He directed his echo vision lower and there, lying at the chamber’s bottom, was an enormous stone disc. Eagerly, he dropped down to it, brushing away the dried cocoons, insect husks, and years of animal droppings until the hieroglyphs flared in his mind’s eye. Round and round the disc’s surface the images ran, spiralling in towards the centre. Stars, moon, other symbols he didn’t understand. But he would.
He would study the heavens so he could predict the next total eclipse. He would wait for Phoenix to emerge from the Underworld and then mate with her to create a new royal family. And together they would finally raise Zotz from the Underworld.
Creaking wings overhead made him jerk around. “Who’s there?” he roared.
Clinging to a corner of the ceiling was a small group of Vampyrum, watching him fearfully. Goth smiled. “Do you know what this place is?” he asked them. “No,” said a young male.
“This is a temple of Cama Zotz, and this Stone contains the future. Did you know that?”
They shook their heads, bewildered.
“Then, listen to me,” said Goth, “and I will tell you about your god, and all the things to come.”
Goth spoke through the day, feeling stronger by the second.
He was alive.
Zotz was watching over him.
His life had just begun.
Griffin felt wetness against his fur and opened his eyes to find himself flapping through mist. He banked and suddenly he was out of it, beneath a clear sky jangling with stars and a full moon. The moon! He licked his mouth and tasted the water beaded in his hair: not salty this time, just right. It seemed to awaken all his senses: how thirsty he was, how tired, and how hungry.
He circled, looking all around for Luna, and then exhaled with relief when she streamed out from the same bank of mist. They flew as close together as their wingbeats would allow, and looked at the silver forest below them. The scent of it was almost too much for Griffin’s nostrils. He was sure he could smell every single tree and flower and animal within a thousand wingbeats. “Look,” said Luna. “We’re home.”
Below them was his favourite sugar maple, rising up from its little hill on the valley floor. “Still lots of caterpillars for you,” said Luna.
Griffin grinned. He would eat later. Right now, all he wanted was to see his mother, and he felt in Luna the same pulse of impatience and excitement to be truly home. In the distance he could see the peak of Tree Haven, and hear other bats in the forest, hunting. He only wished his father were making this journey with them.
With Luna at his side, he beat his wings hard for home.
Shade came out over the forest.
He had no body, no shape that he could discern.
He was just here.
And here was anywhere he wanted, just by wishing it. He glided low over the treetops and skimmed a maple leaf—not above it or below it or near it, but inside it. With elation he felt his whole being enter the leaf and course through its tissue, through the tiny tributaries that carried water and food, and then down the fibrous twig which held it, and into the strong tendons of a larger branch, and then down the wise old muscle and bones of the trunk itself—and finally Shade knew what it felt like to be a tree. He slipped out through the bark back into the forest.
This was great!
He shimmered through the wings of a firefly, danced through some sleeping wildflowers, submerged himself briefly in the stream and came back up, giddy with happiness. When he passed through all these things, it wasn’t like he was visiting, it was like he was, for that moment, the thing itself, all his senses guided through it. And he could pick and choose, which suited him just fine, because as much as he’d liked the wildflower, he thought it might be a bit dull to be a flower forever.
The forest hummed and pulsed all around him—and he felt more alive and connected to it than he could ever remember. He became aware of the living creatures out below the full moon. He couldn’t quite bring himself to pass through the skunk—he’d do that later when he had more practice—but worked up the courage to fly through an owl, and felt its superb power and skill.
It was not merely the living he felt, either. Within every fibre of the forest, he was aware of the others, those who had died and passed through the Tree. He could not see them or hear them or speak to them, but he sensed they were all around him—in the leaves and dust, dewdrops and pebbles—and knew they were equally content.
When he saw the Silverwings, he felt a quick pang of longing. They were streaking through the forest, hunting, and they looked so superb he wished momentarily he could have a living body again. He passed through one, and felt the familiar glee of flight, the anticipation of the hunt for insects. They were all chittering rapidly to one another, and he listened, though he had no need of their words to understand their excitement, and their destination.
Shade too felt a quickening within him, and soared on ahead of the bats … and saw before him Tree Haven. He circled once, just to admire it, and to watch all the newborns and mothers racing back to the roost, even though it was far from sunrise. Shade slipped inside, and there, in the central hollow of the trunk, was a great gathering of the entire colony, the walls and ceilings all crowded with Silverwings. The elders were roosting in the middle, and beside them were Roma and her child Luna and …
He felt himself expand with joy when he saw Marina and Griffin, talking and enfolding each other in their wings. Shade streamed towards them and embraced them both, flowing through Marina and Griffin, his mate and his son, and being closer to them than they could possibly comprehend. He felt all the things in their hearts, and became a part of them, and so the homecoming was his as well.
About the Author
KENNETH OPPEL is the author of many books, including Airborn, winner of the Governor General’s Award; Skybreaker, winner of the Red Maple Award and the Ruth and Sylvia Schwartz Award; and the million-copy-selling Silverwing Saga. His most recent novel is Half Brother. Kenneth Oppel lives with his wife and three children in Toronto. Visit his website at www.kennethoppel.com.
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Praise for FIREWING
ALSO NOMINATED FOR
Canadian Library Association’s Book of the Year for Children Award
Hackmatack Children’s Choice Book Award
Manitoba Young Reader’s Choice Award
“Brilliantly, Oppel has created an entirely believable fantasy world inhabited by bats and other creatures that, except for their furriness, exhibit all the behaviours of human beings and mythological gods…. I can guarantee you’ll love it.” —The Vancouver Sun
“With a spring-tight plot, it propels the reader through an exciting, chilling, and deliciously satisfying adventure. Firewing is sure to delight.” —Quill & Quire
“The story is vivid and spellbinding, full of drama … just as thrilling as the previous two books in the series.” —The Chronicle-Herald
“Firewing has accessible and appealing young characters, a fascinating, elaborately imagined world and an exciting, well-crafted story.” —Winnipeg Free Press
“[In Firewing] Oppel constructs a wonderfully florid and richly imagined world, a bat world in which life and death, goodness and evil, heaven and hell, and the notion of giving up one’s own life so that another might live, are there for the reading—and the feeling.” —The Globe and Mail
“Hauntingly vivid.” —Toronto Star
“Goth, the monstrous cannibal bat who plotted to kill the sun, may have been blown to bits at the end of Kenneth Oppel’s Sunwing. But this doesn’t stop Oppel from including his arch-villain in yet another electrifying sequel to the bat saga he began in 1997.”
—Amazon.ca
BOOKS BY KENNETH OPPEL
Half Brother
Starclimber
Skybreaker
Airborn
Darkwing
Firewing
Sunwing
Si
lverwing
Dead Water Zone
The Live-Forever Machine
(For Younger Readers)
The King’s Taster
Peg and the Yeti
Peg and the Whale
Emma’s Emu
A Bad Case of Ghosts
A Strange Case of Magic
A Crazy Case of Robots
A Weird Case of Super-Goo
An Incredible Case of Dinosaurs
A Creepy Case of Vampires
Copyright
Requiem Copyright © 2011 by Kenneth Oppel.
Published by Collins, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
All rights reserved under all applicable International Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
EPub Edition AUGUST 2011 ISBN: 9781443411264
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.
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Kenneth Oppel, Firewing
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