Firewing

  Gradually the world below him started to reveal itself: furrowed ridges of hills, the dark scars of valleys or rivers, black smudges of forest. He tried to find his own forest, his stream, Tree Haven, but this vague landscape was completely unrecognizable.

  A forest swelled beneath him. Still coming in too fast. He was used to the downward dive of a landing, but this was too much. Desperately spraying out sound, he tried to pick out a suitable landing site. He pulled back, angling his wings to brake. He saw the trees hurtling up, and then he was among them, slashed by leaves and twigs and pine needles, and grabbing wildly for anything that might break his fall.

  TREE HAVEN

  Shade and his four companions cleared the last ridge and followed the treeline down into the valley. Whole swaths of forest looked as if they’d been swatted over by a giant paw. He could hear the consternation of birds and beasts as he sailed overhead. Please, he thought fervently, let Tree Haven be all right. Not far now, not far.

  There, up ahead, still standing!

  But as he drew closer to Tree Haven, Shade saw that a large branch had snapped off, leaving a jagged hole midway up the trunk. Without hesitating he trimmed his wings and flew through the knothole.

  Inside it was a chaos of wings and voices, newborns and mothers crying out for one another. Shade wasted no time adding his own voice to the clamour. “Marina!”

  He fluttered laboriously through the aerial tangle, crying out Marina’s name. Around him he could hear his other Silverwing companions calling out for their own mates. Shade had helped hollow out this tree, but since he’d been gone its passageways and roosts had been enlarged even more by the females, and he was no longer familiar with its twisting geography.

  “Shade?”

  He locked onto her voice instantly and wheeled. When he saw her, his throat tightened. She wasn’t roosting, but lying flat on her belly on a ledge, her right wing extended awkwardly.

  “Marina,” he said, landing beside her, and for a few moments, neither of them said a word, their faces and bodies pressed into one another, revelling in the other’s scent and touch.

  “I’m so glad you came,” she whispered into his neck.

  Finally he pulled back. “Your wing.”

  “I’m not sure. It doesn’t feel too good. The earthquake snapped the branch and I was in it. I got knocked around a bit before I got clear.”

  He cast a tender wash of sound over her wing, and could see the swelling in her forearm, though he didn’t make out any obvious fractures. He was hopeful it was just a sprain, but knew she wouldn’t be able to fly for a while.

  “Is the pain bad?” he asked.

  She shook her head impatiently. “I don’t know where Griffin is. I asked Penumbra to find him, but she hasn’t come back yet.”

  “He’s probably still out hunting,” Shade said, not wanting to worry her—but he felt drenched with worry. She hadn’t seen what it was like out there, trees mangled, the earth wrenched up. If Griffin had been out there, Shade could only hope his son was aloft when the quake hit.

  “He was upset, Shade. He flew off somewhere to be alone, I think.”

  “Why?”

  Her face was pinched. “There was a terrible accident.”

  “Not with Griffin,” he blurted instinctively.

  “Griffin’s okay. It was his friend, Luna. One of the other newborns. They stole some fire from the Humans.”

  He listened in growing horror as she told him all that had happened.

  “How’s Luna now?”

  “Not good. We tended to her burns but …” She shook her head. “And the whole time …” She lowered her voice as if ashamed. “Over and over again I kept thinking, I’m so glad it wasn’t Griffin. So glad.”

  She started to cry, and Shade nuzzled her tenderly, trying to hold his own tears at bay.

  “I think he did it to impress you,” Marina said.

  “Impress me?” he said, startled.

  “I should’ve known it would happen. They all tell stories about you, the things you did and—He’s not like you, Shade. He hangs back, he worries about things. He was probably afraid you wouldn’t like him unless he did something clever and heroic.”

  Shade didn’t know what to say. He hadn’t even met his son, and it seemed he’d already made him unhappy, forced him into doing something foolish and dangerous that might cost a newborn her life.

  Penumbra fluttered towards them, her face grave. “I’m sorry, Marina, we haven’t seen him yet. But there are still plenty of newborns outside. We’re still looking.”

  “I’ll look, too,” Shade reassured Marina. He put his head close to hers. “Tell me what he looks like.”

  He listened carefully as she sang an echo picture into his ears, and watched as his son appeared before his mind’s eye, etched in silver. It was the first time he’d beheld his son, and Shade’s heart swelled. He didn’t know if Griffin strongly resembled either Marina or himself, but looking at him, he felt an overwhelming sense of familiarity. This small creature belonged to him.

  “Where did you last see him?” he asked.

  “The healer’s roost. He flew off before I could stop him, and when I went after him he’d already disappeared. I thought maybe he needed to be alone.” She shifted anxiously, wincing at the pain it caused her wing. “I should’ve gone after him.”

  “It’s okay. I’m going to find him.” When he saw her confusion, he added, “I’m going to listen for him.”

  Shade knew he could waste hours flapping around, looking. The best way would be to track him with sound. Long ago, Zephyr, the Keeper of the Spire, had told him that you could hear noises from the past, and even the future, if your hearing was sharp enough. Shade had never had any success listening to the future, but he’d found if he concentrated enough, he could hear the echoes of things that had already happened—though how far back, he didn’t really know.

  He stroked Marina one last time and flew for the healer’s roost near the summit of Tree Haven. At the entrance he faltered when he saw the wounded newborn, so still, tended by her mother.

  “How is she?” Shade asked.

  “I don’t know.” Her mother barely lifted her head.

  “Is there anything else you need?”

  “Everything’s been done,” said the mother. “Thank you.” Shade fluttered to the back of the healer’s roost and tried to clear his mind. He listened. He started by screening out the biggest sounds, those that were being made now within Tree Haven, and then tried to hear the smaller ones, the echoes of sounds made just a few seconds ago, then a few seconds more….

  As he listened deeper and deeper into the past, he felt a strange weightless sensation, somewhere between flying and floating in water. He did not know how far back he was going, and had to guess, pausing sometimes and letting the echoes draw pictures in his mind’s eye.

  Luna—and her mother crouched over her, nuzzling her cheek.

  Further back: Ariel and many other females, gathered around the newborn, doubtless discussing her injuries—though Shade didn’t want to spend time deciphering their words….

  Off to one side he saw Marina, roosting alone, watching….

  A little further back in time and—

  A newborn was suddenly beside her, talking, and Shade recognized Griffin at once.

  I’ve found him, Shade thought to himself. Now he had to follow him, listening forwards through time.

  Feeling as though he were hovering in an immense black void, Shade strained to catch the echoes that formed his son: the image was silvery, hazy, and threatened to dissolve altogether sometimes. Listening intently, he saw Griffin take flight and careen from the healer’s roost.

  Shade too had to take flight and follow his son’s path, staying close to the echoes his wings made. It was like chasing a smear of liquid light, moving down through the great trunk of Tree Haven, and Shade flew with one eye open, so he could match his own course with his son’s—and avoid colliding with other bats.

/>   He followed Griffin’s sonic trail lower, until it hesitated briefly at the base of Tree Haven. It took all Shade’s concentration to focus, to stopper his ears against all the noise in the roost and the competing echoes from the past.

  When he saw his son’s echo image disappear into the tunnels, he felt ill. He could only hope Griffin hadn’t been underground. Shade paused, listening forwards in time, hoping he’d hear another sonic mirage coming back out of the passageway.

  But there was nothing, except a long concussion of light, created by something very, very loud. The earthquake.

  Shade launched himself into the tunnel, scrambling as fast as he could, following Griffin’s trail. Past the junction to the echo chamber, and down even further. Griffin, why did you go so deep? Why did you have to hide down here?

  So intent was he on the trail that he almost crashed headlong into the wall of rubble and rock created by the earthquake. Panting, he cast back into the past, before the earthquake, until he caught sight of his son’s smudgy silver image in the tunnel. With horror, Shade watched as Griffin dissolved into the wall of rubble and disappeared.

  That meant he’d gone past this point.

  Or that he was trapped somewhere within the debris. “Griffin!” he shouted, his voice clattering about in the cramped tunnel. Immediately he started clawing at the rubble, coughing and sneezing as dust swirled around him. The cave-in might be only a few wingbeats deep, or a few hundred. Didn’t matter. But after a few minutes he realized he was getting nowhere this way. He backed up, closed his eyes. He knew it was dangerous, that it might cause an even more disastrous cave-in, but Griffin could be in there, trapped, and it was the only way to shift the rubble. Shade took a deep breath and with all his might barked out a bolt of sound.

  The sound struck against the wall of rubble, and the returning echo blinded him in both ears. The ground shuddered, and rock and earth pelted his fur, but when he opened his eyes, he saw that his blast had triggered a small avalanche and opened a hole in the wall. He sang out once more, carefully, to enlarge the opening, and then hurried towards it. “Griffin!”

  Nothing.

  He clambered through, using careful washes of sound to search the rubble. His heart fluttered, sick with the fear he might see the edge of a shattered wing, a bit of lifeless fur. Matted with grit, he dragged himself out the other side, trembling with exhaustion and relief. He’d seen nothing. Surely Griffin was on this side, safe. “Griffin?”

  But the tunnel was empty. Then he saw it. At the far end, the rock had been split into a narrow gash, big enough for a bat to squeeze through. It was hissing faintly. Shade instantly thought of the tiger moth, sucked down into the earth.

  No.

  It was still possible his son was trapped somewhere in the cave-in…. Only one way to be sure. Again Shade flared his ears and listened. It was simpler this time: fewer echoes to distract him as he sifted back through the sound of time, and then suddenly there was Griffin, hunched up in the tunnel, trapped.

  Shade’s throat thickened as he watched the worried movements of his son, scratching uselessly at the rubble that cut him off, then turning to move closer to the hissing opening which promised his only exit. Shade stared, his breath frozen, as Griffin ducked into the fissure and disappeared.

  “I fear your son may already be lost to you,” said Lucretia, the chief Silverwing elder.

  Shade shook his head, trying to expel her terrible words. “There’s no way we can know that yet.”

  It had taken all his resolve to return to Tree Haven. Underground, he had crawled into the hissing crevice, following Griffin’s echo image down and down until suddenly it evaporated in the powerful current. Shade knew that unless he turned back immediately, he, too, would be dragged headlong to whatever waited beneath. He’d wanted to go, anyway, to hurtle himself after his son. But he couldn’t. Not yet. At the very least he had to tell Marina. Laboriously, he’d dragged himself back up the tunnel into Tree Haven. And now, at its summit, he shifted impatiently as he listened to the four elders roosting above him.

  “Over the centuries,” said Lucretia, “similar cracks in the earth have opened. We have accounts of bats who fell down them. None ever returned. Shade, where your son has gone, there can be no rescue.”

  “I’m going,” he said hoarsely. “I only came back to tell you.”

  “Our legends tell us it is the Underworld. The land Cama Zotz created for the cannibal bats after their death. It’s a place of utter darkness and torment. For our kind, Nocturna created a different afterlife, a wonderful one. But in Zotz’s Underworld, there are only the Vampyrum Spectrum, all the billions of them who were ever born.”

  The thought of his son in this hellish place—the wrong place—was almost too terrible for Shade to endure. “I won’t leave him there.”

  “It is said that those who enter the world of the dead, become the dead.”

  “Legends,” Shade muttered.

  “They are all we have,” Lucretia reminded him kindly, but firmly.

  “I’ve never even heard these legends,” Shade said, unable to contain his frustration—and indignation, too. “Why weren’t we ever told about Cama Zotz or this Underworld?” He’d spent a lot of time in the echo chamber, the perfectly spherical cave where the Silverwing colony stored its history. He’d even sung some stories of his own to the polished walls. So how was it possible that he—a hero, in case anyone needed reminding!—should be shut out like this? It was outrageous.

  “There are some legends that are meant only for the elders,” said Lucretia. “Unless we feel they serve a purpose in their telling.” Shade said nothing, not trusting himself to speak. He hated the idea of secrets being kept from him, as if he were some silly newborn. Why shouldn’t he—why shouldn’t everyone?—know all there was to know?

  “Well,” he said, his mind already leaping ahead, “who started these legends?”

  “We don’t know that, Shade.”

  “All I’m getting at,” he pressed on, “is that someone must’ve gone down to the Underworld and learned all this stuff, about the billions of dead cannibal bats and the darkness and Zotz—”

  “Perhaps—”

  “—and he must’ve come back alive, or how would we know?”

  “This is all conjecture, Shade.”

  “If he came back, I can come back!”

  The elders exhaled in unison, momentarily at a loss.

  “There’s something else to consider, Shade.”

  This time the speaker was his own mother, Ariel. He still wasn’t used to seeing her like this: hanging above him, looking wise and impartial. To be perfectly honest, it freaked him out, made him feel like a newborn all over again. “If the earth opened this tunnel,” she said to him, “it may close it. Without warning.”

  “That’s why I need to go right away. Mom, Griffin’s down there!”

  “My grandson,” Ariel reminded him. “And if you go, my heart tells me I will lose my son, as well. And Marina her mate.”

  “Anything we say will only seem cruel to you,” Lucretia said, addressing Shade again. “We know that. But the opening must be shut immediately, to prevent anyone else being lost—and to prevent anything from coming up.”

  “I know it’s got to be closed, I know that. But not yet. Please.”

  He looked up at his mother in confusion. “You would’ve done the same for me, wouldn’t you?”

  “Of course I would’ve.” She fluttered down beside him, pushing her face against his. He breathed in her scent, wished for a moment that he could go back in time—not that his past had ever been particularly easy. “But I’m not just your mother anymore, Shade,” said Ariel. “I’m also an elder. And my own wishes are not always those of the council.”

  “The council can’t stop me,” he said.

  “Shade,” Lucretia said sharply, “it is inviting death to go after your son. It is unlikely there is any food down there, or any water. There may not even be air to breathe. No Silverwing
was meant to go to the Underworld of Cama Zotz.”

  “But Griffin has! Two nights is all I want,” Shade persisted. “If I haven’t returned by then, block the opening.”

  The elders were silent for a moment. Then Lucretia sighed and looked down at Ariel. Sadly, she nodded up at the chief elder.

  “Very well,” Lucretia said, “two nights. But that is all.”

  “I’m coming, too!” Marina raged at him.

  “You can’t,” Shade told her. “You’ve got to let your wing heal. If you don’t, you might never fly again.”

  “It’s not fair!” she said through her tears. “It’s not fair you get to go, and leave me behind where all I can do is worry!” She looked so angry, he couldn’t help smiling just a little. “And you,” she said. “What if I lose you, too?” He sighed, spreading his wings around her. “Tell me what you want me to do.” “Go get him,” she said. “Go get him and bring him home.” “Yes,” he told her. “Yes.”

  OASIS

  For a long time, Griffin stared blearily, trying to understand what he was looking at. Slowly, things began to make sense. He was peering up at a complicated tangle of branches and leaves, and beyond them, stars blazing in the night sky.

  Flat on his back, wings sprawled, jagged images of his crash-landing flickered in his memory. His body tensed. What if he’d broken something …? A wing? He swallowed, afraid to move; he certainly didn’t feel any pain. But maybe he was in shock. Maybe he’d broken his back and wouldn’t feel anything ever again. Cautiously Griffin turned his head. Good, that worked. He inspected first his left wing, then his right. They didn’t seem damaged. He twitched his fingers, one at a time, then slowly furled both wings tightly against his body. Gently he rocked himself from side to side until he had enough momentum to flip onto his belly. He grunted as the bruised muscles all across his back and chest clenched. But at least nothing seemed to be broken. The thick bed of leaves and moss on the forest floor must have broken his fall, saved his life.