Darkwing

  From the sequoia’s mighty limbs grew thinner branches that drooped slightly over the clearing. It was mostly these that the chiropters used as their hunting perches, for they made excellent vantage points for sighting prey and launching. A good perch was jealously held, and once chiropters were old enough to find mates, they were expected to claim their own perch and use it for the rest of their lives. Dusk and Sylph were still allowed to use their parents’ perch. Dusk could see it coming into view now.

  He didn’t feel quite so jaunty any more. He started looking around for his father. At first he’d desperately wanted Dad to see him floating and know how clever his son was. But now, after noticing all the stern looks from the colony, he wondered how his father would react. No one had ever told him not to ride thermals. No one had said anything about it at all.

  He couldn’t spot his father or mother anywhere. Maybe it was for the best.

  He checked on Sylph. She was still there below him, doing fine. He’d sort of hoped she’d slip off the thermal, so he alone would rise gloriously past the perch.

  “You know, little brother,” Sylph commented, “you look particularly odd from this angle.”

  “You know, big sister,” said Dusk, glancing down at her, “from this angle it would be particularly unfortunate if I had to pee.”

  “Don’t you dare!” Sylph said.

  “I won, by the way,” he told her. “First to the perch.”

  “You didn’t reach the perch,” she said. “We’ve actually floated right past the perch. The winner has to be on the perch. And since I’m well below you, seems I’ve got the lead.”

  “But I’ve got the speed,” Dusk countered.

  “Not that much speed.”

  He knew she was right. She’d probably beat him to the perch.

  “You go ahead, then,” he told her. “The thermal’s still strong. I’m not done flying.”

  He heard Sylph’s mocking laugh, and instantly regretted his choice of words.

  “After all,” she said, “you always did want to be a bird.” It was a joke in their family—and outside it, thanks to Sylph. Dad liked to tell the story of how Dusk tried to flap during his first gliding lesson. And when Sylph wanted to be particularly irritating, she’d start flailing her sails, saying, “Oh, I think I’m getting somewhere! I’m getting liftoff! Just a bit more!” Dusk had learned his lesson quickly, and had never told anyone about his secret visits to the Upper Spar. He was deeply ashamed of his abnormal impulses, but seemed powerless to prevent them.

  “Hey, do you think this’ll take us above the treetops?” Sylph asked.

  “I don’t know,” Dusk said. “Anyway, we’re almost at the Upper Spar.”

  “So?”

  “Dad said—”

  “You don’t always have to do what Dad says,” Sylph said impatiently. “Don’t be such a newborn.”

  “Well, we are actually newborns until we turn one.”

  “Don’t you want to see above the treetops?”

  “That’s bird territory,” he said.

  “Well, you’re practically a bird, aren’t you?” she replied with a chuckle. “The birds won’t like it,” he said.

  “But they fly through our territory all the time,” Sylph pointed out. “To get to the ground. We don’t mind.”

  “Right,” Dusk agreed, not wanting to seem meek. “It’s not like we’re landing on their roosts.”

  “We’re just passing through,” said Sylph.

  “Just to the canopy, to get a better view of the sky,” Dusk added. Sylph’s confidence made him feel bolder. But he heard his father in his head, telling him not to go beyond the spar. Dusk was not a rule-breaker by nature. Sylph was the rule-breaker. He tried to do everything he could to please his father. But he was truly curious to see a proper view of the sky—and the birds who inhabited it. They were level with the Upper Spar now, and Dusk swallowed nervously as they rose past it.

  The sequoia’s branches were shorter here as the tree narrowed towards its peak. The clearing opened wider. Birds traversed the sky, and the sun was just starting its slow descent to the west. Before long Dusk and Sylph would be almost as high as the sequoia.

  Dusk followed the birds’ speedy flight paths with eager eyes, marvelling at how their wing strokes carried them effortlessly higher. A large flock suddenly wheeled in unison and streaked out of sight. In their wake, a strange shadow appeared in the sky, just emerging from the sun’s glare, its outline blurred.

  “What is that?” Dusk asked Sylph, directing her gaze skyward.

  To him it looked like a tree uprooted, sailing on its side, boughs thrashing. Once free of the sun’s glare, the object became clearer, and with alarm Dusk realized it was coming towards them. He’d never seen anything so large in the air.

  A long crested head.

  Jagged wings that spanned forty feet.

  “It’s some kind of bird!” Sylph said, her voice constricted with fear.

  Dusk saw its massive wings arch sharply and push down in a half-hearted stroke. “But it has no feathers,” he muttered.

  The thermal, which had been giving them such a delightful ride, was now carrying them heedlessly closer to this thing. Dusk angled his sails and pulled away, shouting for Sylph to do the same. Free, they began a hasty descent. Dusk kept looking back.

  The creature slewed through the air, heading unmistakably for their clearing. No wonder the birds had beat a frantic retreat! Had this thing seen him and Sylph? Dusk angled his sails more sharply, hastening his fall. Sylph led the way, past bird territory, past the Upper Spar.

  He heard the thing coming, bringing the sound of a sudden squall. Wind pushed against his tail and back. Turning, he saw the long head slanting up to a bony crest. He saw a long beak—or jaws, he wasn’t sure which. One wing was half collapsed against the body, the other snapping and billowing, its tip grazing branches as the creature started its ferocious slantwise plunge into the clearing. He had to warn the colony.

  “Look out!” Dusk bellowed, for there were still hundreds of chiropters hunting between the trees. “Get out of the way!”

  They must have heard him, for he saw the chiropters scatter to the safety of the redwood branches.

  But Dusk did not know which way to fly to escape it. The creature was huge and its wings spanned nearly the whole clearing. “Land!” he shouted to Sylph, who was well below him. “Where?”

  “Anywhere!”

  Sylph swerved to the left and landed hard on the sequoia, scuttling in towards the safety of the trunk.

  Dusk hurtled on, afraid to bank because the creature was so close behind him now. He careened through the deserted hunting grounds, and could see the forest floor rushing towards him. Surely the creature would have to pull up!

  He glanced back and at that moment the thing thundered over him, its hot, rank turbulence sucking Dusk after it, head over tail. The forest whirled. He heard the creature’s wings crackling against branches, snapping wood.

  Dusk untangled his sails and managed to right himself, but could not wrench himself free of the creature’s wake. Tree trunks loomed. He expected the creature to pull up and veer, but instead it piled straight into the redwoods. Digging in with his sails, Dusk braked desperately. He collided with some part of the creature’s leathery tail, spun off stunned, and flailed down through branches. He crashed against bark and dug in with all his claws, shaking so badly he could barely hold on.

  All was silent. No birds sang; no insects trilled. The forest held its breath.

  Dusk looked up into the redwood and saw the creature tangled in the branches directly above him. Its huge body lay crookedly, the great wings pierced and crumpled. Its long head lolled over a branch, the sharp beak hanging not ten feet from Dusk’s head. He followed the fearsome bony rails of its jaws, up to its nostrils, the slits big enough for him to crawl into. There seemed no light behind the creature’s huge black eyes.

  Dusk was afraid to move. Was it dead, or just unconscious? A bough s
plintered and Dusk flinched. But the creature itself did not stir. Dusk was overwhelmed by its sheer size. It had no feathers, so it couldn’t be a bird—but its jaws did look a lot like a long beak. He wasn’t sure what it was.

  He glanced down and realized with a start that he was mere feet from the forest floor. His heart thumped. Unless he meant to crawl along the ground, he would have to climb higher in this tree in order to glide to another.

  Sound began to return to the forest. He gazed up hopefully into the clearing, searching for his father or some of the other chiropters. But he saw no one.

  He looked back at the creature. Its body was as wide as the tree. A branch creaked ominously under the stress.

  Dusk could not stay here. For all he knew, this thing could come crashing down on top of him. He would have to crawl up past it. He plotted a course with his eyes. It was possible, but would take him perilously close to the creature’s head.

  Surely it was dead after a crash like that. Its crest was cracked. It must have collided head first with the trunk. That would kill anything.

  Gingerly, Dusk walked splay-legged towards the trunk. The prick of his claws into the wood sounded deafening to him. Part of the creature’s wing hung down over the branch, and as Dusk sidled past he looked at the thick leathery hide.

  He hesitated. It had no feathers, yet it flew. He hadn’t thought it was possible. The creature’s skin was stretched over a long spar of bone. There were no other fingers exactly.

  Though the skin was much thicker than his own, he couldn’t help thinking the creature’s wings looked a bit like his own furless sails. It was a disturbing, even distasteful, thought, and he quickly banished it.

  At the redwood’s trunk he began his climb. The creature’s body hung over him, dark and brooding as a storm cloud. Its humid heat washed over him and his nostrils narrowed at the odour. He wanted to groom himself.

  Why had it crashed in the first place? What had made it fly so erratically?

  From the leading edge of its right wing extended a cluster of three claws, each one twice the length of Dusk. He took a breath and hurriedly ducked beneath them. He felt no bigger than a twig alongside this giant. He did not want to look at it any more; he only wanted to get past it, to glide away to the sequoia and climb back to his nest.

  And yet, his eyes kept straying to the wing, its shape, the fine covering—he could see it now—of hair, or was it some kind of feather after all? Across the wing membrane were strange blooms of rotted skin. Maybe the creature was diseased; maybe that was why it had flown so poorly.

  Dusk climbed hurriedly, now parallel with the creature’s lolling head. The branches creaked. He felt a stirring of wind. Slowly Dusk looked back over his shoulder. The creature’s left wingtip twitched, making the membrane rustle.

  He waited no longer. He moved with speed, not caring if he was noisy now. The creature flinched. The head shifted. If Dusk could only get past the jaws, past the head, and up to the next branch, he could launch himself across the clearing.

  Now he was alongside the creature’s left eye. It was as big as him, this eye, black and impenetrable. With a start, Dusk saw himself reflected in it, just as he sometimes saw himself in pools of still water in the sequoia’s bark. He stared, transfixed. Then the eye became eerily translucent; light shifted within and Dusk saw his reflection dissolve. The creature’s head tilted towards him.

  Dusk could only stare back. The creature’s jaws parted, and a great gust of reeking air washed over him. But mingled with this exhalation was something else, something that sounded to Dusk like language, though a kind he’d never heard. One more sour gust of breath escaped the creature’s throat, and its head thudded against the branch as the last echo of life evaporated from its eye.

  CHAPTER 3

  CARNASSIAL

  In the shallow depression were two eggs, long and narrow, nestled amidst a thick mulch of fruit and mud and leaves. The rotting vegetation sent up a rich stink, and a surprising amount of heat, which Carnassial knew was meant to keep the eggs warm. He’d seen many saurian nests like this one. “How did you know it was here?” Panthera asked, amazed.

  His eyes flashed triumphantly. “I could smell it. Now, take cover.”

  They quickly backed up into the tall grass and pressed their bodies flat against the earth. The nest was unguarded, and though this was not unusual, it still made Carnassial nervous. Something might be returning, or watching.

  He could remember times when he’d found a whole colony of nests, twelve or more, guarded by at least one saurian, while the others were off hunting. The mothers would walk amongst the eggs, patrolling them. Sometimes they would lie down beside them to help keep them warm. They were too large and heavy to actually sit atop them, as birds did. But in the past two years, he’d seen only lone nests, and ever fewer at that.

  Where was the mother? Or the father, for that matter? It was possible they’d both gone off to hunt, trusting that their nest was well camouflaged. And so it was, tucked into the tall grass at the very edge of the cliff. Carnassial might have missed it altogether if it hadn’t been for the nest’s characteristic smell—over the years, he’d become very familiar with it.

  Carnassial’s tall ears, so sharply tapered that they might have been horns, swivelled: one to the east, one to the west. He heard the wind against the cliff, the sea breaking along the shore; he heard the tread of some small gnawer not far distant—but he picked up nothing that might have been the sound of a returning saurian. His belly against the earth felt no vibrations of approaching footsteps. The leathery eggs themselves did not tell him what kind of creature they contained, though the elevated location of the nest made Carnassial suspect they were flyers. He turned his gold-flecked eyes skyward. Nothing but birds.

  He forced himself to wait just a moment longer, his impatient heart thumping against his ribs. Saliva flooded his mouth. He kept his long, bushy tail very still. The breeze rustled his whiskers. He pressed himself even closer to the earth, rump tensed, ready. His eyes, huge in his lean face, were locked on the eggs, as though he could bore right through them and see his prey within.

  “Now,” he said.

  Carnassial sprang forward, grass against his belly, taking fast slinking strides. He leapt into the nest amongst the eggs. They were the same size as him. He and Panthera each chose one and set to work. His jaws would not open wide enough to crush the shell. Putting his head against the egg, he rolled it to the edge of the nest, against the raised mud rim, so it could not wobble away from him. He put his shoulder to the shell and extended his four claws. Each was stout and strong, with a curved hook at the end.

  With his left claws he held the egg; with his right he cut four parallel swaths into it. Fluid oozed through the cracks, and with it a delicious smell. He wrenched his claws free and dug the tips into a single crack, pulling against the shell. A leathery shard ripped off, then another and another, until Carnassial had torn a large opening in the side of the egg. Within, through the torn membrane, he saw the pale glimmer of the hatchling, trembling slightly.

  He looked over to see how Panthera was faring. A skilled hunter, she too had gashed a hole in her egg. His ears pricked and swivelled; he looked all about him once more, high into the skies, without seeing any sign of saurians. Then he returned to his prey.

  The hatchling was far along, close to being born. Carnassial was delighted. If the eggs were new, there was little more than the yolk, but with this one there would be plenty of tender flesh. He thrust his snout into the opening, his gaping jaws cracking the shell even more. Teeth gnashing, he gorged himself on the hatchling without even bothering to drag it from its egg.

  For two days he had eaten little except grubs and nuts and fruit, and his feeding now was so savage, he barely remembered to note what manner of saurian he devoured. Patriofelis would want to know, when Carnassial returned to the prowl. Their leader was a great keeper of such facts.

  He pulled back and cast an eye over the remains. The hat
ch-ling’s elongated arm bones told him all he needed to know. He’d guessed right. It was a flyer. A quetzal, by the looks of it.

  Its bony wings and the cartilage of its crest and bill were the only parts he rejected. Sated, Carnassial fell back, licking the remaining fluid from his muzzle and paws. Panthera was watching him. Like most of the other hunters, she had savaged the shell, lapped up the yolk, but left the hatchling to die. “You do not want the meat?” he asked her.

  She gave a shake and stepped back, inviting Carnassial to feed. As he ate, he felt her watching him curiously, her stripeless grey tail whisking back and forth in agitation. Meat was not a typical part of the felid diet. But years ago, Carnassial had discovered that his rear teeth allowed him to shear meat from bones—not something all other felids could do, he learned. He sometimes wondered if his craving for meat had been with him since birth, or whether the eggs had given him the appetite. He glanced again at Panthera.

  “Will you eat nothing?” he said.

  “No.”

  She watched him almost warily, as though he might turn his shearing teeth on her.

  Carnassial gazed skyward, watching for the mother saurian. Maybe she was already dead. With every year he’d found fewer and fewer nests, many of them abandoned as their parents fell victim to the disease that bloomed on their skins. Likely these two eggs were all that was left. Still, it was best he and Panthera took cover quickly. The quetzals could dive down from the sky with lightning speed.

  Before leaving, he lifted his hind leg and triumphantly sprayed the nest with urine. It was his territory now.

  “Maybe these were the very last,” Panthera said, as they bounded through the tall grass.

  Carnassial licked his teeth thoughtfully. He’d developed a liking for eggs over the years, especially those that contained tender flesh. He would miss them. But the thought that he might be responsible for destroying the last nest—that was very pleasing. Of all the hunting parties stalking the earth, he had sniffed it out. It was the kind of honour that would one day make him leader of the prowl.