“I know, it’s a shock, isn’t it, to hear that?” Java said kindly. “We all had to go through it, believe me. With a little time you won’t find it so dreadful. Trust me.”
“Um, well, I’m not dead, actually,” said Shade.
“Denial,” said the misshapen Silverwing in a bored voice. “Classic reaction.”
“This is perfectly normal,” Java told Shade in a soothing tone. “You just need some time with it.”
“No, really, I can see why there’d be a misunderstanding,” Shade said. “But I’m not dead. There was an earthquake and—”
“This is all very poignant,” said the misshapen Silverwing, “but do you think we could hurry it along.”
“Yorick,” said Java, for the first time sounding testy, “surely a little patience wouldn’t kill you.”
“It did kill me, actually,” snapped Yorick. “And now that I’m dead, I find myself exceedingly impatient to get out of here!”
Shade looked from one to the other, dazed. “So those other bats I saw outside, they all came down here when they died?”
“Quick learner,” muttered Yorick.
“Every bat from every part of the world comes here when they die,” Java told him.
Shade couldn’t speak, he was so shaken. This hideous netherworld was where Nocturna sent her own favoured creatures? Nocturna was supposed to look after them when they died! Send them someplace wonderful!
“All bats come here,” he muttered, dazed. “But my elders … the legends say the Underworld is only for the Vampyrum.”
“Wrong!” said Whiskery-face cheerfully.
“Can’t be right …”
“It’s true,” Java told him gently. “You saw for yourself just now.”
Shade snorted angrily. “This really spikes my fur up,” he said. “They tell you things and you’re supposed to believe it because they’re elders, and it’s some dusty old legend that’s been staggering around the echo chamber for thousands of years….” The others were all staring at him in astonishment, and he trailed off. “Sorry, I just hate not knowing things. You, for instance,” he said to Java and Whiskery-face, “no one ever told me about creatures like you. Never.”
“I’m a Foxwing,” she said. “A bat, but a fruit-eater, from the other side of the ocean from you, I think. My name’s Java.”
“Shade,” he said. “From the northern forests. Are you all so … big? Your species?”
“Bigger. I’m a runt.”
“Really?” said Shade, ears pricking in surprise. “So am I.”
“And I’m Nemo,” said Whiskery-face, “from the coastal waters way down south. We’re fish-eaters.” Now Shade understood the wickedly elongated claws. He could imagine Nemo strafing streams and oceans, snatching food from the water. His eyesight and powers of echolocation must be extraordinary.
“And the grouchy Silverwing here,” said Java, “is Yorick.”
“Do you know my colony?” Shade asked, trying to place him. “Tree Haven?”
“Never heard of your colony, never heard of you.”
“Not surprising,” said Nemo, his eyes flashing mischief, “since Yorick’s probably been down here five hundred years or so.”
Shade stared. Yorick looked the youngest of them all, yet he was five hundred years old? Five hundred years down here?
“Not such a quick learner yourself, are you, Yorick?” Java said with gentle mockery. “Took you some time to figure things out.”
“I had some adjustment difficulties, if that’s what you’re referring to,” Yorick said primly. “But I think I’ve made up for those now. You two wouldn’t have gotten far without me as leader.”
“Leader, is it?” Nemo said, amused. “My boy, we tolerate you because you’ve got the map and you won’t share it with us. It’s not your charisma that keeps us bobbing alongside, believe me!”
“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t call me my boy,” Yorick replied tartly. “I’m approximately four hundred and fifty-two years your elder, by my calculation. And now, we really should be moving on.”
“Where?” Shade asked.
“The Tree,” Java told him. “The dead need to travel there. All of us.”
“Really, I’m not dead.” He sighed. “I have a heartbeat and everything. Come and listen.”
Java looked sadly at the others.
“Humour him,” Yorick said. “If it helps speed the grieving process …”
Java walked across the ceiling towards him. Her face was almost the same size as his entire torso and she had a hard time bending one of her triangular ears to his chest. Her cool ear had barely touched him when she jerked back in shock.
“It’s beating,” she yelped. “His heart beats.”
“You’re sure?” Yorick snapped.
“Listen for yourself.” Java stared at Shade with such intense curiosity and awe that he looked away, self-conscious. “You’re warm, too. But how?”
“I came through a crack in the stone sky,” Shade told them. “From the Upper World.”
“Why?” Yorick demanded, incredulous.
“To find my son.”
“Is he dead?” Java asked.
“Alive. There was an earthquake and a crack opened up and sucked him down.” Shade felt all his frantic impatience seep back. “Do you know where he might go? He’s a newborn. I tried to track him, but lost the trail, and I don’t know where he would’ve landed.” Java, Yorick, and Nemo all looked at him, mute, then turned to one another helplessly. Shade’s anxiety felt amplified in their silence.
“What about these Oases you mentioned. How many are there?” Java inhaled deeply. “Hundreds at least, all across the Underworld, and between them, stretches of badlands like this one.”
Shade felt the breath leak out of him. Hundreds. He could search for months.
“We can’t help you look,” Yorick said sharply. “We’ve got to get to the Tree.”
“What is that?” asked Shade, hopeful. Maybe it was because it sounded like Tree Haven, or maybe it was just the simple image of a tree, a living thing that could only be good, give shelter. Was this a place Griffin might try to reach?
“We’re Pilgrims,” Java explained. “The three of us came from different Oases, on different sides of this world, but we all share the same journey, and that’s how we met. We’re not supposed to stay here. Once we accept our deaths, we’re meant to travel to the Tree. It’s the only way out for us.”
“Where does it go?” Shade asked urgently. Java shook her head. “A new world, better than this. All we’re told is that we must enter the Tree to begin our new lives.”
“Who told you this?”
“The messenger Pilgrims. They fly over all the Oases with their message, and mostly they get ignored by everyone—me included, for the longest time. But it was this latest Pilgrim that finally broke through to me. A Silverwing, actually. Frieda.” Shade choked. “Frieda? Frieda Silverwing?”
“You know her?”
“She was my elder back home, before she died. Where do I find her?”
“She travels the Underworld,” Java explained, “urging bats to begin their journey and giving them maps to the Tree. I don’t know where she is right now.”
“And it doesn’t matter,” said Yorick. “We must go.”
“The journey’s not what you’d call clear sailing,” Nemo explained to Shade. “There’s the voyage itself, which is long, and the land can change on you, and then you’ve got to wait around for more Pilgrims to get a new map. There’s the pain, too. Once you’ve figured out you’re dead, you start feeling pain again—whatever you had in the Upper World, only worse. So there’s that to carry with you. And we’ve also got these cannibal bats stirred into things. So far we’ve managed to slip past them. But if we get caught, our voyage is over, like that.”
Shade was silent, trying to fathom this huge depth of new information. All the dead, here. Silverwings and Brightwings and Vampyrum all swirled together. A journey to some Tree
that would take the dead to a new world. But would his son know about the Tree? Would Griffin naturally fly for it—and was that even the right thing for the living? Maybe it was only for the dead. He longed to talk to Frieda. Wishing was useless. He needed a plan, something to keep his mind focused. Seconds were streaming past.
“I don’t know where to start looking,” Shade admitted.
“Maybe you feel like travelling with us for a bit,” Java offered kindly.
Yorick’s ears nearly shot off his head. “Honestly, Java, all those years eating fruit have made your brain mushy! Hasn’t anyone been listening to me? He’s going to attract all sorts of attention to us, the worst kind! He’ll make bats curious, he’ll make bats angry; they’ll talk, and talk travels! And let’s not forget you can see him coming a hundred wingbeats away! The cannibals will have us in a second!”
“I might be useful to have along,” said Shade.
Yorick snorted.
“I say let him come if he chooses,” Java said firmly.
“This is my voyage,” Yorick said coldly. “I’ve got the map, I lead the way. I’ve been down here five hundred years, and I’m not going to risk getting caught because of a stranger with a tragic tale to tell!”
“Nemo, what do you think?” said Java.
“He has my welcome,” Nemo said, giving Shade a wink.
“That’s it, I’ll go solo,” blustered Yorick.
“All right,” said Java solemnly. “If you must, you must.”
“I don’t need you all slowing me down.”
“Good sailing, my boy,” said Nemo fondly. “May you have favourable winds.”
Yorick looked defiantly from Nemo to Java, then glanced out the cave opening. His battered wings fluttered nervously.
“If he comes,” Yorick said sternly, “he does what I say, he keeps his mouth firmly closed, and he flies close to you, Java. If we see anything coming, you wrap him up tight so he’s not like a beacon.”
Shade smiled. “Seems fair,” he said.
“Our route takes us over an Oasis soon,” Yorick told Shade, more kindly. “Maybe someone there will have seen your son.”
“Thank you.” Shade’s wings twitched impatiently. One Oasis out of hundreds. What were the chances? It was the best he had right now, though.
“Good, good,” muttered Yorick, “then, let’s depart.”
Java gave a yelp and pulled back her wing as if she’d been nipped. A dark muscular shape thrust itself through the exposed cave opening and then enlarged into a Vampyrum Spectrum, jagged wings spread wide, blocking their only exit.
LUNA
Finding Luna was harder than he’d thought.
He went back to where he’d first seen her, and flew out in an ever-widening spiral. Streaking through the trees, he called her name. The other bats flashed out of his way in alarm. Oasis was huge. It could take him nights and nights to sweep its entire area. And he was running out of time—that was the thing that nagged at him like a burr on his cheek. With every wingbeat he was getting weaker, using up the energy he was supposed to be saving for his journey to the Tree.
But how could he leave without her? “Luna!” he called. “Come on, Luna, I need to talk to you! Luna!”
She had either gone to a completely different part of Oasis, or was avoiding him.
His mouth felt stale; he wanted water. He wanted food. He wanted to see the horizon brightening. His wings hurt. He roosted on a freaky-looking tree, trying to quell his growing panic. “Why’re you looking for me?”
He jumped and looked along the branch to see Luna, wrapped up tightly, her eyes watching him over her wings.
“You’ve been here all along?” he exclaimed.
“I’ve been following you.”
“Following me?”
“Trying to decide if you’re crazy or not. Why’d you fly away from me like that? Like you were scared of me.” He tried to say it. Couldn’t. She did it for him.
“You think I’m dead.”
“Well,” he said, letting out a big breath of relief. “So you know.”
“Yeah. That I’m not dead. I mean, come on, look at me!” She sprang from the branch, did a somersault, then nimbly flipped upside down in mid-air and roosted beside him. “Not bad for a dead bat, huh?”
“Look,” he said, “all I know is—”
“Plenty of bats here think you’re dead, though,” Luna told him good-naturedly.
“Yes, I know.”
“The whole glowing thing, the way you fell out of the sky. It’s pretty suspicious.”
“Okay, but—”
“Do you feel dead?”
Griffin couldn’t help chuckling in frustration. “I am not dead. All right?” He stopped laughing. “But you are.” She sniffed.
“It’s not just you,” Griffin told her. “You’re … well, you’re all dead. I’m sorry, it’s not a very polite thing to say, but you are. And I’m not the only one who thinks so.”
“I saw you talking to one of the Pilgrims.” Griffin nodded. “Her name’s Frieda. My parents knew her. She was the elder of our colony.”
“Hmm,” said Luna dubiously. “And I suppose she’s dead, too, right?” “Uh-huh.”
“She seemed nice,” Luna said with a trace of sadness. “She didn’t seem crazy or anything.” “I don’t think she is.” Luna looked at him hard. “So prove it.”
Griffin sucked in a big breath. “This place is not the real world. It’s … totally different, and it’s all wrong. The trees—take a good look.”
Luna stared at the trees around her, unimpressed. “So?” “They’re all mixed up. Pine needles, oak leaves, maple leaves, all on the same branch. That doesn’t seem weird to you?”
She flicked her wingtips carelessly. “No. That’s what I’m used to. Maybe the trees where you come from are just different.” Griffin sighed. This might be harder than he’d thought. “Eating,” he said. “Those bugs don’t taste like anything. Because they aren’t anything. They’re just sound or something; they just disappear when you chew them. And where’s the sun, Luna? Where’s the moon?” “What are those?”
“The sun?” he said in disbelief, “that big bright ball in the sky. Feels warm on your fur. And the moon …”
For a moment he wondered if he was the crazy one, spouting gibberish. Obviously he needed a better strategy. “So how long have you lived here at Oasis?” he asked casually. She shrugged. “Always.” “Since you were born?”
Her face clouded for a moment, and almost defiantly she said, “Yeah.” “Where’s your nursery roost?”
She waved her wing vaguely. “Over there.”
“Who’s your mother?”
“What’s the point of all these questions?”
“Do you know?”
“Of course I know who my mother is!”
“So what’s her name?”
“This is stupid.” But for the first time, Luna looked uneasy. “Um … it’s Serena.”
“No.”
“I think I know the name of my own mother,” she insisted, indignant.
“Frieda said the dead don’t remember anything. The memories are there, but you just have trouble seeing them—or don’t want to.”
“This is all just talk.”
“You have no heartbeat,” he said sadly. “And you’re cold. Living things are warm. That’s why I … I got scared and flew away. I’m sorry.”
“A heartbeat?” she said, as if the idea was unfamiliar to her.
“Come closer. Put your head here, you can hear it.” Hesitantly she shifted along the branch and pressed her ear to the centre of his chest.
“Loud,” she said, pulling back.
“Yeah, well, it gets louder and faster when you’re scared.” She folded some of her wing against her own chest, attentive, listening.
“Maybe some bats just don’t have one,” she said.
“Look at your wings.” He hated doing this. “Tell me how it happened.”
She frowned at
the scars, seemed about to speak, then gave a little shake of her head. “I think I just was born that way.” But she said it without much conviction.
He watched her, waiting.
“You know—is that what you’re saying?” she demanded.
“I know.”
She shrugged, then a moment later said, “So let’s hear your story. I’m not saying I believe it or anything.”
He didn’t want to be doing this, but maybe if he could start her remembering, there’d be a landslide. But did he really want her remembering this particular thing? Carefully he chose his words, voice hoarse.
“There was a fire in our forest. And you got burned. The elders tried to heal you. Everyone was taking care of you, but you were too badly hurt. You died.”
“But I don’t feel dead.”
“This is the Underworld, Luna.”
“You seem to know everything,” she said angrily. “All about me, too.”
“We grew up together.”
“News to me.”
“When you first saw me down here, you flew right over, even though I was glowing! All the other bats are terrified of me. They just scatter. Not you. You came right over. Because you remembered me!”
She stared at him, then looked away. “I don’t remember you. I don’t remember anything.”
“Well, I remember you,” Griffin said. “And I’ll tell you everything you want to know. If you come with me.”
“Where?”
“The Tree.”
Suddenly, he was aware of the other bats, dozens of them hanging in the branches, staring balefully.
“Out!” Corona shouted, darting from her branch and swirling angrily around Griffin. “You’re poisoning this colony!”
“Spreading lies!” another bat cried, and then they were all shouting at him, the air suddenly jagged with their wings.
“Bad as the Pilgrims!”
“Won’t stand for these lies!”
“Out! Out!”
“Get him out!”
“Hey!” shouted Luna. “We were just talking!” Griffin clung to his branch, paralyzed. They seemed so angry, and there were so many of them he doubted he could break past. Then they attacked, battering him with their wings.
“Out! Out!”
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