Firewing

by Kenneth Oppel

  Can’t—you—just—die? Shade raged inwardly, trying to wrench himself free.

  Something hit Goth. Shade didn’t even see it coming, but felt the impact through the cannibal’s body as his claws ripped loose. He was suddenly free. Braking, Shade opened his wounded mouth, singing out sound, and the world came back into silver focus. He saw Goth spin down and hit the pool. A small geyser of darkness shot up, a fierce ripple raced away from the impact, and Goth was gone, instantly swept beneath the surface.

  Shade glanced up to see Murk flying towards him. “You hit him?” Shade gasped.

  Murk nodded.

  “Thank you.” Twice now the cannibal had helped him. Anxiously he searched for Griffin. Luna was nowhere to be seen, and he feared the worst for her if she hadn’t opened her wings. But where was his son? “I saw them both fall into the pool,” Murk said quietly.

  Shade dived low over the surface, but all he saw was his own dark reflection.

  He was about to dive in, when he heard Murk cry out his name. He jerked his head up to see a skinny object plummeting for him. A petrified bat, whistling down from the ceiling like a stalactite. He didn’t even have time to move—just tensed as it hit him.

  Helplessly Murk watched as Shade’s body plunged into the black pool and was swallowed up.

  It was as if all light and sound had been abruptly sucked from the universe.

  From above, the pool of darkness had looked still as ice, but it had seized Griffin hard and swept him right under. He’d expected a choking rush of water down his mouth, but there was no water at all, just viscous, silent darkness instantly enveloping him.

  He couldn’t hear the creak of his own wings, nor the panicked rasp of his breath. Nothing. He sang out, but whatever this stuff was, it ate sound. In his mind’s eye, he saw only an eternity of blackness, not so much as a silver spark or shimmer. For the first time in his life he was truly blind. He could see no part of himself. All he could do was feel himself, his heart thumping against his ribs, wings flapping, as he tried to lift himself free of this terrible sludge. “Luna, are you there?”

  He felt his mouth moving, the muscles vibrating at the back of his throat, but he was mute.

  They had been tumbling together, had hit the pool at the same time, so she had to be close by. With his wings he reached out, desperately hoping he’d nudge her body. “Luna!” he shouted silently. “Luna!”

  He had to get out, he couldn’t endure much more of this blind nothingness. Wherever this deathly river flowed, he was sure it wasn’t pleasant. Or maybe it had no end. Maybe this was all there was, forever and ever. He thought of all those petrified bats, minds empty. Drifting dead.

  Flailing out, he touched something with his wingtip and lurched closer. Luna, it must be Luna. He nudged up against it, and felt the cold hard scrape of stone against his fur. With revulsion he knew it was a crusted-over bat. It was almost worse not seeing it. He pushed away hurriedly with his legs, his whole body shivering with disgust.

  How was he ever going to find Luna like this?

  For a weird moment, he wasn’t sure he was moving at all, but simply floating in a terrible black abyss.

  Was he even here at all?

  Do you feel your heartbeat? Hear yourself thinking? Then, you’re still here.

  His left wing grazed something cold, but soft this time. Clumsily he steered closer. For a terrible moment he wondered if this might be the cannibal bat, and he was drawing near only to be eaten alive, silently, invisibly. He tapped cautiously with his wingtip: a furred flank, the edge of a furled wing. Didn’t feel too big.

  “Luna?” he called out, hoping his need would transmit itself through touch.

  No reply.

  He was next to her now—at least, he hoped it was her. He sank his rear claws into her fur, and with his teeth grabbed her by the scruff of the neck and beat his wings hard, pulling up. Was this really up?

  Help me, Luna, he thought, please help. He had no idea if she was flapping too, but somehow, he felt they were rising. He pulled, smashed his wings down again and again until his heart was racing too fast for his breath and he felt his chest would burst.

  Up.

  And then out, the sudden noise of his own breath so loud it made him look around in terror. The darkness was pouring off him like water and he was in open air again. Beneath him, her own wings beating in tandem, was Luna. He let go, and together they soared above the strange river and the high canyon walls that encased it. In the starlight the river’s surface was almost translucent, and he could see the skinny shapes of countless petrified bats pulsing past in the current. He turned away with a shudder. “Why’d you pull me out?”

  Startled by the anger in Luna’s voice, he didn’t know what to say. “Well, I … wanted to save you.”

  “Saved,” she muttered bitterly.

  Griffin was bewildered. “You wanted to stay in that weird river of … of nothing?”

  “It wasn’t nothing! It had everything I wanted! It had my home and my family and … everything. And there was no pain, and now it’s back!”

  She started to cry, hopelessly, and he flew towards her. But when he gently touched her wingtip, she pulled away and trailed behind him. He let her alone. He felt confused and useless. He hated making her sad, and hated the greater suffering he’d caused her since the accident, her normally buoyant personality all pinched by sadness and the burning pain in her wings. He’d done that to her. So now he would get her out of here—that’s what he could do. He would make things right.

  After a while he circled back and flew alongside her. She’d stopped crying.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I know you wanted to stay, but it was all mirages and lies.”

  Luna said nothing, staring down at the river morosely. “It’s fine for you. You get to go back home.”

  “You’ll get to go someplace good too, though.”

  “Nothing was better than the way things were back home. I was happy there. Now I’m dead and I can’t ever get it back. I’ll never see Tree Haven again, or my mother … it’s not fair!”

  “I know.”

  “Anyway,” she said after a pause, “it’s not your fault.”

  It is, he thought.

  “You should’ve just left me, Griff. At least I would’ve thought I was back home. And isn’t that just as good in the end? As long as you think it?”

  He didn’t know what to say to that.

  She looked over at him sharply, remembering something. “Was your father there? Was that real?”

  Griffin nodded miserably. “He came down to look for me. He was going to take me home.”

  His sob came out like a bark, something held back too long. Luna flew closer and patted him as they circled. It took him a while to stop crying, and then he told Luna about how his father had found him, tried to save her from falling into the darkness, and then how the Vampyrum had attacked him. “It had my father in its claws, and that was the last thing I saw.” “Your father can take care of himself,” Luna said promptly. “All those stories you told me about him. There’s nothing he can’t do. And remember the slap you gave that one at the cactus? You’re just a newborn! Imagine what your father can do!”

  Griffin nodded, feeling a bit better.

  For the first time he made a careful sweep of his surroundings. Flanked by more desert, the river canyon ran to both horizons. There was no sign of the cave: the current must have shuttled them a great distance in a very short time—or maybe they were in it for a long time … who knew? Several hundred wingbeats downstream, a pair of strange stone spikes curved up from the canyon walls like massive horns, almost touching at the tips. Griffin stared at them for a long time before recognizing what they were.

  “That’s the next landmark,” he said in surprise. “We fly between the points and that sets us on our last course. That is so lucky. If we’d come out of the river later or earlier, we might’ve missed it.”

  He took a deep breath, unable to feel much ple
asure at this good fortune. Every joint in his body ached now, and he felt feverish, his muscles gelid with fatigue.

  “I don’t know what to do,” he said. “Way I see it, we’ve got three choices. We could travel back to the cave and try to find my father. We could wait here, and hope he finds us. Or we could just keep going.”

  “Go back to the cave and find your father.”

  “Okay. Good.” She made it sound so simple. But almost right away his mind started working.

  “What if my father’s been killed, and it’s just the Vampyrum back there, waiting for us?”

  Luna grunted as if she hadn’t thought of that. “Your father’s fine,” she said.

  “So maybe he thinks we drowned or something, and he’s given up on me and gone home alone.” As he spoke the thought, his heart broke into a gallop. It was worse now, being alone, after having seen his father and thinking escape was so near.

  “And we don’t even know how far away that cave is,” Griffin went on, worries coming like a torrent now. “The river’s pretty fast, it might have taken us really far, and if we go back and my dad’s not even there and we’ve just wasted all that time, I might not … well, make it out in time. Before I die.”

  Luna sighed impatiently. “These are all maybe’s. Why waste time with all the maybe’s?”

  “Because you can’t make a decision if you don’t know all the maybe’s!” Griffin told her, exasperated. “Otherwise, it’s not a decision. It’s a guess!”

  “Okay, so you make the decision!” Griffin felt his mind clouding with panic, suffocating him.

  “I can’t,” he wheezed. “I can’t decide. I don’t feel good, Luna.”

  “Roost,” she said, “stop flying in circles.”

  “Don’t want to,” he croaked. “I’m afraid.”

  “Of what?”

  “Everything. Afraid if I stop moving, I’ll stop breathing. Afraid of dying …”

  “It’s okay, Griff,” she said kindly. “You’re not gonna die. It’s all right. Hey, look, dying’s not so bad, anyway. Look at me. Don’t I seem cheerful?”

  He laughed, and felt a bit of anxiety evaporate from his mind.

  “You’re the nicest dead bat I’ve ever met,” he said. Luna sniffed. “How many dead bats do you know?”

  “You’re the nicest bat I know, dead or alive.”

  “That’s better.”

  Griffin shut his eyes tight, tried to make some sense of his swirling thoughts. “All those stories about him—my father, I mean—how he was in the jungle with just a few dozen northern bats, and there were millions of cannibals, and he could have just flown home, but he stayed and rescued his father from the pyramid. He did that for his father.”

  “He was older,” Luna pointed out.

  “Not by much. I want to get to the Tree and get out, but I can’t just go and leave him alone down here. He came down here because of me—this is all my fault.”

  “It’s not your fault you got sucked down here,” Luna said. “It was a freak accident.”

  “We’ve got to go back, you’re right,” he said after a moment. “He won’t know what’s happened to me, otherwise. He might waste all his time looking for me….” Luna nodded.

  “You don’t have to come,” he told her hurriedly.

  “I’ve got nothing better to do.”

  “You should go on to the Tree.”

  “Well, the Tree’s not going anywhere. And to be perfectly honest, I don’t much want to be alone down here.”

  “Me, neither,” Griffin grinned, relieved. But his heart was heavy as he turned away from the giant stone horns. He wasn’t even sure he was doing the right thing—but at least he was doing something. With Luna at his wingtip he followed the dreadful black river upstream, back towards the cave. His father was alive: he forced himself to assume that. He’d have defeated the Vampyrum somehow, and would be looking for him. Maybe even right now his father was on his way.

  He noticed he was having trouble keeping up with Luna.

  “You all right?” she asked, slowing.

  “Just tired.”

  And hungry. Before, he’d sometimes been able to forget, but now hunger was always with him, clawing at his stomach, sending a spidery, crampy pain across his belly and up into his chest. He felt all jittery, pressure at both his temples crumpling his vision into a tunnel. His tongue was dry and sluggish, like something that didn’t belong in his mouth.

  They flew on. It was all he could do to lift his wings yet again, stay in motion. Below them the river flowed black, reflecting the false starlight.

  “No,” he heard Luna breathe beside him. Then he saw it too, a pair of enormously long wings in the distance, carrying a giant bat towards them.

  “It’s that Vampyrum,” she hissed.

  Griffin stared. What did this mean? Had this thing killed his father?

  “We’ve got to get out of here, Griff,” said Luna, already scanning the landscape for an escape route.

  “No,” he said, squinting, “wait.”

  This huge creature wasn’t alone. Alongside it, he could just now make out two other bats, smaller. And the big bat was almost too big. Much bigger than the Vampyrum. This one’s wings must be almost five feet across.

  “That one was with my father!” he said excitedly. “In the cave. I saw her! She’s a Foxwing!”

  “You’re sure?” Luna said uncertainly.

  “Her name’s Java. She’s a Pilgrim.” He squinted at the smaller bats again, beating their way towards him.

  A Silverwing!

  There was definitely a Silverwing among them!

  “Hey!” Griffin cried out, surging ahead with a pulse of newfound energy. “Dad!” Then his wingbeats faltered. Even from this distance he could tell—the profile, the strange limping gait—this wasn’t his father. Just another dead bat.

  “Griffin!” he heard Java call out.

  And it was then that he really did see the Vampyrum. It must have been flying directly behind Java, cloaked by the billowy sweep of her massive wings.

  “Behind you!” Griffin bellowed. “Look out!”

  Java whirled, accidentally smacking the cannibal in the head.

  “Hey!” barked the Vampyrum.

  “Oh, sorry,” said Java. She turned back to Griffin. “That’s just Murk,” she called out. “It’s all right. He’s with us.”

  “He is?”

  Griffin held back, taking another look at Murk, and caught an unsettling flash of chiselled black teeth. He definitely wasn’t the cannibal from the cactus. Still, how could they trust him? His father hadn’t mentioned anything about a Vampyrum Pilgrim! But his father had trusted Java, so he too would have to trust her.

  “Where’s my father?” Griffin asked.

  The Foxwing’s hesitation made him feel sick.

  “I saw him fight with the other Vampyrum,” Java said. “Murk knocked him into the black pool. Your father was all right at first. But then something fell from the ceiling and hit him, hard—very hard I think—and he went into the pool.” Java’s eyes were huge. “He did not come up. I watched for him, a long time, but he did not come up.”

  “Well, he might’ve come out along the river,” said Griffin, fighting for control of his voice.

  “We’ve been flying over the river,” said Java, “and seen no sign of him.”

  “I got out,” Griffin said. “If I can get out, he can. I mean, he’s way stronger than me, and I was pulling Luna, too!”

  “Your father was not conscious when he fell,” Murk said. “His body was limp. He may already have been dead.”

  “Was he still glowing?” Luna demanded. “You know, that light in his fur? If he died, it would come away from his body.”

  Murk squinted, trying to remember. “So much light was swirling there above the pool, I couldn’t tell.”

  “We were on our way back to find him,” Griffin said.

  “Travel with us now,” said Java. “To the Tree.” Despairingly Griffin look
ed down the stretch of black canyon. “But what if he comes out somewhere, and keeps looking for me?”

  “Your father can track you with sound,” Java said. “He would want you to go to the Tree. Not waste time searching for him.”

  Would he? Griffin wondered. Shade had gone back for Cassiel, his own father. Why wouldn’t he expect the same of his son? And what would Griffin tell his mother, if he ever did get home? I left my father. I got out myself, but left him there.

  “You must come with us,” said the misshapen Silverwing impatiently. “There’s nothing more to be done about it.” Griffin stared at this grumpy bat with dislike.

  “Please,” said Java softly, “both of you, come with us. We will watch for your father along the river. But there is no point going back to the cave or lingering here. None at all.”

  “She’s right, Griff,” said Luna. “I guess” was all he could say.

  Luna nudged him gently, turning him around in the direction of the Tree.

  PART THREE

  THE FALLS

  Dead.

  What else could this be, Shade thought, all this silence? All this darkness. It was so total that he felt short of breath—was there air here? His only sensation was that of floating, somehow moving without any effort. He forced himself to be still, until he felt his limbs, his wings, and deep within himself the beating of his heart. A heartbeat meant alive. So did the pain all across his shoulders and left flank. Memory came with it. Something must have hit him … one of those petrified bats from the cave. He must’ve been knocked unconscious, and now he was just waking up.

  In the pool.

  He coughed in panic, silently thrashing his wings, then realized he was not in the least wet. Not immersed in water at all. He paused; it wasn’t a sound he heard, but a vibration, a vague shimmering in every part of his body. The vibration intensified. He was trembling. The current was obvious now, and he had difficulty rowing against it. He was being sucked somewhere, and he did not want to go. He flapped, flying blind, trying to gain altitude. No sound or light to guide him, only a frail instinct of which way was up.