Firewing

by Kenneth Oppel

  He wanted to be outside. Dropping from his roost, he stretched his wings, streaked through the opening, and was instantly over the sea. The sun was still high enough above the horizon to set the water alight. Shade banked sharply and soared over the rocky coastline, notched by countless coves and inlets. The tides here were fierce and sudden, and the sea had carved the land into high, blunt cliffs. Stone Hold was deep within the tallest cliff of all, its craggy head crowned with moss-covered rocks, and a few hardy spruce trees bowed by the wind.

  Far away, Shade could hear a pod of whales singing their strange song, somehow mournful and ecstatic all at once, resonating through the water and air, gusting landward. Shade skimmed over the dense forest, intent on hunting now. From the topmost branch of a pine, a raven stared suspiciously as he passed, but said nothing. Shade watched the powerful bird carefully. He’d quickly realized that being allowed to fly in sunlight was not the same as being welcome.

  Though the owls had agreed to a peace treaty with the bats, Shade and the other Silverwings still felt wary in the day. Most avoided it, choosing to hunt and fly under the moon and stars, as they had done for millennia. Sometimes Shade wondered what the point had been, fighting to get the sun back. But he knew it wasn’t the daylight itself that was important: it was the freedom. The freedom to choose if you flew by night or day, and, most of all, the freedom from fear of owl attack.

  Shade veered and caught a monarch butterfly. That was one good thing about flying in the sunlight—there were all sorts of new bugs to eat, ones that rarely came out at night.

  “You’re up early,” said a voice behind him, and he glanced over his wing to see his father, Cassiel, pulling alongside.

  “Did you feel the cave shake?” Shade asked. Cassiel shook his head. “You did?”

  “I don’t know if it was real. I’m pretty sure I felt a little tremor.”

  “Could be,” said his father. “Years ago there were a few earthquakes. Nothing very big, though.”

  His father was trying to reassure him, but Shade remembered the low, controlled rhythm of the vibration, like a suggestion of greater things to come. He wondered if they’d felt it at Tree Haven.

  “Do you think Orion will pick me?” he asked.

  “All I know is he always chooses fast, reliable flyers.”

  “Well, I’m not the fastest, sure, but I’m reliable.” His father looked at him with a grin.

  “You don’t think I’m reliable?” Shade asked, hurt.

  “Of course I do. You saved my life. But Orion’s probably worried you might get distracted along the way. Discover some evil plan to destroy the world, or accidentally start a war. Something like that.”

  Shade snorted, but he knew his father was right. Even after all his adventures, maybe even because of them, he noticed the Silverwing elders didn’t exactly trust him.

  “They trust Chinook,” Shade said irritably.

  “Well, he is very trustworthy,” his father agreed. It rankled Shade that Chinook had been one of the first messengers. He’d been to Tree Haven and seen his mate, and his own child. And he’d brought news back about a hundred other newborns as well, among them, Griffin.

  “What did he look like?” Shade had demanded, moments after an exhausted Chinook lurched into Stone Hold.

  “Looked fine. Healthy.”

  Shade’s surge of relief and gratitude had quickly given way to intense curiosity. “What else?” he’d asked Chinook. “Come on, a few more details!”

  “They all look kind of the same at that age, Shade. I mean, they’re all sort of red and floppy-skinned and they don’t have any fur yet and, well, to be honest, they’re pretty weird looking.”

  Weird looking. And that was all Chinook had been able to tell him. But Shade wanted to know everything, and not a single night passed that his mind wasn’t filled with questions. Was Griffin growing well? Was he a good flyer and hunter? What did he look like—more like Marina or him? Did he have lots of friends, or was he a loner? Was he curious, talkative, daring? Or quiet and watchful?

  “It’s ridiculous we have to wait so long,” Shade muttered as he and his father sailed through the twilight forest, snapping up darkling beetles and mosquitoes. “Anyone should be able to go to Tree Haven if he wants. Splitting up the colony makes no sense.”

  “Only the mothers can feed the newborns,” Cassiel reminded him. “We wouldn’t be any use early on.”

  “But later we would. We could help teach them to fly and hunt.”

  “The females seem to be doing just fine on their own. It’s the way it’s always been, Shade.”

  “I think it’s stupid,” he said firmly. “And I can’t believe no one else feels the same. Doesn’t anyone else miss their mates and newborns?”

  “Well, I don’t think many males are in a hurry to leave Stone Hold,” his father said with a grin. “They know we’ve got it easy here. Apparently it’s very noisy in the nursery roost. Newborns are pretty demanding. A lot of crying, a lot of shouting, a lot of commotion.”

  “A little commotion would be a nice change about now,” Shade said.

  The truth was, he was bored at Stone Hold. He liked being with Chinook, and especially his father, but every night was virtually the same. They woke at sunset, took to the skies, and hunted. When they weren’t hunting, they were hanging around, telling stories. The stories he always enjoyed, but then there were the councils, the endless councils about migration preparations: who would lead, who would take up the rear; the quality of the mealworms this year, the rainfall reports and prevailing wind reports and … It made his skull go numb just thinking about it. He knew he shouldn’t complain—but he wanted to, anyway. Things were good right now. There was peace with the owls, food was plentiful and—there was just nothing to do. He was bored and he felt like he was getting boring himself.

  He wanted to be back with Marina; he wanted to be with his new family.

  “Do you think …” he began, and then stopped himself, embarrassed.

  “What?” Cassiel asked.

  He coughed. “Do you think I’ll make a good father?” The fact was, he still didn’t feel like a father at all. The very idea seemed ridiculous. Even though he could barely wait to meet his son, he was still worried that Griffin might think he was a fake. Shade certainly felt like a fake. A father? How could he possibly take care of a newborn when he still practically felt like a newborn himself? He simply could not imagine himself saying, with conviction, things like “You shouldn’t do that” or “That’s just the way things are” or “Do what your mother and I tell you.” There was no way Griffin would take him seriously.

  He was worried he wouldn’t be vigilant enough or strong enough to rescue Griffin if anything should happen, worried that he wouldn’t be patient enough or firm enough—or something enough.

  “You’ll be a great father,” Cassiel told him. “I think almost everyone worries about it, though.”

  “You?” Shade asked, surprised.

  “Especially me,” Cassiel replied. “I was hardly the most responsible father. I wasn’t even around when you were born.”

  “Well, no fathers were.”

  “I was a little more absent than most.”

  “That wasn’t your fault.”

  “Well, I took risks I shouldn’t have, not when I had a newborn coming.” He flew in close to give Shade an affectionate nuzzle. “It’ll be fine.”

  They hunted side by side for a while in contented silence, and then Shade sighted a tiger moth and went spinning off on his own in pursuit. The moth was wily, dipping and veering through the weave of the forest, spraying out a barrage of echo mirages. But Shade, after long experience, was focused with both sight and sound, and wasn’t going to be thrown off. He came in fast with his tail flared, ready to scoop up the moth. Moths always tended to drop straight down, and Shade’s trajectory took this into account, but this moth didn’t just drop—it plummeted, heavy as a hailstone.

  Shade did a backward somersault an
d twisted around in time to see the moth hit the earth and disappear. This was not tiger moth behaviour. With his echo vision he probed the rocky ground and saw there was actually a hole there. Moths, as far as he knew, did not make burrows. Carefully, he made a pass, shooting down sound. The hole was deep, and no echoes returned, nor was there any sign of the moth. Directly overhead, he noticed a powerful downward current.

  Shade settled on the ground and warily advanced towards the hole, which seemed to have been split from the rock itself. He wondered if it had been opened by the tremor he’d felt earlier. The hole was noisily sucking in air. Dust and shards of stone drizzled over its rim. With his rear claws locked firmly in the earth, Shade stretched his head over the opening, feeling the current pull ominously at his fur. The tunnel slanted steeply into blackness. Maybe it led down towards the coastal caves, but he heard no slap of water, or shushing of wind. Far, far away he picked up the faint but frenzied flutter of the moth’s wings, fighting the current, until it dissolved to nothingness. Wherever this hole went, it was very deep.

  His ears pricked. A sound, like the faintest exhalation, rose from the depths, and a ripple of horror swept Shade’s flesh. Perhaps it was just a whisper his own ears had superimposed over the silence. With all his concentration he listened, and heard once again the same sigh, like the slow measured breath of some living creature that wanted to speak. That wanted to come up. “Who’s there?” Shade shouted.

  His voice echoed down the hole, rapidly dwindling: Who’s there? Who’s there who’s there there there….

  Then silence, as after a sharp intake of breath—the silence of something listening for you in the dark. Shade instantly regretted calling out. Cold sweat prickled his neck and shoulders. He couldn’t move. He was waiting to hear the breathing resume.

  He blinked, dizzy with the sudden overwhelming certainty that this tunnel plunged to the earth’s very centre, to some terrible place that was not entirely unfamiliar to him. For in his mind’s eye, though his ears detected no sound, he caught a pale flash of images he had seen before: a feathered serpent, a jaguar, a pair of unblinking eyes with no pupils. And he knew their origin: Cama Zotz, god of the Underworld. “Yes,” a voice whispered.

  Shade jerked back in terror, but not quickly enough, for at that moment, the earth around the tunnel mouth collapsed, and Shade’s upper body pitched down into the hole, his rear claws straining to keep their grip. The current plucked at him fiercely as he scrabbled with his thumbs to push back and out. One of his rear claws tore free of the earth, and he was about to fall, to fall down into that terrible hole—and suddenly he was hauled back and his father was with him, seizing him with wings and teeth and claws.

  They scuttled clear and took flight, panting and shaken. Roosting on a nearby cedar, heart still pumping painfully, Shade told his father what had happened.

  Cassiel looked grimly at the hole. “We should go back to Stone Hold and tell the elders. We’ll need help to properly block off that tunnel. Don’t want anyone getting sucked down.” “Or anything coming out,” Shade said.

  His father looked at him. “You’re sure you heard someone?”

  “I think so.” He sighed. “There was something down there, and not just one thing, it felt like … a world.” He did not want to imagine the kind of creatures that populated it, or what they might be capable of.

  Shade stared up through the branches into a sky heavy with stars. By their position he could tell it was almost midnight. Orion would be making his decision soon. More than ever now, he wanted to travel to Tree Haven. He wanted to see Marina, and his son. He wanted to make sure that everything was all right. That the ominous tremor he’d felt earlier hadn’t cracked the earth near them.

  As he flew with his father back towards Stone Hold, he’d already made up his mind. Even if Orion didn’t choose him as a messenger, he was leaving for Tree Haven before sunrise.

  AWAKE

  He woke to an enormous weight of stone crushing down on him. The stench of seared rock and dust clogged his nostrils. Sluggishly at first, and then with increasing panic, he dredged his mind for memories. He could not remember what he was, or whether he had a name. He tried to lift a shoulder, dig in with a hind leg.

  Push.

  Exhausted by the effort, he wheezed, coughing dust from his mouth and nostrils.

  What happened?

  Who am I?

  Fight, he told himself. Fight this.

  Shoulders hunched, claws digging in, he pulled. His legs found purchase and he felt the leaden weight above him shift, allow him a few precious inches. His head was molten with pain, fire raging in all his joints. His left wing was still extended, pinned flat by stone. He tried to pull it in, feeling as though he were dragging it inch by inch through serrated jaws. He bellowed with all his might to dull the pain, and finally had his wing folded tight against him.

  Shuddering, he took a few moments to recover. He made the mistake of trying to open his eyes, only to have silt pour into them. Shutting them tight, he cracked open his mouth and sang out sound. Almost instantly his echoes were slammed back to him, painting an unintelligible silver din in his mind’s eye.

  Buried alive.

  He had a sudden image of himself, hundreds of feet below the earth, unable to reach the surface, the air slowly being forced from his lungs. Roaring with terror and rage, he flexed and thrashed, shoulders and back buckling against the stone. He felt it give, tumble down around him. Again and again he heaved himself upwards, rear claws pushing against anything they touched.

  Slashing up through the rubble like a blade, his snout broke the surface first. Greedily sucking air, he pushed out the rest of his head. He opened his eyes slowly, ablur with tears and dust, and saw before him in the gloom a barren plain stretching to all horizons. He heard no trees or vegetation or life of any kind. Just earth and sky—and a gritty wind that assumed its own ghostly silver shape in his echo vision.

  Is this normal?

  No, he was expecting something else—but what?

  Think, he urged himself. Remember.

  He hauled the rest of his body free, and shivered, wings drawn tight, chin pressed into his chest. His mind throbbed, trying to unlock itself. And then a few images flared in his mind’s eye.

  Trees that soared to the sky and formed a canopy.

  Below, a world of lush vegetation. Creepers and vines and mosses and flowers.

  A pyramid of stone, with other creatures like him, swirling around it.

  Home.

  He looked round at the rubble strewn in all directions. This was not home. Then, how had he come to be here? Again he thought of that stone pyramid, stared at it in his memory.

  A flash of light. The premonition of some cataclysmic noise—nothing more.

  An explosion? Some kind of disaster? And this—was this all there was left, everything flattened to this rocky plain? Tilting his aching neck, he squinted up at the heavens and saw, through the swirling dust, stars glimmering. They reminded him of nothing.

  Instinctively he spread his wings to fly, but the earth would not release him. He felt immeasurably heavy and tired. Rest, he told himself. After a rest, you will be able to fly. Instead, he began a slow crawl, moving with the wind, opening his wings a little and angling them so he was shoved along by it.

  He didn’t know where he was going, but sooner or later he would have to meet another living thing who could tell him.

  Then he stopped. His nose twitched as if trying to catch a scent. Hunching forward, head cocked, he listened. Something was wrong. Not outside, but inside. Deep inside him, something was all wrong.

  He tried to breathe calmly, to listen, to think.

  Then it came to him.

  His heart wasn’t beating.

  In a panic, he coughed and thrashed about, hoping to force his heart into action. He pounded his chest against the rocky ground. Beat! Beat! Desperate for air, his vision flared and swam—then suddenly cleared.

  And he realized he wasn
’t dying.

  He was already dead.

  At the same moment, his name came surging back to him. He opened his mouth to speak it and his voice sounded alien to him, saturated with grime and exhaustion. “Goth.”

  A CRACK IN THE SKY

  Inside Tree Haven, Griffin watched as they placed Luna on a soft bed of moss. With their noses they gently nudged out her wounded wings. His mother was among the helpers, as was his grandmother, Ariel. In niches carved from the bark were small mounds of different berries and dried leaves and strips of bark. Ariel took some of these things into her mouth, chewing not swallowing. Then she roosted above Luna and proceeded to drizzle the potion from her mouth onto the patches of raw, burned skin.

  Luna was shivering. Why was she shivering, Griffin wondered, when she’d just been on fire? She said nothing, made no sound, just stared straight ahead, eyes wide and unblinking. She didn’t look like herself. It was as if the things that made her Luna had gone away, or were deep in hiding somewhere. She just gazed right through things. Maybe she was concentrating, using all her energy to get better.

  Griffin had always found Tree Haven immensely comforting. He loved the reassuring thickness of its great trunk, and the geography of its craggy grey bark, knotted and gouged with valleys deep enough to hide in. Most of all he loved the inside, hollowed out by the Silverwings into a series of interconnected roosts, radiating from the trunk into the larger branches, all the way up to the elders’ roost at the summit. At sunset the entire colony would burst through the central knothole into the night with the sound of a torrential river. But his favourite time of all was sunrise, when everyone would return from the night’s hunting, find their roosts, and talk while combing the dust and grit from their fur and licking their wings clean. Then all the mothers and newborns, roosting snugly side by side, would sleep.