Sunwing

by Kenneth Oppel

  Shade glanced over at Chinook. He’d lost both his parents, but at least he wasn’t an orphan anymore, not really. Three nights ago, Shade had secretly asked his mother and father if Chinook could join their family, and they had instantly agreed. And so had Chinook when they’d asked him.

  “Hey, Shade, we’re brothers now!” Chinook had said, digging his thumb playfully into Shade’s ribs.

  Shade winced, shifting away. “I tried to stop them, Chinook, honestly, but my parents had their hearts set on it.” Chinook didn’t know it was all Shade’s idea, and Shade wasn’t about to tell him. With a sigh, he knew he’d be getting a lot more snow dumped on his head now. Still, he didn’t regret it. Not yet, anyway.

  Now, as they neared Bridge City, he turned to his father. Already, it seemed impossible that Shade had ever been without him. And he realized that in some ways he hadn’t, not really. Even in his absence Cassiel had been such a presence in his daily thoughts, it was as if his father must, one day, materialize to answer all his son’s questions, to explain himself.

  Over the journey, Shade had heard all about Cassiel’s terrible adventure. Last spring, he’d been one of the first to find the Human building and the forest inside, and he’d spent months there as it slowly filled with other bats. At first he’d been hopeful, but then the Humans started experimenting with them, trying to perfect their metal discs, and Cassiel had known many bats who’d had their wings burned off—or worse.

  “You have no idea how badly I wanted to escape, to get back to you, warn you all,” he told Shade and Ariel. “But I couldn’t. The stream never occurred to me,” he added, looking admiringly at his son. “And then, once they took me in the flying machine to the jungle, I almost lost hope of ever getting back. It was all we could do to survive night by night. I never thought of rescue, and certainly not by my own son.”

  “He’s even crazier than you,” Ariel said with a smile.

  “Certainly braver,” Cassiel said, and Shade burned with pleasure at this compliment. But he quickly looked over at Marina.

  “I did a lot of stupid things,” he said, shaking his head. “If it weren’t for Marina and you too, Mom, I’d have died in the jungle probably. All of us.”

  “You have a way of dragging me into things,” said Marina wryly. “I’ll give you that.”

  “You’re like me,” Cassiel told his son. “Both of us greedy for knowledge. I wanted to take the sun back for all of us. I wanted to know the secret of the bands.”

  “There was no secret,” said Shade bitterly. “We were all wrong about the Humans helping us, Nocturna’s Promise.” For a moment his happiness at finally being reunited with his family paled, and he remembered that their journey north was hardly a triumphant homecoming. It was a preparation for war. He’d heard all about King Boreal raising his armies to fight at Bridge City.

  “I mean, we saved the sun,” said Shade indignantly. “You’d think the owls would be grateful for that, but somehow, I doubt they’ll be impressed.” He felt weary. “Now we’ve just got another fight ahead of us.”

  “They might help us,” Marina reminded him, nodding at Orestes and the other owls.

  Shade nodded. It was the one hope he harbored too. But at the same time, he worried that once they all reached Bridge City safely, everything good they’d shared in the jungle would somehow be forgotten: The whole convoy north would simply be a matter of convenience, and they’d go back to their own warring sides. Orestes too.

  Soon he would find out.

  As Shade neared the glittering peaks of Bridge City, he saw a small group of bats flickering toward them as they made their descent.

  “It’s Achilles Graywing,” Marina said.

  Shade watched as the famous general drew warily closer and then called out, “Are you flying with these owls of your own free will?”

  Shade knew the general must think they were all prisoners of the owls, perhaps held hostage in exchange for safe passage over Bridge City.

  “Yes,” Cassiel called back loudly, “we’re with them freely. They are friends.”

  Shade could hear mutters of amazement pass among the other bats.

  “This is hard to imagine,” said Achilles Graywing, “when our northern horizon is blackened by an owl army, less than an hour away.”

  “Is my father among them?” Orestes called out impulsively.

  Achilles looked at the owl warily. “Your father?”

  “King Boreal.”

  “It is King Boreal who leads them,” the general replied coolly.

  “Then I must speak to him at once,” Orestes said.

  “Our delegation has already departed to do so,” Achilles replied.

  Orestes circled back to Shade. “Let’s hurry, then,” he said.

  “You’re going to help us?” Shade asked.

  “Of course,” replied the owl, “with all my heart. Wasn’t it obvious?”

  “Father, I’d be grateful if you’d let me speak,” Orestes told King Boreal.

  High above Bridge City, the leaders of the bat and owl kingdoms circled warily around one another. Shade felt distinctly out of place among Halo Freetail, Achilles Graywing, and the other bat elders. And he felt particularly uneasy flying so close to the massive King Boreal with his magnificent silver head and the lightning-streaked plumage he shared with his son. Shade knew that this was to be the last talk before the battle began, and he watched Orestes anxiously as he addressed his fierce father.

  “Are you on good terms with your father?” he’d asked hopefully as they’d sped to the aerial meeting place.

  “Not particularly,” Orestes had said.

  And in fact, their meeting was far from what Shade would have expected, a stiff nod between father and son. But maybe, Shade thought, that was just because of the situation. This was not the time for emotional reunions.

  King Boreal looked irritated at his son’s request to speak. “Has this any bearing on the matter at hand?” he said in a bone-rattling thunder.

  “Yes.”

  “Be brief.”

  “We cannot go to war with the bats,” said Orestes nervously, looking around at the other owls as they tried to suppress their contemptuous laughter.

  “I think your son needs more tutoring in such matters,” muttered one of the owl ambassadors.

  King Boreal turned his baleful eyes on the speaker, and needed to do no more in rebuke.

  “Why do you say this?” he asked his son sternly.

  “Shade Silverwing saved my life,” Orestes began falteringly. “Not once but twice. Last fall when we closed the night skies to the bats, we thought they’d been murdering birds. But these northern bats weren’t the murderers. They were jungle bats from the south.”

  “We have already heard these lies,” snapped King Boreal.

  “I have seen them myself,” insisted Orestes. “And I would have been killed if it weren’t for Shade. He risked his own life to do it, even though we’ve declared war on him and his fellow bats.”

  “An unusual act of bravery, perhaps,” said King Boreal coolly, fixing his moonlike eyes on Shade, “but irrelevant. What does this have to do with the larger issue at hand?”

  “The Humans have been taking owls and bats south to help them wage war,” Orestes pressed on, and waited for a moment for the surprised exclamations of his elders to die down. “I can explain more later, but this is what I wanted to say. The south is home to thousands of cannibals, and they took owls prisoner there, and if it weren’t for Shade, we would have been eaten alive by these monsters. Because of him, we escaped and returned home.”

  “Again, I ask you, why should this make us change our course of action?”

  “Because we don’t want war,” Shade blurted impetuously, and received a glare from Halo Freetail.

  King Boreal laughed scornfully. “You have waged war on us before,” he said. “Fifteen years ago, as I recall. But you’re not old enough to remember such things, young Silverwing.”

  “We wa
ged war, yes, but in rebellion,” Achilles told King Boreal. “We wanted the sun back. We wanted to be free of your tyranny, the risk of death should we see so much as a splinter of sunrise!”

  “But you have lost the sun, all of you,” thundered King Boreal, “for your treachery at the Great Battle of the Birds and the Beasts.”

  “Because we didn’t take sides!” Achilles said hotly.

  “No, because you switched sides,” King Boreal retorted.

  “You are mistaken, King Boreal,” Achilles said. “As you have been for millions of years.”

  “It is tragic that you can believe your own lies,” said the owl king.

  “What does it matter?” Shade blurted out angrily. “Silence,” Halo Freetail hissed at him. “Your place is not to speak here.”

  “Why shouldn’t he?” Orestes said.

  “Because he knows nothing,” said King Boreal, “like you.”

  “Let him speak,” said Achilles calmly. “One of our greatest elders, Frieda Silverwing, has had much confidence in this young bat.”

  “It happened so long ago,” said Shade haltingly, more nervous now that everyone was listening to him in hostile silence. “It’s over, even if we can’t agree on what the truth is.”

  “The truth is everything,” said King Boreal.

  “I thought so too,” said Shade. “I thought the sun was stolen from us, and I wanted to get it back, and I thought the Humans would help us somehow. I thought we would beat the owls in war, I really did.” He faltered, wondering if he should’ve said that. But it was too late to stop now. He just had to go on before what he wanted to say slipped away from him. “I thought that was the truth, but it wasn’t. The Humans didn’t help us fight a war with you. They didn’t bring us back the sun. They just wanted to use us, all of us, owls and bats. That’s how I met Orestes, in one of their indoor forests. Maybe he wanted to kill me; I guess I wanted to kill him too. But there was something else in there that wanted to kill both of us.”

  “The cannibal bat,” Orestes said.

  “Yeah,” said Shade. “And I don’t even know why I helped Orestes that first time, maybe just because he was being attacked and I didn’t like to see it. And then he helped me. And that seemed important, I guess. More important than what happened at the Great Battle, a million years ago…. “

  He’d lost hold of what he was trying to say, and trailed off. He didn’t even remember what he’d just said; probably a babbling mess.

  “We were always taught bats were traitors,” Orestes said to his father, “that you couldn’t trust them. But Shade isn’t like that, and neither are the others I met. We fought together for our lives. We trusted each other.”

  “There might be other Human buildings,” Shade said, “where they’re keeping bats and owls prisoner. We should be using our energy to free them, not fighting each other.”

  King Boreal looked from Shade to his son in one slow blink.

  “I find all this youthful naïveté trying,” an owl ambassador said.

  Achilles Graywing sighed and looked at the stars overhead. “We would be wise to heed it more carefully,” he said.

  “Perhaps so,” said King Boreal, and for the first time, Shade thought he looked tenderly at his own son. “I had given you up for lost, and I missed you sorely.”

  “Me too,” said Orestes, flying closer.

  “My appetite for war is dulled,” said King Boreal. “Let us agree to a truce, if that is acceptable to you. We can meet this summer in the northern forests and talk more of this, in the hopes of coming to a better understanding.”

  “Yes,” said Halo Freetail, “let us do that, King Boreal.”

  “The night skies are no longer closed to you. You have them once again in peace.”

  “The sun,” Shade breathed, before he could stop himself. He swallowed as King Boreal’s head swiveled back to him, eyes flashing. Oh no, I’ve ruined everything, he thought.

  “The sun?” said the owl king, eyebrows lifting. “Are the nights not enough for you?”

  All he could do was shake his head.

  “That must be a matter of discussion when we next meet. Until then, I can consent to an interim measure. You have given me back my son, Silverwing. So in return I give you your sun.”

  When Shade landed beside Frieda on the sheltered ledge beneath the bridge, she was so still, he feared he was too late.

  “Is she breathing?” he whispered anxiously to Marina, who’d flown down with him.

  “I believe I am.” The Silverwing elder opened her eyes and looked at Shade with some amusement. But her words whistled faintly with effort. “Your mother told me all about your meeting with King Boreal.”

  “We can all go home now,” said Shade excitedly. “They’re freeing all the Hibernaculums. We can go back to our forest! In the sunlight! I want to help make a new Tree Haven. I mean, it’s the least I can do since I got the first one burned down, right?” He knew he was rattling on, but he was afraid not to talk, afraid what he might see, might hear.

  Frieda just smiled. “I told you there was a brightness to you. It’s always so satisfying to be proven right. Not something that happens very often when you’re an elder.” She coughed. “You did what I wanted to do. You fulfilled the Promise.”

  With great difficulty she raised her wing to reveal the silver band on her forearm. The sight of it made Shade wince. It used to be such a powerful image for him, a sign of hope, of strength. He’d wanted one so badly. Now it would always be a hideous reminder of what the Humans had done to all of them—and of a horrible delusion that had falsely raised their hopes for centuries. He hated the sight of the bands now.

  “No,” Frieda wheezed, seeing it in his face, “the bands were important.”

  Shade didn’t know what to say. How could he contradict her now, when she was so sick?

  “I think I understand,” said Marina with surprise. “They did play a part.”

  “How?” Shade demanded angrily. How could anyone say that now?

  “The bands set us on the path,” Marina said. “They made us seek the Humans out.”

  “And look where it took us,” said Shade.

  “Oh, he’s not as smart as he thinks!” said Marina gleefully to Frieda. “Yeah, they took us to the Human building, and the fake forest. And that’s where the owls were too.”

  Shade looked from her to Frieda, mystified. But Frieda nodded, her eyes sparkling.

  “Go on,” she urged Marina.

  “What if you hadn’t met Orestes, if you hadn’t saved his life? You won each other’s trust. I doubt King Boreal would’ve called a truce if that hadn’t happened.”

  Shade nodded sheepishly, finally realizing.

  “The Humans brought us together,” he said.

  “United us,” said Frieda. “We didn’t win the sun through war. We won it through peace.”

  As Shade watched, Frieda smiled, as though she’d just caught a glimpse of a favorable future. She rustled her wings, folded them comfortably against her body, and shut her eyes for the last time.

  TREE HAVEN

  It was a good tree, a massive silver maple with a broad trunk and a multitude of strong, high branches. As the sky paled with the coming dawn, thousands of Silverwings, male and female, were at work, hollowing out the insides of the great tree, turning it into a nursery roost for the colony. Just a few hundred wingbeats to the east were the charred remains of the old Tree Haven, the place where Shade had been born, and which he’d seen burned down by the owls last fall.

  Beneath the tree, among the buckled roots, Shade was working alongside his father, carving out the walls of the new echo chamber. Every colony had one, a perfectly circular stone chamber, whose walls were so smooth that a bat’s voice could bounce between them for centuries. It was here that all a colony’s stories were spoken, and contained as echoes within the walls, so that nothing would be forgotten. Last fall, when Tree Haven burned, its echo chamber was breached, and all the stories of the colony h
ad fled like ghostly bats, dissolving in the air. Now they would tell the stories again.

  As he polished the wall with a small rock, Shade remembered how Frieda had taken him to the echo chamber for the first time. There, he hadn’t simply heard the stories, he’d seen them as the echoes flooded his head with silvery pictures. As if he’d been there, he saw the Great Battle of the Birds and the Beasts, the Banishment, and heard Nocturna’s voice make the bats a Promise, that one day they would regain the light of day. But Frieda had died before she could see a sunrise—not one of those fake ones from inside the Human forest, but a real one in the outside world.

  “I wish she were still alive,” he said.

  His father nodded, knowing instinctively who Shade was talking about. “She would’ve been happy that your mother took her place, though.”

  “Yeah,” said Shade. “Mom’s a good choice. I mean, she didn’t blow up the cannibals’ pyramid, or save the sun or anything, but she’ll be good.” He saw his father looking at him humorously.

  “What?”

  “I know you wanted to be an elder.”

  “I didn’t,” said Shade, looking away, embarrassed.

  “You did,” laughed Cassiel. “Hardly a year old, and you expected to be made an elder! You’ve done some amazing things, but you’ve got some years to go yet, my son.”

  “Come on, you wanted to be asked too,” said Shade with a grin. His father shook his head and started to say something, but then just looked back at him. They both smiled.

  “Probably best neither of us were,” said Shade.

  “Better for the entire colony,” his father agreed. “Hotheads like us don’t make good leaders.”

  He grinned and went back to polishing. It was such a simple thing, talking to his father, but still a novelty, and every so often he’d feel a pulse of tremendous happiness. For the first time in his life he felt complete.

  Almost, anyway. He sighed inwardly.