“What do you think of Marina?” he asked his father casually. “Fine young bat.”
Since returning to the northern forest a few weeks ago, lots of the young bats had been choosing mates. He’d watched it all with a feeling of acute discomfort. The truth was he still felt ridiculous, especially around female bats. And even, lately, around Marina, which rankled him most of all. They’d been such good friends; she’d risked her life for him, and he used to feel so completely at home with her. But now everything was different, and he just couldn’t believe she’d take him seriously as a potential mate. It wasn’t so long ago he’d first met her: he was a runty newborn, lost, scared, and she was a full year older than him—something she never let him forget. She always seemed so colossally unimpressed by him. Sure, he was supposed to be a hero. Then how come he never felt like one?
“Yeah, she’s pretty great,” he said. He put down his polishing stone with a sigh. “I’m not much to look at, especially after half my fur got burned off.”
“It’ll grow back. Anyway, let’s have a look at you.” His father pulled back, tilting his head from side to side. “You’re not so bad, no uglier than your father.”
“I’m not big like the others. Not … handsome. Like Chinook.”
“No, you’re not as handsome as Chinook.”
“No,” said Shade, put out that his father had agreed so readily.
“You know what?” his father said. “I don’t think Marina cares.”
“You don’t?”
“No. She’s smarter than that.”
“I’m going to stretch my wings,” said Shade abruptly.
“Take your time,” said his father.
Shade shot out of the echo chamber, spiraled up through a larger cave, then hurried on all fours through the undulating tunnel that led up into the base of the new Tree Haven.
All around him, Silverwings were at work, chipping away ledges and roosts for themselves from the soft wood. He flew up through the hollow trunk, seeking out Marina with sound. Near the top of the tree, he saw his mother overseeing the work on the elders’ roosts, which would be at the very summit.
“Shade,” she greeted him, nuzzling his cheek.
“Have you seen Marina?”
“She went out to hunt, I think.”
Without waiting, he hurled himself through a knothole in the trunk, and was out in the night. How he’d missed all this over the months. It was early spring, and the air was still crisp, a hint of frost glinting from the branches and grass. But everything was starting to live again, leaves beginning to unfurl, buds opening. He wondered if he would ever feel the same about the day as the night, and decided he never would. The night would always be special somehow.
“Marina!” he called out, snapping up a few midges as he flew. He thought he saw her up ahead, and veered after her, calling out her name again. “Hey, wait up, will you!”
“Race you to the stream!” he heard her call back over her shoulder.
“Do we have to?” he shouted, but she showed no signs of stopping, and he hated the idea of her beating him. He trimmed his wings and darted after her, through the branches of a big chestnut—a shortcut he knew. He blasted out from the trees and swirled over the stream, dipping low to skim some water into his mouth. It was so cold, it burned.
“Beat you!” he cried out, settling on an overhanging branch. “No you didn’t.”
He jumped. She was hanging just several inches away, folded up in her bright wings, and looking for all the world like an autumn leaf that hadn’t fallen. He smiled. It was just the way he’d first met her, on the island, long ago.
“How’s your roost going?” he asked her, suddenly awkward.
“I finished it a few hours ago.”
“I’m glad you’re staying with us.”
“Hmmmm,” she said lazily. “I couldn’t pass up the novelty of being the only Brightwing in your colony. Oh, by the way, Chinook just asked me to be his mate.”
Shade nearly choked on his mosquito. “What?”
“Yeah, just an hour ago.”
“Oh,” said Shade stiffly. “Well, he’s a handsome bat, like you said.”
“Everyone’s choosing mates now. You’ve noticed that, right, Shade?”
“Yes,” he said through gritted teeth.
“You know it’s something I’ve really wanted, don’t you?” she said, looking at him intently. “I mean, I’m older than you, I know that. It’s not the same for you yet. But for me, I have to have a home. Ariel’s been so good to me, but I want my very own family now. You understand, right?”
“Yes,” he said, looking away.
“So you’ll be my mate, then,” Marina said, grinning.
“Be your … what about Chinook!”
“I told him no thanks. I did the right thing, didn’t I?”
“You’re not allowed to be anyone’s mate but mine,” said Shade, curving his wing around her and drawing her close.
“Good,” she said, her voice muffled against his fur. “It worked out just right, then.”
“I thought I heard your voices,” said Ariel, landing on the branch.
“Marina’s going to be my mate!” Shade exclaimed.
“I know; she already told me.”
“You did?” he asked, looking at Marina.
“Well, come on, Shade, it was obvious. Who else would put up with you?”
“I’m sure you’ll both be very … competitive,” said Ariel with a smile, “and happy too.” She looked at Shade. “Your father says the echo chamber’s almost finished.” Shade nodded.
“I was talking with the elders, and we agreed that you should tell our most recent story.”
“Me?” Shade said. He’d never even imagined such an honor. His voice telling a story to the walls of the echo chamber, living on for centuries, long after he was dead. Always there for the Silverwing colony.
His mother nodded. “It’s what Frieda would have wanted. It’s your story, Shade.”
“I’d love to do it,” he said.
“We’ll begin after dawn,” said Ariel, and flew off. Shade looked up through the branches of the tree into the brightening sky. All around them, birds were beginning their dawn chorus from their nests, and he could even hear an owl, hooting in the distance. And the sound no longer made him feel afraid.
“Come on,” he said to Marina, “I’ll show you the best place in the forest to see the sun rise.”
AUTHOR’S NOTE
During the Second World War, the United States military initiated Project X-Ray, a top secret program in which bats were trained to carry and deliver explosive devices. Ultimately the project was scrapped after hundreds of bats escaped from the test range, incinerated several army buildings, and took up residence beneath a large fuel tank.
This historical incident was the inspiration for one of the main story lines in Sunwing. Aztec and Mayan mythology were also rich sources of ideas for me when it came to writing about Goth and the Vampyrum Spectrum. The Aztecs really did have a huge, beautiful calendar stone that was more accurate than anything in Europe at the time—and this became, in my story, the stone that predicts the total eclipse and eternal night. (The Aztecs had a profound fear of the sun being extinguished forever on certain dates.)
Bridge City is based on the real city of Austin, Texas, where the underside of the Congress Avenue Bridge is home to over a million freetailed-bats, which can be seen flooding into the sky at twilight. Finally, I got the idea for Statue Haven from the giant statue of Christ the Redeemer, on Corcovado Mountain, overlooking the city of Rio de Janeiro.
Be sure to read
FIREWING
A Sequel to
SUNWING
by
KENNETH OPPEL
The forest heaves and splits in a terrible quake, and Griffin, a Silverwing newborn, is sucked down a fissure deep into the earth. Shade, Griffin’s father, soon realizes that his son has been drawn into the Underworld and embarks on the most dangerous of
journeys to rescue him. But something else is hunting Griffin—a deadly foe Shade hoped he would never see again.
Who will find Griffin first? And who will survive to make the perilous journey back to the land of the living?
In this riveting sequel to the acclaimed novels Silverwing and Sunwing, Kenneth Oppel creates a story that will resonate with readers of all ages—a glorious fantasy adventure in which the living and the dead struggle for the sake of eternity.
chapter 1
GRIFFIN
It had rained during the day and now, under a three-quarter moon, the forest was silver with mist. Things always smelled better after the rain, Griffin thought as he sailed through the humid summer air. From the forest floor rose the loamy fragrance of the soil, and the rich stink of rotting leaves and animal droppings. The resinous tang of pitch wafted up from the firs and pines as he grazed their topmost boughs.
A new smell suddenly twined its way through all the others—one that didn’t belong to the forest. Griffin felt his fur spike up. Nostrils flared, he sniffed again, but the smell was gone now, evaporated. Maybe just the dying traces of a faraway skunk. It was pungent but … somehow hotter and more dangerous. He stored the smell away in his memory so he could describe it to his mother back at Tree Haven at sunrise. Then he angled his wings and set course for his favourite hunting ground.
The giant sugar maple occupied a small rise on the valley floor, and its canopy spread wider and higher than any tree nearby. After Tree Haven, this was Griffin’s favourite place in the forest. He loved the way the moonlight washed the leaves a translucent silver, and when a strong wind blew, the leaves looked and sounded like a thousand bats, all taking flight at once.
Circling low overhead, Griffin cast out sound and the returning echoes painted the tree’s canopy in his head with more detail than his eyes could ever achieve. He saw each branch and twig, each bud, even the veins of the leaves.
And, of course, the caterpillars.
They were everywhere. The maple, like plenty of other trees in the forest, was infested. Gypsy moth caterpillars, that’s what they were, and they’d already stripped the tree of half its leaves. Every night for the past week Griffin had come here and fed, but the next night, it seemed there were just as many caterpillars as before. Just look at them! There must be hundreds of them! His stomach made a hungry popping sound.
He trimmed his wings, and tipped himself into a steep dive, spraying sound ahead of him. The first caterpillar he scooped right off a twig with his tail, flicked it into his wing and then straight into his open mouth. Ducking under a branch, he wheeled and snapped up two more dangling from threads. Curled on a nearby leaf was yet another caterpillar. Griffin streaked in close and with a swat of his wingtip bounced the caterpillar right off the leaf, catching it in mid-air.
Swirling round and round the great tree, Griffin scoured it with sound, darting in to gobble up every caterpillar he found. They were a bit fuzzy going down, and had a slightly sour aftertaste, but you got used to them.
“Don’t you get tired of them?”
Griffin looked up to see Luna, one of the other Silverwing newborns, swooping down alongside him. “They’re not so bad,” he said.
The truth was, it made him feel useful. The caterpillars were voracious eaters, and his mother said they could gobble up half the forest if they weren’t controlled. The thought had filled Griffin with panic. He didn’t want to see his forest stripped bare, especially not his favourite sugar maple. A horrible vision had played itself before his eyes. Without any trees the soil would wash away and without soil nothing could grow and there’d be nowhere to roost and nothing to eat and all the Silverwings would probably starve to death or have to leave and find a new home.
So Griffin ate caterpillars.
And every time he swallowed, he was helping stave off total catastrophe. But he didn’t tell Luna this. She already thought he was crazy.
A nice fat tiger moth fluttered across his path, no more than a few wingbeats from his nose. Griffin let it go.
“You don’t want that?” Luna asked in amazement.
“It’s all yours,” he told her, and she was already gone, plunging down into the trees after her prey.
Griffin watched, admiring the expert way she swerved and tilted through the tight tangle of branches. He’d tried to catch tiger moths once or twice, but he was no good at it. They sprayed out their own sounds and scrambled up your echo vision, so it seemed like there were a whole bunch of moths, all darting in different directions and you could end up chasing a mirage and getting splatted against a tree. Wasn’t worth it. Also, he wasn’t the greatest flyer. His wings were too long or too big or something, and he felt clumsy in the forest, couldn’t manoeuvre fast enough. And there were beasts down on the forest floor: bear and lynx and fox. He preferred to stay up high, where he could see what was what. He didn’t mind eating mosquitoes and midges and caterpillars.
The boring bugs, Luna would say. Griffin looked and caught one last glimpse of her before she disappeared into the foliage. He hoped she’d come back afterwards.
Below him, a maple leaf glittered with dew and he carefully checked out the nearby branches before roosting. Further down was a nest of warblers, but they were all asleep, and anyway, birds didn’t attack bats anymore, so it seemed safe enough. He braked, gripped the branch with his rear claws and swung upside down. Thirstily he lapped up the bright beads of water on the leaf.
“Why don’t you just drink from the creek,” Luna asked as she flipped down beside him.
“You never know what’s under the surface,” Griffin replied.
“Sure you do. Fish!”
“Right. But from what I’ve heard, some of them can get pretty big, and what’s to stop them from just leaping—”
“Leaping?”
“Leaping, yes, right up out of the water and taking us down with them.”
“A fish?”
“Well, a big one, why not?”
“Fish don’t eat bats, Griffin.”
“So they say.”
“It must be tiring, being you,” Luna said, but she was chuckling. Griffin had noticed this about her. She liked hearing him worry. She seemed to think it was funny. That must be why she hung around with him sometimes. It certainly wasn’t because he was brave or adventurous like her. But she still seemed to consider him a friend, and he was intensely grateful. She had a hundred friends, though, and it was rare to have her all to himself. Normally there were half a dozen other newborns flapping all around her.
Luna’s tall ears pricked up and with a nimble forward lunge, she snatched an earwig off the twig above her. Griffin cocked his head, studying the insect as she cracked its shell.
“You know,” he said thoughtfully, “when you look at most of what we eat, it’s not altogether appetizing. If you really stopped and looked at it, I mean. All those legs going, and the antenna tickling your throat on the way down …”
“Stop it,” Luna said, giggling, “You’re gonna make me choke.”
With a flurry of wings, three other newborns came in to land, calling out hellos. There were Skye and Rowan, and Falstaff, who was so stuffed that the branch bowed over and bounced up and down a few times after he roosted. Griffin knew they’d come because of Luna. If it had been just him hanging here alone, forget it. It wasn’t that they disliked him—he doubted they even thought about him enough for that. They just didn’t see the point of him.
Boring, Griffin thought. That’s what he was to them. And they were right. There was nothing special about him. He wasn’t a particularly good flyer or hunter. And he hardly ever joined in with their games. But why should he? They only ever seemed to want to do ridiculously dangerous things. Now the little hairballs were shoving their way in and all chittering to Luna at once—Skye about the moose she’d seen earlier in the night, Rowan about how fast he’d flown with the wind at his tail, and Falstaff about all the bugs he’d eaten, what kind, where he’d found them, and what they eac
h tasted like. Luna seemed to be able to listen to them all, and talk, at the same time.
When he was off by himself, Griffin hardly ever felt lonely. But now, amongst the other newborns, he did. He wasn’t much like them. He didn’t even look like them. Sometimes he thought he was barely a Silverwing at all. Their fur was sleek and black, shot through with streaks of silver. He had stupid fur. Most of it was black, but all across his back and chest were jagged bands of dazzling bright hair. The bright stuff came from his mother, a Brightwing. His father was a Silverwing, but it seemed he took after his mother more. Like her, his fur grew in longer and thicker than the Silverwings, and his ears were a different shape, rounder, smaller and closer in to his head. His wings were longer and narrower than the other newborns’, but that wasn’t really a consolation, because they still felt too big on him, made his flight all loose and jerky in the forest.
“Hey, Luna,” Rowan whispered. “Look.” Griffin looked too and saw, roosting several trees away, an owl perched on a thick branch. Even though they were at peace with the owls now, the sight of them still sent a tremor of fear through Griffin. They were just so big, easily four times a bat’s size, with sharp talons and a hooked beak that was designed for slashing and crushing its prey. Griffin’s mother still said they should avoid the owls. They were at peace, but that didn’t automatically make them friends. All the mothers said so. Now the owl’s huge head swivelled, and fixed them with its moonlike eyes.
“You want to play?” Skye asked Luna.
The owl game was Luna’s invention, and it terrified Griffin. The idea was to see who could roost closest to an owl on the same branch, and stay there for ten whole seconds before taking flight. Several weeks ago, Luna came within two wingspans. No one had done better than that.
“Sure,” said Luna. “I’m always ready.”
“Me too,” said Rowan.
“I’m in,” Skye said.
“All right,” Falstaff agreed, “but only if it doesn’t take too long. I’m starving.”
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