Firewing (18 page)

Griffin nodded, pleased he’d impressed his father. “She’s the one who gave me the map and explained everything. She remembered you and Mom.”

Shade smiled. “I wish I’d seen her.”

“She told me the Tree was the only way out.”

“I trust Frieda,” Shade said, “but the crack is right above us now, and I know exactly where it goes. I still think it makes the most sense for us. But we should get going. The stars move fast here and—” He was about to say something more, but seemed to change his mind. “Say goodbye to Luna.”

Griffin just nodded. He wasn’t about to argue with his father. Of course he knew best. He was a hero, everything he did worked out.

“I just want to make sure she makes it to the Tree, that’s all,” he said. “Frieda said there’re bats who might never get there….”

He looked around at the thousands of bats roosting from the ceiling. How long had they been here? Right beside him hung a Brightwing female, her unblinking eyes aglow with the mysterious light. Then he noticed her claws. There was something wrong with them. They were all scaly, as if the stone from the ceiling had seeped down over her talons and started up both ankles. His eyes skittered further along. Almost all the claws he saw were coated with stone, and on some of the bats the stone had reached as far as their abdomens and folded wings. No wonder they were so still! “Dad …” he said with mounting alarm. “Look at them!”

Instantly he lifted his own claws, left then right, to make sure nothing was sticking to them. He checked his father’s, and they too seemed to be free. In horror Griffin caught sight of a nearby male whose entire body was crusted over. He looked dead, like something mummified, but then Griffin saw his bright eyes and gasped when they blinked.

With a brittle clicking sound, the petrified bat cracked away from the roof and plummeted like a stone. The bat made no effort to open his wings—how could he?—and disappeared into the swirling mist. There was no splash of water, no thud of impact on stone. The bat was just gone.

“Luna,” Griffin said in a strangled voice. He dropped from his roost. He couldn’t believe he’d left her alone. Abandoned her. He was such a bad friend. What if she’d already scaled over?

“Where is she?” his father asked at his wingtip.

Millions of bats here, like a carpet of dark moss, and he’d forgotten where he and Luna had been roosting. Another bat fell from the ceiling and whistled past his wingtip.

“Luna!” he called out. “Luna!”

No answer, nothing.

“I think she was over here,” he gasped. In his frenzy the bats were all starting to look the same.

“I see her,” said his father calmly.

And there she was, her body and claws still clear of the dreadful creeping stone. She didn’t stir as Griffin landed beside her.

“Luna, my Dad’s here.”

“That’s great, Griff.” Her voice was drowsy.

“We should get going, don’t you think?”

“Thanks for helping me get back here,” she said. “Thank you so much.”

“No, it’s not true, Luna,” he told her worriedly. “You’re not back. This isn’t the way back.”

“Sure it is, Griff.”

“We’ve got to go!”

“You go on ahead. I’m just fine here. I don’t want to leave her.”

“Who?”

“My mother.” Luna sighed contentedly, and her face had that look newborns got when being groomed. Total comfort, total happiness. How could he take that away from her again? But how could he possibly leave her in this place?

“Luna,” he pleaded, “you’ve got to get to the Tree.”

“I want this,” she said simply.

Griffin turned to his father, who was circling below them. “What do we do?”

“We’d better just grab her and—”

Griffin saw his father’s look of shock the same moment he felt Luna falling past him. Wings furled tight, she plummeted. “Dad!” “I’ll get her! You stay here!”

Shade threw himself into a nose-dive and streaked after Luna. Griffin couldn’t bear it. The sight of them both getting farther and farther away—and him doing nothing. He dropped, too. To overtake Luna his father had opened his wings, was actually beating them to speed his vertical plunge. Griffin was afraid of the speed, kept braking as he crashed through layer after layer of misty light. He was terrified the ground would loom up suddenly and they would all be shattered against it.

He plunged through a final sheet of light, and below him saw a great pool of perfect blackness, so much like a starless night sky that he almost flipped over in confusion. Not blackness, he thought.
Darkness
. Its surface shimmered like some kind of thick fluid. A few echoey ripples flitted across it, and it was strangely beautiful. Luna was still dropping headfirst towards it, but he saw his father now pulling alongside her. They were not more than ten wingbeats from the pool, and Griffin watched with amazement as his father dipped beneath her and slowly braked, pulling up out of his dive and lifting Luna with him on his back. “I’ve got you,” he heard his father say.

Luna was so still, wings wrapped tight, and she wasn’t even trying to hold on. Rocking from side to side, she wasn’t at all secure, and Griffin was worried she might roll off, even though his father was flying as level as he could.

Griffin beat hard to catch up.

“I told you to stay back,” his father said.

“I wanted to help.”

Without warning, the jagged shadow of a huge winged creature strafed him and slammed into his father, knocking him over onto his back. Luna came flying off, straight for Griffin, and hit him hard, sending him into a tailspin.

“Dad!” he shouted.

Tumbling backwards, wings buckled, his eyes caught only snatches of things. Luna plunging alongside him. His father falling too, a Vampyrum clutching at his belly, driving him down.

The dark pool, soaring up to meet him.

Shade instantly recognized the winged fiend riding atop him. Its face was seared forever into his memory, as inescapable as a recurring nightmare. Goth’s body seemed slightly wizened, his grip not quite as piercing as Shade recalled, but there was nothing diminished about the savagery blazing from his eyes. The cannibal’s flesh was searingly cold. Quickly Shade furled his right wing and punched out with his left. The air caught hard beneath it and slammed him around—and Goth with him. Now Shade was on top, and Goth underneath—and coming up fast, the vast pool of darkness.

Goth snapped at him, and Shade tried to push him off and away, but the cannibal’s rear claws were locked in his flesh and fur, and one of his thumbs had pierced his wing.

Shade gulped air, ready to batter Goth with a sonic blast, but before he could open his mouth, Goth had his free thumb claw flexed around his muzzle, clamping it painfully shut. Shade was mute, half blind. Goth’s writhing head lunged forward suddenly, and Shade recoiled, teeth grazing his throat.

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 pleasure 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.