Firewing (9 page)

“And Cama Zotz, the god of the Underworld, does all he can to keep everyone in this state of delusion. The forest is his creation, and is convincing enough to satisfy most bats.”

Zotz. The name itself seemed loaded with danger, like lightning. Griffin had heard all sorts of stories, traded from newborn to newborn, how much of it true he could only guess. The little he knew for sure was from his mother—stories about his own father’s adventures in the southern jungles. He did know that Cama Zotz was the god of the Vampyrum Spectrum, the cannibal bats his father had defeated.

“So … where is Cama Zotz?” Griffin asked nervously.

“All around us,” said Frieda, and Griffin felt his fur twitch across the nape of his neck. “This is his kingdom, and he would rather see it swell in size than diminish. He can’t stop bats from seeking out the Tree and leaving this place, for the Tree was rooted here by Nocturna herself. But Zotz does all he can to convince us this is our true and final home. Most bats have willingly agreed to play along. And for those who come to accept their deaths, he makes their journey long and difficult, and puts many temptations and trials in their path. That is why there have always been Pilgrims to help the dead understand who and what they are. And set them on their final journey.”

“They all go to this Tree and live inside it?” Griffin asked. “It must be huge.”

Frieda chuckled. “It is huge. But no, the Tree is not the destination. The Tree is a conduit, a passageway to the next world.”

“But I don’t want to go to the
next
world,” Griffin said in alarm. “I want to go back to my own world.”

Frieda nodded. “From what I understand of the Tree, it is a kind of current, a slipstream that guides us where we most need to go.

For the living, there would be a different path than for the dead.”

“Have other living bats gone into it?”

“Not in the time that I have been a Pilgrim, no.”

“See, that’s what’s got me worried. It just seems like the Tree would be all used to dead bats down here, and I go in there, alive, and maybe it makes a mistake and sends me to the wrong place, like this next world, for instance. I’m sure it’s nice and everything,” he added hurriedly, not wanting to offend her, “but it’s just … not where I want to go.”

“I understand completely,” said Frieda. “I believe that Nocturna will take care of you once you’re in the Tree.”

Nocturna. She wasn’t exactly taking care of him now. Maybe he didn’t deserve taking care of, after what he’d done.

“As long as it takes me home,” he said. “I just want to be really clear about this.”

Frieda smiled. “I have every confidence it will.” Griffin nodded. Frieda was wise, his mother had always said that. If Frieda said it, he would try to trust her.

“So what is the next world, anyway?”

“I’ll only find out when I enter the Tree myself.” Frieda sounded tired, and more than a little wistful.

“You’ve seen the Tree, though, right?” He still wanted to be reassured it was a real place.

“Yes, Griffin. Many times.”

“Why haven’t you gone inside?”

“Believe me, every time I see it, it’s all I can do to stop myself from hurtling through the knothole.” She laughed ruefully. “I thought with death my responsibilities as elder would end, but no, it seems that even now I’m expected to look after all of you.” She shook out her wrinkled wings. “I would have preferred to rest
this old body of mine, but in time someone will replace me.” She smiled. “Soon enough,” she said. “Until then, I’m needed here. Dying is a confusing business.”

“The young ones,” Griffin said, “the ones who die suddenly, what happens to them?”

“In time, most come to realize on their own what has happened, and travel for the Tree. But some, even with help, never make the journey.”

“So they just—”

“Remain here eternally, yes.”

Griffin shuddered inwardly at the thought.

“And time is a luxury you do not have, Griffin,” Frieda reminded him firmly. “You must set out now.”

He looked at her. “Alone?”

“You may meet other travellers on the way.”

He inhaled, feeling a slow squeeze of panic around his heart. He wanted to stay with Frieda, be with someone who remembered the Upper World, who knew his parents.

“Come with me,” he whispered, knowing it came out sounding like a whine, weak and cowardly—but he couldn’t help it.

She leaned her old, grey head against his. “I can’t, child,” she said. “Even if I could, I’d be of no help to you. The best I can do is set you on your path.”

It wasn’t fair, he thought, anger momentarily overtaking his fear. Why couldn’t she make an exception? His parents were important. His father … his father was more famous than her, even! His father had won back the sun, made peace with the owls! She should be taking care of him down here, not deserting him.

Maybe she caught the flash of indignation in his eyes, because she said, “I know this must seem harsh, even cruel to you, but it
has always been this way. There are many colonies like Oasis, all across the Underworld, and I must visit them all. That is my role.”

“It’s not like they even listen to you, anyway,” Griffin muttered.

Frieda surprised him with her laugh. “No, it’s not. The dead are notoriously stubborn. But nonetheless …” “I know … you have to do it.” “Are you ready to hear the map?”

He blinked. “Hear it?”

“Ah, you haven’t even had your first migration yet, have you. The mothers sing the maps to their newborns, a song made of echoes that they see in their mind’s eye.”

The simple image of his mother made his eyes fill with tears. Tree Haven, the other newborns. Feeding in the night, preparing for the upcoming migration. Would he be a part of it? “Close your eyes,” Frieda said to him.

He did so, and she sang sound into his ears. His breath snagged as the darkness inside his head suddenly exploded with light. A perfect silver forest flared before him, so real he jerked back, eyes snapping open.

Frieda was smiling. “Shade did the same when I first took him to the echo chamber.”

Griffin looked at her eagerly, hungry for more about his father. But Frieda was already singing again, so he shut his eyes, flared his ears and—

The forest, Oasis, and the plain of cracked mud and rock encircling it and stretching to all horizons. He seemed to soar up, his stomach plunging as if actually in flight, until he was high in the air.

“How am I supposed to find my way?” he asked, remembering at least to keep his eyes shut. The desert all looked the same. No trees or hills or landmarks of any kind.

“Listen,” he heard Frieda tell him, as if from a great distance.

Suddenly he heard a new tone being sung, and he was streaming down over the plains now—frighteningly fast, he thought—right towards the earth. He could see that the mud was cracked in a definite pattern, as if some ancient river had once flowed there. The riverbed filled with light as he neared it, coursing along its path to the horizon.

“Oh!” he said, “so I follow that old trail kind of thing. But then what?”

He was plunged back into darkness and then—

A single tree on a plain, a pudgy-looking thing with fat branches, bristling with thorns. “It’s called a cactus,” came Frieda’s faraway voice.

In his mind’s eye Griffin was circling the cactus and then roosting on a high branch that split in half and then rejoined, forming a circular gap. Suddenly he was pelting towards the opening—would he fit through?—and shot straight through the other side. “Why—?” he began to say, but already the images were shimmering and shifting, and he was flying again, over desert, and then a valley, and at the valley’s end was the opening of a vast cavern. Around it, many bats fluttered. It looked inviting, but he was obviously not meant to linger there because he was jerked past, hurtling on into darkness for another moment before—

An immense canyon, whose walls plunged down into total darkness. It ran to both horizons, uninterrupted, like some huge terrible scar, and he was about to cross over it to the other side. As he did so he felt a terrible yawning pit in his stomach, and simultaneously the urge to look straight down—but, luckily perhaps, he couldn’t because he was not in control of this flight. All he knew was that there was something terrible in that great canyon, and the thought of even flying over it made him feel sick.

Turning now. He soared between two tall spires of stone that flanked the canyon like the horns of a buried beast, and then, his new course set, the landscape blurred past him at impossible speed until—

A deep valley ringed by mountain ranges. The valley was empty, dead, but suddenly from the soil sprang a frail shoot, buds unfurling as it grew higher, thickening into a trunk, sheathing itself with bark. Up it grew with dizzying speed, a sapling now, reaching skywards, now a mature tree, its main trunk forking into yet more branches that sprouted leaves and branched again. The tree was higher than the mountains now, and Griffin had to flap out of the way as the trunk soared up past him, its hundreds of branches reaching skywards until they seemed to be scraping the very heavens. “The Tree!” he said in delight. It was so tall, so beautiful.

Then it ignited, its entire surface wreathed in flame.

Griffin cried out in surprise. After a moment it was so engorged that it seemed the tree and all its branches were made entirely of fire. How could this be a way out? Midway up the trunk was a small knothole, the single gap in the tree’s seething skin of flame. Griffin could see nothing beyond the darkness, but it was like peering into the eye of some hypnotic animal. It beckoned, even as he felt his instincts holding him back. Fly into that? How could he? How could anyone? No wonder the Oasis bats thought the Tree was a place of death and torment. Fly too close and—

Luna. Spiralling to the ground, her wings ablaze.

His eyes snapped open. Frieda was looking at him patiently. “You understand?” she said. “Those were all the landmarks. Do you remember them?”

He stole some air. “The path in the cracked mud. That fat tree, I mean cactus, and I squeeze through the hole in the branch
and that sets me on course to the big cavern. Go past the cavern and over the canyon, not looking down, turn between those two weird skinny towers of stone. And that pretty much takes me to the Tree. Um, does it always, you know, burn so … brightly?”

“It does, but you mustn’t fear it.”

“Don’t fear raging inferno. I’ll remember that.” He started to giggle nervously, but managed to stifle himself when he saw that Frieda had more to tell him.

“The path can change,” she said. “Zotz alters the landscape when he pleases. It’s best if you leave immediately. Let no one distract you on your way. There may be those who try to slow you down or stop you.”

“Who?” he asked.

“Those jealous of your life. And there are also the Vampyrum.”

Griffin’s mouth fell open. “What about them?”

“Not so long ago they were content to remain in their own oases, but now they have been raiding others, and enslaving the bats. Be watchful always.”

Griffin swallowed, mouth parched. “Is there anything else I should know about? I’m not sure I’m quite terrified enough.”

Frieda smiled. “You know everything you need to. But you must hurry.”

He was glad she didn’t mention the dying part again.

“I
will
make it, right?”

“It will be stuff of legends, do you realize that?” Frieda told him, her eyes dancing with starlight. “No living creature has come here and returned. You will be the first!”

“It’ll make a good story,” he said with an unexpected surge of enthusiasm.

“An excellent one.”

“Maybe even something to tell the echo chamber,” he said, imagining it, the words he would speak to the smooth walls, his own echo voice joining Frieda’s and the elders’ and his father’s, too! The stuff of legends! He smiled, trying to feel brave, but he felt his face tightening as if it might crack. What made
him
think he could be the first to do this thing?

“What if—” he began.

“Give my kindest wishes to your parents when you see them,” Frieda said.

His parents. Her words filled his heart with hope: Frieda thought he’d make it back.

“Thanks,” he said, and then, before he could check himself, “But Luna.”

Frieda looked at him curiously. “Who?”

“My friend. I saw her down here. She doesn’t know she’s dead.”

“She will have to find that out in her own time.”

“But she needs to get to the Tree, right? Could she get out if I took her with me? To the Upper World?” Frieda shook her head.

“She’s barely dead, though,” Griffin hurried on anxiously. “Maybe a night or two at most. And she shouldn’t be here—”

“She is dead, Griffin, and nothing can change that.”

“Nothing?” Frieda looked troubled.

“So there is a way?” Griffin persisted.

“Listen to me, Griffin, I did not intend to tell you this, but it affects you very much. Your life glows around you like a haze. The dead can see it; most may not know what it means, but some will. They will want it. They may do anything to get it.”

“What can they do? I mean, they’re dead.”

“Dead or not, they can still kill you. They still have bodies, and
weight, and strength, and if they have the will, they can steal your life away.”

Griffin felt his insides start to churn coldly.

“How?” he heard himself ask.

“If they kill you, your life springs from your body like a kind of current, like an echo, and they can suck it into themselves. I have never seen it happen, but I have heard of such things, and it is terrible. And so this is an answer to your earlier question about your friend. The only way the dead can live again is to steal the life of a living thing. So you must be especially wary on your journey. Stay away from all others. Your trip truly is one that must be made alone. Even those who seem friendly may attack you out of fear or desperation.”

Griffin nodded, looked to the horizon. “It’s just that, it shouldn’t have happened,” he blurted out, needing to tell someone. “It was really stupid the way she died, an accident and … it was because of me.”