Sunwing (6 page)

“You can’t know everything,” said Marina angrily. “What makes you think you’re so special!”

His face burned with indignation. “You know what?” he said. “It’s not easy being special! I’d just love to be like Chinook. I really would. I’d love to let someone else do all the thinking, and take care of things for a while!”

Marina stared at him and burst out laughing. “What?” he snapped.

She was still breathless with laughter, wheezing out the words.

“The idea … of you … letting someone else … take care of things. That’s … I’m sorry, Shade, but … that’s the funniest thing I’ve heard in ages.” There were tears in her eyes. “You couldn’t. It’s impossible for you.”

“You’re the same,” he said softly. “You always wanted to know as much as me. That was part of why you came with me from the very start. To find out what the bands really meant.”

“Maybe I’m happy with the answer.”

“Are you really?”

For a few moments neither of them said anything. “There’s something else too,” he said. He’d been almost afraid to mention it, in case by speaking it aloud, the idea evaporated like mist. “If the Humans are taking bats away, maybe my father
was
here. Even before Arcadia and all the other bats. Maybe my father was here with lots of bats, and they took him away. So what’s happened to him, Marina? Where is he now?”

Marina shook her head and stared at the stream disappearing into the cliff.

“I just can’t believe you were going to do this alone. Without telling anyone. What about your mother? What about me!”

“You said you loved it here!”

“But if you’re going somewhere …” She trailed off. “Listen, you’ll just mess things up by yourself. I’m coming with you.”

Shade looked again at the fast water and, before he could change his mind, dropped into it, shuddering as it took hold of him and seeped through his fur. Marina splashed in beside him, and together they shot toward the mouth of the tunnel.

It was much worse than he expected. There was scarcely a whisker of air overhead, and it was almost impossible to get at it, nose scraping against the tunnel roof, desperately sucking in more water than air. “No good,” Marina spluttered, “turn around.” But without warning, the air was gone. Shade tried to find the surface, and there was no surface, only solid water. Submerged, he whipped around, eyes wide, seeing nothing but dark smudges. Was that Marina? He tried singing out, but his echoes bounced back sluggishly to his clogged ears, painting a senseless, tarry ooze in his head. Water streamed down his throat, and he clamped his mouth shut.

He didn’t even know which way was up anymore.

He was blind, with only the current to guide him. He forced
himself to stay still a moment and wait for the water’s tug. This way. He didn’t have much breath left, and all he could do was hope the current would bring him out somewhere soon. And that Marina was still close by.

His chest felt as if it might explode. He wanted air. He tried to row with his wings, but it was slowing him down more than helping. He felt his body start to panic. Air. He knocked his nose against the roof of the tunnel, hoping for a breath. His thoughts splintered and danced in his head. Air. Which way? Can’t. Hurry, hurry, please.

Suddenly he was gasping and choking, his head above water. Rivulets streamed down his face, his fur plastered against his body. He turned clumsily, blinking water from his eyes, to see Marina splash up nearby, spluttering and sucking air hungrily.

“Another great idea from the master,” she said sarcastically when she’d caught her breath. “Thank you, Shade.”

They had spread their wings to keep themselves afloat and were drifting down a stream lined with willows. They were in another forest—so familiar-looking that for a moment, Shade wondered if by some trick the tunnel had simply returned them to the same place. Spreading around them was the same lush mix of conifers and leafy trees; far overhead the same glass roof, the same sun. They drifted lazily down the stream.

“Maybe this is where they take the bats,” whispered Marina excitedly.

Impulsively Shade drew in breath to call out his father’s name, but Marina smacked a wet wing across his mouth. “Are you crazy? We don’t even know what’s in here yet!”

Shade scowled, but nodded. Cautiously, he swept the trees with sound, searching beneath branches for the telltale shape of roosting bats. Nothing so far … just leaves … more
leaves … and then something moved, something much larger than what he’d been looking for. He’d been searching only for bats, his focus tight, but now he pulled back in alarm and saw a huge, feathered head with horned ears.

Heart hammering, his echo vision skittered along the branch, and then into nearby trees.

The forest was teeming with owls.

“Marina …” he breathed.

“I see them. Good thing you didn’t call out.” He’d never seen so many owls in one place before, and he doubted any bat had, since the rebellion of fifteen years ago. He’d already counted three dozen. They were all sleeping, it seemed, and Shade wanted to keep it that way. But what were they doing here—in an identical forest right beside their own?

“We’re going back,” Marina said in a tight voice. Shade nodded, but with a shock realized how far they’d already drifted down the stream. The tunnel mouth was out of sight around a bend. Stupid! He’d forgotten how fast the current was. He clumsily paddled with his wings, but wasn’t doing much more than treading water.

“This is no good,” hissed Marina. “It’ll take too long.”

“We’re going to have to fly,” Shade said. Marina grimaced, and Shade didn’t like the idea, either. To fly was to risk being spotted by a restless owl. But once airborne, they could probably make it back to the tunnel in less than a minute.

“This was a bad idea, wasn’t it?”

“Definitely,” said Marina. “Let’s climb out.” Stealthily, they hauled themselves up onto the bank, quietly shaking water from their fur and wings. Shade knew they should really wait until they were dryer, but they didn’t have the time. He just hoped they weren’t too waterlogged. With a clumsy leap,
he was airborne, heavy and flapping hard. With Marina, he flew low, streaking back through the forest to the stream’s source. There it was.

They settled on the bank. The water burst from the tunnel, frothing at the sides. He hadn’t realized how fast it was. They’d nearly drowned coming through, and that was
with
the current. There was no way he could imagine them getting back alive. His stomach shifted heavily. He looked at Marina. “I’m sorry,” he said.

She was trembling with anger. “I can’t believe I let you do this.”

“You didn’t have to—”

“Just start thinking, all right, because—”

“Bats!”

It was the legs Shade noticed first, those surprisingly long legs dangling as if boneless, but tipped with four-pronged claws, ready to slash. The owl dropped toward them like a huge, winged head, beak open, shrieking to wake the forest.

Shade veered up into a tight weave of branches with Marina, the owl plunging narrowly past her tail.

“Bats!” the owl screeched again.

Shade could see the owl was a young male, traces of down still clinging around his wings. But even so, it was a giant compared to him. In the center of his chest, the mottled feathers made a pattern of white lightning bolts.

All around them, owls were waking, and within seconds, the air was churning with wings. Even as he blurred through outstretched talons, between legs and over winged heads, Shade was desperately scanning the forest for a hiding place. It was only a matter of seconds before he would be snatched up and eaten whole. He spotted a knothole in a tree, too small for owls, just big enough for them—he hoped. There wasn’t time to make
a better measurement. He looked around anxiously for Marina.

“The tree!” he called out, and shot a flare of sound toward it so she could see. And then he hurled himself at the knothole, shooting through and almost knocking himself out against the inside. Dazed, he shifted out of the way as Marina half flew, half tumbled into the tree.

“Move back!” Shade cried, and she jerked away from the opening just as a she-owl’s beak thrust through, snapping. Her hard, pointed tongue vibrated as she roared.

Huddled together at the bottom of the hollow, Shade watched the owl press her flat face against the knothole and glare down at them with one huge, luminous eye. “Why are we here?” she shrieked.

The question surprised him. “I … I don’t know what you—”

“Are we to be prisoners until we die, is that your plan?”

“What do you mean,
our
plan?” Marina said.

The she-owl’s eyes hooded dangerously. “Your plan with the Humans. Yes, we know all about it. You’ve asked them to fight alongside you, and now you trap us here in their building.”

“How could we ask them?” said Shade in confusion. “We can’t talk to them any more than you can.”

“Tell us the way out!” the she-owl demanded.

“I don’t know the way out!”

“Then how did you get in
here?”
said the she-owl slyly. Should he tell her the Humans had trapped them too, that he was trying to find a way out, just like them? No, he wouldn’t risk telling her there were thousands of bats just on the other side of the tunnel. Even if the owls could fight the current, the tunnel was too small for them, he was quite sure of that—but he wasn’t about to take any chances.

“We had nothing to do with trapping you,” he said.

“We can wait, little bats. We have patience.” With that, the owl withdrew her head.

Shade looked at Marina. “We’ve been in worse than this.”

“Yeah,” she said, without much conviction. “We’ll tunnel out.”

Marina followed his lead and started searching the hollow for fissures in the bark. Even as he searched, he knew it was probably futile, but he had to stay busy to keep himself from shaking inside.

“What’re the Humans doing?” he muttered angrily.

“Maybe the she-owl’s right,” whispered Marina. “Maybe this is part of the plan, just like Arcadia said. Get all the owls in here, and then they can release us back outside.”

Shade faltered for a moment. He couldn’t deny the idea was appealing. All the owls in the world out of the way? Sounded good. But a big job, wasn’t it? There were a lot of owls out there.

“Here I was, happy with my life for the first time,” Marina muttered, “but no, you had to come along with your big frown and big questions, and I was
stupid
enough to listen to you.”

Shade winced. What if she was right, and the Humans were taking care of everything all along, and he just hadn’t been able to accept it? He’d risked his own life, and even worse, Marina’s, just to find out. She was right: He was vain, he was selfish.

“You find anything?” he asked her weakly.

“I think it’s thinnest over here,” she said. Shade looked over with a surge of hope. “How long will it take to claw through?”

“About a week. Don’t suppose you have any fancy echo tricks to get us out of this one.”

“Look out!” he cried.

Marina lurched out of the way as a stone plummeted down
from the knothole, almost braining her. Shade looked to see the owl’s beak, pulling back. A moment later, another beak thrust in and dropped a second stone.

“Keep to the sides!” Shade cried. By plastering themselves against the bark, they managed to avoid the steady avalanche of stones the owls were now dumping from above.

“They’re filling it up,” said Marina dully. Shade knew it wouldn’t be long before they’d be forced out of the knothole, into the owls’ waiting claws. He knew what they did to you. Swallowed you whole, alive sometimes, and spat out what they didn’t want: the bones and fur matted together. He’d seen these gruesome pellets once before and they’d made him sick with fury. More rocks thudded down, and they had to scramble up onto them to keep from getting crushed underneath.

“They’re not getting us,” he said.

“What’re you doing?” Marina said in alarm as he clambered up the bark toward the knothole. “Get ready to fly.”

He crouched flat, just below the knothole, waiting for the next beak to poke through; then, when it pulled back, he’d leap out and shriek an image of Goth so terrifying, it would scare them half to death. That would buy them enough time to get out, and after that—he’d worry about that later.

Shade waited, counting his furious heartbeats, sixty-seven, sixty-eight, sixty-nine, and still no beak came. The longer he waited, the more frightened he became, and that made him even angrier—and then he wrinkled his nose and frowned. “Smell that?” he whispered over his shoulder at Marina.

She took a quick breath. “Sweet.”

“It’s what they used to make us sleep!”

A huge, wheezing sigh passed through the forest. He could hear
leafs fluttering, and then thumping footfalls, which he felt through the bark of the tree. Carefully, Shade inched up and peeked out the knothole. No owls were in sight, but the rhythmic thuds were louder now. He leaned out for a better angle and gasped.

Walking through the forest were the same faceless wraiths from his dream, but this time he knew they were Humans, cloaked in white, heads covered with thick hoods with only slits for eyes. They were tall and terrifying as they took their slow, heavy steps through the forest, fanning out among the trees.

The owls, Shade could see, had all collected in the highest branches, huddled near the trunks. But if they thought the Humans couldn’t reach them, they were wrong. They all held long metal sticks—in his dream he’d thought they were skeletal arms—with big nets at the end. And as they raised them, they grew even longer, stretching up and up into the trees.

He watched as the tip of one metal stick grazed an owl’s belly. There was a sharp, crackling sound, and the owl slumped into the net at the stick’s end.

Many of the owls seemed strangely lethargic—the sleeping gas, Shade knew—and the Humans netted them easily. Others had fight left in them, and began to shriek, flaring their plumage so they seemed to double in size. But the Humans’ terrible sticks only had to nick their feathers, and the owls slumped, twitching, into the nets. The Humans carried on, steadily, deliberately. Shade could hear their voices: thunderous, low things.

His own eyes drooped, and he snapped his head back, fighting the heavy calm that oozed through his body. He looked down and saw Marina, her eyes glazed and serene.

“Wake up!” he shouted. “Now’s our only chance. Come on! Move!”

He dropped down beside her, prodding her roughly toward the
knothole, then after only a second’s hesitation, nipped her tail.

“Hey!”

“Fly!”

He leaped after her and soared a tight circle to get his bearings. There, the stream. They couldn’t go upstream, only farther down in the hopes it would bring them out somewhere safer. “This is your fault!”

He turned sluggishly and saw the young owl with the lightning bolts emblazoned on his plumage. He too seemed dulled by the vapor in the forest, his wingstrokes slow and clumsy, so that he listed slightly as he flew. Still, he was coming at them head-on, claws extended for fight.

Shade and Marina flew. He looked back over his shoulder, and still, the owl was dogging them, and getting within striking distance. Shade tried to cast a sound illusion behind him, but he had no breath left in him, and the image melted before it was even out of his mouth.

He’d lost the stream, but then suddenly they were over it again, racing with it, as it came out of the trees and disappeared into a high stone wall. It would take them even farther away from their own forest, but what choice did they have now?

“Into the stream!” he shouted. He tucked his wings, and barely had time to suck in air before he cut the surface and shot into the tunnel. He was blind again, buried beneath the water, with only his own momentum and the current to guide him. He tried again to use his wings, and this time had more success: Keeping them bunched tight, he levered them up and down, and used his tail membrane as well to propel him forward. But it tired him out faster too, and what if there was no end, what if the tunnel kept going on and on under the earth, until his lungs were gorged with water?