Raffa could see joy and relief on Kuma’s face. It was one thing to know that bears hibernate. It was quite another for Kuma to have seen her beloved Roo breathing so infrequently for so many weeks, almost as if she had forgotten how.
Moments of joy had been all but absent for Raffa’s little group that winter. There in the desolate wilderness of the Sudden Mountains, they were forced to spend their hours focused entirely on two activities: keeping warm and finding food. The work was too hard, the wind too cold, the snow too deep. There was never enough to eat.
Two days ago, the wind had changed. Its knife-edged sharpness had dulled, then softened. Never in his life had Raffa felt such relief over a shift in the weather. Since then, Kuma had been checking the cave obsessively to see if Roo was awake.
Now Raffa hung back while Kuma entered the cave. She moved slowly and spoke in a soothing tone as she approached the bear. Squatting down in front of Roo, she made herself small and unthreatening, and let Roo sniff at her.
Roo whined and swatted Kuma’s shoulder affectionately with an enormous paw. Kuma was ready for this and had braced herself; otherwise, Roo’s exuberant greeting might have knocked her over. Then the bear turned away and began nosing at something on the ground.
Something gray and furry, with a striped tail.
The mound of fur did not respond at first, but Roo let out a plaintive growl and persisted, continuing to nudge with her nose.
Finally, there was a mew of protest, and the masked face of a young raccoon appeared. Twig unfurled herself, sat up, and blinked a few times, her eyes glowing purple.
“Water?” she squeaked.
Raffa smiled at Twig and went to fetch a strawful of melted snow. He gave her a drink. When she was finished, she pawed at the bear’s leg. Roo seemed fully awake and reoriented now. She relaxed, sat down, and allowed Kuma to give her a good hard scratch. At the same time, she began giving Twig a tongue-bath.
The girl scratching the bear grooming the raccoon . . . Seeing the three of them together, Raffa felt a sharp pang of longing for his own special companion.
He made his way to the back corner of the cave. A tiny bat hung there, on a perch made out of a twig tied to a leather cord. Raffa blew on the bat’s whiskers. Echo stirred, then produced an annoyed click.
Delighted, Raffa tried again, blowing a little harder.
Another click, this one weaker than the first.
Raffa frowned. Neither Twig nor Echo were true hibernators like Roo, but both had slept for days at a time throughout the winter. Raffa didn’t know if it was normal for bats to emerge from torpor later than raccoons. He donned the perch necklace; perhaps the warmth of his body would help Echo waken.
Echo hadn’t spoken for weeks. How Raffa missed their conversations! The bat never failed to make him laugh. He could hardly wait for Echo to talk again, for then it would truly be spring, a farewell forever to this harsh winter of too little laughter.
Garith was sitting partway up inside the shelter. He had been woken not by the bear’s growls but by a shaft of sunlight piercing the screen of branches.
“Garith.” Raffa waved his hand to get his cousin’s attention. “Roo and Twig are awake. Want to go see them?” He spoke slowly, enunciating each syllable as clearly as he could and making exaggerated gestures.
“I’ve told you a million times, that doesn’t help me!” Garith said. “Stop talking to me like I’m some kind of idiot. I lost my hearing, not my brain.”
His voice had flattened out since he had become deaf, and was often toneless. Raffa should have been used to it by now, but every reminder of Garith’s deafness twisted his insides—because it was his fault. Maybe not directly, but the fact remained that Garith wouldn’t be deaf if it weren’t for Raffa’s decision to flee Gilden.
Raffa had spent the winter months trying to make it up to Garith, by helping with his share of the work. But Garith resented that too, and Raffa felt as if he was always tiptoeing around his cousin’s bad moods. He didn’t know what to do about it. For the hundredth time, he wished he could talk to his parents.
But he couldn’t risk going home, for none of them had any idea what awaited them there. Were their families being watched? Would neighbors turn them in? Would guards seize them the instant they were sighted?
Raffa and Kuma and Garith could hardly be considered enemies of Obsidia. But Chancellor Leeds viewed them as a threat, for she knew that they possessed something more important than strength or power.
Knowledge.
Now that Raffa knew about the animals trapped in a compound, where they were being dosed and trained against their natures, he was sure that the Chancellor was seeking a way to silence him. He had nightmare visions of being thrown into the underground cells of the Garrison, left to a life not worth living among the rats and the filth and the loneliness.
And the Chancellor wanted one thing even more than his silence: Roo. Raffa had heard only dark and murky whispers of her plans, but he did know that she wanted to use the great bear as a weapon. Keeping Roo out of her reach was the main reason he and his friends had chosen to hide in the Suddens.
Now that spring had finally arrived, he found himself in an agony of indecision.
They couldn’t stay here forever, but they couldn’t go home, either.
Raffa slept poorly that night, waking several times to check on Echo. The next morning, the bat seemed even more inert. Raffa could see that Echo was still breathing, but his tiny body was barely warm to the touch.
He showed the bat to Kuma. “I don’t know what’s wrong,” he said. “He should at least be starting to wake by now.”
Kuma examined Echo. “Yes, I think so, too,” she said slowly. “I’m sure that I’ve seen bats flying around in early spring.”
Raffa’s alarm was growing by the moment. He scolded himself silently: Panicking would do Echo no good. He thought of his parents, Mohan and Salima. When they were treating patients, they were almost always calm and deliberate. Sometimes decisions had to be made quickly. Sometimes their actions were urgent. But they were never panicky.
Think like they would. Like an apothecary.
Because Raffa did not know exactly what was wrong with Echo, any treatment he used would have to be mild—one sure to do no harm.
A restorative tonic, then. He had only a few botanical supplies with him, and no equipment other than his trusty mortar and pestle. He set about grinding some anjella root, then combined it with dried mellia and wortjon.
Three times a day for the next two days, Raffa dosed the bat with the combination. He checked on him constantly, even massaging Echo’s tiny back in an attempt to improve his circulation.
All to no avail. If anything, the bat was worse off, for no matter how many times Raffa blew on his whiskers, Echo did not respond.
Raffa made the same infusion again, but this time he added a powder made of the stems and leaves of the scarlet vine. He had taken the entire stock of the vine from Uncle Ansel’s glasshouse in Gilden, and had dried the plants to store them.
Unlike the fresh vine, the dry powder emitted not a single spark or gleam when combined with other ingredients. Raffa concentrated hard while making the infusion. Nothing came to him—no moment of color or music, no prick of discomfort. No sign at all from his intuition, which was his special gift as an apothecary.
What was he to think of this blankness? Was it possible that he was losing his gift? It made him feel frightened and uncertain to have to rely solely on his training and experience instead. Did other apothecaries have to do that all the time?
He took a deep breath, gritted his teeth, and dosed Echo with the infusion.
The next few hours dragged by so slowly that it felt to Raffa as if the sun had come to a complete standstill. He looked down the neck of his tunic every few moments, hoping to detect even the smallest change in Echo’s condition.
Nothing.
The bat remained as he was, limp except for the tiny claws closed tightly around the tw
ig.
Raffa’s relief that the infusion seemed to have done no harm was overwhelmed by the harsh disappointment that it had done no good, either. He went to Kuma and Garith, fighting back tears.
“I don’t know what else to do,” he said. “He should be awake by now, but nothing’s working.”
Garith glanced at Echo hanging limply from his perch. Then he looked at Raffa. “You need more botanicals,” he said in a monotone. “It’s still too cold up here—nothing’s growing.”
“And maybe . . .” Kuma’s voice was soft with sympathy. “Maybe you could use some help—somebody to talk to about what you could try.”
Raffa swallowed past the lump in his throat and put his hand protectively over the wee bat. Months earlier, he had saved Echo’s life. Somehow that gave him a solemn responsibility for the bat. He hadn’t failed Echo the first time. He couldn’t fail him now.
He clenched and unclenched his jaw. Garith and Kuma were both right, and he was sure upon certain about what he had to do. When he spoke, the words came out fiercely.
“We’re going home,” he said.
Neither Garith nor Kuma uttered a single protest. They were well aware of the risks; at the same time, Raffa knew that each had reasons for wanting to leave the Suddens. Kuma needed to find a safe place for Roo, somewhere close enough to visit occasionally. And Garith had to go back to face his father, a meeting that Raffa suspected was both yearned for and dreaded.
“All right, then,” Raffa said. “We’ll leave tomorrow at daybirth.”
He glanced down at Echo on the perch around his neck. “I’ll get there as fast as I can, I promise,” he murmured.
Ford the Everwide . . . Find a hideout for Roo . . . And then go home, where—as long as no guards awaited him—there would be plenty of botanicals to work with.
Even more important, his parents would be there. Mohan, with his profound knowledge of garden botanicals, and Salima, so familiar with wild plants; both of them having years of experience treating illness and injury. Surely, with their help, he could cure the little bat.
Then Raffa’s stomach lurched at his next thought.
If only Echo lives long enough to get there.
BACK AD
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo by Sonya Sones
LINDA SUE PARK, recipient of the Newbery Medal for A Single Shard, is the bestselling author of many books for young readers, including picture books, poetry, and historical and contemporary fiction. Born in Illinois, Ms. Park has also lived in California, England, and Ireland. She and her husband, a journalist, now live in Rochester, New York, and have two grown children. Learn more at www.lindasuepark.com.
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BOOKS BY LINDA SUE PARK
NOVELS
Seesaw Girl
The Kite Fighters
A Single Shard
When My Name Was Keoko
Project Mulberry
Archer’s Quest
Keeping Score
The 39 Clues: Storm Warning
A Long Walk to Water
The 39 Clues: Trust No One
PICTURE BOOKS
The Firekeeper’s Son
Mung-Mung
What Does Bunny See?
Yum! Yuck!
Tap Dancing on the Roof
Bee-bim Bop!
The Third Gift
Xander’s Panda Party
CREDITS
COVER ART © 2016 BY JIM MADSEN
COVER DESIGN BY JOE MERKEL
COPYRIGHT
WING & CLAW #1: FOREST OF WONDERS. Copyright © 2016 by HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
www.harpercollinschildrens.com
* * *
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015940700
ISBN 978-0-06-232738-3
EPub Edition © February 2016 ISBN 9780062327406
* * *
Map by Mike Schley
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FIRST EDITION
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Linda Sue Park, Forest of Wonders
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