“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, Sh
ade 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?
He was through almost before he realized it, head above the water, choking in air. Marina splashed up beside him.
Even as they grimly clambered out onto the bank, he noticed the heat—a fierce, soaking heat that hung in the air like mist. Overhead were trees he’d never seen before, with strange, broad leaves, and luxuriant fronds. It was drizzling; warm, soft drops of water falling gently.
He’d barely had time to catch his breath when Marina stiffened. “Look,” she said.
In the stream, Shade saw a large shape darken the water before breaking the surface.
The owl had come too. Shade couldn’t decide if the owl looked less, or more, frightening wet. Certainly he looked skinnier, his usually voluminous feathers plastered against his body; but his head, with its matted plumage, looked ferociously gaunt, the eyes and beak even bigger and more vicious.
Frozen beside Marina, Shade watched as the owl lurched to the bank and wearily hauled himself out. Then his head swiveled, and he looked straight at them. They faced each other warily, no more than twenty wingbeats apart.
The young owl made a valiant attempt to flare his plumage, but only succeeded in shaking spray from his soggy wings. The piercing shriek that escaped his mouth was, however, more impressive.
Too exhausted to fly, Shade forced himself not to flinch.
The owl cocked his head, to the left, the right, laying it almost flat. It was a curious gesture, almost comical, but Shade knew the owl was just measuring the distance to them, preparing for a strike.
Instinctively, Shade and Marina bared their teeth and hissed, flaring their wings and tripling in size.
“Go back!” Shade yelled.
“I’m not afraid of you,” said the owl, but Shade could hear a tremor of uncertainty in his deep voice. The bird glanced down at the mouth of the stream, as if hoping more owls would be coming soon.
“He’s half feathers,” Shade said loudly to Marina.
“You’re right. There’s nothing to him.”
The owl rocked slowly from side to side.
The heat crawled through Shade’s fur like worms. Even on the hottest summer day he could remember, it had never been like this. He stole a glance up at the broad leaves, mossy vines draped from branches. It was hard to breathe.
“Stupid bats.” The owl looked at the water once more.
“No one’s coming to help you,” said Shade. “They’re too big to fit through.”
“You’re in league with them, aren’t you?” spat the owl. “The Humans. They came to help you back there. They helped you escape, and they killed those other owls.”
“They’re not dead,” said Shade. “They were still moving.” He couldn’t stop himself from feeling a pang of sympathy for the owl. Before his dream-dazed eyes, he’d seen the Humans snatch and steal his fellow creatures. This owl had been trapped in a forest, just like Shade, wanting to get out, not knowing what was happening to them.
“They’re doing it to us too,” he said, looking quickly at Marina, not knowing if this was the right strategy.
“Liars. You bats have always been lawbreakers. You started this war by killing birds at night. The city pigeons, then owls, then—”
“That wasn’t us,” said Shade desperately.
“They were bats.”
“No … well, yes, they were bats, but not northern bats. They came from the jungle. The Humans brought them up from the jungle, and they escaped and—”
“So the Humans are in league with you!”
“No!” He looked despairingly at Marina. How could he explain this?
“There were two of these jungle bats,” said Marina. “And they ate birds. They ate beasts. And they ate bats. They nearly ate us, if that makes you feel any better. They were monsters.”
“And they’re dead now, anyway,” said Shade, with a brief surge of hope. “So this whole thing, the whole war, it’s a misunderstanding. We don’t want a war.”
But he could tell from the owl’s rigid face he was far from convinced. Just more bat lies, that’s what he was thinking.
The owl snorted. “This is stupid, talking to you. The enemy.”
“I’m not your enemy.”
“All bats are enemies. You kill birds.”
“But I just told you … look, I’ve never killed any birds.”
“Only because you can’t.”
Shade felt a stab of guilt. The owl was right. How often had he wished for the power to kill the owls? For so long, he’d harbored a hatred of them.
“Have you killed any bats?” Shade asked.
“Not yet.”
“Then you’re not my enemy, either.”
“So why are you here, if you’re not in league with the Humans?” the owl demanded.
“I told you. They’re trapping us too,” said Shade. “There’re thousands of us here, and yesterday, they came and took some of us away, just like they did to you back there.”
The owl seemed to consider this carefully. “Where do they take them?”
“I don’t know,” said Shade. “That’s what we’re trying to find out. How long have you been inside?”
“Several weeks. Just before winter set in hard.
We were flying to our hibernation site and passed over this building. We heard owls, and went closer. There were openings in the wall, and it looked like it might be a barn, a good wintering site, so we went inside and found the forest. And once inside—”
“There was no way out.”
The owl nodded.
“What do they feed you?” Shade asked.
The owl’s great brows furrowed at the question. “Mice, mostly,” he said hesitantly.
“I bet they’re lousy, right? All taste the same?”
A quick, somewhat alarming hoot came from the owl’s throat, and Shade stiffened before realizing it was laughter.
“You should try the bugs they pump out for us,” said Shade. “I had one today, nearly gagged!”
“Does the water have a strange taste to you?” the owl wanted to know.
“Yeah, like metal,” Shade said.
“Yes, metal,” said the owl with another short chuckle.
“Well, see how much we have in common?” said Marina.
The owl stared at them, some of his wariness coming back. “I won’t be tricked by you.”
“We don’t have any tricks right now,” said Shade. “We’re as confused as you, believe me.”
The owl swiveled his head to look at the huge trees and lush plants. “What is this place?”
Shade shook his head, listening. He heard nothing but the drip-drip of water from the leaves, and the occasional chirrup of some strange insect. It was disturbingly quiet.
“Has to be something inside,” he said, “doesn’t there?”
“Maybe they’re waiting to fill it,” said Marina. “What kind of creature would fill a place like this?” the owl asked.
Fear tingled along Shade’s bones. There was something terribly familiar about this place. Had he seen it in one of his dreams, maybe? Or had somebody described it to him, drawing it in words.
A vine rustled.
There was something watching them. Shade knew it with utter certainty. He tilted his head and peered with sound into the shadows of a fleshy tree. A narrow, spiky leaf shuddered, dislodging a rivulet of water.