Free Firewing by Kenneth Oppel Page A

wasn’t going to be so easy. At the mere sight of him, the Silverwings scattered as if he were a demented owl. He couldn’t get within fifty wingbeats without them pelting for cover. Must be my glow, he thought. Still, how scary was a glowing newborn?
    He tried calling out to them.
    “Hi, excuse me, I—”
    “I was wondering if you knew where—”
    “Please ignore the glow, I just wanted to ask you—”
    It was no use. Without fail, the Silverwings fled before he could get more than a few words out.
    “These bats are
pathetic
,” he said, throbbing with loneliness. What was he supposed to do now? He looked up at the sky again. Still no sign of the moon but the stars had shifted. He wondered how long it was until dawn.
    His stomach hurt, and he felt strangely reassured by it. Hunger. Something familiar. This he could deal with. He remembered that big bug he’d seen earlier. Hadn’t looked particularly appetizing, but a few of those would be the same as a thousand mosquitoes. Pricking up his ears, he listened for the whine of insect wings as he soared through the forest.
    Strange that he hadn’t seen any other kind of creature here. At night he was used to spotting deer, flying squirrels, and kangaroo mice, sometimes even a bear shambling through the undergrowth or a moose stepping softly through the trees. Here, the forest floor was deserted.
    An insect swooped up before his nose—some kind of winged spider by the looks of it, not something he’d ever seen. He switched over to his echo vision and locked on. It wasn’t too fast, and he came in quickly and smacked it from his wing into his open mouth. With a bit of trepidation he clamped down on the bug and—
    There was nothing there. His eyes snapped open and he looked around in confusion, sending out a barrage of sound. Maybe it had just gotten away. But there was no sign of it. He’d felt it in his wing, then in his mouth….
    He tried again. This time, he locked onto a freaky-lookingmoth, overtook it and, with painstaking care, curled it from his left wingtip into his mouth. He felt the gauzy fabric of its wings against his skin, then brought his jaws together. There was a quick pulse of light, a faint pop, and the bug melted away. Gone.
    Panting, Griffin tried to land, missing the branch on his first approach and nearly plummeting to the ground. The second time he shakily gripped the bark.
    The bugs were not
real.
    They were just little bits of sound and light. What else wasn’t real here? What about those odourless trees? His eyes darted anxiously across the branch, noticing the leaves. There were buds just unfurling, others fully grown, and some hard curled dead ones, still clinging on. It was spring, summer, and fall all at once here. It wasn’t normal. This place was
not normal
.
    Then he saw her.
    Maybe it was her distinctive upstroke, or her sleek profile as she streaked past—but he knew. “Luna!” he cried out.
    She shot him a quick backwards glance, then came around for a better look. As she flew closer, his heart leapt. It was definitely her, no question! She roosted at the end of his branch, staring at him in amazement.
    “How did
you
get here?” Griffin exclaimed, words pouring out of him in sheer, giddy joy. “This is the weirdest place, Luna! Have you seen the trees and the leaves—and the bugs? Bizarre! These huge spiny bugs that you can’t even eat! And the other bats here, have you talked to any of them yet? They’re kind of unusual, to say the least. They keep telling me I’m glowing!” “You are,” she said.
    “Oh.” He felt taken aback. “You can see it, too? Because I can’t, you know. I can’t see anything glowing at all.”
    “It’s like you have starlight trapped in your fur.” He paused to catch his breath, and noticed the shiny patches of scar tissue on her wings. But her fur didn’t look too bad. He couldn’t believe how quickly it had all healed. All those potions the elders had must be