Firewing (20 page)

“Maybe they’ll be more interesting dead,” Luna said.

“Probably. I like dead bats. Some of my best friends are dead, you know.”

She was giggling, just the way she used to, and it made Griffin’s
heart swell. “And you’ll be there with me, too,” she said firmly.

Griffin said nothing, pleased she was singling him out, even if he did feel terribly unworthy of her affection.

“And we can do things together,” she went on. “We can go anywhere—big journeys all over this big new world.”

“Well, I’m really more a roost-at-home sort of bat,” he said, “but, sure, why not. If it makes you happy.”

She was silent for a moment. She winced, then said: “What if it’s not like that?”

“No, no, it’ll be great.”

“What if it’s
worse
than this place?”

“Um, no. It couldn’t be. Not possible.”

“What if I’m all alone, and have to wait a long time for anyone I know to show up? You’re just a newborn, and my parents could live another twenty-five years. I don’t want to be all by myself.”

“You’re starting to sound like me,” Griffin said. “Worrying’s
my
thing. And frankly, I’m better at it. You and your
little
worries—I laugh at them!”

Luna gave a low chuckle.

“I know what awaits me,” said Nemo, pulling alongside, “if you don’t mind me horning in on your chatter. A big stretch of river, as broad as you could hope for, and enough fish to make the water boil.”

Yorick looked back over his wing, “You’re assuming, my soggy friend, that we will be eating in this next world.”

“To be sure, my boy! What greater pleasure is there than to eat well! And not the fake food they supplied for us here, but real food. Trout, salmon, bass!”

“Interesting,” said Yorick with a dismissive smirk. “A most inspiring view of the afterlife.”

“So what’s it you’re after, then?” Nemo said. “Do tell us.”

“It’s obvious, isn’t it?” Yorick said. “I want to be whole again. I’ve endured centuries with this crippled wing and the pain it brings. I know you scoff at my suffering:
Oh, there goes Yorick again about his wing—yawn!
But all I want is a world without the constant nag of it. I could quite happily spend eternity staring at wood lice, so long as I could do it without pain.”

“Fair enough, then,” said Nemo, not sarcastically but with genuine respect. “Let’s hope in the next world, you’ll get fixed up.”

“All I ask is a little fairness,” Yorick continued. “This place is completely unfair. Let me offer up an example. In the Upper World Nemo got eaten. Chewed up.
Digested
. Unpleasant, I admit. But down here in the Underworld, he got his body back whole. He shouldn’t look like anything at all but a pile of bones and gristle.”

“I’ve got to look like
something
,” protested Nemo.

“Fine. But me, I only got smashed into a tree, died on impact, and look at me! Look at this wing and shoulder. Still crooked, still throbbing. And poor Luna, she’s even worse off. Badly burned and still suffering—anyone can see that! Where’s the fairness? Where’s the
logic
of it?”

Nemo shook his head. “You’ve got a good point, my boy. All I can say is thank goodness I’m on the lucky end. And thank goodness we’ll soon all be free of this vexing place.” After a moment he turned to Murk. “Can’t help enquiring about you. What’s your new world like? You’re hoping there’s lots of juicy little bats waiting for you, I wouldn’t doubt.”

“Perhaps there are different places for different bats,” said Murk, with a hint of a smile. At least Griffin assumed it was a smile: he still wasn’t used to the dark flash of those teeth.

“Be a bit much if we have to worry about getting eaten, even in this new life,” muttered Yorick.

“And you?” Luna asked Java. “Are there orchards in your afterlife?”

“Maybe so, but I was hoping for something completely new.”

“Really?” Griffin asked, curious.

“Well, doesn’t it seem a touch repetitive? To get the same thing all over again?”

“No! I want the same thing,” Luna said stoutly. “I want it to be
exactly
the way things were at Tree Haven. I can’t imagine anything better.”

“You are young, and should have had more, to be sure,” said Java. “But I was lucky enough to live a full life, and now am curious to see another face of the world, for I am hopeful there are many.”

Griffin saw Murk nod. “Yes, that is my craving, as well.”

“And it will be something wonderful,” said Java, with such serenity that Griffin felt his mood lighten. But Luna, he saw, made no comment, staring straight ahead. She was trembling.

“You all right?” he asked, moving closer.

“Just all this stuff about it being different,” she whispered, as the others went on talking. “Don’t know if I want anything else different. I’m not even used to being dead yet in the first place. You don’t know what it’s like, Griffin.”

“I know.”

“I don’t
want
this.”

“You always got through things all right,” said Griffin. “You always did. Owls and high winds and lightning. Whenever I was scared, you weren’t. There’s nothing you’re afraid of.”

“This,” she said.

He didn’t like the fact she was afraid. He counted on her to be fearless, to help dilute his own perpetual fear. He could almost feel her anxiety leaking into his already wasted muscles, and he
experienced a sting of resentment. How was he supposed to keep it all together by himself?

“What in Nocturna’s name is that?” Yorick asked, squinting into the distance.

Griffin pushed up on Java’s back. Dead ahead he made out a shadowy grey cliff towering up so high it dissolved into the blackness of the sky, blotting out the stars. But its base looked far from solid, and couldn’t be rock because it kept shifting in and out of focus, fading and then coalescing darker. He sniffed: the same scent he’d caught earlier, only amplified. And now he noticed the change in the air, too. His eyes, when he blinked, no longer felt as if sand were lodged behind his lids. Even his parched mouth and raw throat were eased.

“It’s rain,” said Nemo in amazement. “Listen.” Flaring his ears, Griffin heard a faraway clatter of droplets, and beyond that, a low growing rumble that suggested something bigger and more powerful.

“Bit of a downpour, by the sound of it,” Nemo remarked cheerfully.

“This wasn’t on the map,” said Yorick, peeved. “We weren’t told about this.”

“Passed overhead not long ago,” said Nemo. “Down there, look, the ground’s still wet.”

Water!
Without thinking, Griffin leapt off Java’s back, nearly getting swatted by her left wing, and dropped earthward in a jerky spiral. Nemo was right. The ground, normally cracked and dry, was softened to mud, glistening in some places where the rainwater had pooled.

“Griffin!” Luna called after him. “Wait up!” He couldn’t wait. He wanted water in his mouth, down his throat. He skimmed the ground, watching the water being
loudly sucked into the parched soil. Before his eyes, puddles turned into mud, mud turned back into arid dirt. Griffin flew on, only half aware that Luna was now alongside him and that the other Pilgrims were overhead protectively. Spotting another pool, Griffin sailed on, tumbling head over tail in a clumsy landing. This time he was fast enough to plunge his face into the water and drink. It was real! He felt his tongue softening even as he spluttered and choked more icy water down his throat, not even tasting it. When the pool was sucked empty by the earth and himself, Griffin lifted his head, panting. He ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth, finally tasting the water. Not like the stream back home. This had a strong salty flavour and it left him a little queasy, yet still thirsting for more, just for the searing liquid cold of it. As he launched himself back into the air, the water sloshed heavily in his stomach. “Was that good?” Luna asked him.

He nodded. Probably he shouldn’t have had so much. But salty water was better than nothing, wasn’t it? “Sorry,” he said to the others. “I really needed that.”

Together they flew on towards the shadowy cliff of rain. Its low rumble grew, the air shuddering around them. A fine mist pearled Griffin’s fur, and a wind kicked at the underside of his wings. Suddenly they were in the rain proper. Griffin felt exultant as it struck his fur, this cold but welcome reminder of the world of the living. He weaved through the raindrops with Luna, opening his mouth and catching them on his tongue, drinking in mid-air. Luna laughed—a sound he hadn’t heard down here nearly enough—and for just a moment, Griffin almost forgot where they were.

Before them the rain intensified into a looming grey wall. It wasn’t falling in single drops anymore, but in thick, drenching
splashes that made Griffin dip down whenever he was struck. All around him the other Pilgrims were making slow progress, trying to steer their way through the deluge.

“I don’t like this,” said Yorick above the roar of the rain. “We should go around or wait this out!”

“This is nothing,” said Nemo. “Look up ahead!” Griffin blinked, finally understanding. No more than fifty wingbeats away was a colossal waterfall spilling down from the sky, thousands of wingbeats across. The water sparkled and danced in the starlight. Griffin and the other Pilgrims pulled back, circling.

“Where’s it all coming from?” Java wondered.

“A hole!” Griffin shouted. “A hole in the sky! It must come from the Upper World!”

From deep beneath the great lakes, from deep beneath the oceans, the water must be trickling and leaking through the soil and stone, down and down, and finally plunging through some gash in the Underworld’s stone sky. Just the idea of it awoke in Griffin a fierce yearning. To fly high, to find that crack, to somehow force his way into it, and swim up. He’d never make it, of course. Not without air, not against the colossal weight of all that water.

He could smell the falls. He’d never thought of water having a smell, but here in this odourless world it was almost over-whelming—the torrent brought with it the fragrance of the soil through which it must have sifted, the rock it flowed over, the smell of fish, salt, seaweed. Who knew where all the water had come from, but every drop was packed with tantalizing fragrance. Maybe some of this water had once flown through the stream near Tree Haven.

“We’ll have to go around,” Yorick said.

“What if we lose our course?” Java pointed out.

“I say straight through!” Nemo said. “Bit of water never did anyone any harm.”

“Except for drowning,” muttered Yorick.

“No chance of that,” said Nemo. “Look, there’re great gaps. I’ll see us through, dry as a whale’s elbow!”

As Griffin stared at the waterfall, listening, he saw that Nemo was right: it wasn’t really a solid wall at all. It was made up of countless individual streams of plunging water, forming undulating sheets and spiralled columns. If you watched hard enough you could see the chinks in between them all. The face of the waterfall changed constantly. Whole segments would suddenly dry up, leaving a vertical channel of open air, with only a fine drizzle to remind you of the thunderous torrent that had just fallen there. Elsewhere, without warning, other gaps would snap shut with a thunderclap. Griffin forced a swallow down his throat.

“You’re sure about this?” Java asked Nemo.

“Just stay close, and we’ll nip right through. Won’t take a second.”

Yorick insisted on being right behind Nemo—as leader, naturally. Java made sure Luna and Griffin went next, and she and Murk brought up the rear.

“Don’t forget, your path has to be wide enough for me!” the Foxwing called out to Nemo, and he gave her a reassuring backwards flick of his wing.

“Follow me!” he cried.

Griffin soared towards the waterfall. The bellow of it was overwhelming. The salty water felt heavy in his stomach. He
absolutely
did not want to do this. Closer now, and every sinew told him to pull up and away. He clamped down hard on his fear and concentrated on Luna’s wings, letting them be his guide. They
were heading right for solid water, and then Nemo swerved and sliced through an opening, and was gone, and before Griffin could even pull in a big breath he too was inside the waterfall.

If he thought it was loud outside, here it was like something that lived within your skull. All around him soared great roaring pillars of water. It was almost completely dark, the starlight blotted out, except for the occasional shaft that broke through and refracted brilliantly through the layers of water and heavy mist.

They flew at a dizzying speed, veering and diving and climbing through the ever-changing innards of the waterfall. Nemo seemed to have an almost supernatural understanding of all this water, knew how to see around it and even through it, to guess when it was about to dry up and when it was going to plunge down.

“Almost there!” he heard Nemo call out from up ahead, and then—

Luna braked so sharply that Griffin nearly slammed into her. “What’s wrong?” he gulped. Then he saw. They’d hit a dead end. Nemo and Yorick circled tightly, the fisher bat peering intently at an unbroken wall of water. “Not too much of a problem,” Nemo muttered. “Up we go.”

With that, he launched himself into a near-vertical climb. Gasping, Griffin followed, Java and Murk close behind. Higher and higher they went. Surely they couldn’t keep going up forever! They’d hit the stone sky!

Suddenly Luna levelled off in front of him. “Be quick here!” he heard Nemo calling out. “We’ve got clear passage, but it’s not going to last.”

Before them, Griffin saw two dizzyingly high walls of water forming a narrow canyon—only, these walls were moving, slowly but steadily coming together with an animal roar. At the canyon’s
end—and it looked a long distance away—Griffin saw stars. Sky. The end of the waterfall.

“Fly hard!” Nemo called, already streaking on ahead. Luna went too, but Griffin faltered for a moment. He forced himself to talk.

“The walls are closing, sort of a crushing-water kind of situation, but the rate seems constant, and I can probably make it if I flap hard, and it shouldn’t be a problem if I leave—”

“Right now!” Murk urged, nudging him as he pulled alongside.