Darkwing (4 page)

Dusk hurtled on, afraid to bank because the creature was so close behind him now. He careened through the deserted hunting grounds, and could see the forest floor rushing towards him. Surely the creature would have to pull up!

He glanced back and at that moment the thing thundered over him, its hot, rank turbulence sucking Dusk after it, head over tail. The forest whirled. He heard the creature’s wings crackling against branches, snapping wood.

Dusk untangled his sails and managed to right himself, but could not wrench himself free of the creature’s wake. Tree trunks loomed. He expected the creature to pull up and veer, but instead it piled straight into the redwoods. Digging in with his sails, Dusk braked desperately. He collided with some part of the creature’s leathery tail, spun off stunned, and flailed down through branches. He crashed against bark and dug in with all his claws, shaking so badly he could barely hold on.

All was silent. No birds sang; no insects trilled. The forest held its breath.

Dusk looked up into the redwood and saw the creature tangled in the branches directly above him. Its huge body lay crookedly, the great wings pierced and crumpled. Its long head lolled over a branch, the sharp beak hanging not ten feet from Dusk’s head. He followed the fearsome bony rails of its jaws, up to its nostrils, the slits big enough for him to crawl into. There seemed no light behind the creature’s huge black eyes.

Dusk was afraid to move. Was it dead, or just unconscious? A bough splintered and Dusk flinched. But the creature itself did not stir. Dusk was overwhelmed by its sheer size. It had no
feathers, so it couldn’t be a bird—but its jaws did look a lot like a long beak. He wasn’t sure what it was.

He glanced down and realized with a start that he was mere feet from the forest floor. His heart thumped. Unless he meant to crawl along the ground, he would have to climb higher in this tree in order to glide to another.

Sound began to return to the forest. He gazed up hopefully into the clearing, searching for his father or some of the other chiropters. But he saw no one.

He looked back at the creature. Its body was as wide as the tree. A branch creaked ominously under the stress.

Dusk could not stay here. For all he knew, this thing could come crashing down on top of him. He would have to crawl up past it. He plotted a course with his eyes. It was possible, but would take him perilously close to the creature’s head.

Surely it was dead after a crash like that. Its crest was cracked. It must have collided head first with the trunk. That would kill anything.

Gingerly, Dusk walked splay-legged towards the trunk. The prick of his claws into the wood sounded deafening to him. Part of the creature’s wing hung down over the branch, and as Dusk sidled past he looked at the thick leathery hide.

He hesitated. It had no feathers, yet it flew. He hadn’t thought it was possible. The creature’s skin was stretched over a long spar of bone. There were no other fingers exactly.

Though the skin was much thicker than his own, he couldn’t help thinking the creature’s wings looked a bit like his own furless sails. It was a disturbing, even distasteful, thought, and he quickly banished it.

At the redwood’s trunk he began his climb. The creature’s body hung over him, dark and brooding as a storm cloud. Its
humid heat washed over him and his nostrils narrowed at the odour. He wanted to groom himself.

Why had it crashed in the first place? What had made it fly so erratically?

From the leading edge of its right wing extended a cluster of three claws, each one twice the length of Dusk. He took a breath and hurriedly ducked beneath them. He felt no bigger than a twig alongside this giant. He did not want to look at it any more; he only wanted to get past it, to glide away to the sequoia and climb back to his nest.

And yet, his eyes kept straying to the wing, its shape, the fine covering—he could see it now—of hair, or was it some kind of feather after all? Across the wing membrane were strange blooms of rotted skin. Maybe the creature was diseased; maybe that was why it had flown so poorly.

Dusk climbed hurriedly, now parallel with the creature’s lolling head. The branches creaked. He felt a stirring of wind. Slowly Dusk looked back over his shoulder. The creature’s left wingtip twitched, making the membrane rustle.

He waited no longer. He moved with speed, not caring if he was noisy now. The creature flinched. The head shifted. If Dusk could only get past the jaws, past the head, and up to the next branch, he could launch himself across the clearing.

Now he was alongside the creature’s left eye. It was as big as him, this eye, black and impenetrable. With a start, Dusk saw himself reflected in it, just as he sometimes saw himself in pools of still water in the sequoia’s bark. He stared, transfixed. Then the eye became eerily translucent; light shifted within and Dusk saw his reflection dissolve. The creature’s head tilted towards him.

Dusk could only stare back. The creature’s jaws parted, and a great gust of reeking air washed over him. But mingled with this
exhalation was something else, something that sounded to Dusk like language, though a kind he’d never heard. One more sour gust of breath escaped the creature’s throat, and its head thudded against the branch as the last echo of life evaporated from its eye.

In the shallow depression were two eggs, long and narrow, nestled amidst a thick mulch of fruit and mud and leaves. The rotting vegetation sent up a rich stink, and a surprising amount of heat, which Carnassial knew was meant to keep the eggs warm. He’d seen many saurian nests like this one. “How did you know it was here?” Panthera asked, amazed.

His eyes flashed triumphantly. “I could smell it. Now, take cover.”

They quickly backed up into the tall grass and pressed their bodies flat against the earth. The nest was unguarded, and though this was not unusual, it still made Carnassial nervous. Something might be returning, or watching.

He could remember times when he’d found a whole colony of nests, twelve or more, guarded by at least one saurian, while the others were off hunting. The mothers would walk amongst the eggs, patrolling them. Sometimes they would lie down beside them to help keep them warm. They were too large and heavy to actually sit atop them, as birds did. But in the past two years, he’d seen only lone nests, and ever fewer at that.

Where was the mother? Or the father, for that matter? It was possible they’d both gone off to hunt, trusting that their nest was well camouflaged. And so it was, tucked into the tall grass at the very edge of the cliff. Carnassial might have missed it altogether if it hadn’t been for the nest’s characteristic smell—over the years, he’d become very familiar with it.

Carnassial’s tall ears, so sharply tapered that they might have been horns, swivelled: one to the east, one to the west. He heard the wind against the cliff, the sea breaking along the shore; he heard the tread of some small gnawer not far distant—but he picked up nothing that might have been the sound of a returning saurian. His belly against the earth felt no vibrations of approaching footsteps. The leathery eggs themselves did not tell him what kind of creature they contained, though the elevated location of the nest made Carnassial suspect they were flyers. He turned his gold-flecked eyes skyward. Nothing but birds.

He forced himself to wait just a moment longer, his impatient heart thumping against his ribs. Saliva flooded his mouth. He kept his long, bushy tail very still. The breeze rustled his whiskers. He pressed himself even closer to the earth, rump tensed, ready. His eyes, huge in his lean face, were locked on the eggs, as though he could bore right through them and see his prey within.

“Now,” he said.

Carnassial sprang forward, grass against his belly, taking fast slinking strides. He leapt into the nest amongst the eggs. They were the same size as him. He and Panthera each chose one and set to work. His jaws would not open wide enough to crush the shell. Putting his head against the egg, he rolled it to the edge of the nest, against the raised mud rim, so it could not wobble away from him. He put his shoulder to the shell and extended his four claws. Each was stout and strong, with a curved hook at the end.

With his left claws he held the egg; with his right he cut four parallel swaths into it. Fluid oozed through the cracks, and with it a delicious smell. He wrenched his claws free and dug the tips into a single crack, pulling against the shell. A leathery shard ripped off, then another and another, until Carnassial had torn a large opening in the side of the egg. Within, through the torn membrane, he saw the pale glimmer of the hatchling, trembling slightly.

He looked over to see how Panthera was faring. A skilled hunter, she too had gashed a hole in her egg. His ears pricked and swivelled; he looked all about him once more, high into the skies, without seeing any sign of saurians. Then he returned to his prey.

The hatchling was far along, close to being born. Carnassial was delighted. If the eggs were new, there was little more than the yolk, but with this one there would be plenty of tender flesh. He thrust his snout into the opening, his gaping jaws cracking the shell even more. Teeth gnashing, he gorged himself on the hatchling without even bothering to drag it from its egg.

For two days he had eaten little except grubs and nuts and fruit, and his feeding now was so savage, he barely remembered to note what manner of saurian he devoured. Patriofelis would want to know, when Carnassial returned to the prowl. Their leader was a great keeper of such facts.

He pulled back and cast an eye over the remains. The hatch-ling’s elongated arm bones told him all he needed to know. He’d guessed right. It was a flyer. A quetzal, by the looks of it.

Its bony wings and the cartilage of its crest and bill were the only parts he rejected. Sated, Carnassial fell back, licking the remaining fluid from his muzzle and paws. Panthera was watching him. Like most of the other hunters, she had savaged the shell, lapped up the yolk, but left the hatchling to die. “You do not want the meat?” he asked her.

She gave a shake and stepped back, inviting Carnassial to feed. As he ate, he felt her watching him curiously, her stripeless grey tail whisking back and forth in agitation. Meat was not a typical part of the felid diet. But years ago, Carnassial had discovered that his rear teeth allowed him to shear meat from bones—not something all other felids could do, he learned. He sometimes wondered if his craving for meat had been with him since birth, or whether the eggs had given him the appetite. He glanced again at Panthera.

“Will you eat nothing?” he said.

“No.”

She watched him almost warily, as though he might turn his shearing teeth on her.

Carnassial gazed skyward, watching for the mother saurian. Maybe she was already dead. With every year he’d found fewer and fewer nests, many of them abandoned as their parents fell victim to the disease that bloomed on their skins. Likely these two eggs were all that was left. Still, it was best he and Panthera took cover quickly. The quetzals could dive down from the sky with lightning speed.

Before leaving, he lifted his hind leg and triumphantly sprayed the nest with urine. It was
his
territory now.

“Maybe these were the very last,” Panthera said, as they bounded through the tall grass.

Carnassial licked his teeth thoughtfully. He’d developed a liking for eggs over the years, especially those that contained tender flesh. He would miss them. But the thought that he might be responsible for destroying the last nest—that was very pleasing. Of all the hunting parties stalking the earth, he had sniffed it out. It was the kind of honour that would one day make him leader of the prowl.

The last saurian eggs.

The completion of the Pact.

Dusk heard his father calling his name, and looked up into the clearing to see him gliding down with a dozen other chiropters, including the three elders and Sylph. “I’m here!” he shouted. “Down here!”

He scrambled out farther along the branch so they could see him.

“Come away from it, Dusk!” Icaron shouted.

“It’s all right. It’s dead.”

Just to make sure, he looked back at the creature’s inert body. Already flies were beginning to settle around its eyes and nostrils. It certainly seemed dead. His father and the others landed cautiously on the branch.

“Are you all right?” his father asked, hurrying up and nuzzling him in concern.

“Just a bit sore,” he said, only now thinking about his aching body.

In silence, they all stared intently at the creature. Then his father looked at Barat, one of the elders, and nodded.

“What is it?” Dusk asked in a whisper. “A winged saurian,” his father replied.

“A saurian!” Dusk exclaimed. Just speaking the word made his fur bristle. “But … they’re all dead!” His father made no reply.

Everyone had heard stories about saurians, the fantastical creatures that had once roamed and ruled the earth. Many times Dusk had imagined these great scaly monsters, tall as redwoods, with vast jaws and mountain ranges of teeth. They were voracious hunters, feeding on virtually every other creature, large and small, including chiropters. But they had disappeared from the world before Dusk was even born. At least, that’s what they’d always been told.

“Tell me what happened,” Icaron said to Dusk. Dusk couldn’t help being pleased that he’d been asked rather than Sylph. He was afraid to tell his father how he and Sylph had been riding thermals, so only mentioned how they’d spotted the creature in the sky and been swept into its wake, and how he’d tried to climb past it after it crashed.

“I think it spoke to me,” he added.

“Why would it speak to you?” Sylph asked.

“It sounded like talking.” His legs were shaking, and he clenched tight, willing them to stop. “But I didn’t understand.”

“That’s all right,” said his father. “Why would you understand a saurian language? Do you think you can make it back to the nest?”

“Yes, but—”

“Go then,” his father said, gently but firmly. “You too, Sylph.” Dusk gazed enviously at the other chiropters, especially his eldest brother, Auster. He’d probably be the colony’s next leader. He even looked a bit like Dad. He nodded smugly at Dusk, as if
wanting to hurry him along. It wasn’t fair that Auster got to stay, when it was Dusk who’d seen the saurian up close.

“Why can’t we stay?” Sylph asked, echoing his thoughts.

“We need to examine the creature.”

“Well, we can help,” Dusk said. “I was pretty close—”

“Go now,” said Dad. “And don’t speak of this to anyone but your mother. Do you hear? I’ll call an assembly of the four families when we’re ready.”

Dusk nodded. Icaron was not simply his father right now; he was leader of the colony, and Dusk dared not question him.

He began to climb. He didn’t have the heart to try to catch a thermal this time. Somehow, the thermal and the saurian were all bundled together in his confused thoughts, and he felt one might have caused the other. Anyway, the sun had passed over the clearing now and he doubted the warm air had enough power to lift him.

It would be a very long climb.

Sylph, infuriatingly, streaked ahead up the tree so she could be the first to tell their mother the news. When Dusk finally hauled himself up to the nest, Mistral made a terrible fuss of him. What seemed to horrify her most was that the saurian had breathed all over him. She made him bathe in a pool of rainwater on the branch, rolling him over and over until his fur was completely sodden. Then she groomed him, head to tail—because she didn’t trust Dusk to do it properly himself—while Sylph made helpful suggestions.

“I’d double check his armpits, Mom, I found an entire mealworm there once.”

“Thank you, Sylph, I’m sure I can manage.”

“Also, his lower back is usually
teeming
with something. I think he has trouble combing back there.”

“That’s enough, Sylph,” their mother said. “I suggest you groom yourself. You’re looking a bit mangy after the long climb.” Dusk sent his sister a smirk through his matted hair. “Now, both of you,” Mistral said sternly, “have behaved very foolishly today. I heard many complaints that you were riding thermals in the clearing and making a great nuisance of yourselves.”

“Who said we were a nuisance?” Sylph demanded loudly. “It doesn’t matter who said it. What matters is you did it. Riding thermals is not something chiropters do.”

Dusk said nothing; he knew he could rely on Sylph to do the protesting. “Well, no one ever told us!” she shouted. “Shush, Sylph,” said their mother. “It should be obvious. Have you ever seen others doing such a thing? Were you
taught
to do it?”

“No,” Sylph said, “but does that mean—?”

“Was this your idea?” their mother asked. Sylph hesitated, then replied, “Yes.” Startled, Dusk spoke up. “It was my idea, Mom.”

“It was mine!” Sylph yelled. “I figured out how to ride the thermals and taught Dusk.”

Dusk was bewildered. Sylph was a loyal sister, but this was going too far. Was she trying to protect him—or just steal credit for his discovery? Either way, he couldn’t let her get away with it.

His mother looked over at him impatiently. “Dusk, is this true?”

“No. It was my idea, Mom. I didn’t want to climb the tree, and I was tired, and I wondered if the hot air could lift me, and it did.” Mistral nodded. “It was very resourceful of you, Dusk.” He didn’t dare glance over at Sylph, but he heard her groan of
exasperation and could just imagine the delicious look of indignation on her face.

“But,” his mother continued swiftly, “I don’t want to see you ever doing it again. We have sails so we can glide. That is how we use them. And for no other purpose. Don’t make yourself more different than you already are, Dusk. Difference can be severely punished in a colony.”

“Will Dusk be punished?” Sylph piped up with great interest.

“Not this time,” Mistral said.

“Dusk never gets punished,” Sylph grumbled.

“But remember what I say, both of you,” their mother continued. “Behave like the colony, or risk being shunned by the colony.”

Dusk swallowed. “Mom,” he began uncertainly, “why did they stop feeding Cassandra? Was it just because she looked different?”

The fur on his mother’s forehead furrowed. She came closer and nuzzled him. “No, Dusk, she was very sick. She would never have been able to glide or hunt or feed herself. She couldn’t have survived. It wasn’t because she looked different.”

“Oh,” said Dusk. He felt relieved, but it still seemed cruel to stop feeding her.

“Who’s been talking to you about that poor creature?” Mom asked.

“Jib,” Sylph told her. “He said it’s lucky Dusk was the leader’s son, or he would’ve been driven out of the colony.”

“That newborn should watch what he says!” said Mom, her eyes flashing.

“I knew he was just trying to scare me,” Dusk sniffed. “I know things like that don’t happen.”

When she made no reply, he felt a jolt of panic. “Mom? They don’t, do they?”

“Of course not, Dusk,” she said gently. “We’d never allow such a thing.”

“You mean, they
wanted
to, but—”

“I mean it doesn’t happen,” she told him firmly. “Now listen, don’t change the subject. I’m not quite finished with you two yet. I also heard reports you went beyond the Upper Spar. You know you’re never to trespass in bird territory. And
that
you have been taught. Never do it again. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Mom,” said Dusk, hanging his head. “Sorry.”

“Sylph?” Mistral said.

“Sorry!” she said loudly.

“Good. Now, here comes your father,” she said. “And if I’m not mistaken, he’ll be calling an assembly soon.”

Dusk’s colony numbered in the hundreds, and was made up of four families who had lived on the sequoia for twenty years. An elder governed each family. There was Sol, Barat, Nova, and Icaron, who of course was both an elder and leader of the entire colony.

All four families had been mating with one another for many years, so practically everyone was related, if you cared to figure out how. Dusk would sooner have tried to count raindrops.

In the day’s dying light, all the chiropters gathered along the sequoia’s mighty branches, anxious to hear about the winged creature that had hurtled through the clearing. Most had seen its terrifying dive; certainly all had heard it. Some had narrowly avoided being pulverized by it.

Crouching atop a large bulge in the redwood’s trunk, where all the assembled chiropters could see them, were Icaron and the three elders. The birds’ dusk chorus had faded away and cricket song was beginning to pulse across the forest.

Dusk rested beside Sylph and his mother, waiting expectantly. He was exhausted by his long climb and the ordeal with the saurian, but now, looking up at his father, his fatigue evaporated. Even though Icaron was far away, he seemed bigger than usual, and more powerful. Dusk hoped Dad could see him from way up there. He lifted a sail to catch his father’s attention, and was delighted when Dad returned the gesture. Dusk glanced around to see if any of the newborns had seen their exchange. Sure enough, a few were stealing glimpses at him and whispering, no doubt boiling with jealousy that their fathers weren’t leader. He tried to find Jib in the crowd, but couldn’t.

Dusk had never known such a gathering. Assemblies were only called on occasions of great importance. Before this, all he’d witnessed were minor disputes about hunting perches or mates. The chiropters normally didn’t need meetings. Anything they needed to know was passed from branch to branch, family to family, parent to child. There was not much to know, really.

Until now the colony’s life had been uneventful. They strayed hardly at all from the great redwoods ringing the clearing. They never ventured onto the ground, so they saw virtually no other animals except birds, high in the trees and in the skies. Dusk had heard many say their world was perfect. It was always warm. There was food and water and good perches—and no predators. They could hunt and breed in complete safety.

Dusk couldn’t help feeling that this saurian attack (if he could even call it that) was the most momentous occasion in his life, and he was pleased he had some small part in it. But he was also a bit nervous to see his father looking so grave, and all the hundreds of chiropters—normally so noisy and active—still and quiet now as Icaron began to speak, describing what had happened earlier in the day.

“Will there be others?” someone called out, when Icaron had finished.

“Unlikely,” Icaron replied. “This is the first I’ve seen in almost twenty years.”

Dusk twitched his sails in surprise. His father had never said anything to him about seeing a saurian,
ever.
They were supposed to be long gone.

“If there’s one, how do we know there aren’t more?” someone else asked.

“This one was old,” Barat replied, “and nearly blind. It had cataracts.”

Dusk remembered the cloudy moon in its eye.

“My son Dusk saw it crash,” Icaron told the assembly, “and said it was flying erratically. Indeed, its wings had the rot that killed many of the saurians.”

Dusk grinned at Sylph, pleased to be mentioned at the meeting. For a moment he imagined himself up there. Leader. Why not? It was possible. But the thought was complicated and unpleasant, because it meant the death of his father, and all his brothers, and he could think of nothing more terrible than that.

“Maybe if your newborns hadn’t been playing in the air, the creature wouldn’t have spotted them and made the clearing its target.”

The reproachful words were spoken by Nova, the sole female elder, and addressed to Icaron. “Many of us might have been killed,” she said. Dusk ground his teeth. That wasn’t fair at all. “The saurian wasn’t hunting,” Icaron told her. “I believe it was in its death throes.”

“Who’s to say there isn’t a nest nearby?” Nova continued. Even though she was almost as old as his father, Nova still had
a thick coat of fiery copper fur, undulled by age. Her fur matched her temperament: the few times Dusk had seen her speak to other chiropters, she was often contrary and argumentative—much like her great-nephew, Jib, he thought with a sniff. Dusk always got the feeling Nova didn’t like his father, though Dad never seemed to bear her any ill will.

Icaron nodded. “Even so, these flyers pose little threat to us. They’re called quetzals,” he told the assembly. “The largest of the winged saurians. They pick fish from the shallows and creatures from the mud. Or they strafe the plains for prey. They can’t hunt over the forest. The canopy hides us and keeps us safe.”

Dusk was amazed at how knowledgeable his father sounded. Just how much experience had he had with these creatures?

“But we were not safe today,” Nova persisted. “It was only a matter of time before this happened. For every one saurian we see, there are hundreds more unseen. This is what comes of shirking our obligations.”