Read Online Firewing by Kenneth Oppel - Free Book Online Page B

They were taking a good long look at him. With his own echo vision he cautiously scanned the branches and caught sight of a multitude of bats, roosting deep in the trees. His body relaxed a little. He’d been afraid they might be owls. But why were they just hanging there silently, staring at him?
    “Hello?” he called out.
    His greeting triggered a collective gasp, a brief silence, and then a chorus of hushed chittering.
    “… fell from the sky …”
    “… Corona saw him …”
    “… came down like a shooting star …”
    “… not a Vampyrum …”
    “… maybe a Pilgrim …”
    A Pilgrim? Griffin’s head was starting to ache from the effort of catching all these muted voices.
    “… look at him …”
    “… at his wings, see …”
    “… the way the light moves …”
    “… the glow of him …”
    Glow? Griffin thought in alarm, glancing at his wings. He wasn’t
glowing
. What were they talking about?
    “Oh, do you mean my fur?” he called out, hoping to clear up the confusion. “My father’s a Silverwing, but my mother’s a Brightwing, so I sort of got fur from both of them. That’s why I have all these bands of bright hair. Maybe that’s why you thoughtI was glowing … you know, just the, um, contrast between the dark fur and the light? It’s pretty weird, I know …”
    He trailed off, discouraged. He didn’t get the feeling he was convincing anyone. He took another look at his wings and chest hair, and still didn’t see anything glowing. Was there something wrong with these bats? Maybe this was some kind of strange joke. “I really don’t see anything,” he said, trying to stifle a nervous chuckle. “I’m sorry, if I glow, but I really … don’t have anything to do with it.” It sounded ridiculous, but he felt it was best to apologize for pretty much everything at this point. He wished these bats would just show themselves.
    “… ghost …” came an anxious whisper from the trees, and then that one word was transmitted across the clearing, round and round him, like a tornado, faster and faster. “… ghost … a ghost … ghost, ghost, ghostghostghost …”
    He felt as if he himself were spinning, the air whipped away from his nostrils by this whirlpool of whispers. They thought he was a ghost. Starlight in his fur. He remembered his plunge from the sky, how fast the trees had come up, branches thrashing and slashing all around him. Then nothing. And then waking up—
    Waking up alive?
    Or dead?
    Griffin’s breath congealed in his throat. Panicked, he folded his wings around himself, felt the warmth trapped against his fur, felt his furious heartbeat. Beating heart. That meant not dead. Alive.
    “I’m not a ghost!” he shouted out, more to reassure himself than the others. “I’m a Silverwing! I’m just lost!”
    A long silence stretched out, and for a moment Griffin wondered if they’d all silently flown away. But then he heard the rustle of unfurling wings, the squeak of claws pulling free from bark, and a flurry of bats emerged from their hiding places, curiouslycircling around him but keeping their distance. They were all Silverwings, males and females both. Many were extremely old, and kind of mangy looking, even more so than Lucretia and the other ancient elders back at Tree Haven. A lot of these bats had fur that looked as if it had been chewed up by a racoon and then stuck back on. Even some of the younger ones looked a little grizzled and squished out of shape. And they think
I’m
weird, Griffin thought.
    His eyes skittered from one to the next, hoping he’d recognize someone. A knot of bats parted respectfully and a silver-streaked female—no older than Ariel, his grandmother—flew towards him and roosted on a branch overhead. Of all the Silverwings he’d seen here, she looked the most normal, barely bashed or chewed up at all. Even though she was comparatively young, she had the bearing of someone in authority. Her eyes did not meet his, but strayed