Firewing by Kenneth Oppel Read Free Book Online

as though foreshadowing a lightning storm. Yet the sky overhead was almost entirely clear.
    The air began to sing, a low, unbroken tone that he felt in every hair of his body. The tone gathered force, buffeting the underside of his wings, numbing his face. Without warning, the trees heaved up towards him, spiky branches almost impaling him as he veered wildly, flapping desperately against the leaden air. He cast around anxiously to make sure Cirrus and the others were all right. They all circled together, gazing down in horror. Below he saw the earth heave and grind, whole swaths of forest buckling up and crumpling against one another. He flattened his ears against the colossal noise, as if the earth’s very bones were being smashed together, snapped and crushed. The air churned,hard as water, and Shade slewed about, as if he were no more than a seed pod.
    The sky was aswirl with birds, woken by the earth’s violent shaking. They’d taken wing in terror, their poor night vision making them careen dangerously. On the lurching forest floor Shade could see moose and bears and lynx baying and roaring as they ran headlong, trying to escape the thrashing of the ground beneath them. The sight made him gasp in pity: unlike himself, they had no easy escape, no flinging themselves safe and high into the air. They were locked to the earth, their home that had in a second become their enemy. The river that meandered through the forest was frothing, water leaping over its banks. Dust erupted across the land.
    Then, impossibly, it was over. With a great groaning of rock and wood, the earth slowly exhaled and lay still. Shrieks of pain and dismay rose up from the birds and beasts as they returned to their ruined roosts and dens. Shade stared down at the wreckage of the forest, his mouth dry, heart throbbing against his ribs.
    Marina
, he thought.
Griffin
.
    Griffin must have fallen asleep.
    Waking, there were a few merciful seconds when everything was forgotten. He wondered where he was, and why his body felt so heavy, as if he’d just finished a long night’s hunting. Then everything came back to him, and he wished he’d never woken up. Up in Tree Haven, Luna was suffering, maybe even dying. All because of his idea—his stupid, pointless idea. He wagged his head, trying to shake out the pictures flooding his head. He should go back up, help them, do something useful….
    How could he face them all? Feel their eyes on him, hating him?
    Especially his mother. She would try to be kind, and try to forgive him—but how could she, after what he’d done?
    He tried not to cry. Then he stopped abruptly. What he’d thought was his body shaking was actually the ground beneath his belly. The shuddering intensified so his vision sang with sound, the very air throbbing with light. The tunnel was so tight it took him a moment to turn around. Scrambling forwards, spraying out sound, he heard the low grinding of rock against rock, and was suddenly shoved hard against the wall as a great fist of stone punched through the tunnel ahead of him. Griffin lurched back, cowering beneath his wings as a choking cascade of debris rained down upon him. The earth shivered violently for a moment, and then was still. Griffin waited, listening to the patter of settling grit.
    “Okay,” he panted, trying to rein in his panic. “Okay. No more shaking. That’s good. That’s excellent.”
    He lifted his wing to take a look and was immediately seized by a coughing fit, eyes and nostrils streaming. After a minute or so he managed to croak out a few tendrils of sound, and saw what he had most feared. The passage was blocked. Carefully he probed the wall of debris with his echo vision, but found no gaps. He stared for a few moments, numb, still half expecting something to happen: the wall to crumble away and reveal a passage, or someone to call him from the other side.
    “All right,” he said, needing to talk. Talking aloud made things better, somehow. If he could