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  He had killed a fellow beast. He had eaten its flesh and thrilled at the taste.

  He quickly dipped his face into the water so he would not have to look at himself.

  CHAPTER 6

  THE EXPEDITION

  Dusk watched enviously as his mother’s search party glided off into the forest. The sun had scarcely cleared the horizon and Dad’s group had already left, along with more than a dozen others, radiating out through the trees, each bound for a different part of the coastline.

  Earlier that morning, Dusk had made one final plea to be taken along, reminding his father that he’d said there were no saurian nests on the island anyway, so it was perfectly safe, and why couldn’t he and Sylph come too? He’d thought it was a pretty good argument, as did Sylph, who’d come up with it.

  But his father had just said no again, and his mother told him and Sylph to behave themselves, and stay at the tree until they returned that night. Bruba, an older sister Dusk scarcely knew, was supposed to be keeping an eye on them.

  “This was probably our one and only chance to see a live saurian,” Sylph said as the two of them sailed through the clearing, hunting half-heartedly.

  “We’ve already seen one,” Dusk reminded her.

  “That one was dead,” said Sylph. “Or practically dead.” Far below, Dusk could smell the quetzal, already beginning to rot in the trees. For some reason he didn’t like to think of it getting eaten by insects and scavengers, its body and wings stripped to sinew and bone.

  “Don’t you want to see a nest, though?” Sylph said. “Saurian eggs!”

  “There’s probably nothing,” Dusk said.

  “But there might be.” Sylph looked at him. “What do you think?”

  “What?”

  “Let’s go have a look ourselves.”

  “We’d get lost,” said Dusk, but he was already interested.

  “We’d follow them,” said Sylph, jerking her head in the direction of the last search party, just launching from the branch.

  Dusk noted their heading. “We’d have to stay well back,” he whispered. “If we got caught—”

  “We won’t,” said Sylph. “We just follow them, and hide and watch while they search the coastline.”

  “What about Bruba?” Dusk asked.

  “She’s got about two dozen newborns to take care of, plus her own two. She’s barely glanced at us. Anyway, I don’t think she can even tell us apart. She’s called me three different names this morning.”

  Dusk chuckled nervously. He didn’t want to get into trouble. Sylph was used to being in trouble, but he wasn’t. And he liked it that way. His physical appearance attracted enough attention, and he didn’t think it would be smart to test the patience of the colony, or even his own parents. Jib’s taunt about being driven away still haunted him.

  And yet, he wanted to go with Sylph. He doubted they’d see a saurian, or even a nest, but he would see the island’s coastline, and the open sky—and more birds in flight. “Yes,” he said. “Let’s do it.”

  Sneaking off was amazingly easy.

  They glided through a big group of newborns for a few minutes, and then, when Bruba wasn’t looking, simply veered into the forest. They sailed until they were certain they could no longer be seen from the clearing, and then landed, breathless with excitement.

  In the distance, Dusk could make out a few of the chiropters from the search party, sailing on ahead. He turned back in the direction of the sequoia, and felt an odd contraction in his throat. Every day he left the tree’s embrace to hunt, but never for very long, and he’d certainly never lost sight of it. He glanced down at the bark beneath his claws. It was smooth and scaly, not sequoia bark. He caught Sylph glancing backwards too, but if she was feeling any doubts about their adventure, she wasn’t saying anything. Neither would he. “Come on,” she said.

  They headed off after the other chiropters. It suddenly occurred to Dusk that, his entire life, all he’d ever done was glide back and forth across the clearing. Now, for the first time, he was actually going somewhere. He had a destination beyond his gaze.

  With each glide, he and Sylph tried to cover as much distance as possible. It was difficult, for the forest was dense and cluttered, and they often had to swerve or dip around branches. When they’d fallen as close to the ground as they dared, they landed and made the arduous climb up the trunk to find another launching perch. Dusk knew he had a long and tiring journey ahead of him.

  “Can you climb any faster?” Sylph asked him impatiently. “No,” he panted, “I can’t.”

  He cursed his missing claws and his weak legs. He looked about, hoping for a shaft of strong sunlight that might ignite a thermal current to lift him. But the forest was far darker here, the sky almost entirely blocked by trees and vegetation.

  Sylph slowed down so she could climb alongside him. “It’s amazing to think Mom and Dad were saurian hunters,” she said.

  Dusk nodded his agreement. He could scarcely believe it himself. Even though he knew the Pact was wrong, he still felt proud imagining his father as a brave hunter of saurian eggs. Imagine creeping into a nest, maybe a nest guarded by fierce saurians. Maybe his father watched from the trees, and when no one was looking, sailed noiselessly down, right into the nest, and destroyed the eggs without ever being seen. Still, getting out of the nest would have been the most dangerous bit. You couldn’t just glide away. You’d have to crawl out, scuttling along the ground, and that would be slow and dangerous. His father must have been awfully clever and brave.

  “I bet I would’ve been good at it,” Sylph said.

  “You’d have to be very quiet,” Dusk said good-naturedly.

  “I can be quiet when I want. Just imagine, though, if things were different and we’d never left the mainland. It would’ve been so exciting.”

  “Lots of chiropters probably died doing it.”

  “Not me, though,” said Sylph. “I’d be like Mom. And everyone would think I was stealthy and amazing. Even Dad.” Dusk said nothing, not wanting to ruin Sylph’s fantasy.

  They walked out along a high branch, looking for a good launching perch.

  “Oh no,” Sylph said in dismay. “We’ve lost them already.” Dusk peered into the murky forest and couldn’t see the other chiropters. “You’re too slow,” Sylph complained.

  “The shadows are just so deep in here,” Dusk protested, and then he had an idea.

  He closed his eyes, breathed deeply, and slung out a long volley of clicks. He waited, and watched within his mind as his echoes returned to him. The first to come back revealed a tangle of branches and trunks, and then, moments later, came a bright flare of outspread sails, glimmering slightly.

  “I see them!” he told Sylph, opening his eyes.

  “With your echoes?” He nodded. “They’re just up ahead.”

  She shut her eyes and released a barrage of clicks, but then just frowned and shook her head. “I don’t understand how you do it. Did you ask Mom or Dad about it?”

  “There wasn’t time.”

  Sylph grunted. “Well, it’s pretty useful for us right now.”

  They sailed off after the other chiropters. A bird flitted past, heading skyward, and Dusk watched it go with the same wistfulness he always felt.

  “Do you ever,” he began tentatively, “dream about flying?”

  He’d never mentioned his dreams to anyone because they made him feel guilty. But maybe he was being foolish, and everyone had them sometimes.

  Sylph looked across at him. “No,” she said.

  “Really? Never?” He was disappointed.

  “Never. Do you?”

  “Once or twice,” he lied. He was sorry he’d brought it up. Sylph made no reply.

  “You think I’m a freak, don’t you,” Dusk said miserably. “Not a freak. You’re just … different.”

  “I feel different,” he admitted. He could talk more honestly away from their tree, in the middle of the forest. “Or at least I think I do. It’s hard
to tell what’s normal. Do you feel normal?”

  “I think so,” said Sylph.

  Dusk struggled for the right words. “You never feel you should be something else?”

  “What are you talking about?” Sylph said, exasperated. “Don’t you ever wish—?” Dusk lost his nerve and trailed off. “What?” She was almost shouting, and Dusk worried the other chiropters would hear them. “Tell me!”

  “All right, all right,” he whispered. “Don’t you ever wish you could fly?”

  He watched her face carefully. “That’s impossible,” she said. “But do you ever wish it?” he persisted.

  “Yes, sure. But we can’t fly, so why waste time thinking about it?” Dusk said nothing. Sylph sounded like Mom, and it surprised him.

  “You’re different, Dusk, but you’re not that different. You think you can fly now?”

  “No, no,” he said hastily. He’d never told her about all his secret attempts at the Upper Spar.

  “I wouldn’t go telling anyone else this,” she said. “It’s like saying you wish you were a bird.”

  “I don’t want to be a bird,” he insisted. “It was just, when I saw that saurian—”

  Sylph gasped. “You want to be a saurian?”

  “No! But its wings looked sort of like mine, and I couldn’t help wondering: if it can fly, why can’t I?”

  “Don’t you want to be a chiropter?”

  “Of course I do. I just wish I could fly too.”

  They travelled on in silence. Glide. Climb. Glide. Below them, groundlings scuffled through the undergrowth. Dusk felt sorry for them; they must get awfully dusty always grubbing in the dirt. He studied the trees. He saw new kinds, some with broad leaves that rustled in the light wind. He saw foreign mosses and lichen clinging to bark, and flowers he’d never seen before. He didn’t know any of their names. It struck him how little he knew, how little he’d seen. The winged saurian, and his father’s stories of the past, had made him painfully aware of that. He lived in a tree in a clearing in a forest on an island with the entire world stretching out unseen all around him. The thought of it made him feel excited and frightened all at once.

  Crouched on a branch, resting after a long climb, Dusk noticed that, up ahead, light shafted between the trees.

  “Must be a clearing,” said Sylph.

  “Not a clearing,” Dusk exclaimed, throwing himself off the branch and calling back to his sister. “The coast!”

  A breeze played against his fur, and it carried a fragrance he wasn’t used to. Since he couldn’t see the other chiropters up ahead, he guessed that they must have reached the coastline and were already searching. Just to be sure, he veered away from the course they’d been following, keeping a careful watch. He didn’t want to sail right into them.

  As they approached the last line of trees, the light made Dusk squint. It was almost blinding after the gloom of the forest. He managed to pick out a branch with lots of leaves to hide them, and they landed. With Sylph at his side, he shuffled along the branch to find a good vantage point.

  Then he just stared.

  All his life he’d been surrounded by trees and branches and leaves. The vast view before him now felt like a weight against his chest. Wind rustled the fur of his face. His breath came fast and shallow. He had to turn himself around and stare back into the forest to calm his heart. It was too much.

  “You all right?” Sylph asked. She too was panting, he noticed.

  “It’s a lot to look at,” Dusk said, his voice hoarse.

  “Yeah, it is a lot,” his sister agreed.

  He slowly turned back. The ground sloped away gently for several yards before falling off sharply into the water. Until now, the most water he’d ever seen was pooled in a big furrow in a branch of the sequoia. Here the water spread out from the coast and kept going and going until it reached the sky. He took a deep breath. This was the salty smell he’d noticed earlier, more pungent now. The water’s surface glittered brightly, forcing Dusk to lift his gaze away. He’d never seen such a soaring expanse of sky either. It made him want to press himself down against the branch and hold on.

  He stared at his claws against the bark for a moment, and then looked right and left along the coast, but saw no sign of any search parties.

  “How do they do their searches?” Dusk whispered to his sister, just in case there were other chiropters nearby. “Don’t they just do it from the trees?”

  Dusk looked down into the tangle of shrubs and grasses and shadows. It would be easy to miss something. “Wouldn’t they need to go down on the ground?” he said. “To see properly?”

  The thought made him shudder. Chiropters were hardly fast on their feet. And on the ground, there could be no quick launch into a glide. You were trapped. It was hard to believe his parents had taken such dreadful risks during their years as saurian hunters.

  “Let’s just look from up here,” Sylph suggested. “We should keep an eye open for other chiropters too,” Dusk reminded her. “What would a nest even look like?”

  Dusk sniffed at their ignorance. They’d come all this way without any clear idea what they’d be looking for.

  “Must be like a bird’s nest, don’t you think?” he said. “But on the ground. Round, made of leaves and sticks and twigs.” This seemed fairly logical.

  “Everything sort of blends together down there,” said Sylph. Dusk had an idea. He closed his eyes and sent out sound. His echoes penetrated the shadows and the muddle of colours and brought him back an incredibly sharp image.

  “Are you using your hunting clicks?” he heard Sylph ask beside him.

  He nodded, still studying the terrain with sound. Grass.

  A laurel branchlet.

  Rocks.

  A tea shrub.

  A ridge of mulched leaves …

  He let his echoes linger over this. It was more than just a ridge. It was a circle of leaves—and right in the middle of it rested something egg-shaped.

  Dusk’s eyes snapped open, his heart kicking hard. “There’s a nest!” he wheezed.

  Now that he’d found one, he felt completely unprepared. He was terrified. He looked all around. Where were the saurian parents? Would they come from the sky, like the quetzal, or from the ground? Or from the trees?

  “Where? Where is it?” Sylph demanded.

  He directed her gaze with a nod. “There.”

  “You think so?” Sylph sounded unsure.

  Dusk stared. It wasn’t nearly so clear with just his eyes. The egg was certainly larger than a bird’s—he’d seen a broken one once, fallen on the ground. This one was bigger and rougher, and pointier at the ends. It lay lopsided on the mulch. “We should tell someone,” said Dusk.

  “We tell them, we get in huge trouble for sneaking off,” said Sylph.

  Dusk thought of their father’s temper at the assembly. “But what if it’s a real nest!” he said. “We’d better be sure, Dusk.”

  “How should I know what a saurian egg looks like? It’s not like Mom or Dad ever talked about them!”

  “We’d know if it was real,” Sylph said with absurd confidence. Dusk ground his teeth in indecision. He feared his father’s wrath. But he couldn’t bear the thought of doing nothing, when it might be a real saurian nest. “I better go closer.”

  “No, I’ll go,” said Sylph. “I’m older.”

  “Three seconds older!”

  “I’m faster on the ground. You’ve got weak legs.” Dusk was startled to see a hunter’s craving in her eyes. “No,” he said quickly. “I saw it first. And one of us needs to stay up here and keep watch.”

  “You’re afraid I’ll destroy the egg, aren’t you,” Sylph demanded. Dusk didn’t want to get into an argument with her, so before she could object he launched himself off the branch and sailed out into the open. He landed as close to the nest as he could manage. The moment he touched down, he knew he’d made a terrible mistake. He’d never in his life set foot on the ground. He looked back over his shoulder at t
he trees—they seemed very far away. He caught sight of Sylph hunched forward on a branch, looking down at him. He wanted to hurry back to her, but wouldn’t allow himself to be so cowardly.

  Weak legs pushing, he dragged himself through the wiry undergrowth. He reached the nest, and clambered up onto the shallow rim. The nest sloped away into an irregularly shaped hollow.

  Lying across the bottom, not more than a few inches away from him, was the egg.

  Dusk cringed, glancing fearfully all around. What had possessed him to come down here, and make himself so vulnerable? There might be an adult nearby. And what about the egg itself? Was it close to hatching, or just newly laid? At any moment it might shudder and start to splinter. Even a newborn saurian would be bigger than him, and would barely need to chew before swallowing him down.

  But was it a real egg? He needed to go closer still. He sucked in a breath, held it, and then rushed closer until his nose was against the shell. He sniffed. It smelled of the earth. He touched it with his claw. It was not at all warm—shouldn’t it be warm?—and as he pulled his claw back, confused, a bit of the egg’s surface flaked away. He grunted in surprise.

  It wasn’t shell that had broken loose. It was hardened mud.

  He looked back at the egg and, where the mud had flaked off, saw what was underneath.

  It was just a giant pine cone, coated in mud!

  He laughed in relief. He wanted to let Sylph know he was all right, but didn’t want to call out in case any of his colony was nearby. Lifting his sails he waved up at her. His stomach gave a sickening lurch as he realized she was flapping her own sails in a frenzy.

  Something rustled in the undergrowth.

  Dusk jerked round. The rim of the nest was just high enough to block his view of whatever was on the ground beyond. The noise was very close, and sounded like something big. Was it a saurian? His heart shuddered.

  He made a frenzied scramble up the rim; the noise was getting louder, branches crackling. In his peripheral vision he saw some leaves fly up. A dreadful weakness swept through him. He was stuck on the ground; he was so slow. He was helpless.