Firewing Read Online Free Page A

it.” No, she was wrong. There was still a long way to go. He looked and couldn’t even see the tip of the stalk anymore, it had burned down so close to his body. Heat lashed his fur and claws. He remembered the scalding force of the Humans’ fire, imagined himself alight, spiralling to the ground in flames.
    “Luna! I’m not gonna make it!”
    “Wait, wait, I’ll check, hang on.”
    Luna swooped below him again, and almost at the same moment Griffin felt a searing pain in his left claw. He cried out, and before he could check himself he let go of the fire stick.
    “Look out!” he yelled but—
    He heard her grunt of surprise, tilted sharply, and looked down.
    Luna was on fire, her back dancing with flame. The stick had bounced off, leaving its burning tip embedded in her fur.
    “Griffin!” she cried, flying round and round, flapping desperately but only fanning the flames.
    “Land!” Griffin shouted to her, but she was panicking now, as the flames leapt nimbly towards her shoulders, licking out across her wings. Griffin whirled round her, slapping at the fire, but it was no good, Luna was moving too much, and the flames seemed to have burrowed deep into her fur. She was crying, a high, piercing wail.
    “Land!” he shouted at her again in despair. “Land and I can put it out!”
    Luna was tilting earthwards, though it didn’t seem of her own doing. She slewed through the air at a reckless angle, gathering speed, too much, and slammed into a mound of hardened mud and leaves. She didn’t move.
    Griffin crashed down beside her, scrambled up, and started sweeping mud and earth onto her with his claws and wings, trying to smother the flames. Suddenly he was shoved back out of the way and there was his mother, Marina, and Luna’s mother, and a dozen other mothers, landing around the smoking newborn, throwing themselves on her to extinguish the fire. It took them only a few seconds, but still Luna didn’t move. Her fur, Griffin saw, was terribly burned, patches of inflamed skin showing through. Her wings were seared and melted in places.
    Griffin couldn’t tear his eyes from her, and he realized he was moaning, a low, toneless cry that he couldn’t stop.
    “She’s alive,” he heard one of the mothers say. “Let’s take her back to Tree Haven.”

S TONE H OLD
    Shade stirred restlessly, frowning as he woke. He opened one eye, then the other, and looked around at the thousands of Silverwing males hanging from the cave’s ridged walls and ceiling. Wrapped tightly in their wings, they were all still fast asleep. He held his breath, listening. He couldn’t tell if it was a sound or a vibration through the stone that had brought him out of sleep. Maybe it was just Chinook, snoring beside him. Or Cassiel, his father, muttering in his dreams.
    Shade glanced at the long vertical gash that was the cave’s opening, and judged from the light it was still an hour or so till sunset. At midnight, he knew that Orion, the chief male elder, would be choosing five messengers to make the journey to Tree Haven. Shade wanted to be one of them.
    He wanted to see his son.
    Griffin
. The name was pretty much all Shade knew about him, and that he’d been born healthy in the spring. How could anyone be satisfied with just that? But this was the way it had been done for millions of years. Every spring the females roosted at TreeHaven and gave birth, and the males spent the summer at Stone Hold, a hundred thousand wingbeats to the southeast. None of the males seemed to want to visit their mates and newborns; they were perfectly happy to be apart until the fall, knowing nothing except the news the messengers brought back periodically after the birthing season. But that was months ago now! How could they stand it? It was too bizarre. He was desperate to see Marina again—and to meet his son for the very first time.
    Shade sighed. Well, he was awake now. For just a moment, he thought he felt the slightest of vibrations through his