Firewing

Part OneGriffin It had rained during the day, and now, under a three-quarter moon, the forest was silver with mist. Things always smelled better after the rain, Griffin thought as he sailed through the humid summer air. From the forest floor rose the loamy fragrance of the soil and the rich stink of rotting leaves and animal droppings. The resinous tang of pitch wafted up from the firs and pines as he grazed their topmost boughs.A new smell suddenly twined its way through all the others -- one that didn't belong to the forest. Griffin felt his fur spike up. Nostrils flared, he sniffed again, but the smell was gone now, evaporated. Maybe just the dying traces of a faraway skunk. It was pungent but...somehow hotter and more dangerous. He stored the smell away in his memory so he could describe it to his mother back at Tree Haven at sunrise. Then he angled his wings and set course for his favorite hunting ground.The giant sugar maple occupied a small rise on the valley floor, and its canopy spread wider and higher than any tree nearby. After Tree Haven, this was Griffin's favorite place in the forest. He loved the way the moonlight washed the leaves a translucent silver, and when a strong wind blew, the leaves looked and sounded like a thousand bats, all taking flight at once.Circling low overhead, Griffin cast out sound, and the returning echoes painted the tree's canopy in his head with more detail than his eyes could ever achieve. He saw each branch and twig, each bud, even the veins of the leaves.And, of course, the caterpillars.They were everywhere. The maple, like plenty of other trees in the forest, was infested. Gypsy moth caterpillars, that's what they were, and they'd already stripped the tree of half its leaves. Every night for the past week Griffin had come here and fed, but the next night it seemed there were just as many caterpillars as before. Just look at them! There must be hundreds of them! His stomach made a hungry popping sound.He trimmed his wings and tipped himself into a steep dive, spraying sound ahead of him. The first caterpillar he scooped right off a twig with his tail, flicked it into his wing and then straight into his open mouth. Ducking under a branch, he wheeled and snapped up two more dangling from threads. Curled on a nearby leaf was yet another caterpillar. Griffin streaked in close and, with a swat of his wing tip, bounced it right off the leaf, gobbling it in midair. They were a bit fuzzy going down and had a slightly sour aftertaste, but you got used to them."Doesn't it get boring?"Griffin looked up to see Luna, one of the other Silverwing newborns, swooping down alongside him."They're not so bad," he said.The truth was, it made him feel useful. The caterpillars were voracious eaters, and his mother said they could gobble up half the forest if they weren't controlled. The thought had filled Griffin with panic. He didn't want to see his forest stripped bare, especially not his favorite sugar maple. A horrible vision had played itself before his eyes. Without any trees, the soil would wash away, and without soil, nothing could grow and there'd be nowhere to roost and nothing to eat and all the Silverwings would probably starve to death or have to leave and find a new home!So Griffin ate caterpillars.And every time he swallowed, he was helping stave off total catastrophe. That's how he saw it anyway. But he didn't tell Luna this. She already thought he was crazy.A nice fat tiger moth fluttered past, no more than a few wingbeats from his nose. Griffin let it go."You don't want that?" Luna asked in amazement."It's all yours," he told her, and she was already gone, plunging down into the trees after her prey.Griffin watched, admiring the expert way she swerved and tilted through the tight tangle of branches. He'd tried to catch tiger moths once or twice, but he was no good at it. They sprayedOppel, Kenneth is the author of 'Firewing' with ISBN 9780689849930 and ISBN 0689849931.