Sunwing by Kenneth Oppel Page A

door: It probably wouldn’t be long before the Humans came back out, and they’d almost certainly be looking for them. Which way, though?
    The passageway seemed to stretch on forever in both directions, doorways on both sides. Shade closed his eyes and quickly regained his sense of direction.
    “Okay, maybe this passage runs behind all the forests: Goth’s, then the owls’, then ours. It’s how the Humans get inside.” Marina was nodding. “We follow it back to our own forest?”
    “All these doors on the right open into them, right?” He looked at her, hoping for reassurance. “We wait for the Humans to open a door, and slip back in.”
    “We could wait a long time. What about these?” she asked, nodding at the doorways on the left side of the passage.
    Shade shrugged. “Maybe they go deeper into the building, or to other forests—or else outside,” he added hopefully.
    Suddenly there was the sound of footsteps, and a Human Female, her head unhooded, was approaching. Shade held his breath as she passed beneath them. The ceilings were high, but she had one of those sticks; she could easily reach up and poke them. Luckily she never looked up. “Follow that one,” Marina said.
    Sticking high to the shadows, they followed the Female down the tunnel, keeping to a safe distance. After a minute, she came to a door in the left wall, tapped at it, and pulled it open.
    A horrible tide of weeping washed out, mingled with shouts of pain and fear—and then was instantly erased as the door sealed itself with a hiss. The passageway buzzed quietly, but Shade’s ears still sang with those terrible cries.
    They were the cries of bats.
    “They’re in there,” Shade said, his mouth parched. Marina was shaking her head, eyes wide with panic. “I don’t want to go in there, Shade. It’s going to be something really, really bad.”
    “That’s where they take us. We’ve got to,” he said hoarsely. He wasn’t thinking too clearly, his thoughts surging uselessly in all directions. “We’ve got to see what’s inside.”
    More footsteps sounded along the passageway, and Shade could see three more Humans coming, two of them carrying cages. Goth and the owl. They stopped before the same door and poked at a cluster of metal buttons.
    Shade looked at Marina, and she shook her head anxiously. “What if my father’s in there?” he whispered. He saw her look away, then give a quick, resigned nod.
    The door hissed open. Shade dropped down from the ceiling with Marina and landed on the back of the Human bringing up the rear. He clung delicately to the loose folds of the white robe, claws just pricking the fabric, afraid of poking through. Above him, between the Human’s shoulder blades, he saw Marina holding on tight. He could feel the Human’s energy conducted through the swing of the robe. The Human hesitated for a split second. He feels it, Shade worried, the extra weight—but then the Human hurried after his companions.
    Inside the doorway, they dropped off instantly, soaring straight for the high ceiling. A mournful tide of cries rose up with them. Only when he’d reached the very top did Shade turn and look down.
    He squinted. The room hurt his eyes, brighter even than the passageway. It had a smell too, a horrible smell of sweating, panicking bodies, of mouths stale with fear.
    Running the length of the room were two raised troughs, as thick as great fallen trees. They looked to Shade like they were made of metal and, straining with his echo vision, he saw that the tops were covered by some sort of glass, pricked with tiny holes.
    All along the length of each metal trough, Humans hunched over the glass. Their hands were shoved through numerous openings on either side of the troughs. They seemed to be handling things.
    Bats.
    Shade caught his first glimpse of the familiar shapes beneath the glass, spread out in a long, single line, but each separated by little dividing walls. The space was enough for the bat to lie