Silverwing

Shade and Marina stop to rest in an abandoned house. Once inside, they realize it’s full of bats, and they’re all banded like Marina. They immediately swarm Marina, admiring her band. They all believe that they are the special chosen bats, and they think that their bands will one day transform them into humans. The leader, Scirocco, believes he is in the process of becoming human. The other bats start chanting “transform,” and Shade can’t believe his eyes: “Scirocco’s body shuddered and suddenly burst its own skin, towering up into the air” like a human (152).

Scirocco suddenly looks like a bat again, and Shade can’t help but to think that “There was something not right about it, something unnatural” (152). The group asks Marina to stay with them since she’s banded, but they ask Shade to leave. He does, and Marina stays but seems sad to watch him go. After he leaves, Goth spots the house and looks forward to feasting.

Without Marina, Shade feels incredibly lonely. He flies along, wondering why he didn’t get banded like Marina and his dad. Suddenly, Marina flies up beside him. She decided she didn’t want to stay at the house without Shade; plus, she remembered Zephyr’s warning to “beware of metal on wings” (157). All the bats were banded, and something didn’t feel right about it to her.

Goth and Throbb spot Shade and Marina. The night before, they had feasted on the bats in the house, and Goth stole the bands to wear like trophies of his conquest.

Shade and Marina realize that Goth and Throbb have found them, and they escape by flying into a metal grate in the ground. Underneath, they discover a population of rats who capture Shade and Marina.

The rats take Shade and Marina to see their king, Prince Remus. He believes that Shade and Marina have made a treacherous pact with the birds against him; he says, “You’ve killed rats, and our squirrel and mice cousins too,” (170) and Shade realizes that Goth murdered these animals. He tries to explain the truth, but the king doesn’t believe them. He’s about to send them to their death when the king’s brother, Romulus, demands to see them. The rats take Shade and Marina to Romulus, who’s kept in a small, dark room because he’s believed to be insane. Shade and Marina quickly find out that he’s banished from the others because he has bat-like wings. He instantly likes Shade and Marina because of their similarities, and he helps them escape.

Shade and Marina try to escape, but Shade and Goth catch them. Shade and Marina recognize the many bands that adorn Goth’s limbs and realize with horror that he murdered the bats in the house. Marina thinks about “All those bats, all they’d hoped for, gone forever now” (182). Shade tries to gain Goth’s trust, hoping that it will somehow hatch into a plan to escape.

Shade continues to build trust with Goth by telling him that he believes in his god, Zotz. He can’t get Marina alone to tell her his plan, so she thinks that Shade is really switching allegiance. He makes a proposition to Goth: “I take you to Hibernaculum, and you take me to the jungle” (190). Goth decides that Shade might be useful to him after all and accepts the plan.

One night while they’re out hunting, Shade spots the same plant that Zephyr gave him to make him sleep. He harvests it in his mouth and saves it for later. Back in their roosting spot, Shade asks Goth if he can eat some of the bat that he caught. Goth lets him. Shade bends down to pretend to eat the meat, but he secretly spits the chewed up sleeping plant onto the bat meat. By morning, Goth and Throbb are sleeping so deeply that Shade and Marina can escape. They fly out into the day.

Shade and Marina fly as quickly as possible to get away from the cannibalistic bats, but they eventually catch up. Attempting to escape, Shade and Marina fly into the eye of a storm, but Goth and Throbb follow. Goth steals Marina’s band and injures her wing, but she survives. A lightning bolt hit’s Throbb’s bands and instantly turns him to ash. Goth is hit too, but he survives. He thinks, “Zotz must have been protecting him from that bolt of lightning” (204-05). He decides to return to his jungle but vows to one day get revenge on Shade.

Shade and Marina finally make it to Hibernaculum and reunite with Shade’s colony. They tell the colony the full story of what happened. The colony realizes that they are at war with the owls. Shade reveals that his father, Cassiel, is still alive. Frieda thinks she knows the last place he would have been, and they form a plan to see if they can find him. Marina is going to stay with the colony and join the adventure, too.