The great bat was lying in her nest. Her large wings were unfurled and her ears were relaxed. Despite the pains in her tail, arm, and belly, she was trying to sleep.
Suddenly, in the midst of the quiet, she heard the sound again.Muscle after muscle inside her ears contracted within milliseconds of one another, refining and sharpening and pinpointing the sound. Fatty tissue in the base of the ear dampened everything outside the focus of the external ear, absorbing all sounds but the one she wanted to hear.
It was more comforting than the sound of her mate had ever been. Yet it was so much less familiar. In her mind she couldn’t see what made it. Yet when she heard it she couldn’t think of anything but the sound.
Slowly, she raised her head and pulled her wings toward her. It was strange to be on the ground like this and not suspended in the air. But it had not been an ordinary night. She had seen death, his death. She had sought to destroy the one who had taken him from her. And then she had felt the call of new life. She had returned here to await its arrival.
Now the sound had returned.The sound that had stopped her enraged flight from death and filled her with peace and with an unfamiliar yearning. A need so old yet so near…
It was coming from outside her cave. Despite her discomfort, the bat had to go to it. She had to find the source. She had to smell, see, and touch it. She had to understand it.
She had to have it again.
The giant threw back her head and wailed. Throughout the tunnel, her voice stirred her minions. When she heard them moving, she drew her powerful legs beneath her and stretched her hooks before her. She looked back at her nest, then began crawling through the blackness. As the sound grew closer, louder, her need for it became greater.
Then, when she was free of the cave, the sound suddenly disappeared-just as it had before.
The bat stopped. She listened. She heard countless smaller sounds ahead and above and to the sides. But she knew what those were: food. There were also lesser bats flying around her in all directions. She stopped wailing as she felt the loss again. Along the top of her wings, her fingers moved as though searching for something.
Where had it gone?
And then, as the lesser bats settled onto posts and ledges and wires, as the fluttering of their wings stopped, she heard it again. The sound, distant but distinct. She turned to the side.
There was another cave, larger than her own. That was where the sound was coming from. And the sound was making an echo. This cave had a back. Whatever was making the sound would not be able to leave.
Bunching her wings beside her and turning, the bat flung herself forward and soared into the air.