There was no arguing with Kalo. Her husband, Grom, was a quiet, reflective owl, who rarely contradicted his mate. Marked by the blue feather! This was the limit, in Cory’s mind. Now she had done it. They would all have to go into hiding. A singed blue feather was the death warrant. Once a hollow, nest, or burrow had been marked with it, an owl would stand trial—trial by fire—for keeping an unclean habitat, a home profaned by the “vanities” and “skart” literature that they had refused to yield up. It was an odd test. If the owl could escape the strong fibrous green vines that bound them to the stake, and fly away while reciting the Glaux creed rejecting all vanities, then that owl was declared innocent of all charges. But so far no owl had escaped.
Cory knew of two burnings and suspected more. The creed itself was controversial. No one had ever heard of it before the Blue Brigade had appeared. It was a jumble of words about the hagsfires, lustrous pearls, rich fabrics, and the dark and haggish ink of skart pages printed by the “monster”: the printing press. More and more charred piles of these so-called vanities littered the landscape on the mainland. And with the Blue Brigade patrolling everywhere, owls stayed in their burrows and hollows whenever possible. Cory stumbled back and headed toward Kalo’s burrow. He heard the soft crying before he got there.
“Grom!” he called out to Kalo’s mate, hardly more than a heap of feathers collapsed in a corner of the burrow. The Burrowing Owl looked up. His face had feathered gray overnight. The white swag of feathers above his eyes had thickened, as had the one beneath his beak. “She’s gone,” he sobbed.
“Then she saw it? The blue feather?”
“I guess so. She left me this note.” He handed Cory a scrap of paper.
My dear mate, my brother Coryn, and my little owlet,
You must understand, all of you, how deeply I regret endangering my own family. But in truth, every owl in every one of the five kingdoms is endangered, for we’re not talking about losing our “vanities” here. We’re talking about losing the right to think. Books can be burned. But the ideas and the knowledge in them cannot be killed. Owls can die, but books, never. Fear of ideas is the most extreme form of cowardice. I have love in my gizzard and heart; they only have hatred. I have inspiration from the books I have read; they only have terror from the lies they have chosen to believe. I have heroes, like Siv and King Hoole; Grank, the first collier; and Theo the peaceful blacksmith. They have no one but that twisted blue owl. So don’t worry about me. These owls who hunt me are more cowardly and more defenseless than I am, for they have stopped thinking.
Glauxspeed,
Kalo
“I’m going to find her,” Cory said.
“I knew you would say that.” Grom looked up as if seeking an answer. “But what has happened to that friend of hers, that Barn Owl we thought was to be the noblest of kings? The one you were named after?”
It was then that an idea came to Cory. He turned around to leave the burrow.
“You’re leaving?” Grom asked. “Going to find her, right now?”
“No, I am going to see a king, a king who was once noble.”
As Cory angled north by northeast to catch the wind, he noticed that the border between Silverveil and his own scoured landscape, The Barrens, seemed different. The verdant lushness of one of the most beautiful forests in the Southern Kingdoms, like a cloth of green plush with trees and undulating meadows and valleys, usually rose up in sharp contrast to The Barrens. But now he noticed bare patches in the tree line along the border, and when he crossed over, the terrain below appeared scarred and scorched in places. He saw smoldering pyres and his gizzard writhed. They are everywhere, he thought. Wherever will Kalo hide? Yes, Balefire Night was coming, but these piles of wood and brush were much more numerous than those usually prepared for the celebration.
In a clearing below, he saw a gathering of owls. Something was about to be ignited. Great Glaux! It’s an owl—it’s four owls. He felt his gizzard turn to stone. I am going yeep, he thought. The ground was rushing toward him. His vision suddenly narrowed, tunnel-like, its edges a radiant blur as the ground rushed up. He felt the wind press through his feathers. His eyes dried out. A hiss filled his ear slits. It was the noise of his body gathering speed. I am going to die, he thought. But then he felt something grab his neck. Talons gripped him. He was floating up again. The ground receded. He could see the moon, the stars, and then the dark embroidery of pine needles.
“There’s a hollow right up here, buddy.”
Cory looked up. A Masked Owl was clutching him.
“Thought you bit it.” The owl smelled like charred wood, coal, fire!
“You going to burn me?” Cory asked.
“Are you yoicks? There’s enough burning around here. It’s these blue-feather thugs. They steal coals from my forge to start their haggish fires.”
Cory almost fainted with relief. The Masked Owl was a Rogue smith. There was a famous one in Silverveil he had heard of from Kalo. In fact, if he recalled correctly, this Rogue smith had been a good friend to the king, when the king was a young’un living with his terrible mother in the canyonlands.
“Well, that was certainly a close one,” the Rogue smith said, tucking Cory into the hollow.
“What are they doing down there? Are they burning owls?”
“Not yet. Just dummies—effigies, I think they call them.”
“Effigies of whom?” Cory asked.
“Well, I’m not sure. Let’s have a peek. You feel steady enough?”
“Yes,” Cory replied and followed the Rogue smith out to the end of a long limb.
Below them on the ground were four figures made from bundles of twigs and dried grasses. One was very large and was covered with a silvery lichen called old bird’s beard. Another was made of reddish twigs with a face that was almost white and two black coals for eyes. The third was a bundle of twigs with two long sticklike legs, and the fourth was a little ball of frizzled tumble-weed. Four owls, each a different species: a Great Gray, a Barn Owl, a Burrowing Owl, and an Elf Owl. Gwyndor, the Rogue smith of Silverveil, for it was he, swiveled his head and looked at Cory. “The Band,” he said quietly. “They are burning the Band in effigy.” And just then a dozen or so owls, each sporting a blue feather, swooped around the effigies. A grim chant rose from them.
Fire does redemption bring
Cleansing flames for which we sing.
Scour the soul, prepare the mind,
Make us to all vanities blind.
Bring your gaudies, profane art,
Singe it, burn it, all is skart!
Let there be nought but ash,
Make redemption ours at last.
As they sang, owls came forward, dropping strands of beads, books, whirligigs, and all sorts of articles onto the pyre. A large Horned Owl flew up to the pyre with a torch and touched it to the kindling. There were cracks and popping sounds as pearls and glass exploded. As the flames licked higher and closer to the effigies of the Band, the figures began to jiggle in a weird palsied dance as if trying to escape. And then the red tongues reached them and they were devoured in one fiery gulp. A cheer went up, but Cory noticed that the cheers came only from the Blue Brigade. The other owls remained silent and wilfed as the fire grew hotter and hotter. The scent of sizzling glue rose from the books and with it the sad odor of the incinerating lovely things.
In the dell of Ambala a new kind of training had begun. This training involved learning to fly dressed in draperies of moss.
“How am I suppose to do my famous flying wedgie with all this stuff hanging off me?” Twilight grumbled.
“Put a mouse in it, Twilight, and pay attention.” Gylfie scowled.
“That’s easy for you to say. You’re so itty-bitty one little patch of moss covers you up.”
“It’s all relative,” Digger said. His legs were cloaked in a very green moss called bunch clover. The owls of Ambala had introduced them to one of their oldest traditions for Balefire Night celebrations: Greenowling. The t
radition could be traced back to an ancient poem of Ambalan origin:
In a night sky drenched in flames
Thus begin the Balefire games.
Then high above the conflagration
Comes the brightest green formation.
Robed in Ambala’s greenest green
Their brains so fit, their gizzards keen,
“Greenowls” is their special name.
Cloaked in moss they play the game
Merry, fast, and fair they play
Until the night fades into day.
The fires die, begin to smolder,
The embers grow cold, then colder.
Another Balefire come and gone
Ambala’s Greenowls praised in song.
On Balefire Night, with battle claws tucked into their mossy garments and branches ready to ignite, the Band would end their exile and reclaim the great tree. If the king must die…well, they tried not to think of that. But if it did come to that, they must be prepared. Soren had been ready to kill his own brother, Kludd, and was only spared from delivering those fatal blows because Twilight had hurled himself into the fray, impaling Kludd on a firebrand. But would Soren kill the son of Kludd—his own nephew—if need be?
He would do anything to protect Pelli, the three B’s, and the great tree. He was, after all, a mate, a father, and finally, a Guardian of Ga’Hoole.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Something Familiar?
You mean I can’t see the king?” Cory asked. “Why should you be able to see him? You’re just an ordinary owl,” a Barred Owl replied. The owl sported a blue feather tucked into the coverts of his primary feathers.
“I have very important business.” Cory didn’t want to say his real name. He remembered how the awful blue owl had ordered that Kalo be dragged from the burrow, and then sneered at her when she had said his name. He had claimed that to name an owl “Coryn” was blasphemous. It was Cory’s third night at the tree and still he had not seen the king for whom he had been named. Suddenly, that same hideous blue owl stuck his head out of the port of the king’s hollow.
“What does this Burrowing Owl want?” he asked.
“To see the king. Claims he has business of a personal nature. He’s getting tiresome.”
Suddenly, Cory got an idea. He would change tactics. Anything to get in. “It’s not really of a personal nature,” he blurted out. “I mean, this person used to be my friend, but I want to report a suspected hoarding incident.” The Blue Brigade owls were always keen to hear of hoarding incidents. “Let him in,” said the Striga.
Great! Cory thought. Now if he could just see the king alone! But they were not alone. The Striga perched nearby. What could he say to the king with that horrid owl right there? And the king seemed odd, not at all kingly. His feathers were dull and lusterless. He had heard gossip that the king rarely left his hollow. He was standing in front of a small case that glowed with the light of an ember and was staring at it. Could this be the Ember of Hoole that I have heard so much about? Cory wondered.
“What is it?” the king asked without turning around to look at the owl.
“A hoarding incident to report,” the Striga said.
The king sighed. It was a sigh of boredom more than anything else. He continued peering at the ember. He felt none of the old exhilarating tingle he used to feel when around the ember. The Striga was right. He had grown stronger in its presence. “It’s chilly in here,” he finally said. “Could you poke up the fire in the grate, Striga?”
“Yes, it’s beginning to flurry outside,” Cory said.
The king turned around slowly. Was there something familiar in the timbre of that voice? He looked at the young owl and blinked. Who is this owl?
And while that disturbing thought swirled in the king’s mind, Cory wished that he could be alone with him for only a minute or two.
“A hoarding incident,” the Striga prompted.
“Yes. I think this owl has been wrongly accused. And I know that King Coryn…”
Something twitched in Coryn’s gizzard. There was something about the way this young owl said Coryn’s name that seemed like a distant echo of something long ago. The fires in the grate burst into a lively blaze. Cory stood between the king and the grate. The young king suddenly pushed him aside. The gesture was misinterpreted by both the Striga and Cory.
“He wants you out! Now!” the Striga commanded.
“But I haven’t said what I have to say,” Cory pleaded.
Before Cory knew it, two guards hustled him from the hollow and the king had done nothing to stop them. But Coryn had spied something in the flames. Something alarming. Something terrifying. “Leave me alone,” Coryn said when the Striga returned. The blue owl silently retreated. Coryn continued to stare into the fire. How had he let himself forget his gift? Coryn could see things in flames. But how long had it been since he had even looked into a fire? It was a skill that the Striga knew nothing about.
And I must not let him know! Coryn thought. For the first time in many moon cycles Coryn felt a true tremor in his gizzard. It was as if it had been dead, insentient as a rock, but now it was awakening.
He was seeing shapes in the flames. The first shape was that of an ember, and in its center a lick of blue and then there was the shimmering edge of green. How could I have forgotten that green? His eyes widened. He spun about and gazed at the ember in the case.
“It’s a fake,” he whispered to himself. “How could I have not known?” And the young owl who had just been in the hollow, the Burrowing Owl? He had never even asked his name but he knew it was Coryn, brother of Kalo—Coryn hatched from the egg he had rescued long ago. Great Glaux, what has happened to me? He looked again at the counterfeit ember. I cannot blame the ember this time. Yes, I have been weak. The Striga has groomed and nurtured a great weakness in me, through flattery. The very methods used to render the owls of the Dragon Court weak and powerless! Stupid! How stupid of me! But he was done with being stupid. He flew out of his hollow and was about to command that the Striga come to see him immediately. But he stopped short. Who were all these new owls and why were they all wearing blue feathers? He had thought that the Blue Feather Club was just a silly owlet thing. Something for the young’uns. He felt a bilious surge in his gizzard. Where were his trusted Guardians? The true Guardians of Ga’Hoole? The Band was away—he knew that. But what about Pelli, Eglantine, Otulissa, for Glaux’s sake? He realized he had hardly seen them except in the dining hollow. Something definitely was up.
The Striga flew down onto the branch where Coryn perched. “Sir, a problem?” The blue owl had sensed something. Coryn felt his gizzard clench painfully. But it was a welcome pain. He was feeling again, thinking again. He was regaining his wits and in that moment he knew that he must appear as witless as ever. “No, nothing wrong. Now tell me, what are the plans for Balefire Night?”
“Well, yes. We are going to build a very large bonfire—the largest ever—and it will be the final stage of the special relinquishment ceremonies.” Coryn felt a chill run through his gizzard. He knew about “special” ceremonies. His mother, Nyra, had invented several; one in particular required that Coryn murder a friend.
But now he couldn’t escape, nor did he want to. He was the king of this great tree. The tree was still great but his own honor was gone. He had let this happen and now he must take responsibility for restoring his honor and order to the tree. He returned to his hollow and peered into the flames again. Was that a reflection in the golden light? Was it his own flickering image? He took a step closer to the grate. “Who is it?” he whispered to the flames. He heard a slithering on the edge of his hollow. Mrs. Plithiver slid into the hollow, carrying a nut cup of milk-berry tea.
“Mrs. P., what are you doing here?”
“I was on my way to visit with Audrey, and I thought I perceived a new stirring in a gizzard that—How should I put it? Has not stirred for a while.”
Coryn blinked. “Yes, Mrs. P.” Coryn nodded s
lowly and lowered his voice. “A gizzard has stirred.”
“My coronation teacup…I don’t know where it is,” Madame Plonk had said to the Barred Owl who had flown into her hollow without even asking. And it was true, Madame Plonk did not know where it was. The Barred Owl believed her and left. Octavia, her nest-maid snake, pretended to snooze in a fat coil in the corner of the hollow. It was certainly not the hollow it had once been. Stripped of all ornamentation, the spinning glass whirligigs, the plush velvet cushions, the embroidered cloth, the niches that spilled with beads. Most of them had been seized but Doc Finebeak had managed to sneak a few off the island, and Octavia herself had tucked the teacup away very soon after the first relinquishing ceremonies had begun some nights ago. Although Doc Finebeak had planned to leave right after Punkie Night, Madame Plonk had begged to stay through Balefire Night as she was sure singing would be permitted.
Since Punkie Night, things had deteriorated. Too many strangers had stayed on at the tree after the celebration. The great grass harp had mysteriously suffered new damage. So there had been no song night after night. And now as he entered the hollow he shared with his dear Plonkie, he found her in tears. Between sobs she explained what had happened.
“Don’t worry, my dear. It is safe,” he whispered. But he was agitated and again frustrated that he had not insisted upon their leaving earlier. Just then, Octavia lifted her head. “Oh, Octavia,” Madame Plonk gasped, “you won’t believe what happened.”