“12-8!” The screech seemed to crack the sky. Good Glaux, it was Skench and Spoorn and Jatt and Jutt. And Auntie! Auntie puffed and angry, the yellow light from her eyes no longer soft but a hard metallic glare.
“I suspected her for some time!” Auntie squawked, and dragged Hortense off the nest that she had just moments before returned to.
The egg, limned by the rising sun, stood fragile and quivering at the edge of the rock. Soren’s eyes were riveted on the egg. The egg loomed so large, so fragile against the dawn sky. It could have been Eglantine. It could have been Eglantine. The thought began to swell in Soren’s brain and fill him with a profound terror. This was the future they were fighting for. This was the evilness of St. Aggie’s. The egg teetered on the brink as did the entire world of owls. The eagle hovered above.
Suddenly, there was a deep mournful howl. “Go for the egg! Don’t worry about me. Save the egg…save the egg!” Hortense shrieked. Then a huge shadow slid across the outcropping and next there was an explosion of feathers. It seemed to Soren that there was nothing but feathers. Feathers and down everywhere swirling in the glimmering rosy light of the new day. The eagle was everyplace at once. And Hortense’s voice kept crying, “Save the egg! Save the egg!” Auntie was the fiercest fighter of them all. Her beak open and ready to tear, her yellow eyes flashing madly in her head, her talons extended and trying to rip at the eagle’s eyes, she was a white squall of fury. Scalding curses tore from her mouth. “Kill! Kill!” she screamed in a high-pitched deafening voice. Her feathered face hardened until it seemed like stone. Slashed by a dark beak and the savage yellow eyes, it was a blazing white mask of brutality.
Then Gylfie and Soren saw the eagle take a mighty swipe with her wings and send Auntie tumbling flat on her back. In that moment, the eagle reached the egg and rose into the sky with it clutched in her claws.
Yet the voice of Hortense seemed to grow dimmer, as if it was fading away, dwindling as if…as if…Soren and Gylfie looked at each other. Two big tears leaked from Soren’s dark eyes. “She’s falling, isn’t she, Gylfie?”
“They pushed her.” And there was Auntie, standing at the edge of the cliff with Spoorn, looking down into the thousand-foot-deep abyss. “Bye-bye,” Auntie cooed, and waved a tattered wing. “Bye-bye, 12-8, you fool!” The coo curled into the ugliest snarl Soren could ever imagine.
“But the eagle got the egg,” Gylfie said weakly.
“Yes, I suppose she did,” Soren replied.
And now there would be more stories, indeed, legends to tell in Ambala of brave Hortense.
The eggorium was briefly shut down. All temporary eggorium and hatchery owls were to report to the moon-blaze chamber immediately for moon scalding, as indeed there was to be a full shine the following evening. Soren and Gylfie, still crammed in the slot, heard Auntie and Spoorn and Skench talking about how no word of this could get out. Auntie’s old voice returned. She fretted in that Auntie way of hers about how she could not imagine that 12-8, the most beautifully moon-blinked owl ever, could have gone so wrong under her guidance.
Once again, Gylfie and Soren survived the moon scalding in the moon-blaze chamber. They told the Tales of Yore, as Gylfie called the Ga’Hoolian legends. And Soren, who had a remarkable gift for storytelling, began to compose a new one that first night that he told in bits through the glare of the moon’s hot light.
“She was an owl like none other…” Soren began, thinking of Hortense. “Her face both beautiful and kindly, her deep brown eyes warm and with a glimmer like tiny suns. Her wings, however, for one reason or another were crippled, and it was from this, her weakness, that she drew her great strength. For this was an owl who wanted only to do good, who clung to dreams of freedom while giving up her own and, from a stony perch high in a lawless place, she did find a way to wage her own war.”
Soren finished the legend as the scalding moon began to slip down in the sky.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
One Bloody Night
It was the last night of the dwenking. The moon this night appeared like a fragile dim thread in the sky. The last full shine in which they had been moon scalded after their work in the eggorium had seemed the longest. But Soren and Gylfie had survived. Soren poked his beak into the feathers, the very feathers that Hortense had said were coming along so nicely. They seemed even thicker now.
“Look at those primaries, Soren, and your plummels! How I do envy your plummels,” Gylfie said.
Soren ran his beak lightly through the plummels that hovered like a fine mist over his flight feathers. He remembered his mother saying how one must preen their plummels every day, for, indeed, plummels were unique to owls. Of all birds, only owls, and only certain owls at that, had plummels. Elf Owls did not have these fine, soft feathers that fringed the leading edges of wings. It was these feathers that allowed Barn Owls like Soren to fly in almost complete silence.
“Plummels,” his mother had said, “are every bit as important as a sharp beak or sharp talons.” These words, of course, were directed mostly to Kludd. Kludd’s plummels had just begun to sprout shortly before Soren had been snatched, but all Kludd cared about was his beak and talons.”
“So, Gylfie, you think, then, by the time of the next dwenking we shall be able to leave?”
“Yes.”
Soren looked at this little owl who had become his friend and felt a twinge. She could leave now, for Gylfie was a fully fledged owl. With her dappled plumage of reddish browns and grays and the striking white feathers that curved over her eyes in lovely sweeping arcs, Gylfie looked so grown up, so ready to fly. “Gylfie,” Soren sighed, “you could leave now. Look at you.”
Gylfie had, indeed, turned into a very lovely Elf Owl. “We have had this talk before, Soren. I told you. I am waiting.”
“I know. I know. I just want you to be sure.” Soren bobbed his head up and down twice and then cocked it to the side in a questioning manner.
“We still haven’t gotten into the library and I feel—”
Soren began to interrupt. For the life of him, he could not figure out why Gylfie was so set on getting into the library. The flecks were interesting but he didn’t see how this was connected with anything that had to do with their escaping. The library, of course, was located in a higher part of the canyon, one closer to the sky. Their chances of getting into the hatchery since the Hortense disaster, which would have afforded them the best takeoff spot, were absolute zero. And now that was just what Gylfie was saying. “I just feel it in my gizzard, Soren. If we can get into the library, that might be our way out. But until Grimble comes back, I don’t think there’s a chance.”
“Why didn’t we think of asking Hortense about Grimble being imperfectly moon blinked?” Soren wondered aloud.
“I doubt if she would have known anything. All she ever saw of this place was the hatchery, really.”
“I suppose you’re right,” Soren replied. “But Gylfie, what’s the sense of us getting into the library, even if the library is the second-best escape route, if we can’t fly? You said we have to learn and we’d better start quickly. Do we know the first thing about flying except what we remember our parents saying? How can we practice branching here? Start hopping around and trying to do any of the usual things owl chicks have been doing by the time they are our age to be flight-ready, and you’ll see the monitors on us faster than if we had asked a question.”
“You’re right, Soren. We’re not ready. We have to figure out a way to practice.”
“I’m not sure that we can. I mean, it just seems too risky.”
But Gylfie saw that, in fact, Soren was practicing in a very subtle way as they munched their evening ration of crickets in the glaucidium. The Barn Owl had spread his wings and fluffed them up and, although not hopping, Soren had certainly assumed what was known as a flight-prime position. He turned now to 47-2, their pelletorium guide from the first day, and in Gylfie’s mind the most perfectly moon-blinked creature of St. Aggie’s.
&nb
sp; “Just getting the feel of it,” Soren said to 47-2. Naturally, he did not wait for 47-2 to ask, “The feel of what?” He merely went ahead and answered his own question in hopes of provoking 47-2 to offer some information. “It must feel wonderful when you finally lift off.” He raised his wings slightly as he spoke. “It is almost as if I know exactly where the air will pouch beneath my wings.”
“Oh, yes.” 47-2 blinked. “That feeling will pass.” 47-2’s wings hung limply at her sides. “I remember when I had it as well. You won’t be bothered much longer with such feelings.” She stared straight ahead, her eyes vacant.
Bothered? Why would such feelings ever be a bother? Soren dared not ask. He could see that Gylfie had heard this as well and was equally disturbed. A dread began to creep up from their gizzards and seep into their hollow bones. They had thought that DNFs, owls Destined Not to Fly, were only those owls who worked in the hatchery and the eggorium. Were there DNFs in the pelletorium as well?
“Yes, yes,” 47-2 spoke in her odd flat tones, “it will pass, not much longer, and it is a lovely feeling that comes as they relieve you of those stirrings of flight.”
Soren could hardly steady his voice to form the next statement. “Yes, stirrings of flight. I very much like these stirrings of flight. They feel so lovely under my wings.”
“No, no. They become more bothersome, trust me. You will welcome the bats when they come.”
Bats? Bats? Soren and Gylfie desperately needed to know about the bats. How could he wheedle this information out? “I have not seen any bats around here,” Soren said, trying to keep the anxiousness out of his voice.
“Oh, they only come just before every other newing or so. To relieve us of flight urges. You are still not ready, I’m afraid. You will have to wait until the next newing.”
A hundred questions battered Soren’s brain. But 47-2 continued. “They come tonight, I hear. I am very happy in anticipation. It is so lovely. We always sleep our best after the bats quank.”
Just at that moment, Jatt and Jutt screeched a call for attention. “All 40’s through 48’s shall report on the third sleep march to area three.” They spoke in unison.
“Hooray!” The cheer welled up in the glaucidium. “Hooray, hooray!” 47-2 danced a strange little jig.
Two marches had gone by. The silver thread of a moon was drawn down to the edge where the sky meets the earth. A last feeble blink of silver and it was gone. The sky grew blacker and blacker. A third sleep march would seem meaningless, for all was engulfed in shadows, and yet the shriek came. Soren and Gylfie moved, following 47-2, but stopped at the edge of area three.
“Look!” Gylfie said. “Look at what they are doing.” Soren and Gylfie both stared in disbelief as hundreds of owls flung themselves flat onto their backs with their breasts exposed to the sky and their wings spread out.
“Never,” Soren said, “have I seen an owl perch that way. It looks as if it might hurt.”
“I don’t think it’s called perching,” Gylfie said. “I think its called lying down.”
“Lying down? Animals do that, not birds, and never owls.” Soren hesitated. “Not unless they’re dead.”
But these owls were not dead.
“Listen!” Soren said.
The sky high above the glaucidium seemed suddenly to pulse with a throbbing sound. It was the sound of wing beats but not the soft, almost silent, wing beats of owls. Instead, there was a tough leathery snap. A strange song began to rise in the glaucidium. Then, blacker than the blackness of the night, printed against the sky, ten thousand bats flew overhead as the owls called to them in an odd wailing lament.
Come to us and quackle and quank.
Relieve us of our stirrings
With your fangs so sharp and bright
Take this blood that’s always purring.
Through our hollow bones it flows
To each feather and downy fluff.
Quell the terrible, horrid urge that so often prinkles us,
Still our dreams, make slow our thoughts
Let tranquillity flood our veins.
Come to us and drink your fill
So we might end our pains.
Soren and Gylfie watched in unblinking wonder as the vampire bats fluttered down. Using their tiny wing-thumbs and feet, they began to crawl up onto the owls’ breasts. They seemed to forage for a few seconds, seeking out a bare spot on the owls’ breasts. With gleaming sharp teeth they made a quick tiny cut. The bats’ tongues, narrow and grooved, slipped into the nicks. The owls did not even flinch but seemed merely to sigh into the night. Soren and Gylfie were transfixed and could not move. 47-2 turned her head toward them, her eyes half shut, a mild, contented expression on her face.
“That must hurt terribly,” Soren spoke softly.
“No, lovely, lovely. The stirrings go. No more…” Her voice dwindled into the darkness of the night.
Soren and Gylfie were not sure how long the vampire bats were there, but, indeed, they seemed to swell before their eyes. And then they appeared so gorged, it was as if they staggered rather than lifted into flight. The moon had vanished now for days. The grayness of a new dawn began to filter through the black and, in drunken spirals, the bats wheeled through the remnants of the night.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
To Believe
Ever since that bloody night, Soren and Gylfie had thought of nothing but flying. It had become abundantly clear to them why none of the owlets of St. Aggie’s had the sleek glossy feathers or any of the fluffy down of normal owls who had grown beyond the chick stage. Growing flight feathers for an owl was normally not a complicated business, but deprived of the blood supply, these feathers from the primaries to the plummels would wither and die. With that, stirrings, dreams of flight, notions of skyful joy and freedom shriveled and died as well.
Soren and Gylfie’s mission was unmistakable: They must learn how to fly despite lacking any opportunity to ever branch, or hop, or practice for flight in any way. They must keep the dream of flight alive in their minds. They must feel it in their gizzards and in that way they would learn to fly. Gylfie repeated the words of her father to Soren: “He said, Soren, that ‘you can practice forever and still never fly if you don’t believe.’ So it’s not just practice, Soren. We must believe, and we can because we are not moon blinked.”
“But moon blinked or not, we have to have feathers. And I am still short of flight feathers,” Soren replied.
“You are going to have them. You will have enough by the next newing.”
“Well, that’s just the problem. That’s when the vampire bats come back.”
Gylfie looked at Soren gravely. “That is why we must learn how to fly before the next newing.”
“But I won’t be ready. I won’t have enough feathers,” Soren said.
“Almost, though.”
“Almost? There’s a difference, Gylfie, between almost and enough.”
“Yes. The difference is belief, Soren. Belief.” The little Elf Owl said the last word so fiercely that Soren took a step back. “You have a large and generous gizzard, Soren. You feel. I know this. You feel strongly. If any owl can do this, you can.”
Soren blinked in dismay. How could he not believe it if this owl, who weighed no more than a wad of leaves, believed so much. It was Gylfie who had the enormous gizzard, not himself.
So the two little owls began to think constantly about flying. They discussed it whenever they could. They shared memories of their parents lifting out of their nests into the sky. They argued about wing angles and drift and updrafts and a dozen other things they had seen and almost felt as they had watched other owls. They pondered endlessly the stony maze of the canyons and ravines that made up St. Aggie’s. They knew that the only way out was straight up, requiring the most difficult of flight maneuvers, especially now that they had no access to Hortense’s stone outcropping high in the hatchery. There could be no gradual glide for a takeoff.
Still, they knew that when they escaped
, it was essential to find the highest point possible, the point closest to the sky. And Gylfie continued to feel deep in her gizzard that the library would offer such a place, and that within the library they would discover the secret of the flecks, and in some way this secret would become vital to their escape.
One unseasonably warm day, Gylfie had returned to their station in the pelletorium from a run for new pellets. She was barely able to conceal her excitement. “He’s back,” she whispered to Soren. “Grimble’s back! Get on the next shift with me for new pellets.”
That would be easy. It was a snack shift, and if you were on a new pellet run you missed the snack. So no one ever really wanted to go.
Just as the sun reached its high point, Soren and Gylfie stopped walking forward in the Big Crack. They, of course, continued to move their feet as if they were still marching, and the stream of owlets parted around them and moved on as they remained in the same place. Soren blinked. He did not have to look up to feel the piece of blue sky flowing above them. He had passed this point on the trail many times now, and each time he felt refreshed by the very thought of this small wedge of sky so close. He would close his eyes and feel it. When all the owlets had passed, Gylfie gave the signal and they turned down the smaller crack toward the library.
Gylfie marched ahead. Soren was trembling with fear. What if Gylfie’s suspicions about Grimble being imperfectly moon blinked were wrong? What if Grimble sounded an alarm? What if they were both seized for the next laughter therapy session? Soren winced and felt a twinge flicker from his down fluff to his brand-new primaries.