“Phillip, you still awake?”
“Sort of,” Phillip replied sleepily.
“I was wondering…Was your name really Phillip when you were a young owlet and lived back there in Silverveil?”
“I can’t exactly remember. It began with a P-h, I’m pretty sure.”
“What’s a P-h?” Nyroc said.
“It’s a letter or two letters.”
“A letter?”
“Yeah, for reading and writing. My mum knew how to read. She taught me my letters.”
“You mean that it’s not just the Guardians of Ga’Hoole who know how to read and write?”
“They know better than any other owls, but no, they are not the only ones. Some owls do learn a bit about letters.”
“Can you read?”
“A little bit.”
“I’d like to learn how to read,” Nyroc replied. There was a wistfulness in his voice.
“I can teach you the letters of your name, but to really learn, you’d have to go to the Great Ga’Hoole Tree.”
“Phillip…” Nyroc began.
“I’m really tired, Nyroc. We should get some sleep.”
“I promise this is the last question.”
“All right. What?”
“Well, isn’t it odd that both our fathers were killed by the Guardians of Ga’Hoole, and that we’ve both lost our mothers?”
At this, Phillip’s eyes blinked wide open. “Nyroc, I lost my mother. Your mother lost you. There’s a difference.”
“You mean I left.”
“Yes, and with good reason.”
“What do you mean good reason?”
“To seek the truth and…” Phillip hesitated.
“And what?”
“Nyroc, you were too fine for her, too very fine. You have standards, Nyroc. Standards!”
Standards, Nyroc thought.
But standards aren’t practical, Phillip thought. You can’t eat standards. You can’t live in them.
Finally, the young owls fell asleep.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
A Speck in the Sky
A thin ribbon of light lay diagonally across Phillip’s facial disk. He blinked one eye open. Morning, he thought miserably. Owls were supposed to go to sleep in the morning and rise at night. “Everything’s turned frinking upside down,” he muttered to himself. Nyroc was still sleeping peacefully in his corner. No sense waking him up until he had a peek outside. He walked over to the opening of the den and poked his head out. “Ooph!” he exclaimed, clamping his eyes shut. The sunlight splintered blindingly across a thin blanket of white snow. He dared to open his eyes in a half squint and look up to see if there was any sign of the posse. He searched the sky for several minutes, flipping his head this way and that. It was a beautiful day—if one was a day kind of creature. Very little wind. The sky was a brilliant flawless blue and there was no sign whatsoever of the posse. Time to wake up Nyroc. Except for the unfortunate fact that it was daylight, the conditions were perfect for flying.
“Nyroc! Nyroc! Time to go.” He gave his friend a shake. “Come on, we have to make time while we can in the day. I don’t think they will be flying.”
Then as the two birds made their way to the edge of the den, Phillip suddenly remembered something. “Hold it!” He slammed Nyroc back with one wing just before he had stepped into the fresh snow.
“What’s the matter?”
“We can’t take off from out there. We’ll leave talon prints in the snow. Stryker will find them. We’ll have to do a dry takeoff.”
“I’ve never done one,” Nyroc said.
“Don’t worry. They’re easy. We’ll practice in here.”
“In here?” Nyroc looked around the confines of the den.
A dry takeoff was one from the ground when there was no perch—branch, rock, or limb—available, and very little room to spread one’s wings in the normal way.
“All right, Nyroc, now watch me.” With a great whoosh, Phillip lifted his wings straight up into a sharp V shape. Then he slashed downward in a power stroke. Instantly, he was aloft. He flew out of the den and then back in. “Now you try it.”
It took Nyroc just a few times before he mastered it.
“Now here’s the next thing,” Phillip said.
“Next? What do you mean? I did it perfectly that time. Let’s just go.”
“Look down. There are talon marks all over the floor of this den. If Stryker came in here he would find them. See that pile of lichen over there? You take part of it and I’ll take part and we’ll sweep the marks away.”
It did not take them long to erase the signs of their presence in the fox’s den. Nyroc’s dry takeoff was flawless, and together the birds rose higher and higher out of the canyon.
It was a lovely day for flying, even for dedicated night fliers. There was the extra shimmer of excitement as they flew past a cliff line with crows and saw twenty or more of them nod their heads in a silent salute.
“How about that!” Phillip shouted, and slid in next to Nyroc. “Slam four!” and the two birds touched their four talons from their adjacent legs midflight.
They had been flying for some time when the clouds began to roll in behind them, smudging the perfect blueness of the sky. But ahead it was still clear. They were holding a north-northeast course so as to avoid the Shredders of the Shadow Forest. It was a course toward Silverveil but first they would have to cut through The Barrens. Nyroc had wanted desperately to go to Silverveil. If he was going to see trees for the first time in his life, he wanted to see the most beautiful trees of all and that was where they grew. Phillip wanted to return because he wanted to see how much had grown back in The Brooklets since the fire.
They kept a keen lookout in case Nyra and her troops had followed them into the daylight, but so far they had seen nothing. They stopped to hunt a couple of times. They were very careful not to leave tracks of any kind—either pellets or talon marks. Nyroc now swiveled his head back toward the clouds that rolled in thicker and thicker behind him. Weather coming in—snow or rain, he guessed, this time of year. He noticed something dark in the cloud but it was just a speck. But as soon as he swiveled his head back to face forward he felt a funny little ping in his gizzard. This time, he flipped his head all the way back and cranked the muscles in his facial disk to orient his ear slits toward any sound that might come from that speck of darkness. He heard a rhythmic wuff wuff wuff…so soft, no other creature except a Barn Owl could have ever detected it.
“Phillip! We’re being followed!”
“No!” Phillip flipped his head back and then gasped. “You’re right. What should we do?”
“Split up for now,” Nyroc said, surprised at the certainty in his own voice. “It’ll be harder for them to follow both of us.”
“But where should we meet? I sort of know this territory, but you don’t know it at all.”
Nyroc thought a moment, then said, “We’ll circle back. They won’t expect us to do that. We’ll meet back at the fox’s den tonight.”
Phillip had to admit it was a good idea. The overhanging ledges of the canyon gave them some protection from being seen. No owl would expect another owl to dive into a deep box canyon that was full of rattlesnakes.
“All right, let’s go.”
And so the two young owls peeled away from each other in opposite directions.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Pieces of Me!
Nyroc peeked out of the fox’s den to scan the sky for a sign of Phillip. He had arrived a good time before and had expected Phillip by now. But there was not a speck in the sky. Well, he supposed he should consider this lucky. There was no sign of Phillip—then again, no sign of the posse. But what if the posse had caught Phillip? That was a scary thought. Nyroc turned to walk deeper into the shadows of the den. He yarped a pellet, picked it up, and walked farther into the den to scratch out a place to bury it.
As he was digging with his talons, he felt something odd drop from his tail. He whe
eled around and saw a feather, one of his undertail coverts, lying on the ground. “Great Glaux! What’s happening to me?” He stared in a mixture of dismay and horror. Another smaller covert slipped lazily to the ground. He began to tremble uncontrollably and moan. His gizzard shuddered and grew squishy.
“What in Glaux’s name is going on in here?” Phillip said as he flew into the den.
“Phillip! I’m so glad you’re here.”
“What is wrong?”
Nyroc straightened up and tried to look brave. He gulped and then blinked several times. “Phillip, I hate to tell you this but…but I think I am dying.”
“Dying? What are you talking about? You look perfectly healthy to me.”
Nyroc nodded toward his feet and then bent down and picked up one of the feathers. “How do you explain this, Phillip?”
“Explain it? What’s to explain? You’re molting, that’s all.”
“Molting?”
Phillip sighed deeply. “Hasn’t that idiot mother of yours told you about molting?”
“No.”
“First of all, it’s natural.”
“You mean I’m not ill? I’m not going to die?”
“Not from molting. Sorry to disappoint you. Molting is a sign of maturity. When you were a very young hatchling, your first fluffy down fell off and you were pretty unsightly. We had a First Molting ceremony, don’t you remember?”
“Maybe I kind of remember. But what’s this?” Nyroc waved the feather in front of Phillip. “This isn’t down. This is an important flight feather. An undertail covert. Lose too many of those and how will I rudder, or make a decent turn?”
“When feathers get old and worn you shed them. Another feather will be coming in a short time.”
“When?”
“Don’t be so impatient, Nyroc.”
“I wouldn’t be if I weren’t being chased by my own mum, her best tracker, and her fiercest lieutenants. I need all the feathers I have.”
“It’ll be a few days.” Phillip paused and a worried shadow fell across his eyes.
“What is it?” Nyroc was quick to detect even the subtlest emotions in his friend.
“We’re going to have to bury these feathers like we buried the pellets. We don’t want them able to track us through your feathers.”
“Oh, Glaux! I never thought of that.” Nyroc began trembling all over again.
“Let me check you to see if any others are missing.”
Phillip crowded close to Nyroc and with the special edge on his middle talon began combing through the feathers. He had been Nyroc’s chief preener since the young owl had hatched. Preening was one of the most pleasant social interactions an owl could have. As he picked through the feathers, he was careful to examine for any ruptured shafts where feathers might have broken away. He could feel Nyroc begin to shake once again with fear. “Find anything?” Nyroc asked desperately.
“Pull yourself together, for Glaux’s sake. No, I haven’t found anything.”
“ ‘Pull yourself together,’ you say. Easy for you! You’re not falling apart. Pieces of me could be strewn all over the canyonlands—like flares guiding them to us.”
“If there was ever a time not to fall apart it is now, Nyroc,” Phillip shreed at him. “You dragged me out here to find the truth about the Pure Ones and Ga’Hoole. And to do that we must escape from the Pure Ones. You are more than just your feathers. It was not feathers that spoke to those crows. It was not feathers that figured out how to bargain with them and get a free passage. You are brains and you are gizzard. Oh, yes. You made a fine thronken display with your wings, but that was nothing compared to the gallgrot in your gizzard. So don’t let me hear you going on about falling apart.”
Nyroc nodded. He was so ashamed. Phillip was right. If molting was a natural thing, why should he fear it? He and Phillip simply had to get out of the canyonlands. He had to survive. He wanted the truth and more—he wanted to see a tree, to know the color green, and to maybe even meet his uncle Soren someday. Indeed, the more he thought about his uncle, the more intrigued he became. And when he reflected on what had been revealed to him in the flames of Gwyndor’s fires, his uncle Soren seemed a most extraordinary owl and he longed to know him.
They had just settled in to eat a vole that they had discovered deep in the den. Nyroc had pounced on it and was about to bite off its head.
“Let it go!” Phillip suddenly blurted out.
“Let it go? Are you yoicks?” Nyroc had the fat little fellow gripped in his talons.
“Let it go! They’re back. We don’t want a vole’s blood to give us away.”
Nyroc immediately dropped the vole, which scampered away. He crept up next to Phillip and peered out the small opening of the den.
“Great Glaux, they’re lighting down on the canyon floor! How did they ever find us?”
“I don’t know,” Phillip replied grimly.
“We’re trapped.”
“Maybe not.”
“What do you mean?”
“Remember, Nyroc, I told you that these dens are deep. Sometimes there’s a back way out. Let’s go!” Phillip led the way. He flipped his head back as they hopped around the first bend in the den. “If you drop any feathers, pick them up.”
They walked for a very long time in very close quarters. Nyroc had taken the lead. They both felt it was better that Phillip follow in case the young owl molted a feather or two along the way. Phillip had taken some old nesting material from the fox’s birthing bed and was dragging it behind him to cover their tracks. He knew Stryker was a decent tracker. But was he good enough to find them in a fox’s den in a box canyon after they had split up and been so careful circling back?
“Hey, it’s getting wider,” Nyroc called back. “I can almost spread my wings.”
“That’s good.” Phillip was sick of dragging this brushy stuff behind him. The passageway was damp and smelled of dead animals and the scat of creatures he didn’t even want to think about. The walls seemed to weep with water, and there was no moving air. It was not a bird kind of a place at all.
“I’m flying!” Nyroc called back a few seconds later.
The two birds flew through a twisting passageway barely wider than the span of their wings. It felt as if they were flying in an upward spiral within the canyon walls. They heard rats scurrying about and occasionally the darkness was slashed by the glowing red slits of their eyes. The owls were not tempted to hunt them, even though their stomachs were empty. Indeed, all they thought of was the task. They had become the task, and the task was to escape.
“I see some light ahead,” Nyroc called back.
It couldn’t be much, Phillip thought, for it was almost night. And then as if to answer him, Nyroc called out, “It’s a star.”
They both blasted out from the close, damp, fetid air of the den into the velvety blackness of the night.
“It’s Nevermoves,” Phillip said. “The star that never moves. We must be flying north if we are heading toward that star.”
“Aren’t the Shredders to the north?” Nyroc asked.
“Yes, but don’t worry. We’ll change course before we get there. We’ll cut into The Barrens. Lots of Burrowing Owls there, plenty of ground holes for cover.”
“Dens again!” muttered Nyroc. But he knew he shouldn’t complain. He quickly looked back to see if he was trailing any feathers. “Oh, Glaux! It’s the posse! They’re coming!” Nyroc shreed.
“How did they find us?” Phillip said. “All right. Spiral down,” Phillip yelled.
“Down there?” Nyroc gasped in amazement. Below them were The Needles, sharp and stabbing at the sky. Were they even flyable? They looked so tightly packed together it was hard to imagine any space between them to light down. They were not, however, going to light down.
“This is going to be the fanciest flying you’ve ever done,” Phillip said.
The Needles were meant to be flown over, not between, but that was exactly what the two owls were doing
in hopes of confounding and losing the owls who were chasing them. Phillip and Nyroc made quick wing shifts, minute adjustments of flight feathers as they threaded their way at top speed between the rocky spires.
It would be easy to get lost within The Needles’ tangled maze of stone and easy to clip all the plummels off the leading edge of one’s primaries. Nyroc’s muscles began to ache fiercely. He noticed that Phillip had fallen behind him for the first time. Nyroc felt every feather shaft as he had never felt them before. The tiny adjustments he had to make to his primaries, to his greater wing coverts, to his tail coverts were difficult and exhausting. But he must keep flying. Glaux, even my talons hurt!
What was that ahead? Nyroc blinked. There was something projecting from The Needles directly in front of him. Glaux bless, it was a sliver of rock. He settled down upon it. A moment later, Phillip joined him.
“I don’t think I could have kept going,” Phillip said.
“Do you think we’ve lost them?” Nyroc gasped.
“I don’t know. Maybe. Press in as close as you can. The moon is almost full shine and we could cast shadows.”
“Look, it’s starting to snow again.” Nyroc nodded toward some great roiling gusts of snow.
“Yeah. The Shredders are just where you see those gusts. They toss the snow into whirlpools.”
Nyroc saw. It was frightening. He had never seen wind like this. It not only disturbed the snow, but the very blackness of the sky and the light of the moon looked to Nyroc as if they were swirling violently.
Phillip was looking up. He spoke quietly. “They’ve found us!”
Nyroc felt his gizzard drop to his talons. “No.”
“Yes, but they can’t figure out how to get at us.”
“How long will we be safe here?”
“Not long.”
“Why not?”
“Because there is only one tracker in the entire owl universe who can find his way in here. Doc Finebeak.” Phillip paused. “And he’s flying with them.”
Nyroc looked up and saw an immense Snowy Owl circling overhead, and between his two wings in the middle of his back another feather rose, long and black.