“Well, don’t worry, Digger, it’s not your problem.”
“But it is.”
“No, it’s not, Digger. You worry too much. You just need to worry about yourself. Not me. That’s not your job.”
“It’s not a job, Soren,” Digger said with a slight edge in his voice. “It is what I am.”
“Now what do you mean by that?”
“Well, you might think I’m only a Burrowing Owl, you know, perfect for tracking with my long strong legs, but I am more than just this bunch of feathers and bare legs. I can’t explain it. I just feel things. And right now I am feeling very sorry, very bad for you.”
Soren blinked. He thought about what Digger had just said. It made him think of his conversation with Bubo, who had, in a sense, said the same thing. When he asked Bubo why he lived in a cave, he said that he was not simply a Great Horned Owl. In other words, Bubo, like Digger, was not just a bunch of feathers on a pair of legs, weak or strong, with a pair of wings. He was something more, and it was this that had drawn him to a cave in the earth to live, closer to the metals he knew and worked with. Maybe this was what Bubo had meant when he told Soren to be all he could be. Maybe it had something to do with an owl’s true nature that went beyond his or her species as a Barn Owl or a Burrowing Owl. Soren’s head swirled with these confusing thoughts.
Then Digger asked a truly astounding question. “Soren, what do you think it means to be an owl?”
“I don’t know. I mean, I’m not sure what you mean.”
“I’m not sure, either,” Digger said. “But it’s just as if it is so easy to describe us. You know, there are so many things that we have that are different from other birds, but do you really think that is the meaning of being an owl? Just because our heads can spin nearly all the way around, that we can see what other birds cannot at night, that we fly slow and silent—is it just these differences that make us owls?”
“Digger, why do you ask these questions? They’re impossible to answer.”
“Maybe that’s why I ask them—because they are impossible to answer. It’s kind of exciting. It means that there can be unexpected truths and meanings to why we are what we are. You see—that is why I know I am much more than strong legs and weak wings. And you are, too, Soren—you are more than your lovely white face and your sharp ears that can hear anything and your strange black eyes.”
Digger was a curious owl. There was certainly no doubt about it. Soren looked out the opening into the last of the morning as it began to blare into the lightness of midday. If, indeed, what Digger said was true—that there were unexpected truths and meanings to be found, Soren wondered what that might mean for him. He looked at his friends sleeping peacefully now: Twilight, huge, a luminous silvery gray in the morning light; Gylfie, like a little dusty smudge not much longer than one of Twilight’s talons; and Digger, his peculiar, featherless legs, long and sinewy, his stubby tail, and his rather flattish head.
Soren remembered when, in anticipation of going to the Great Ga’Hoole Tree, he and Gylfie imagined it as just the opposite of St. Aggie’s, but it was really much more. And maybe he could become more, too. The beak-shaped opening in the hollow flared white in the noonday sun as Soren finally fell asleep.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The Voices in the Roots
Psst…pssst,” something hissed in Soren’s ear. “Gylfie, what are you doing up at this hour? It’s broad daylight. Are you yoicks?”
“Not at all.” Soren could see that Gylfie was practically hopping up and down with excitement. “Soren, there’s a very important meeting going on in the parliament hollow.”
“So?”
“Soren, I think they are talking about the Barred Owl and”—Gylfie gulped and shut her eyes tight—“and…and…” Gylfie was seldom at a loss for words. “The ‘you only wish.’”
Soren was suddenly fully awake. “You’re kidding.”
“I wouldn’t kid about something like this, Soren, and you know it.”
“How do you know this? I mean, how did you find out? Were you in the meeting?”
Gylfie blinked and looked down at her tiny talons in embarrassment. “Look, I know it’s not nice to eavesdrop, but I couldn’t sleep and you know how Cook always says come down to the kitchen if we can’t sleep and she’ll make us a nice cup of milkberry tea. So I went down, and on my way back I just thought I’d take a different route, so I followed one of those deep inner passageways that is very winding and pretty narrow, and it actually started to go down instead of up toward the sleeping hollows. There’s a spot where something happens to the timber of the Great Ga’Hoole Tree. It is very thin, and I could hear voices, and then I found this perfect slot that is just Elf Owl size.”
“Do they have one just Barn Owl size?” Soren interrupted.
“Maybe. There’s an even better one my size higher up, but I would need a perch.”
“At your service, Gylf!” Twilight was suddenly awake. “What a team we’ll make. On the shoulders of giants, the little Elf will bring back the word!”
“Twilight, puhleeze!” Soren said.
“Why not? Makes perfect sense.”
“Well, I might not be a giant like you, but I can hear better than any of you. I’m going, too. So count me in,” said Soren.
“Me, too.” Digger was stretching his legs and seemed at least half awake.
“Do you even know what we’re talking about?” Gylfie turned to the Burrowing Owl.
“No, but we’re a band, remember? Nobody gets left out. Fill me in on the way to whatever we’re doing.”
And so the band of four, as quietly as possible, moved out of their hollow with Gylfie in the lead. They left by the sky opening and flew a quarter way down the tree, where they entered a very small opening that Gylfie had discovered, which twisted and turned, pitched and curled through the huge trunk of the tree, until they had wound around to the back side of the Parliament hollow and found themselves actually slightly beneath that hollow, in the root structure of the tree. It was not that the walls were thin, Soren soon realized. It was rather that the roots of the Great Ga’Hoole Tree were transmitting the sounds.
Gylfie hopped on Twilight’s shoulders and Soren pressed one ear to a root, as did Digger.
“And so you say, Bubo, that no trace of the dear Barred Owl was found? Our noble servant perished in the region of The Beaks?”
The four eavesdropping owls blinked and suppressed gasps of astonishment. It had to be the same owl. It just had to. Soren pressed his ear closer.
“Not rightly sure if he exactly perished, Boron. I mean he mightn’t be dead. He might just be captured.”
“By St. Aggie’s patrols or…” Now all four owls strained to hear, but they could not make out what Boron had said. Indeed, it seemed as if there was a little hole in the conversation, as if a word had dropped out, perhaps a word too awful to say. Soren wasn’t sure. But he felt a chill run through him.
“Either way it’s a bad piece of work.” It was Ezylryb’s voice. Soren could tell.
“We done lost one of our best slipgizzles and a darned fine smith as well, one of the best of the rogues.” Bubo was speaking again.
What is a slipgizzle? Digger mouthed the words. Soren shrugged. He had never heard the word before. He might have heard the word “rogue” but he wasn’t sure what that meant, either.
“Without a reliable slipgizzle,” now Barran was speaking, “it’s going to make it very difficult to get any information about their activities in The Beaks.”
“It was a very strategic spot where he set up his forge.”
So that was it! thought Soren. That cave that, as Digger had said, not only held the spirit of the Barred Owl within its walls, sooty and scorched by countless fires, but also was his forge. He was a blacksmith, like Bubo. But he was also something else—a slipgizzle. Gradually, the four owls began to understand that a slipgizzle was some sort of owl who listened hard and found out things.
“That old Barred
had ears like a Barn Owl,” Boron was saying. “We got more information from him than three other slipgizzles put together. And, as you said, my dear, his forge in The Beaks was ideally situated near the four points area where Ambala, The Beaks, Kuneer, and Tyto almost touch. Couldn’t be better. Flew egg guard in Tyto, I hear. Trained up a bunch of young ones to go into Ambala when they were having the worst of their problems…Oh, my. Well, to the immediate business. We must not lose a moment in shoring up the four points region. We’re going to need to cultivate a new slipgizzle, of course, but in the meantime we’ll have to send out some egg patrols and a small reconnaissance team. Nothing too big. Don’t want to attract undue attention. I don’t need to tell you how dangerous it will be with the recent reports we’ve been getting. A lot of groundwork and, as you know, bobcats are numerous there.”
“I’ll go!” a voice said. Soren blinked. It was that old boring Ga’Hoology ryb.
“Count me in,” said Bubo.
“And me.” It was the voice of another owl that Soren didn’t recognize.
“I think that’s enough,” Boron spoke in a low voice. “Bubo, you sure about going?”
“‘Course I’m sure, sir. He was a smith.”
“Yes, Bubo, I know that, but you are our only smith. If we lose you…well, where would we be?”
“I ain’t going to get lost, sir. Ain’t going to get captured. Ain’t going to get eaten by a bobcat. You need me on this mission. I can see what happened in that cave. It takes a smith’s eye and a smith’s nose to figure something like this out. He couldn’t have just vanished into thin air, and I don’t believe the Barred could have been captured by St. Aggie’s or them others. But there’ll be clues.”
Them others? It was so maddening, Soren thought. Who were they? Who exactly was the “you only wish” Barred Owl?
“Well,” continued Boron, “that taken care of, I think the time has now come to honor our brother the Barred Owl, who had no name and elected never to live with us on this island in the middle of the sea, never to be embraced by the lovely ancient limbs of our Great Ga’Hoole Tree, but served as nobly in his own peculiar way as any Knight of Ga’Hoole. Let us raise a flagon of milkberry mead and think gentle thoughts of this brave and noble owl who made safer the hollows and nestlings of so many other owls in the Kingdoms of Ambala, Kuneer, and Tyto. Slipgizzle beyond compare, artisan of metals, courageous defender against the growing tides of evil, a Glaux-blessed owl. Hear! Hear!”
And with that, the parliament of owls was adjourned. An immense fluttering swelled up as they left. Soren, Gyl-fie, Twilight, and Digger looked at one another with tears in their eyes.
“And to think,” Digger said, “that we are the ones who found him.”
“But that’s just the problem,” said Gylfie. “What do we do now? Tell Boron and Barran that?”
“Then they’ll know we were eavesdropping,” Twilight said.
“Precisely,” Gylfie replied.
Soren began to speak slowly, “I think we shouldn’t say anything, at least not now. Nothing we will say will change their plans. They still need to send in a reconnaissance team or whatever they call it and find a new slipgizzle. Our knowing that the Barred Owl is dead and telling them really doesn’t change anything.”
“I think Soren’s right,” Gylfie spoke. “You know, eavesdropping like this…well…I have a feeling Boron would really be mad.”
“Definitely,” said Twilight.
So the four owls wound their way back to their hollow and slept until First Black.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Weather Chaw
A sliver of wet ice hit Soren’s face and woke him up abruptly. Outside the hollow, the wind shrieked and a gale raged.
“Great Glaux, it’s a mess out there,” Twilight muttered.
“It’s cold, too,” said Gylfie, her tiny body shivering.
“Hop under here,” Twilight said, and spread one of his enormous wings so that it touched the other side of the hollow and knocked Digger from his bed.
“Twilight!” Digger complained. “Watch it with that wing.”
“Gylf is cold.”
“I sure hope they will serve something hot for breakfast,” Gylfie said through her clattering beak.
“Me, too,” said Twilight.
The owls got up and crept from their hollow out onto a madly shaking branch and took off for the dining hollow. There was acorn porridge and steaming cups of milkberry tea, roasted tree slugs and braised mice. But as Soren headed for his place at Mrs. Plithiver’s, a voice scratched the air.
“Over here, boy. Weather chaw eats it raw with the hair on.” It was the unmistakable voice of Ezylryb.
“What?” Soren beaked the word in disbelief.
“You mean you haven’t heard?” Otulissa was suddenly beside him.
“Heard what?” Soren said, not sure if he really wanted to know.
“We’re having our first weather interpretation chaw tonight.”
“You have to be kidding, Otulissa. We aren’t going out in this gale.”
“Oh, but we are,” she said. “And I think it’s outrageous. I’m going to have a word with Strix Struma. I’ll go right up to Barran if I have to. This is reckless. This is endangering our lives.”
“Oh, hush up, dearie. Sit down and eat your mouse—and all the hair, mind you, and that goes for every one of you.” It was the fat old blind snake named Octavia, who had served as the weather chaw table for years. Unlike the other blind snakes whose scales were colors varying from rose to pink to a deep coral, Octavia was a pale greenish-blue. Soren sat next to Martin, the smart little Northern Saw-whet who had asked the question in colliering practice about the need for fresh coals. Indeed, Soren realized suddenly that there was more room at the table than he was accustomed to and as he looked about he knew it was because all of the young owls in the weather chaw seemed to have diminished in size. Their feathers were pulled, in tightly indications that the owls were very nervous about their first weather flight. When relaxed, an owl’s plumage is loose and fluffy. When angered, owls can puff up their feathers until they appear much, much larger. But now it was as if they had all become suddenly slim. The tension hovered in the air.
Ezylryb fixed the young owls in the amber light of his squinted eye. “Eat up, maties…every single little hair. You’ve forgotten what raw meat tastes like with the fur, as you call it. Poot here is my first mate. He’ll tell you what it’s like to fly with no ballast in your gizzard.”
“I remember that time before I had acquired the taste for hair and thought I could go through that hurricane. Last time I ever tried that. Nearly got caught in the rim of the eye, I did. Now, you don’t want to do that, young’uns.” Poot was a Boreal Owl like Soren and Gylfie’s old friend Grimble.
“What happens if you get caught in the rim of the eye of a hurricane?” asked Rudy.
“Oh, you spin around till you’re dead. Just around and around and around. Awful nasty way to go. Usually get your wings torn off in the process,” said Poot.
“Now, don’t go scaring them, Poot,” Octavia said and gave a ripple so that all their plates clattered a bit. “And please, young’uns, don’t try that trick of slipping the fur under the table. Remember, I am the table and it itches something fierce.”
It was not even dark yet, but the weather chaw owls were already on the takeoff limb. It was all they could do to hang on as the gale lashed about them and the limb bucked in the turbulent wind. Shards of ice flew through the air.
“We take off upwind, naturally.” Although Soren was not sure in this gale which way upwind even was. “We’re going to fly straight out over the Sea of Hoolemere. Try to find the main part of the gale.” Ezylryb spoke in short snappish sentences. “Now listen up. Here’s what you need to know about a gale, or any storm, really—except for hurricanes—they be a little different with their eyes and all. But what you got in a gale, or storm, is you got your gutter. That’s what we call the main trough where the wind
runs its punch through. It’s at the center. It not be like the eye in a hurricane. Not nearly so dangerous. Then on either side of the gutter you’ve got the scuppers. That’s where the edge of the winds from the gutters spills over. Then at the very outside edge of the scuppers you got your swillages—more about them later. I fly point. Poot flies what we call upwind scupper. You just follow behind. Do what you’re told. Any questions?”
Otulissa raised her talon. “Ezylryb, sir, with all due respect, I have to say that I am surprised that we are going out before it is completely dark. Isn’t there a very real danger that in this light we could be mobbed by crows?”
Ezylryb began to laugh and then said, “With all due respect, Otulissa, no one else is yoicks enough to be out on a day like this!”
Soren couldn’t help but laugh. But how could he be laughing when he was scared to death? Then again, how could he have been bored in colliering chaw when he was also scared? If this was being all one could be, as Bubo had told him, he certainly had a lot of confusing feelings.
And then, suddenly, with an enormous scream, the old Whiskered Screech Owl spread his wings and lifted into the ice-spun twilight.
They flew straight out over the Sea of Hoolemere. The storm was so fierce and the torrents of sleeting rain so thick they could barely see the water, but they did hear the crashing waves. Otulissa was flying near Soren.
“I have never heard of a ryb who used such poor judgment. This is so irresponsible. I am going to have to speak with Boron and Barran. I cannot believe that they would approve of this.”
Soren, meanwhile, could not believe that Otulissa could fly through this mess and still keep talking. It took all of his concentration just to fly. The winds seemed to come from every direction. They were constantly buffeted by confused drafts. Martin, the little Saw-whet, was a tumbling blur ahead of him. He had been instructed, as the smallest, to begin flying in Ezylryb’s wake for better control.