“Now, I want you young’uns to stay out of the way. We’ve got some wounded owls coming in and I have to arrange for their care.” They were flying up through the branches, following the Short-eared Owl to the hollow that would be theirs.
“Matron, we’re going to need moss and down. Search-and-rescue’s coming in with two more little ones. Nest decimation.” Another Short-eared Owl flew by with a wad of something fluffy in her talons.
“Oh, no! Poor little things.”
“Nest decimation. What’s that?” Soren asked.
“Accidental destruction of nests.” A young Spotted Owl flew up as they landed on a branch midway up the tree.
“Otulissa, thank goodness. Can you show these new arrivals to that hollow we cleaned out yesterday?”
“Certainly, Matron.”
“And see if Cook has any tea or cakes left over. They look half starved.”
“Certainly.”
The Spotted Owl named Otulissa showed them to their hollow. “What is going on here?” Twilight asked her.
“Oh, there’ve been some skirmishes up in the borderlands, nothing too serious.”
“Is it St. Aggie’s?” Soren asked. “We know all about St. Aggie’s. Gylfie and I escaped.” Otulissa blinked.
“And we killed their top two lieutenants when they came after Digger here. So we’re ready to fight,” Twilight added. The Spotted Owl blinked again. “I mean, we’re in the right place, aren’t we? The Great Ga’Hoole Tree?” Twilight had stepped closer to the owl to ask his question.
“Where each night the order of knightly owls rises to perform noble deeds,” Soren offered in a softer voice. An uncertain feeling that was not quite a doubt, yet not a real belief, began to stir in Soren’s gizzard. “This is the place?” his voice quavered.
“Of course it’s the place,” the Spotted Owl replied.
“Then get us some battle claws—we’re ready!” Twilight stomped one talon impatiently.
“You’re ready!” Otulissa gasped. “You think just because you escaped and killed two rattlebrained owls, you’re ready?”
“And the bobcat,” Soren said.
“And the crows,” Digger piped up. “Well, not exactly killed them, but drove them off.”
Gylfie was very still, however. She had said nothing. But now the Elf Owl stepped forward. “Are you trying to tell us we are not ready…that…that it takes more?”
“Indeed. There is nothing that noble about slaughtering two bad owls in the desert.” The Spotted Owl rose up to her full height and looked down her beak at Gylfie. In a very haughty voice she said, “You have not been tempered by battle yet. Nor do you know the first thing about strategy. You probably don’t even know how to fly with battle claws. I have been here much longer than you and still have not yet become a member of a chaw.”
“What’s a chaw?” Soren said.
“You are selected to join a chaw—a small team of owls—and you will learn a skill that is helpful.”
“In battle?” Twilight asked.
“Not just battle—in life. There is more to life than just battles. Each chaw has its own, oh, how should I put it? Personality. Navigation chaw tends to have a kind of elegance, they are all superb flyers, as are the members of search-and-rescue, but they, of course, are less refined. Weather interpretation and colliering are decidely rough and uncouth. But,” and the Spotted Owl fixed a very intense gaze on Twilight, “they are all fiercely brave and can fight or fly to the death!”
Twilight seemed to swell in anticipation, but Soren almost shrank with fear. Would he be up to it? He had to be. With his friends, he could. Look what they had accomplished so far! “Do we all get to be in the same chaw?” Soren asked.
“Probably not.”
“But we’re a band.” Soren hoped that he did not sound as if he were pleading.
“That doesn’t matter now. You’re part of a larger band. I have to go.”
“Duty calls, I suppose,” Gylfie said with a slight edge in her voice.
“I suppose it does.” Otulissa again looked down at the Elf Owl, then she left the hollow. Soren thought Gylfie was going to spit at her.
“I don’t like her one bit,” Twilight said.
“Me, neither. Did you see how she looked at me? She might think she’s all hoity-toity and very refined, but I bet she makes tasteless stature jokes all the time.” Gylfie was very sensitive, like many Elf Owls, about remarks concerning size and shortness. Her grandmother had been a founder of SOS—the Small Owl Society—whose purpose was to prevent cruel and tasteless remarks about size.
“Make way! Make way!” Just outside their hollow, they saw two burly Great Horned Owls flying by, carrying a hammock with another owl collapsed on it. The wounded owl’s helmet was askew and one wing drooped off the edge of the hammock at an odd angle.
Then, through the walls of the hollow, Soren thought he heard the mewling sound of a young crying owl and another voice saying, “There, there.” Soren crept out of an opening leading into an inner passageway that wound through the trunk. There were many of these passageways and it seemed to Soren that one might get hopelessly lost. But he began to follow the sound. Soon, he came to another hollow. Like most, this hollow had both an inside and an outside entrance so that one could either fly in or walk in from one of the many inner pathways through the trunk of the tree. He peeked in. He saw the Short-eared Owl called Matron who had led them to their own hollow. She was bustling about, plucking down from her own breast and tucking it in around an owl. “Now, now, dear, we know you did your best.”
“But what will Mum and Da think?” For a moment Soren’s gizzard gave a lurch. Could this little owl be Eglantine?
“They will think that you were a brave little Pygmy Owl,” Matron replied.
Soren sighed.
“What are you doing out there? Just don’t stand around, come in and make yourself useful,” Matron called. Soren came slowly into the hollow. The little owl was nearly as small as Gylfie; she was very fluffy, although she smelled of soot and some of her feathers were singed. “Now what did you say your name was, dear?” Matron bent over the Pygmy Owl.
“Primrose.”
“Yes. Primrose here lost her nest.”
“The whole tree,” gulped the little owl.
“Yes, indeed. See, her parents had gone off to fight in the borderlands skirmishes, and they had left her all safe and sound.”
“I was supposed to be sitting the two new eggs. Mum was really only off hunting, not fighting. She was going to be right back.”
“What happened?” Soren asked.
“A fire—forest fire. I didn’t think it would reach our tree and when it did, well, I tried to save one of the eggs. But you know, I haven’t been flying that long and, well, I just…” Here, she began to sob uncontrollably.
A bunchy Barred Owl poked her head in. “Any tea here?”
“Oh, yes, I think a cup of milkberry tea would be lovely.”
“I dropped the egg. I don’t deserve to live.” Primrose emitted a long sound halfway between a whistle and a wail.
“Don’t say that!” Soren exclaimed. “Of course you deserve to live. Every owl deserves to live. That’s why we came here.”
Matron stopped what she was doing and cocked her head and regarded the young Barn Owl. Perhaps he was learning; just perhaps he was beginning to catch a glimmer of the true meaning of a noble deed. She would leave him to comfort this little Pygmy Owl and send in an extra cup of tea and some milkberry tart.
Soren stayed with Primrose for the rest of the evening. She was sometimes a bit feverish and would begin to mumble about the little brother she was sure she had killed. She had wanted to call him Osgood. Other times, she was quite lucid and would blink and say to Soren, “But what about Mum? What about Da? What will they think when they come home and find our forest burned, our tree gone? Will they look for me?”
And Soren simply did not know how to answer her, for, indeed, he had asked himself the
same question so many times. Near daybreak, Primrose was sound asleep and Soren decided to make his way back to his own hollow. He meandered through the central hollow of the tree and more than once took a wrong turn that led down another passageway. While wandering down a particularly twisty one, he met up with an elderly Spotted Owl.
“Ah, one of the new arrivals, part of that band that flew in from the Ice Narrows,” she hooted softly.
“Yes, well, we don’t come from the Narrows. We were blown off course. We’d left from The Beaks but somehow…”
“Oh, dear…Yes, The Beaks, only for the strongest gizzards.”
Soren blinked. Now what did she mean by that?
“I’m Strix Struma, here. Perhaps you need to sharpen your navigational skills. I am the navigation ryb. It’s getting to be First Light, so I suggest you hasten to your hollow. And if you are very quiet, you shall hear the music of Madame Plonk’s harp. It is lovely to go to sleep to and she has a fine voice.”
“What’s a harp? What’s music?” Soren asked. He remembered the awful songs of St. Aggie’s. Surely this must be different.
“Oh, dear. It’s hard to explain. Listen and you’ll begin to know.”
When he got back to his hollow, they were all having cups of milkberry tea. “It’s amazing, Soren,” Gylfie said. “Nest-maid snakes brought the tea around on their backs.”
“Yes, I really think there will be a place for me here, Soren. I think I can serve.” Mrs. P. almost glowed as she said the word.
Everyone seemed quite content except for Twilight. “I didn’t kill those two fiends of St. Aggie’s, I didn’t battle crows and tear out the throat of a bobcat to sit on my tail feathers and be served tea.” Twilight seemed to swell to twice his size.
“Well, what can you do, Twilight?” Gylfie said.
“I think we have to have a word with the head owls—Boron and Barran. I don’t think they know what real evil is. This border skirmish up there that they are talking about—it has nothing to do with St. Aggie’s. You heard what little Miss Stuck-up Spotted Owl said. I don’t think they know what they’re in for. But we do!” He slid his yellow eyes about the hollow. “Right?”
“You mean the ‘You only wish’?” Digger whispered the words of the dying Barred Owl. They had never really spoken about the meaning of those words, but they knew that the Barred Owl had meant, in no uncertain terms, that there was something out there that was far worse than St. Aggie’s.
“Yes,” Soren said hesitantly. “Maybe we should go talk to the king and queen. But not now. It’s daylight. Time to sleep.”
The hollow was lined with the finest mosses and the fluffiest down. Soren made his way to a corner near the opening to watch the breaking dawn. The very last of the evening stars was just winking out and a lovely pink-ness began to spread in the sky. The immense gnarled limbs of the Great Ga’Hoole Tree stretched out and seemed to embrace the new day.
“This down,” Soren whispered to Mrs. Plithiver, “reminds me of Mum.”
“Oh, doesn’t it, dear!” said Mrs. Plithiver, arranging herself into a neat coil in the same corner. Then, as the owls nestled down, the loveliest, most unearthly sounds began to pling softly through the Great Ga’Hoole Tree, and a voice began to sing.
Night is done, gone the moon, gone the stars
From the skies.
Fades the black of the night
Comes the morn with rosy light.
Fold your wings, go to sleep,
Rest your gizzards,
Safe you’ll be for the day.
Glaux is nigh.
Far away is First Black,
But it shall seep back
Over field
Over flower
In the twilight hour.
We are home in our tree.
We are owls, we are free.
As we go, this we know
Glaux is nigh.
Soren never remembered feeling so peaceful.
“Digger, Soren, Gylf, you asleep?” Twilight called.
“Almost, Twi,” Digger and Soren replied.
“How soon do you think until we get our battle claws?”
“I have no idea, Twilight. But don’t worry, good light,” Soren replied sleepily.
“Good light, Twi,” Digger said.
“Good light, Soren,” Gylfie said.
“Good light, Gylf,” Soren replied. And then added. “Good light, Mrs. Plithiver.”
But Mrs. Plithiver was already sound asleep.
CHAPTER NINE
A Parliament of Owls
The four owls were in the antechamber of another hollow called the parliament. They were waiting to be admitted for their meeting with Boron and Barran.
“Very important business inside, young’uns,” an owl on guard spoke in the soft tings of a Boreal Owl.
“We won’t take long,” Gylfie said.
I hope not, thought Soren. He was frightened. The other three had decided that he should be the one to speak.
Another owl stuck her head out. “You can come in now. But be quiet and wait your turn.”
She indicated a branch where they should perch. Soren looked about. It was not an especially large hollow, not nearly as big as the one in which they had first been welcomed by Boron and Barran. There were candles, of course, and there was one long white branch from a tree that Soren thought was called a birch that had been bent into a half circle. It was on this white branch that the owls of the parliament, no more than a dozen, perched. He recognized the elderly Strix Struma, the Spotted Owl he had met the night before. She perched next to a Great Horned Owl of an unusual ruddy color with even more unusual very black talons. Then there was an ancient and decrepit Whiskered Screech, who appeared to have the worst case of feather fletch Soren had ever seen. Not that he had seen all that many. The Whiskered Screech had a long bristly beard. One of his eyes seemed stuck in a perpetual squint, and his beak had a notch in it.
“I’ve never seen a more disreputable-looking owl,” Gyl-fie whispered. “Great Glaux, look at his foot! His talons!” She paused. “Or lack of!” The Whiskered Screech, indeed, had only three talons on one foot. And just as Soren was blinking in a mixture of astonishment and horror, the old owl swung his head about and fixed Soren in his squinted gaze. Soren thought his gizzard was going to drop right out of him.
“So, Elvanryb,” Boron turned and addressed another owl, a Great Gray. “It is your notion that we need to have a search-and-rescue attachment chaw on the colliering missions?”
“Not all, Boron. I think they are only necessary when we are in areas near battle zones. So often the parents are off fighting. In normal circumstances, the parents are there if a fire breaks out, but tonight, for instance, we had to pick up that little Pygmy and a Northern Saw-whet. We got them back, but it taxed our chaw, believe me—carrying coals and injured owlets. Can’t exactly drop them in the coal bucket. And I don’t even like to think of the ones we might have missed and left behind.”
The old Whiskered Screech raised his deformed foot.
“Yes, Ezylryb?” Boron nodded to the owl.
“Question for Bubo.” the Whiskered Screech’s voice was a low growl. “You think this fire was natural or more trouble with the rogue raids?”
“No telling, sir. The rogues make good targets, and it wouldn’t be the first time raiding one caused a fire.”
“Hmmm,” the Whiskered Screech replied, and then scratched his head with the second of the three remaining talons of one foot.
“Next order of business,” Boron said. “Something about starvation in Ambala?”
Ambala! Soren and Gylfie looked at each other. Ambala was where their friend the great Hortense came from. When they first had met Hortense at St. Aggie’s, they thought she was the most perfectly moon-blinked creature ever. Moon blinking was perhaps the cruelest thing that St. Aggie’s did to young owls. By forcing them to sleep during the full shines of the moon, directly exposing their heads to the moon’s light, they destroye
d the will, the very personalities of individual owls and made them perfectly obedient with no thoughts of their own. Soren and Gylfie had devised a plan for fooling the sleep monitors and escaping the full shine. It turned out so had Hortense. She, in fact, was an infiltrator and had been sneaking out the eggs that St. Aggie’s patrols had been snatching. Unfortunately, however, she was caught and killed. Still, they had heard that Hortense had become a legend in Ambala because of her heroic deeds.
“Yes,” another owl was speaking now. “The egg production is down, and it is thought to be caused by a blight on the rodent population. Simply not enough food.” Soren and Gylfie exchanged looks. It was not just the rodent population. It was the St. Aggie’s egg snatchers. This was information they could offer. This might convince Boron and Barran that they really knew something.
“We’ll look into it,” Boron said. “And now, I believe some of our new arrivals have requested to speak with us.” He turned and blinked at the four young owls.
Speak with us! What was he talking about? Soren was not prepared to talk in front of all these owls.
“Now who wants to go first?”
Twilight, Digger, and Gylfie all looked at Soren.
“Up here, young’un.” There was a perch in the middle of the half circle to which Boron nodded.