The only problem with the library was the old Whiskered Screech, Ezylryb. He was always there, and he was still as frightening as he had been that day when Soren first saw him in the parliament and felt his squinted eye burning into him. The old bird rarely spoke and when he did it was in a low, growlish hoot. He had a fondness for caterpillars and kept a store of dried ones for when they were out of season. These he put in a little pile by his desk in the library. It was not what Ezylryb did say that Soren and Gylfie found unnerving, it was what he didn’t. He seemed to quietly observe everything even as he read with his one and a half eyes. Every once in a while he emitted a low growl of what they could only feel was disapproval. But worst of all was his deformed foot. And although Soren and Gylfie knew it was impolite to stare, their eyes just seemed drawn to that foot. Soren admitted to Gylfie that he couldn’t help it, and Gylfie said that she herself was fearful of making a terrible slip.
“Remember when Matron came in the other day to serve tea and she asked me to take the cup to him and to ask if he wanted his usual with it—whatever that was. I was so afraid I was going to say something like, ‘Ezylryb, Matron would like to know if you’d like your tea with your usual fourth talon.’” Soren laughed but he knew exactly what Gylfie meant.
There were, however, too many compelling reasons to go to the library. So they went and learned to ignore his occasional growlish hoots, trying not to stare at his foot and trying to avoid the amber squint of his eye. The library was quite high in the great tree in a roomy hollow that was lined with books, and the floor was spread with lovely carpets woven of mosses, grasses, and occasional strands of down. When Soren and Gylfie entered, they spotted Ezyl-ryb in his usual spot. There was the pile of caterpillars. Every now and then he would pluck one and munch it. His beak was now poked into a book titled Magnetic Properties as They Occur Naturally and Unnaturally in Nature.
Soren made his way toward a shelf that had books about barns and churches for, indeed, once upon a time Barn Owls like himself had actually lived in such places and Soren enjoyed looking at the pictures and reading about them. Some of the churches were magnificent, with windows stained the colors of rainbows and stone spires that soared high into the sky. But Soren actually preferred the simpler little wooden churches, neatly painted, with something called steeples for their bells. Gylfie liked books with poems, funny riddles, and jokes. She went to see if a book she had discovered yesterday was still there, called Hooties, Cooties, and Nooties: A Book of Owl Humor with Recipes, Jokes, and Practical Advice. It was written by Philom-ena Bagwhistle, a well-known nest-maid snake who had spent many years in service.
But just as Gylfie was about to pull the book from the shelf there was a low growl. “You can do better than that, young one. One day with that Philomena Bagwhistle slop is quite ’nuff, I’dsay. Whyn’t try something a little weightier?”
“Like what?” Gylfie said in a small voice.
“Try that one over there.” Ezylryb raised his foot, the one with three talons, and pointed.
Soren froze. He could not take his eyes off the talons. Was it a deformity that he had been born with, as some said, or had it been snapped off in a mobbing by crows? The three talons raked the air as he pointed, and Soren and Gylfie’s feathers automatically drooped as owl feathers do when they find themselves in conditions of fear. The old owl now got up from his desk, lurched toward the shelf, and pulled the book off using only one talon. Gylfie’s and Soren’s eyes were riveted on the talon. “Look at the book, idiots, not my talons. Or, here, take a good look at the talons so you can get used to it.” And he shook the deformed foot in their faces. The two owls nearly fainted on the spot.
“We’re used to it,” Soren gasped.
“Good. Now read the book,” Ezylryb said.
Gylfie began sounding out the words, “ Tempers of the Gizzard: An Interpretative Physiology of This Vital Organ in Strigi-formes.”
“What are Strigiformes?” whispered Soren.
“Us,” Gylfie said softly. “That’s the fancy name for all owls, whether we’re Elf Owls or Barn Owls or…” Gylfie hesitated, “a Whiskered Screech.”
“Right-o. Now go on, the both of you. Try something harder. Read it together.” He fixed them in his amber squint. “And you can now quit wasting time thinking about my three talons. If you want to see it again you can.” He gave a little wave, and then with his odd gait made his way back to his desk, stopping on the way to poke the small fire in the grate.
Soren and Gylfie opened the book. Thank goodness there were lots of pictures but they had a go at the first paragraph.
The gizzard is a most marvelous organ. Considered the second stomach in owls and often called the muscular stomach, it filters out indigestible items such as bone, fur, hair, feathers, and teeth. The gizzard compresses the indigestible parts into a pellet. The pellets are yarped through the beak. [See footnote pertaining to identification of owl species through pellet analysis.]
“I think we can skip the footnotes,” Soren whispered, hoping that Ezylryb wouldn’t hear. “This is boring enough as it is.”
“Oh, I always skip the footnotes,” Gylfie said.
“How many books with footnotes have you read, Gyl-fie?” Soren blinked in surprise.
“One. It was about feather maintenance. But look.” Gylfie pointed with her talon to the next paragraph.
Volumes have been written about the physical processes of the gizzard. But rarely do we find much in the literature concerning the temper of this marvelous organ. This seems like a gross oversight. For do we not attribute all of our most profound feelings to the sensitivity of this muscular organ? How many times a day does an owl think, “Oh, I feel it in my gizzard?” When we feel a strong passion, or perhaps trust, or even distrust, this is our first reaction.
“Well, that’s the truth,” Soren said. “There’s not much new in that. Hardly original.”
“Hold on, Soren. Look what he says here.”
We do use our gizzards as our guide. Our gizzards, indeed, do often navigate us over treacherous emotional terrain. However, it is my considered opinion that the immature owl does not always know for certain his gizzardly instincts. Why do so many break the one rule their parents tell them never to break and try to fly too young, thus falling out of nests? Stubbornness. They have blocked out certain subtle signals their gizzards might be sending them…
Soren looked up and saw Ezylryb staring at them. “Why do you suppose he’s having us read this, Gylfie?”
“I think he’s trying to send us a message,” Gylfie replied.
“What? Don’t be stubborn? Open up your gizzard?”
“I don’t know, but it’s almost time for night flight exercises.”
They closed the book and then backed out of the library, making short little bobbing gestures to Ezylryb. “Very interesting,” Gylfie said. “Thank you for the suggestion.”
“Yes, thank you,” Soren said.
Ezylryb said nothing. He only coughed a ragged hoot and plucked another caterpillar from the pile.
“Great Glaux, I’ll just die if I get tapped for the weather interpretation chaw. I mean, can you imagine having Ezyl-ryb as your chaw leader? It’s just too creepy to even think about,” Soren said.
“You know if you get tapped for colliering, you automatically have to take weather interpretation and fly with that chaw as well,” Gylfie said.
“Well, who wants to get tapped for colliering and get their beaked singed, anyway?” Soren replied dejectedly.
“You didn’t get it singed when you picked up the coal that you dropped on that bobcat.”
“We were all picking them up when we were burying them.”
“Yeah, but you flew with yours!”
“That was pure dumb luck.”
“Maybe, but if you do it properly you never get singed, and that’s what Bubo helps teach. It would be great to have Bubo as a chaw leader.”
“Yeah, but if you get Ezylryb with him, I would hardly cal
l that a bargain. I think Bubo only helps. It’s that other old owl, Elvan, who is the leader of colliering. I still don’t see why you have to do weather with colliering.”
“Well, you have to fly into forest fires and pick up burning embers. And forest fires, they say, are like a weather system all by themselves. You have to know about the drafts and winds that the heat can cause. I heard Bubo talking about it the other day.”
Soren decided not to worry about it.
Just at that moment Digger came up. “Ready for night flight, Digger?” Soren asked.
“Yes. And I’ve really improved. Much stronger, that’s what Boron says. Wait until you see me.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Night Flight
The night flight was always fun. There was never any special purpose to it. It really was mostly recreational. Boron liked to get all the newly arrived owls together with some of the other young owls in the blackness of the sky so they could, as he put it, “Buddy up, tell a few jokes, yarp a few pellets, and hoot at the moon.”
“So, Twilight,” Boron began. “I’ve got one that you’ll like. Did you hear the story of the wet pooper who was flying over Hoolemere and hit a fish?”
Otulissa dropped back to where Soren was flying. “He’s just too much,” she muttered.
“Who’s too much?” Soren asked.
“Our king, Boron. He’s telling a wet poop joke. I think it’s undignified for one of his position.”
Soren sighed. “Give it a blow, Otulissa.” This was not the most polite way for an owl to say, “A little less serious, please.”
“Well, I sure hope he doesn’t head a chaw. I would find it most unpleasant. You know, tonight the tappings begin?”
“They do?”
“Yes, and I just have a feeling in my gizzard that I’m going to find ten nooties in my bedding down.”
Each chaw had symbolic objects that the leader left in a young owl’s bedding. Find ten nooties arranged in the pattern of the Great Glaux constellation when you went to sleep at First Light, and that meant you were in the navigation chaw of Strix Struma. A pellet was for the tracking chaw, a milkberry for the Ga’Hoology chaw. A molted feather was the symbol for the search-and-rescue chaw. A dried caterpillar was naturally for Ezylryb’s weather chaw. A piece of coal and a caterpillar meant that you had been picked for colliering and were by necessity in for double duty and required to fly with the weather chaw as well.
“Don’t you have any feelings, Soren?” Otulissa asked.
“I prefer not to discuss my gizzardly feelings,” he replied almost primly.
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. I’m just not comfortable doing it. You know I don’t mean to be rude, Otulissa, but for someone so well bred you push awfully hard.”
“Well, honestly.” Otulissa turned to Primrose, who was flying rather noisily due to her lack of plummels, the fringes at the edge of the flight feathers that helped owls fly in silence. Neither Pygmy nor Elf owls had such fringes. “What about you, Primrose? Any little twinges in the old gizzard?”
“Oh, I don’t know, Otulissa. One minute I think I’m a sure bet for search-and-rescue, which I’d love, and then the next, I think they’ll tap me for tracking, which I guess I wouldn’t mind. You know, I just don’t know. I mean, I think that’s part of the problem.”
“What do you mean—what problem?”
“My gizzard—it’s just so here, there, everywhere. I mean, when you said ‘old gizzard,’ I realized my gizzard isn’t so old, nor is yours for that matter, but you seem to know it better.”
“Oh, I know my gizzard.” Otulissa nodded smugly.
“Lucky you,” Primrose sighed.
Soren had been listening and blinked in wonderment at Primrose’s words. They were exactly what the author of the book had been talking about—the immature gizzard of an immature owl.
Soren cut behind Otulissa and came up on the windward side of Primrose. “Primrose, were you in the library reading that book about the physiology and the temper of owl gizzards?”
“Oh, great Glaux, no. I only read joke books and romances, for the most part, and never anything with any ‘ol-ogy’ in the title. Do you know that Madame Plonk has written a memoir about her love life? She’s had a lot of mates who died. The book is called My Fabulous Life and Times: An Anecdotal History of a Life Devoted to Love and Song. There’s a lot about music in it. I love Madame Plonk.”
“Who wants to read about that?” Twilight flew up. “Enough to make a person yarp, all that romantic stuff. I like reading about weapons, battle claws, war hammers.”
“Well,” said Otulissa, “I don’t especially like reading about weapons but I find Madame Plonk coarse and unrefined, and they say she’s got a touch of the magpie in her. Have you ever been to her ‘apartments,’ as she calls them?”
“Oh, yes,” Primrose made a rapturous little low hooting noise. “Aren’t they beautiful?”
“Oh, yes, beautiful with other creatures’ things—bits of crockery and teacups made out of something she calls porcelain. Now where would she get that stuff? Well, I think under all those snowy white feathers is a magpie in disguise—that’s what I think. And frankly, I find the apartment vulgar—rather like its occupant.”
Great Glaux, she’s obnoxious, Soren thought. Simply to change the subject, Soren decided to ask Otulissa how she came to the Great Ga’Hoole Tree.
“When did you come here, Otulissa?”
“It was during the time of the copper rose rain. I came from Ambala. You might have heard that Ambala suffered a great many egg snatchings because of St. Aggie’s patrols. My mother and father had lost two eggs this way and had gone out to see if they could find them, somehow. I was left in the nest under the care of a very distracted aunt of mine. Well, she decided to go visit a friend, and I became worried. I couldn’t fly yet, and don’t for a minute think I was trying to. I was a very obedient owlet. I was only looking over the edge for Auntie, and I just fell. It’s the honest truth.”
Racdrops it is, Soren thought. She was doing what many other owlets had tried to do, like Gylfie and dozens of others, trying to fly. Except Gylfie had admitted it. Otulissa wasn’t all that different. If she just wasn’t so smug about everything.
“Luckily,” Otulissa continued, “some search-and-rescue patrols from the Great Ga’Hoole Tree came by and found me. They put me back into my nest and we waited and waited for my aunt and for my parents, but none of them ever returned. So,Imustassume that they met with disaster trying to recover the eggs. Of course, my aunt, well, I’m not sure what really happened to her. As I said, she was a very scatterbrained owl—for a Spotted one. In any case, the patrols took me back here to the Great Ga’Hoole Tree.” She paused for a second, then blinked. “I’m an orphan like you.”
Soren was taken aback. It was perhaps the nicest thing that Otulissa had ever said. Otulissa seldom thought of herself being like anyone else or sharing any traits, except with the most elegant and distinguished of her Strix ancestors.
Boron had just clacked his beak loudly, announcing that night flight was finished, and he had spotted Strix Struma making her way upwind to take over for navigation class.
“It will be a short class tonight, young ones,” she announced upon arriving. “For as you know, this is a special night, and we want to be sure to get back before First Light.”
So, indeed, they returned to the Great Ga’Hoole Tree at that border of darkness that owls call the Deep Gray, when the black has faded but the sun has not yet spilled even the first sliver of a ray over the horizon. Nobody really wanted tea. It all took too long and the nest snakes seemed unbearably slow as they slithered in with the cups on their backs. It was an unusually silent teatime. It was as if everyone was too worried to speak, and there was absolutely no talk about feelings in one’s gizzard. Even Otulissa had shut up.
“No seconds, anyone?” Mrs. P. said. “I’d be happy to go back and get some, and there are more nice little nootie cakes.?
??
Soren saw Otulissa blink her eyes shut for the longest time. He knew exactly what she was thinking about: nooties, and not the ones that had been baked in a cake. No, she was thinking of ten nooties arranged in the figure of the Great Glaux constellation. He almost felt sorry for her.
Finally, the time came for good light. Madame Plonk would, of course, sing the beautiful good light song, and then they were allowed to look into the down fluff and discover their destinies. Usually, after Madame Plonk’s song there was total silence, but there would not be tonight. Instead, there would be raucous shrieks mixed with some groans, and owls saying, “I told you so. I knew you’d get into that chaw.” While others would be quietly thinking, How shall I survive Ga’Hoolology with that old bore of a Burrowing Owl?
Soren, Digger, Twilight, and Gylfie went to their hollow.
“Well, good luck, everybody,” Digger said. “Twilight, I really hope you get what you want. I know how much it means to you.”
Suddenly, Soren realized that was his problem. He didn’t know what he wanted. He only knew what he didn’t want. He truly was an immature owl with an immature gizzard.
They each tucked into their corners. The first chords from the great harp were plucked and then came the soft plings of Madame Plonk’s eerily beautiful voice. All too quickly, the last verses of the song came up. Soren felt his heart quicken and a stirring in his gizzard.
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.
Then there were the sounds of owls burrowing into the downy fluff of their beds and then the first gasps. “A pellet!” Digger exclaimed. “I got tracking chaw. I can’t believe it!”
Next, a whoop from Twilight. “Hooray! I’m search-and-rescue.”
From other hollows came more cries: