This was one I wrote after an evening hunt:
There is a gutter in the wind
Where once she flew.
A hole in the night,
A bit from the moon.
A blankness
A void
That absence
That Lil!
This nothingness consumes me
The long shadow of a love vanished
In a world that burns too bright.
Octavia tended to my needs meticulously. She was becoming a nest-maid snake after all. It saddened me in many ways. She was so bright that it seemed a waste of time to me that she should spend her days slurping up vermin and keeping my hollow tidy. She even started to run her fangs lightly through my feathers to comb out my burrs. When I complained that she was squandering her talents, she very nicely told me to shut up. She said that what she did with her time was her business, and she didn’t relish living with a slob.
Little did I know that Octavia was hatching her own schemes. I don’t use the term “hatching” lightly here, for her schemes were aimed at bringing me new life.
To say Octavia was fed up with my ways is perhaps an understatement. But she was also worried — worried sick, she told me later. She said it was as if I were withering away. She knew I had chronic pain in my injured talon, but after I bit it off and the pain vanished, she saw no improvement in me.
Octavia can be chary with her words. In fact, unlike most creatures, I learned over the years that the less Octavia says, the more intensely she’s thinking. So one day she went to Brother Oliver’s study hollow, just off the Glauxian retreat library. I know of this only because Brother Oliver died recently, and a peregrine messenger delivered me his diary. I’ve copied his words exactly:
An extraordinary thing happened tonight, shortly after evensong. The words of the Glaux canticle were still ringing in my ear slits when the snake Octavia arrived. She is of a turquoise hue, a cyan celadon to be exact and, poor thing, she’s blind — she lost her eyes in the terrible Battle of the Ice Talons.
She came to the retreat two moons before with the renowned Whiskered Screech Lyze, the Major General of the Glauxspeed Division. He refuses to answer to his military title now; indeed, he has completely renounced his rank and vowed never to fight again. Lyze and Octavia were both wounded, although Lyze’s injury appears to be one of the mind more than the body. That’s what Octavia came to speak with me about.
“I can see you are troubled,” I said, hoping to offer a sympathetic ear slit.
“Indeed, Brother Oliver.”
“It’s Lyze, I suspect.”
“You suspect right.” She inhaled sharply. “Lyze bit off his own talon because it was causing him so much pain. But now … but now …”
“But now,” I interjected, “the pain is gone, but the misery persists — like a scroom of what was.”
“Exactly!” she exclaimed. She paused as if trying to organize her thoughts. “Poor Lyze is pursued by many scrooms — most of all by the memory of his beloved mate, Lil. But there’s one thing that’s still alive for him, although I fear it will die soon if he doesn’t use it.”
I must admit, I was a bit perplexed.
“Go on,” I urged.
“He hasn’t engaged his mind. If he doesn’t soon, I’m afraid he’ll lose it!”
I felt my gizzard tighten. Everyone knew that this Whiskered Screech, hatched on Stormfast Island, was one of the most brilliant owls in the Northern Kingdoms. He knew weather. He knew winds. His mind was fantastically perceptive and analytical. Now it was my turn to stammer.
“It — it has surprised me that he has not taken more interest in our library.”
“Yes — for a mind like that to not have once peeked into this hollow with its rich collection of manuscripts and parchments! It’s surprising and disturbing.”
“And what might we do about that?” I asked Octavia. Her answer stunned me.
“I want to be his eyes!”
“B-b-b-but, how can you?” I stammered again.
“You must read to me — anything from this library. It doesn’t matter what, but anything about the winds of the Shagdah Snurl would be particularly good. About the winds, not the legends, but physical descriptions, observations. He’ll like that. And I’ll —”
“You’ll tell him about it? You’ll memorize it?”
“Not exactly,” she said. “I plan to write it down.”
“Can you write?” I didn’t mean it as an insult, but many Kielian snakes couldn’t!
“Of course I can write!” she snapped. “What do you take me for, a nincompoop?” Then she seemed to shrink up and falter. “I mean, I used to be able to write. And I have been practicing.”
“How can you practice if you can’t see?”
“I can feel!” She had brought a small piece of parchment with her and she unfurled it. “Touch it!” she ordered. “With your third talon port side.”
This is an owl’s most sensitive talon. I did as she told me.
“I feel bumps,” I said. I was utterly confused.
“Yes! But there is a pattern to the bumps. I punctured it with my own fangs, just as I used to dip them in ink pots to write.”
“What does it say?” I asked.
“It says my name is Octavia. I was born on Stormfast Island. I was a big, fat creature and lazy as could be until I met Lyze — Lyze of Kiel, creator of the Glauxspeed Division, who saved my life and made me into a decent creature. That’s what it says.”
I thought that I saw tears glistening in the dents that had been her eyes. “And if I can read to Lyze, perhaps I can rescue him, just as he rescued me.”
I had never seen a snake more determined.
That, dear readers, is exactly what happened. Blind Octavia led me back to books, to science, to research, and rekindled the dwindling flames of my mind. My steadfast friend Octavia stirred the coals that were quickly becoming cinders — the cinders that would have led to complete dementia. Soon, she was much more than a nest-maid snake. She was my research assistant and, with her odd bumpy writing, my note taker. The sound of her fangs puncturing parchment was a new kind of music, one that seemed to blend with the lovely hymns of evensong and the wind shivering through the trees.
Some creatures have a destiny thrust upon them that is at odds with their true nature. War and leadership had been thrust on me by my parents, by the times, and by the spreading bile of Bylyric’s evil. Left to my own, I wanted nothing to do with war. I only wanted to explore the mysteries of our Earth and its creatures. Science was my great love, but the ferschtucken War of the Ice Talons kept getting in the way.
It was at the Glauxian Brothers retreat — a place where faith was as much a part of life as air — that I made some of my most significant scientific discoveries. I observed, tested, and proved certain notions that I had speculated on for years.
When the war died down, I went to the hatching place of the winds again and again, always accompanied by Octavia. Some of my ideas I had to discard, but others I managed to prove.
I have no problem with the stories or legends my fellow owls seemed to love. I had no problem with the Glauxian Brothers’ deep faith. Faith is a personal thing after all. None of the Brothers would force their faith upon me. They simply choose to picture the world in a different way. As Brother Oliver said to me once, “There’s room for both, you know. There’s more than one way to tell a story.”
The War of the Ice Claws did eventually come to an end, but none too soon. Bylyric’s son, Jesper, rose to prominence, inheriting the raging remnants of his father’s force. But a Glauxspeed assassination unit led by Strix Struma, Loki, and Blix cornered him in a remote region of the H’rathghar. And it was Patches, the snow leopard I’d injured, who actually delivered the fatal blow to him with one of her immense paws.36
I never learned what happened to Ifghar. Never asked and no one ever told me. It was better that way. I had to put him out of my mind and out of my life, or bitternes
s would consume me.
Long before the end of the war, news came to me that Thora had decamped and flown to the Southern Kingdoms. She wanted to create art, not weapons. Like me, she was done with war.
Every now and then, Loki or Blix or Moss would show up at the retreat and try to entice me to return to Dark Fowl as an instructor. But I had no interest. I was completely occupied with my research, and the Glauxian Brothers library was a Glauxsend for me.
One day, I heard a whispering outside my hollow.
“I’ll see,” I heard Octavia say from just outside the hollow. “But don’t count on it.”
“Don’t count on what, Octavia?”
“You have a visitor, Lyze.”
“Blix and Rufus were here just last moon. I told them then and I’ll tell them again, I have no interest in becoming an instructor.”
A familiar voice broke in. “They’re called rybs at the Great Ga’Hoole Tree, Lyze. Rybs, not instructors.”
I nearly dropped my plummels. “Thora!” I exclaimed.
“None other.”
“B-b-but I thought you were in the Southern Kingdoms!”
“Indeed. I have a forge in Silverveil. I make beautiful things, Lyze — sculpture from metal. I haven’t made a weapon in — let’s see, nigh on five years.”
She planted herself before me and glared. “Now listen to me, you stubborn old Whiskered Screech. You’ve grieved too long. Grief becomes an indulgence after a certain point.”
I looked at her narrowly. “What are you trying to say?”
“Come with me! Come back to the Great Ga’hoole Tree. Come be a teacher, a ryb.”
“I don’t want to teach about war.”
“You don’t have to. In the Hoolian dialect, ‘ryb’ means ‘learned one.’ You’ve been exploring, researching all these years. Why not share it? There is a library at the great tree that makes this one look pathetic.”
“Don’t tell Brother Oliver that,” Octavia said.
Thora swiveled her head around. “He knows it. Who do you think sent a peregrine to tell me what Lyze has been up to? Octavia can come with you and continue to be your assistant.”
I shook my head wearily. “But it’s impossible, Thora. Don’t you understand — they’ll know me. Everyone knows about Major General Lyze of Kiel, creator of the Glauxspeed Division. The division that won the War of the Ice Claws.”
“No!” said another voice. Brother Oliver crammed into the hollow.
“You won’t be known as Major General Lyze of Kiel.”
“Well, what in the name of Glaux would I be known as?”
“Ezylryb,” Brother Oliver said softly. “Ezylryb! And you will become the greatest ryb the Great Ga’Hoole Tree has ever seen.”
I swung my head toward Octavia. Although she couldn’t see me, she had developed extraordinary sensibilities and seemed to know when I was looking at her and what I might say before I said it. But for this no words were really needed. She nodded ever so slightly, and I could see what she was thinking:
Do it!
And so I have been a ryb at this grand old tree for decades. Now a young Barn Owl has arrived with his three friends. I can tell he will make a great leader, possibly even become a king of this great tree. You blink? Of course you do, for it’s a preposterous notion. To become king of the great tree, one must be born to royalty or “embered” as decreed by the prophecy of Hoole. Ridiculous, you say. But I say destiny has nothing to do with it. Only inner nobility and intelligence are what count in the end.
So, dear reader, would you care to make a wager on my friend Soren? For I see genius where others might not.
As so often happens, I have been inspired by other artists, and I wish to acknowledge and give credit where credit is due. In Chapter 8 when Tantya Hanja bursts into song at the grog tree, the song she sings was completely inspired by Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” a ballad written at the height of the Vietnam War whose lyrics went beyond the war to address social and racial issues. The names for the different kinds of snow were taken — although not exactly — from an Inuit lexicon that describes more kinds of snow than I could have ever imagined. The myschgrad serpent that the blink skog of Dark Fowl tells a story about is based on the legendary Midgard serpent of the Norse sagas.
Get ready for a wild run!
Turn the page for a sneak peek of the first book in bestselling author Kathryn Lasky’s newest enthralling adventure series, Horses of the Dawn, available January 2014.
The mare felt the foal shift inside her and kicked her leg in discomfort. The foal was coming soon, and the mare should have been on four legs instead of buried in a hold, hanging in a sling rocked by every wave the ship encountered. The mare should have been surrounded by straw or, better yet, soft grass in a meadow. What a place to be born! she thought. A pitching ship in the middle of a sea! The mare could sense the restlessness of the other horses around her. They knew what was about to happen.
The beam of the ship was wide, and ahead of her she could see at least eight other horses, ears twitching. The smaller animals — the goats and the pigs — were in separate stalls and out of sight. But it was the horses the mare cared about. She could see their ears flick forward, listening for the men, and then pivot back to her to hear if the birth had started.
They were in the mid-deck hold, near the pillars of the brigantine’s two masts. Their stalls were padded with bales of straw so the horses wouldn’t be injured when their slings swung too violently. The mare looked down at her legs hanging uselessly in the shadows. Her hooves barely touched the floorboards.
The mid deck was sweltering. Breezes couldn’t reach the hold and there was little light. The horses couldn’t sense the time of day. It was never bright nor completely dark; there was only shadow and a perpetual dimness that was not like any dawn or twilight the mare had ever known.
The last time she had foaled, it had been in a stall on land — dry, unmovable land — and the time before that, in a meadow. It was of course the best place of all to give birth. She remembered that colt well. His coat was beautiful, dappled like a herd of small moons sliding behind clouds. She called him Sombra Luna, Shadow Moon. And now another was on its way. Was it possible, she wondered, that the Seeker and his men did not know? She herself had been surprised. She thought she was much too old to foal. But surely they had seen her belly when they fitted the sling around her on the day before the voyage began from First Island. No one had said anything, but perhaps they were anticipating a short trip and the distances had turned out to be greater than they’d thought. She’d heard the blacksmith and the groom talking about how long the voyage was taking. The groom was just a boy, as gawky as the foal soon to be born.
She felt a sudden wrenching pain and gasped. The young groom leapt from his hammock and rushed to her stall. The ocean had grown a bit calmer, but the mare’s sling swayed back and forth in a disconcerting rhythm. The groom stroked her head. Then his eyes fell upon the large stain that was spreading rapidly through the canvas of the sling.
“Dios mío!” he screeched.
Within seconds the blacksmith was there with another groom.
“It can’t be!” the blacksmith exclaimed.
It is! the Mare thought. She gave him a withering gaze. The young groom’s eyes had fastened on a small wooden carving of a woman with a darkly stained face, her hands pressed together in prayer. His mouth moved as if he were speaking to her.
“Don’t pray to the Virgin, foolish boy. Get the doctor!” the blacksmith ordered.
Who’s foolish? thought the mare. All of you! No one had noticed. The men had been all too obsessed with their dreams of gold to see that the old mare could be in foal.
The doctor came. The sling was lowered and the stall was quickly banked with more hay bales.
“Calma! Calma!” the blacksmith whispered.
Was he telling her to be calm, or the sea? the mare wondered. She hoped it was the sea. Giving birth was hard enough on dry la
nd, and the ocean seemed to be growing more boisterous. But she could take care of herself. What troubled her was the thought of her foal being born in the hold and confined to a sling. How would a foal ever learn to stand on this swelling sea? She groaned deeply and her eyes rolled back in her head. She could hear the groom praying. But the blacksmith and the doctor remained silent as they removed the sling and helped her lie down against the bales of straw.
Time passed, but the mare couldn’t tell how much. The perpetual half-light in the hold hardly changed from morning to afternoon to night. She felt the doctor and the blacksmith both pulling. The front legs were halfway out. One more pull? No, two.
“A filly!” the blacksmith finally said. “And so quick!”
“She’s foaled before,” the doctor said while clearing off the smooth white sac that covered the foal’s body.
The mare turned her head and began licking her newborn’s face. As she licked the foal’s face clean, she saw a lovely white mark emerge on its pale forehead. The mare nickered with soft delight.
“Look!” the groom exclaimed. “She’s trying to stand already.”
The little filly staggered onto her legs, which seemed to be longer than her body. Although she had given birth twice before, the mare could never get used to how long a foal’s legs were. Even though the filly was smaller than her dam, her legs were almost as long.
She staggered a step and fell down, her legs in a scramble. “Too many legs!” her dam nickered. “You’ll have time to sort them out. You’ll see!”
But just then, the seas roughened. A hay bale tumbled and knocked the filly down on her next try at standing. She went into a rolling tumble.
“Get her in a sling. And the mare, too. Get Perlina in a sling,” cried the blacksmith.