It seemed grossly unfair to Soren that once he had finally got his sister back, his favourite ryb had vanished. Maybe that was a selfish way to think but he couldn’t help it. Soren felt that most of what he knew he had learned from the gruff old Whiskered Screech Owl. Ezylryb was not what anyone would call pretty to look at, with one eye held in a perpetual squint, his left foot mangled to the point of missing one talon and a low voice that sounded like something between a growl and distant thunder – no, Ezylryb wasn’t exactly appealing.
“An acquired taste,” Gylfie had said. Well, Soren had certainly acquired the taste.
As a member of both the weather interpretation and the colliering chaws, which flew into forest fires to gather coals for the forge of Bubo the blacksmith, Soren had learned his abilities directly from the master. And though Ezylryb was a stern master, often grouchy and suffering no nonsense, he was, of all the rybs, the most fiercely devoted to his students and his chaw members.
The chaws were the small teams into which the owls were organised. In the chaws, they learned a particular skill that was vital to the survival of not just the owls of Ga’Hoole but to all the kingdoms of owls. Ezylryb led two chaws – weathering and colliering. But for all his gruff ways, he was certainly not above cracking a joke – sometimes very dirty jokes, much to the horror of Otulissa, a Spotted Owl who was just Soren’s age and quite prim and proper and given to airs. Otulissa was always carrying on about her ancient and distinguished ancestors. One of her favourite words was ‘appalling’. She was constantly being “appalled” by Ezylryb’s “crudeness”, his “lack of refinement”, his “coarse ways”. And Ezylryb was constantly telling Otulissa to “give it a blow”. This was the most impolite way an owl could tell another to shut up. The two bickered constantly, and yet Otulissa had turned into a good chaw member and that was all that really counted to Ezylryb.
But now there was no more bickering. No more crude jokes. No more climbing the baggywrinkles, flying upside down in the gutter, punching the wind and popping the scuppers, doing the hurly burly and all the wonderful manoeuvres the owls did when they flew through gales and storms and even hurricanes in the weather interpretation chaw. Life seemed flat without Ezylryb, the night less black, the stars dull, even as this comet, like a great raw gash in the sky, ripped apart the dawn.
“Some say a comet’s an omen.” Soren felt the branch he was perched on quiver. “Octavia!” The fat old nest-maid snake slithered out onto the branch. “What are you doing out here?” Soren asked.
“Same thing as you. Looking for Ezylryb.” She sighed. But of course Octavia, like all nest-maid snakes, who tidied up the hollows of owls and kept them free of vermin, was blind. In fact, she had no eyes, just two small indentations where eyes should be. But nest-maids were renowned for their extraordinary sensory skills. They could hear and feel things that other creatures could not. So if there were wing beats out there, wing beats that had the sound peculiar to those of Ezylryb, she would know. Although owls were silent fliers, each stirred the air with its wings in a unique fashion that only a nest-maid snake could detect. And Octavia, with her musical background and years in the harp guild under Madame Plonk’s guidance, was especially keen to all sorts of vibrations.
The harp guild was one of the most prestigious of all the guilds for which the blind nest-maid snakes were chosen to belong. Dear Mrs Plithiver, who had served in Soren’s family’s hollow and with whom he had been miraculously reunited, was also a member of this guild. The snakes wove themselves in and out of the harp’s strings, playing the accompaniment for Madame Plonk, the beautiful Snowy Owl with the shimmering voice. Octavia had served as a nest-maid for Madame Plonk and Ezylryb. Indeed, she and Ezylryb had arrived at the Great Ga’Hoole Tree together from the land of the North Waters of the Northern Kingdoms years and years ago. She was completely devoted to Ezylryb and, although she had never said much about how she and the old Screech Owl had first met, there were rumours that she had been rescued by Ezylryb and that she, unlike the other snakes, had not been born blind. Something had happened to make her go blind. She certainly did not have the same rosy scales as the other snakes. She was instead a pale greenish blue.
The old snake sighed again.
“I just don’t understand,” Soren said. “He’s too smart to get lost.”
Octavia shook her head. “I don’t think he’s lost, Soren.” Soren swung his head round to look at her. Then what does she think? Does she think he is dead? Octavia said very little these days. It was almost as if she was afraid to speculate on the fete of her beloved master. The others, Barran and Boron, the monarchs of the great tree, speculated constantly, as did Strix Struma, another revered teacher. But the creature who knew Ezylryb the best and the longest offered no such speculations, no ideas, and yet Soren felt she did know something that truly scared her. Something so horrible as to be unspeakable. Thus her impenetrable silences. Soren felt this about Octavia, he felt it in his gizzard where all owls sensed their strongest feelings and experienced their most powerful intuitions. Could he share this with someone? Who? Otulissa? Never. Twilight? Not Twilight. He was too action-oriented. Maybe Gylfie, his best friend, but Gylfie was too practical. She liked definite evidence and was a stickler for words. Soren could imagine Gylfie pushing if he said that he felt Octavia knew something: what do you mean by “know”?
“You better get along, young’un,” Octavia said. “Time for you to sleep. I can feel the sun. The dawn’s getting old.”
“Can you feel the comet too?” Soren asked suddenly.
“Ooh.” It was more like a soft groan or a whispering exhalation. “I don’t know.” But she did know. Soren knew it. She felt it and it worried her. He shouldn’t have asked, and yet he could not stop himself from asking more. “Do you believe it really is an omen like some say?”
“Who is some?” she asked sharply. “I haven’t heard anyone in the tree nattering on about omens.”
“What about you? I heard you just a few minutes ago.”
Octavia paused. “Listen, Soren, I’m just a fat old snake from the Northern Kingdoms, the country of the North Waters. We’re a naturally suspicious lot. So don’t you pay me any heed. Now flutter back down to your hollow.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Soren replied. It didn’t pay to upset a nest-maid snake.
So the young Barn Owl swooped down through the spreading branches of the Great Ga’Hoole Tree to the hollow he shared with his sister, Eglantine, and his best friends, Gylfie, Twilight and Digger. As he flew, looping through the limbs, he saw the sun rise fierce and bright. As clouds the colour of blood crouched on the horizon, a terrible apprehension coursed through Soren’s hollow bones and set his gizzard aquiver.
Digger! Why had he never thought of sharing his feelings about Octavia with Digger? Soren blinked as he stepped into the dim light of the hollow and saw the sleeping shapes of his best friends. Digger was a very odd owl in every sense of the word. For starters, he had lived his entire life – until he was orphaned – not in a tree but in a burrow. With his long, strong, featherless legs, he had preferred walking to flying when Soren and Gylfie and Twilight first met him. He had planned to walk all the way across the desert in search of his parents until mortal danger intervened and the three owls convinced him otherwise. Nervous and high-strung, Digger worried a lot but at the same time, this owl was a very deep thinker. He was always asking the strangest questions. Boron said that Digger possessed what he called a “philosophical turn of mind”. Soren wasn’t sure what that meant exactly. He only knew that if he said to Digger, “I think Octavia might know something about Ezylryb,” Digger, unlike Gylfie, would go deeper. He would not be just a stickler for words or, like Twilight, say, “Well, what are you going to do about it?”
Soren wished he could wake Digger up right now and share his thoughts. But he didn’t want to risk waking the others. No, he would just have to wait until they all rose at First Black.
And so Soren squashed himself into the corner bed of soft moss and down. He stole a glance at Digger before he drifted off. Digger, unlike the others, did not sleep standing