The dawn bled into night, flaying the darkness, turning the black red, and Soren, with Digger by his side, flew through it.
“Strange isn’t it, Soren, how even at night the comet makes this colour?”
“I know. And look at those sparks from the tail just below the moon. Great Glaux, even the moon is beginning to look red.” Digger’s voice was quavery with worry.
“I told you about Octavia. How she thinks it’s an omen, or at least I think she thinks it is, even though she won’t really admit it.”
“Why won’t she admit it?” Digger asked.
“I think she’s sensitive about coming from the great North Waters. She says everyone there is very superstitious, but I don’t know, I suppose she just thinks the owls here will laugh at her or something. I’m not sure.”
Suddenly Soren was experiencing a tight, uncomfortable feeling as he flew. He had never felt uncomfortable flying, even when he was diving into the fringes of forest fires to gather coals on colliering missions. But he could almost feel the sparks from that comet’s tail. It was as if they were hot sizzling points pinging off his wings, singeing his flight feathers as the infernos of burning forests never had. He carved a great downwards arc in the night to try to escape it. Was he becoming like Octavia? Could he actually feel the comet? Impossible! The comet was hundreds of thousands, millions of leagues away. Now suddenly those sparks were turning to glints, sparkling silverygrey glints. “Flecks! Flecks! Flecks!” he screeched.
“Wake up, Soren! Wake up!” The huge Great Grey Owl, Twilight, was shaking him. Eglantine had flown to a perch above him and was quaking with fear at the sight of her brother writhing and screaming in his sleep. And Gylfie the Elf Owl was flying in tight little loops above him, beating the air as best she could to bring down cool drafts that might jar him from sleep and this terrible dream. Digger blinked and said, “Flecks? You mean the ones you had to pick at St Aggie’s?”
Just at that moment, Mrs Plithiver slithered into the hollow. “Soren, dear.”
“Mrs P,” Soren gulped. He was fully awake now. “Great Glaux, did I wake you up with my screaming?”
“No dear, but I just had a feeling that you were having some terrible dream. You know how we blind snakes feel things.”
“Can you feel the comet, Mrs Plithiver?”
Mrs P squirmed a bit then arranged herself into a neat coil. “Well, I can’t really say. But it is true that since the comet arrived a lot of us nest-maid snakes have been feeling – oh, how shall I describe it – a kind of tightness in our scales. But whether it’s the comet or winter coming on I don’t know for sure.”
Soren sighed and remembered the feeling in his dream. “Does it ever feel like hot little sparks pinging off you?”
“No, no. I wouldn’t describe it that way. But, then again, I’m a snake and you’re a Barn Owl.”
“And why …” Soren hesitated. “Why is the sky bleeding?” Soren felt a shiver go through the hollow as he spoke the words.
“It’s not bleeding, silly.” A Spotted Owl stuck her head into the hollow. It was Otulissa. “It’s merely a red tinge and it’s caused by a moisture bank encountering random gasses. I read all about it in Strix Miralda’s book, she’s a sister of the renowned weathertrix—”
“Strix Emerilla,” Gylfie chimed in.
“Yes. How did you know, Gylfie?”
“Because every other word out of your mouth is a quote from Strix Emerilla.”
“Well, I won’t apologise. You know I think we are distantly related, although she lived centuries ago. Emerilla’s sister, Miralda, was a specialist in spectography and atmospheric gasses.”
“Hot air,” Twilight snarled. Glaux! She frinks me off, Twilight thought. But he did not say aloud the rather rude word for ‘supremely irritated’.
“It’s more than hot air, Twilight.”
“But you aren’t, Otulissa,” retorted the Great Grey.
“Now, young’uns, stop your bickering,” Mrs P said. “Soren here has had a frightfully bad dream. And I for one feel that it is not a good idea to push bad dreams away. If you feel like talking about your bad dream, Soren, please go right ahead.”
But Soren really didn’t feel like talking about it that much. And he had decided definitely not to tell Digger of his feelings about Octavia. His head was in too much of a muddle to be able to explain anything.
There was a tense silence. But then Digger spoke up. “Soren, why ‘flecks’? What made you scream out, ‘flecks’?” Soren felt Gylfie give a shudder. And even Otulissa remained silent. When Soren and Gylfie had been captives at St Aggie’s they had been forced to work in the pelletorium picking apart owl pellets. Owls have a unique system for digesting their food and ridding themselves of the waste materials. All of the fur and bone and feathers of their prey are separated into small packets called pellets in their second stomach, that amazingly sensitive organ of owls, the gizzard. When all the materials are packed up, owls yarp the pellets through their beaks. In the pelletorium at St Aggie’s, they had been required to pick out the various materials like bone and feather and some mysterious element that was referred to as flecks. They never knew what flecks were exactly but they were highly prized by the brutal leaders of St Aggie’s.
“I’m not sure why. I think those sparks that come off the comet’s tail somehow glinted like the flecks that we picked out of the pellets.”
“Hmm,” was all Digger said.
“Now look, it’s almost breaklight time. Why don’t you sit at my table, Soren? It’ll be comfy, and I’m going to ask Matron for a nice bit of roasted vole for you.”
“No can do, Mrs P,” Otulissa said in a chipper voice.
If Mrs P had had eyes she would have rolled them, but instead she swung her head in an exaggerated arc and coiled up a little tighter. “What is this ‘no-can-do’ talk? For a supposedly educated and refined owl” – she emphasised the word refined – “I consider it a sloppy and somewhat coarse manner of speaking, Otulissa.”
“There’s a tropical depression that’s swimming our way with the last bits of a late hurricane. The weather chaw is going out. We have to eat at the weather chaw table and …”
“Eat meat raw,” Soren said dejectedly.
Good Glaux, raw vole on top of a bad dream and eating it literally on top of Octavia! For such were the customs of the weather and colliering chaws.
The nest-maid snakes served as tables for all the owls. They slithered into the dining halls bearing tiny Ga’Hoole-nut cups of milkberry tea and whatever meat or bugs were being served up. The chaws always ate together on the evenings of important missions. And if you were in the weather or colliering chaw, it was required that you eat your meat raw with the fur on it. Of course Soren, like most owls until they had come to the Great Tree, had always eaten his meat raw. He still liked raw meat, but on a nippy evening like this, something warm in the gut was of great comfort. Well, he would at least try to avoid sitting next to Otulissa. Eating raw vole with that Spotted Owl yakking in his ear was enough to give any bird indigestion – or maybe even gas, and not of the random variety. He would aim to sit between Martin and Ruby, his two best friends in the chaw. Martin was a little Northern Saw-whet, not much bigger than Gylfie, and Ruby was a Short-eared Owl.
“Glaux almighty!” Soren muttered as he approached the table of