The Spotted Owl’s gizzard turned to ice as the owl settled on the very same limb upon which she perched. She had survived so much. Was she now to die in the talons of this monster owl? The monster turned towards her. The Spotted Owl dared not breathe. Never had she perched this close to an owl and remained imperceptible. The monster blinked. Incredible! He sees straight through me. I am indeed mist.
The branch shook as Kludd flapped his wings again and rose into the night to seek his Pure Ones. With this murder finished, the time for revenge had arrived. Vengeance and glory would be his. His gizzard quivered in exultation. A silent scream filled his brain. Kludd Rules Supreme!
The big limbs of the Great Ga’Hoole Tree shook with the blasts from the first winter’s gale. It was the season of the white rain, when the vines that hung from the tree turned a glistening ivory. The best of the milkberries had all been harvested weeks before in the time of the copper-rose rain, when the vines were burnished a deep copper-rose colour.
The weather chaw to which Soren belonged had just returned from an interpretation flight led by Ezylryb, captain of the chaw. It had been Ezylryb’s first flight since his rescue from the Devil’s Triangle. And it had been wonderful – a loud, boisterous mission with plenty of wet poop jokes and singing. But they had come back with good information despite Otulissa’s dire prediction that they would learn nothing if they didn’t stop all the gleeking about. Gleeking was the owl word for messing around and not being serious. Some chaw leaders such as Strix Struma never permitted such gleeking, but Ezylryb was different. He believed that gleeking was good, building trust and fellowship.
Otulissa, however, a serious and proper young Spotted Owl, abhorred gleeking about in general, and wet poop jokes in particular. It was a never-ending debate between her and Soren.
“Soren, I just don’t believe that exchanging wet poop jokes with seagulls should be part of any mission.”
Otulissa and Soren, both members of the weather chaw, perched on a branch just outside the dining hollow waiting for Matron to announce that breaklight was ready. Breaklight was the meal the owls enjoyed at the end of the night, just before the break of dawn. After this, they would sleep for the rest of the daylight hours until the evening shadows began to creep over the earth and darken the sky.
“You can learn a lot from seagulls, Otulissa,” Soren was saying.
“I beg to differ. All that churring and guffawing and giggling over their pathetic humour interrupts the pressure-front vibrations.” Spotted Owls were known for their extreme sensitivities to atmospheric pressure that came with changes in the weather.
“Well, you picked up on the fact that a blizzard was behind this gale, and look, it’s starting to snow now. So I don’t see how it damaged your prediction.”
“Soren, I could have predicted a lot more precisely when and how much snow we would be getting if there hadn’t been all that gleeking about. Also, I just don’t find wet poop jokes funny. As owls, we should be proud of our digestive system and our unique manner of eliminating waste.”
“Oh, it’s yarping, for Glaux’s sake.” A large Great Grey Owl named Twilight had just lighted down on to the branch next to them. Twilight was one of Soren’s closest friends.
“It’s not simply yarping, Twilight. That we pack the bones and fur of our waste into neat little packets for excretion is quite extraordinary in the bird kingdom. That so little of our waste is liquid is exceptional. Yarping pellets through our mouths is magnificent,” said Otulissa.
“Seen one pellet, seen them all,” Twilight growled.
“I’m getting cold,” Soren said. “When is breaklight going to be ready? I, for one, am ready for something hot.”
Before a mission, the owls of the weather chaw were not permitted to eat their food cooked. Ezylryb insisted that they eat their food raw and with all the ‘hair’ – as he called it – on the meat. Of course, the owls of the Ga’Hoole Tree were special in that they often ate cooked food. Most owls ate their food raw and bloody because, unlike the owls of the great tree, they did not possess knowledge of fire.
The owls of the Great Ga’Hoole Tree enjoyed a civilisation unrivalled by any of the other kingdoms of owls. With their knowledge, they tried to protect the lives of owls in other kingdoms. Lately, however, the dangers had increased alarmingly. Not the least of these dangers were the evil owls of St Aegolius Academy for Orphaned Owls where Soren had once been imprisoned. At St Aggie’s he had met his best friend Gylfie, an Elf Owl. And now there was an even more destructive group, the Pure Ones. It had been on the mission to rescue Ezylryb that Soren had discovered that his own brother, Kludd, was the leader of this group.
Matron, a bunchy Barred Owl, poked her beak out of an opening near the branch where Soren and the others perched. “Breaklight!” she announced cheerfully.
“At last!” Soren said.
“Ooh, bats! I smell roasted bat wings!” Gylfie suddenly swooped in.
“Where’ve you been?” Soren turned to the Elf Owl.
“Helping Octavia in the library,” she replied.
“Octavia in the library? Why?” Soren asked.
“Orders from the top, I guess. We were supposed to organise all the books on higher magnetics and flecks.” Soren felt his gizzard lurch. He would never get used to hearing the word ‘flecks’.
“But Octavia? Why Octavia? What use is a blind snake in the library? No offence, Mrs P,” Otulissa asked as they crowded around Mrs Plithiver, another blind snake.
“None taken, dear,” the rosy-coloured snake replied.
For centuries, blind snakes had served as maids in the nests of owls, keeping them free of vermin and pests. In the Great Ga’Hoole Tree, they served in other tasks as well. Among such tasks were providing the dining tables upon which the owls ate. They could easily and quickly extend their bodies to accommodate more diners.
Answering Otulissa’s question, Gylfie replied, “Why Octavia? Well, she might be blind, but she has served Ezylryb for so long that she knows which books he wants on the special reserve shelf for higher magnetics. And it was too much work for just the book matron. She doesn’t know the collection as well as Octavia – at least not these books. But then, of course, Dewlap came in and started bossing us around.”
There was a sigh from the owls. Dewlap was the most boring teacher, or ryb, of the Great Ga’Hoole Tree.
“What’s she doing in the library?” Soren asked. “Higher magnetics has nothing to do with the stuff she teaches.”
Otulissa plumped up her feathers. “Oh, never mind. I am just so excited about studying higher magnetics, I can’t tell you.”
“Then don’t,” said Twilight.
“Yes, spare us, learned one,” Gylfie said under her breath in a barely audible whisper to Soren, who laughed. Otulissa was a very smart owl. No one would deny that. She had been the one to figure out how the Devil’s Triangle worked, and how to destroy it with fire. And she knew of the protective qualities of mu metal that guarded against the hazards of the magnetic flecks. But she wasn’t shy about