In the coolness of the breaking day, the owls nestled into their hollow and, after a few sleepy words, were sound asleep – except for Soren. His mind continued to speculate almost playfully on how that fragment of paper got to where it was between those rocks. He supposed it could have got caught in the sub-Lobelian current. He tried to recall what those current charts looked like and imagine the course that little piece of paper had travelled. He wondered if there were possibly more pieces of paper caught in rocks. No, not a chance, this was a one-in-a-million thing. He yawned again and was asleep.
The sea seemed to float with pieces of paper and oddly enough, the writing on the bits of paper was perfectly legible. But every time Soren swooped down to pick one up, the fog rolled in and he couldn’t see. He wished that Twilight were here. Twilight was the master of seeing in conditions like these.
Aaah, finally the fog is lifting. But suddenly, Soren realised that he was no longer over the sea. Racdrops! He looked down and saw the regularly undulating hills. The Beaks! His gizzard twitched with dread. Mrs Plithiver’s raspy voice scratched in his ear: “No owl, especially a young impressionable one, has any business in The Beaks. It’s a bad, bad place.”
And then below him were the tantalising Mirror Lakes that had transfixed the band in a kind of deadly stupor on their first journey to Ga’Hoole. Great Glaux. He blinked at the dazzling sparkle of the lakes beneath him, but those lakes abruptly shattered into thousands of pieces.
“I’m sorry, Mrs Plithiver,” he heard himself say. Without even banking, he did a steep dive towards the lakes. He blinked. A dazzling white brightness nearly blinded him. Dread crept around the edges of his gizzard. The radiant brilliance of the shards reminded him of something. Something terrible. What was it? No time to wonder. The fog was drifting back over the lake. Only it wasn’t fog. It was smoke – but there was one small clear space above the lake. He would dive for it now. “I’ll take these lakes – piece by piece. Yes, Mrs Plithiver, piece by piece by piece.”
Soren woke up suddenly and clamped his beak tight. Great Glaux! It was a dream! I was talking in my sleep! He looked across at his hollowmates and hoped his babbling hadn’t woken them up. But they all seemed to be sleeping peacefully. Soren went back to sleep and would not remember this dream for a long, long time – until it was almost too late!
And in another hollow, another Barn Owl dreamed another dream.
Yes, just like the old fir tree, Eglantine thought. Just like home. And look, there’s moss draped across the opening, the same way Mum did it, to keep out the cold wind, or the sunlight if it was too strong. She crept closer on the branch. Did she dare peek through? Why, Great Glaux! Even this branch I am standing on is the same. Then she heard a soft hiss and a slithering sound. Why, that’s exactly the sound Mrs Plithiver makes when she’s tongue-vacuuming and sucking up all the vermin. I’d know that sound anywhere! Eglantine’s gizzard was about to burst with excitement. This is more than a dream, she thought. Oh Glaux, don’t let it end! If I peek in, will I see Mum and Da and Mrs P? Will everything be like before? Eglantine edged in close to the moss curtain. Behind it, she saw a shape bustling about. The whiteness of a Barn Owl’s face shone through the green strands of moss. Is it really you, Mum? She was about to poke her beak through the curtain and ask. Then a breeze stirred the moss. It riffled through her pinfeathers, a cool current of air. This was no dream about a breeze. She really felt it.
“Wind shift,” a voice outside her hollow said. It was Ezylryb.
“Oh no!” moaned Eglantine, and woke up. “I was so close! So close, this time.”
“So close?” said Primrose, coming into their hollow. “So close to what? Eglantine, don’t tell me you’ve been sleeping all this time? Glaux, it’s not even near morning. How will you ever sleep during the day when we are supposed to?”
Eglantine blinked. “Oh I will.” I have to, she thought. She was absolutely desperate to get back to her dream hollow.
“Verrry interesting!” Otulissa pored over the fragment that the band had brought back from the island off the Broken Talon peninsula.
“Is it from the book?” Soren asked.
“Definitely,” Otulissa replied.
“Can you read it?” Gylfie asked.
“Just barely. There’s one word that looks like ‘quadrant’.”
“Quadrant?” Gylfie said. “That’s a navigational term.”
“I know,” said Otulissa. “I can’t imagine why it would show up in a book on fleckasia.”
“You know,” Soren said, “I’ve seen Ezylryb fix up old books, especially ones where the pages have faded. He takes Ga’Hoole-nut oil and soaks it into the page. The writing becomes a lot clearer.”
“Worth a try.” Otulissa looked up. “If only to prove that Dewlap is a traitor and not in the least shattered or having a nervous breakdown.”
Soren looked at Gylfie and the same thought went through both their minds. She’s still blaming Dewlap for Strix Struma’s death. Soren wondered if bringing this fragment back had been such a good idea after all. If Otulissa was only using it to get back at Dewlap, it seemed kind of stupid – even wrong – to him. The parliament would never decide to turn her out. It wasn’t the Ga’Hoole way. Boron and Barran, the monarchs of the tree, had said as much: Turn an owl out and it becomes your enemy. If Dewlap was not a traitor before, she would certainly become one if she were banished.
Instead Dewlap would be relieved of her responsibilities. She would be quietly retired. Already she had been removed from the parliament. That was the supreme dishonour. No owl in the history of the Great Ga’Hoole Tree had ever been removed from the parliament. But Soren knew it was useless to talk to Otulissa about this. She was bound and determined to have her vengeance on Dewlap for the death of her beloved Strix Struma. She had sworn to do so. And she had changed. He had seen that immediately after the last battle of the siege in which Strix Struma had been killed. He had gone to check on Otulissa in her hollow. She was bent over a piece of paper, writing and drawing something. When he had asked what it was, she had said it was an invasion plan. Even though Strix Struma had been killed, the Guardians of Ga’Hoole had won the last battle. Yet somehow the leaders of the so-called Pure Ones, Kludd and his terrifying mate Nyra, whose face shone white as a baleful moon, had escaped. Otulissa’s words came back to him:
“They aren’t finished with us, Soren. And we can’t wait for them to come back and finish.”
“What do you mean?” he had asked.
“I mean, Soren, that we can’t fight defensively. We have to go after them.”
The fury in Otulissa’s eyes had made Soren’s gizzard roil.
“I’ve changed,” she had said softly. But her voice, Soren remembered, was deadly.
The invasion might wait, but for Otulissa the vengeance was to begin here, right here in the tree, with Dewlap as its target.
A silence fell on the group. They all sensed the pent-up violence in Otulissa, who was normally a reflective, highly intellectual owl. It unnerved them.
“Well,” said Gylfie a little too brightly, “isn’t it almost time for Trader Mags to arrive? Let’s go and wait for her.”
“Why would I want any of that ostentatious stuff