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First published in the USA by Scholastic Inc 2004

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2006

Text copyright © Kathryn Lasky 2004

Kathryn Lasky asserts the moral right to be identified as the author

of this work

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Source ISBN: 9780007215195

Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2016 ISBN: 9780008226817

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… soon the walls of the castle ruins rose in the dawn mist …

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Chapter One: Blood Dawn

Chapter Two: Flecks in the night!

Chapter Three: What a Blow!

Chapter Four: The Spirit Woods

Chapter Five: Bubo’s forge

Chapter Six: Eglantine’s Dilemma

Chapter Seven: The Harvest festival

Chapter Eight: Into a Night Stained Red

Chapter Nine: The Rogue Smith of Silverveil

Chapter Ten: The Story of the Rogue Smith

Chapter Eleven: Flint Mops

Chapter Twelve: Rusty Claws

Chapter Thirteen: Octavia Speaks

Chapter Fourteen: Eglantine’s Dream

Chapter Fifteen: The Chaw of Chaws

Chapter Sixteen: The Empty Shrine

Chapter Seventeen: A Muddled Owl

Chapter Eighteen: A Nightmare Revisited

Chapter Nineteen: Into the Devil’s Triangle

Chapter Twenty: Attack!

Chapter Twenty-One: Good Light

Keep Reading

About the Author

Other Books By

About the Publisher

CHAPTER ONE
Blood Dawn

The tail of the comet slashed the dawn and in the red light of the rising sun, for a brief instant, it seemed as if the comet was bleeding across the sky. Every other owl had already tucked into their hollows in the Great Ga’Hoole Tree for the day’s sleep. Every owl, that is, except for Soren, who perched on the highest limb of this tallest Ga’Hoole tree on earth. He scoured the horizon for a sign, any sign of his beloved teacher, Ezylryb.

Ezylryb had disappeared almost two months before. The old Whiskered Screech, indeed the oldest teacher, or ‘ryb’ as they were called, of the great tree had flown out on a mission that late summer night to help rescue owlets from what was now referred to as the Great Downing. Scores of young orphan owlets had mysteriously been found scattered on the ground, some mortally wounded, others stunned and incoherent. None of them had been found anywhere near their nests, but in an open field that for the most part could boast no trees with hollows. It was a complete mystery as to how these young owlets, most of whom could barely fly, had got there. It was as if they had simply dropped out of the night sky. And one of those owlets had been Soren’s sister Eglantine.

After Soren himself had been shoved from his nest by his brother Kludd nearly a year before, and subsequently captured by the violent and depraved owls of St Aggie’s, he had lost all hope of ever seeing his sister or his parents again. Even after he had escaped from St Aggie’s with his best friend Gylfie, a little Elf Owl who had also been captured, he had still not dared to really hope. But then Eglantine had been found by two other dear friends: Twilight the Great Grey and Digger the Burrowing Owl, both of whom had flown out with others on the night of the Great Downing on countless search-and-rescue missions. And Ezylryb, who rarely left the tree except for his responsibilities as leader of the weather interpretation and the colliering chaws, had flown out in an attempt to unravel the strange occurrences of that night. But he had never returned.

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 or sometimes perched, but in a curious posture that more or less could be described as a squat supported by his short stubby tail with his legs splayed out to the sides. Good Glaux, that owl even sleeps odd. That was Soren’s last thought before he drifted off to sleep.

CHAPTER TWO
Flecks in the night!

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 Octavia. The place between Martin and Ruby was taken by one of the new owlets who had been rescued in the Great Downing. He was a little Lesser Sooty called Silver. The name fitted him for he was, like all the Sooty Owls, black, but his underparts were silvery white. Sooties were all part of the same family of Barn Owls as Soren, the Tyto species, but a different group within that species – Soren being a Tyto alba and Silver a Tyto multipunctata. Still, in the whole scheme of things, they were considered ‘cousins’. And they shared the heart-shaped face common to all Barn Owls. Silver, much smaller than Soren, now swivelled and tipped his head back.

“You shouldn’t take the name of Glaux in vain, Soren.” Silver spoke in a voice that was somewhere between a squeak and a shriek.

Soren blinked. “Why ever not?” Everyone said ‘Glaux’ all the time.

“Glaux was the first Tyto. It’s disrespectful to our species, to our maker.”

The first Tyto, Soren thought. What’s he talking about?

Glaux was the most ancient order of owls from which all other owls descended. Glaux was the first owl and no one knew if it was a Tyto, let alone male or female or whatever. It didn’t really matter. Apparently, Soren was not the only one confused.

“Glaux is Glaux no matter what you call him, her, whatever,” said Poot. Poot was the first mate of the weather chaw but now, in the absence of Ezylryb, served as captain.

Silver blinked. “Really?”

“Yes, really,” said Otulissa. “The first owl from whom we are all descended.”

“I thought just Barn Owls – owls like Soren and me.”

“No, all of us,” Otulissa repeated. “No matter what kind of feather pattern, no matter what colour eyes we have – yellow, amber, black like yours – all of us are descended from Great Glaux.” Otulissa could be surprising. For Otulissa to say the words ‘all of us’ was somewhat remarkable for an owl who could be impossibly snooty and stuck-up.

It was a bit peculiar that all of the owls who had been rescued in the Great Downing had been some kind of Barn Owl. They were either Greater or Lesser Sooties like Silver, or Grass Owls, or Masked Owls. But despite the different names and slightly different colouration, they all had the distinctive heart-shaped faces that marked them as belonging to the family of Tytos, or Barn Owls. Like Silver, they had all arrived with some very strange notions and behaviours. Even the most seriously wounded owls when they were rescued had babbled nearly unintelligible fragments, but they were entranced with music. As soon as they heard Madame Plonk and the harp guild, their strange babbling had stopped.

The young owlets were getting better every day as they spent more and more time with normal owls. Of course, the owls of Ga’Hoole were not quite normal. When Soren was very young, his parents would tell him and Kludd and Eglantine stories. They were once-upon-a-time stories. The kind that you might wish were true but somehow don’t quite believe could be. One of his and Eglantine’s favourites began, “Once upon a very long time ago, in the time of Glaux, there was an order of knightly owls, from a kingdom called Ga’Hoole, who would rise each night into the blackness and perform noble deeds. They spoke no words but true ones. Their purpose was to right all wrongs, to make strong the weak, mend the broken, vanquish the proud and make powerless those who abused the frail. With hearts sublime they would take flight …”

But it was true! And when he and Twilight and Gylfie and Digger had finally found the Great Ga’Hoole Tree on an island in the middle of the Sea of Hoolemere, Soren found that in order to fulfil this noble purpose, he needed to learn all sorts of things that many owls never learn. They learned how to read and do mathematics and, with their entry into a chaw, they learned the special skills of navigation, weather interpretation, the science of metals. This kind of learning was called the ‘deep knowledge’ and they were taught by the ‘rybs’. The word ‘ryb’ itself meant deep knowledge.

Tonight, the weather chaw would fly and, for Silver and another young Masked Owl named Nut Beam, it would be their first flight with the chaw. They had not been assigned yet, or ‘tapped’ as it was called, to the weather chaw. They were not even junior members yet. They were only going on a very minor training flight to see if possibly they might be suitable. Before his disappearance, Ezylryb seemed to be able to tell with one glance if an owl might work in the chaw. But now with him gone, Boron and Barran felt it was best for the young new owlets to be tried out for this particular chaw, which required highly refined skills.

“Are we really going to fly into a hurricane tonight?” Silver asked.

“Just a mild tropical storm,” Poot answered. “Nice little depression due south of here kicking up some slop in the bight and beyond.”

“When do we get to fly into a tornado?” Silver asked.

Poot blinked in disbelief. “You yoicks, young’un? You don’t want to fly into a tornado. You want your wings torn off? Only owl I ever seen who got through a tornado alive with his wings came out plumb naked.”

Now it was Soren’s turn to blink. “Plumb naked? What do you mean?”

“Not a feather left on him. Not even a tuft of down.”

Octavia gave a shiver, and their cups of milkberry tea shook. “Don’t scare the young’uns, Poot.”

“Look, Octavia, if they ask me I tell them.”

Ruby, a deep, ruddy-coloured Short-eared Owl, who was the best flier in the chaw, blinked. “How’d he fly with no feathers?”

“Not well, dearie. Not well, not well at all,” Poot replied.

CHAPTER THREE
What a Blow!

“Meatballs! Good and juicy.” Poot swivelled his head and flung off a glob of weed, dead minnows and assorted slop from the Sea of Hoolemere that had landed between his ear tufts.

“Storm residue. He has a very coarse way of speaking,” Otulissa murmured primly to Nut Beam and Silver. She was flying between the two young owlets, and Soren was in their wake making sure that they didn’t go into a bounce spiral caused by sudden updrafts, which could be dangerous.

“See? That’s what you get,” Poot was saying. “You don’t have to go swimming to feel the water below getting warmer do you? You can feel it now, can’t you?”

Soren could feel warm wet gusts coming off the waves that crashed below. It was odd, for although they were on the brink of winter, the Sea of Hoolemere in this region of the bight and beyond held the summer heat longer than any other. “That’s what causes a hurricane, young’uns, when the cooler air meets up with warm water. Now, I’ve sent Ruby out to the edges of this mess to reconnoitre wind speeds and such.”

Poot paused and looked back at his chaw members. “All right now – a little in-flight quiz.”

“Oh, goody,” Otulissa said. “I just love quizzes.” Soren gave her a withering look despite the remnants of a meatball that were splattered around the rims of his eyes.

Poot continued, “Now, Martin. Which way does the wind spiral in a hurricane?”

“Oh, I know! I know!” Otulissa started waving her wings excitedly.

“Shut your beak, Otulissa,” Poot snapped. “I asked Martin.”

But then Nut Beam piped up, “My grandma did a special kind of dive called the spiral.”

“My grandpa had a kind of twisty talon like a spiral,” Silver said loudly.

“Great Glaux.” Soren sighed. He had forgotten how young owlets could be. It was clear that Poot did not know how to deal with such young ones. But Otulissa interrupted what was about to turn into a free-for-all bragging match about grandparents.

“Silver, Nut Beam,” she said sharply, and flew out in front of the two little owls. “Attention. All eyes on my tail, please. Now does anybody here have anything to say that is not about their grandparents, parents or any other relatives or spirals?” There was silence. Then Silver waggled his wings. Otulissa sighed. “I feel a wing waggle from behind.” She flipped her head back. “What is it, Silver?”

“My great-grandma was named for a cloud too. Her name was Alto Cumulus.”

“Thank you for that information,” Otulissa said curtly. “Now may we proceed? Martin, will you please answer the question?”

“The wind spirals inwards and this way.” The little Northern Saw-whet spun his head almost completely around in an anticlockwise motion.

“Very good, considering you’ve never flown in a hurricane,” Poot replied. None of them had as yet, except for Poot.

“We might not have flown in one yet but we’ve read all about them, Poot,” Otulissa said. “Strix Emerilla devotes three chapters to hurricanes in her book, Atmospheric Pressures and Turbulations: An Interpreter’s Guide.”

“The most boring book in the world,” Martin muttered as he flew up on Soren’s starboard wing.

“I’ve read every word of it,” Otulissa said.

“Now, next question,” Poot continued. “And all you older owls shut your beaks. Which is your port wing and which is your starboard?”

There was silence. “All right. Wiggle the one you think is port.” Nut Beam and Silver hesitated a bit, stole a look at each other and then both waggled their right wing.

“Wrong!” Poot said. “Now, you two have to remember the difference. Because when I say strike off to port, or angle starboard, you’re going to fly off in the wrong direction if you don’t know.”

Soren remembered that this was difficult for him to learn when he first started flying in the weather chaw. It took Ruby, the best flier, forever to learn port from starboard, but they all did – finally.

“All right, now,” Poot said. “I’m going out for a short reconnaissance in the opposite direction of Ruby. I want to cover everything. Soren and Martin, you’re in charge here. Keep flying in this direction. I’ll be back soon.”

Poot had not been gone long when a definite whiff seemed to wash over the small band of owls.

“I think I smell gulls nearby.” Otulissa turned her beak upwind. “Oh Great Glaux, here they come. The stench is appalling,” Otulissa muttered. “Those seagulls! Scum of the avian world.”

“Are they really that bad?” Nut Beam asked.

“You can smell them, can’t you? And they’re wet poopers on top of it all!”

“Wet poopers!” Silver and Nut Beam said at once.

“I’ve never met a wet pooper. I can’t imagine,” Nut Beam said.

“Well then, don’t try,” Otulissa snapped testily.

“It’s hard to believe that they never yarp pellets at all,” Nut Beam continued to muse.

“My sister actually had a friend who was a wet pooper, but they wouldn’t let her bring him home. I think he was a warbler,” Silver announced.

“Oh Glaux, here we go again,” said Martin.

“I think maybe I’ve met one once,” said Nut Beam.

“Well, it’s not something to be proud of. It’s disgusting,” Otulissa replied.

“You’re starting to sound like a nest-maid snake, Otulissa,” said Soren, and laughed. Nest-maid snakes were notoriously disdainful of all birds except owls because of what they considered their inferior and less noble digestive systems due to their inability to yarp pellets. All of their waste was splatted out from the other end, which nest-maids considered vile and disgusting.

“They give us a lot of good information about weather, Otulissa,” Soren said.

“You mean a lot of dirty jokes. You can find good information in books.”

Poot was soon back with the seagulls in his wake.

“What’s the report?” Martin asked.

“Storm surge moderate,” Poot said, “but building. The gulls say the leading edge of this thing is at least fifty leagues off to the southeast.”

“Yeah, but I got news for you.” At that moment, Ruby skidded in on a tumultuous draft and a mess of flying spume. She was accompanied by two gulls. It was as if she had come out of nowhere. And suddenly Soren felt an immense pull on his downwind wings. “You’ve been talking to the wrong gulls. It’s not just a storm with a leading edge. It’s a hurricane with an eye!”

Hurricane! Soren thought. Impossible. How has this happened so quickly? No one except Poot had ever flown a hurricane – and these young owlets! What ever would happen to them?

“It’s still far off,” Ruby continued. “But it’s moving faster than you think and building stronger. And we’re very near a rain band. And then it’s the eye wall!”

“Eye wall! We’ve got to alter course,” Poot exclaimed. “Which way, Ruby?”

“Port, I mean starboard!”

“The eye wall!” Soren and Martin both gasped. The eye wall of a hurricane was worse than the eye. It was a wall of thunderstorms, preceded by rain bands delivering violent swirling updrafts that could extend hundreds of leagues from the wall.

“You can’t see the band from here because of the clouds.”

Oh, Glaux, thought Soren. Don’t let these young owlets go off on their stories of grandparents being named for clouds.

“I think that right now we might actually be between two rain bands,” Ruby continued.

And then it was as if they all were sucked up into a swirling shaft. This IS a hurricane! Soren thought. He saw Martin go spinning by in a tawny blur. “Martin!” he screamed. He heard a sickening gasp and in the blur saw the little beak of the Saw-whet open in a wheeze as Martin tried to gulp air. He must have been in one of the terrible airless vacuums that Soren had heard about. Then Martin vanished and Soren had to fight with all of his might to stay back up, belly down, and flying. He could not believe how difficult this was. He had flown through blazing forests harvesting live coals, battling the enormous fire winds and strange contortions of air that the heat made, but this was terrible!

“Strike off to port, south by southeast. We’re going to run down. Rudder starboard with tail feathers! Extend lulus.” The lulus were small feathers just at the bend of an owl’s wing, which could help smooth the airflow. Poot was now calling out a string of instructions. “Downwind rudder, hold two points to skyward with port wing. Come on chaw! You can do it! Primary feathers screw down. Level off now. Forwards thrust!” Poot was flying magnificently, especially considering that under the lee of his wings he had tucked the two young owlets Nut Beam and Silver for protection.

But where was Martin? Martin was the smallest owl in the chaw. Concentrate! Concentrate! Soren told himself. You’re a dead bird if you think about anything but flying. Dead bird! Dead bird! Wings torn off! All the horrible stories he had heard about hurricanes came back to Soren. And although owls talked about the deadly eye of the hurricane, he knew there was something worse, really – the rim of that eye. And if the eye was fifty leagues away – well, the rim could be much closer. Soren’s own two eyes opened wide in terror and his third eyelid, the transparent one that swept across this eyeball, had to work hard to clear the debris, the slop, being flung in it from all directions. But he paid no heed to the slop. In his eye was the image of little Martin vanishing in a split second and being sucked directly into that rim. The eye of a hurricane was calm, but caught in the rim, a bird could spin around and around, its wings torn off by the second spin and most likely gasping for air until it died.

The air started to smooth out and the clammy warmth that had welled up from below subsided as a cooler layer of air floated up from the turbulent waters. But it had begun to pour hard. A driving rain pushed by the winds slanted in at a steep angle. The sea below seemed to smoke from the force of the rain.

“Form up, chaw! SOFP,” Poot commanded. They all assumed the positions of their Standard Operational Flight Pattern. Soren swivelled his head to look for Martin off his starboard wing. There was a little blank space where the Northern Saw-whet usually flew. He tipped his head up to where Ruby flew and saw the rusty fluff of her underbelly. She looked down and shook her head sadly. Soren thought he saw a tear well up in her eye, but it could have been some juice from a leftover meatball.

“Roll call!” Poot now barked. “Beak off, chaw!”

“Ruby here!” snapped the rust-coloured Shorteared Owl.

“Otulissa here!”

“Soren here!”

Then there was nothing – silence, or perhaps it was more like a small gulp from the position that Martin had always flown.

“Absence noted. Continue,” Poot said.

Absence noted? Continue? Was that it? Soren gasped. But before he could protest there was that piercing little voice, “Silver here.”

“Nut Beam here! But I’m feeling nauseous.”

“WHERE IS MARTIN, FOR GLAUX’S SAKE!” Soren shrieked in rage.

“Owl down,” Poot said, “Search-and-rescue commence.”

Then there was a muffled, slightly gagging sound and a terrific stench. At first, Soren thought Nut Beam had thrown up. But then out of the smoking Sea of Hoolemere, a seagull rose and in its beak was a wet little form.

“Martin here!” gasped the little owl. He hung limply in the beak of the seagull.

CHAPTER FOUR
The Spirit Woods

“I’m not sure if it was the impact on the water or the stench that got me, but I’m still feeling a bit dizzy. I have to say, however, that seagull stench is now my favourite fragrance.” Martin turned and nodded at Smatt, the seagull who had rescued him.

“Aw, it warn’t nothin’.” The seagull ducked his head modestly.

When he had first vanished, Martin had been sucked straight up, but it was a narrow funnel of warm air and almost immediately it had swirled into a bank of cold air that created a downdraft, and Martin had plunged into the sea. Smatt, who had been navigating between these funnels of warm and cold air, plunged in after him and grabbed him in his beak as he might have grabbed a fish – although Martin was considerably smaller than any fish that seagulls normally ate.

They had lighted down now on the mainland, in a wooded area on a peninsula that fingered out into the sea. It seemed, for the moment, calm. Although Soren, as he glanced around, found the forest quite strange. All the trees were white-barked and not one had a single leaf. Indeed, although it was night, this forest had a kind of luminance that made the moon pale by comparison.

“I would guess,” said Otulissa as she studied the sky, “that we are between rain bands here.” For some reason this rankled Soren. It sounded to him as if Otulissa was trying to sum up the weather situation the way Ezylryb would have, being the most knowledgeable owl of all about weather. Poot, who had succeeded him as chaw captain, really had very little knowledge in comparison, but he was a great flier. Now it seemed as if Otulissa had become the self-appointed weather expert.

Poot looked around uneasily. “That, or a spirit woods.”

A chill ran through them all. “A spirit woods?” Martin said softly. “I’ve heard of them.”

“Yeah, you’ve heard of them. You don’t necessarily want to spend the night in them,” Poot replied.

“I don’t know, Poot,” Ruby spoke in a nervous low voice, “whether we’ve got much choice. I mean that hurricane’s still going. I’ve seen the worst of it. It’s not something you want to mess with.”

“Well folks.” Smatt began to lift his wings. A foetid smell wafted towards them. “I think I’ll be clearing out now.” The seagull looked apprehensively at Poot. In a flash he had lifted off and vanished.

“What are we gonna do, Poot?” Silver asked, a slight tremor in his voice.

“Not much choice, as Ruby said. Just hope we don’t disturb any scrooms.”

“Scrooms!” Nut Beam and Silver wailed.

“Well, I don’t believe in them,” Martin said and stomped his small talons into the moss-covered ground. Then, as if to prove it, he lifted off and began to search for a tree to light down in.

“You mind what tree you choose. You don’t want to disturb a scroom,” Poot called after him. But Soren thought that maybe after having been sucked up in a rain band, then dropped into the sea, a scroom was nothing to Martin.

Scrooms were disembodied spirits of owls who had died and had not quite made it all the way to glaumora, which was the special owl heaven where the souls of owls went. Nut Beam and Silver, however, had begun to cry uncontrollably.

“Pull yourselves together, both of you,” Otulissa exploded angrily. “There’s no such thing as scrooms. An atmospheric disturbance. False light. That’s all. Strix Emerilla has written about it in a very erudite book entitled Spectroscopic Anomalies: Shifts in Shape and Light.”

“Yes, there are scrooms!” the two owlets hooted back shrilly.

“My grandma said so,” Nut Beam said defiantly and stomped a small talon on the moss.

“I’ve heard enough about your grandmas,” Otulissa snapped. “Poot, how long do we have to stay here?”

“Until the hurricane blows through. Can’t take these young’uns” – he nodded towards Silver and Nut Beam – “out in this. Too inexperienced.”

“You’re making us stay here – with scrooms?” Nut Beam protested. And as if on cue, Silver started to wail again.

Ruby flew up and then lighted directly in front of the two owlets. She looked almost twice her size as her rust-coloured feathers had puffed up in the manner of owls who are extremely angry. In the pale eerie white of the forest, Ruby looked like a ball of red-hot embers. “I’m fed up with all your whining. I don’t give a pile of racdrops if there’re scrooms here. I’m hungry. I’m tired. I want a nice fat rat or vole. I’ll take squirrel if I have to. Then I want to go to sleep. And you two better shut your beaks because I’ll make your life more miserable than scrooms ever could!” The other owls looked at Ruby with astonishment.

“I think we need to organise a hunting party,” Otulissa said.

“Yes, yes, immediately,” Poot said. He began to flutter about the group. “Now, there’s no telling what one can find in such a woods.”

It was obvious to Soren, Ruby and Martin that Otulissa had embarrassed Poot, who might be a terrific flier but not a natural leader. They felt the absence of Ezylryb more than ever.

But then Poot seemed to be jarred into action. He swelled up with authority and tried his best to sound like a leader. “Soren,” Poot said, “you and Ruby can cover the northeast quadrant of this woods. You fly it hard now, young’uns. We got some hungry beaks here. Martin and Otulissa can cover the southwest one. I’ll stay here with the young’uns.”

“Ha!” Ruby gave a harsh sound and ascended through the branches. “I think Poot’s scared of scrooms. That’s why he sent us out. You scared, Soren?” They had gained some altitude now and the strange mist that floated through the white trees below seemed to evaporate.

“Sort of,” Soren said.

“Well, at least you’re honest. But what do you mean by ‘sort of’?”

“I think the idea of a scroom is not so much scary as sad. I mean scrooms are supposed to be spirits that didn’t quite make it to glaumora. That’s kind of sad.”

“I guess so,” Ruby said.

Guess so? Soren blinked at Ruby. He thought it was terribly sad, but Ruby wasn’t the deepest owl. She was a fantastic flier and a great chaw mate and lots of fun but, although she felt things in her gizzard like all owls, she was not given to reflecting deeply. But now she surprised him. “How come they don’t make it to glaumora?”

“I’m not sure. Mrs P said that it was because they might have unfinished business on earth.”

“Mrs Plithiver? How would she know? She’s a snake.”

“I sometimes think that Mrs P knows more about owls than owls do.” Soren cocked his head suddenly. “Sssh.” Ruby shut her beak immediately. She, like all other owls, had great respect for the extraordinary hearing abilities of Barn Owls. “Ground squirrel below.”

There were actually three in all. And Ruby, who was incredibly fast with her talons, managed to get two in one single slicing swipe. They were more successful than Martin and Otulissa, who had only come back with two very small mice.

“Hunter’s share,” Poot said, nodding to the four of them. It was customary that the owls who did the hunting got first choice of the catch. Soren chose a thigh from his ground squirrel. It was rather scrawny, and it wasn’t the most flavourful ground squirrel he had ever eaten. Maybe a spirit wood wasn’t the best place for a ground squirrel to get plump and juicy. Then Soren had a creepy thought. Maybe they fed on scrooms or perhaps scrooms fed on them – spirit food. His gizzard hardly had to work to pack in those bones and fur.

By the time they had finished eating, the night was thinning into day. Although with the mist that seemed to wrap itself through the branches of the white-barked trees, Soren thought that it seemed like twilight in these woods.

“I think,” Poot announced, “it’s time for us to turn in. Not for a full day’s sleep, mind you. We’ll leave before First Black. No fear of crows around here.” He slid his neck about in a slow twist as if scanning the wood.

“No. Just scrooms,” Nut Beam said.

“Nut Beam, shut your beak,” Martin screeched fiercely.

“Now, now, Martin! Don’t like that tone, lad,” Poot said, trying to sound very—

Very what? wondered Soren. Like Ezylryb? Never like the Captain.

“Well, I’ve been doing some thinking,” Poot went on to say. “And I think that this being a spirit woods as some calls ’em, I think it’s best that we keep to the ground for sleeping, no perching in them trees.” He swivelled his head around in a slow sweeping movement, as if he were almost trying to push back the bone-white trees that surrounded them.

A hush fell upon the group. Soren thought he could hear the beat of their hearts quicken. This scroom stuff must really be serious, he said to himself. Even Ruby looked a little nervous. For an owl to sleep on the ground was almost unheard of, unless, of course, it was a Burrowing Owl who lived in the desert, like Digger. There were dangers on the ground. Predators – like raccoons.

“I know what you be thinking,” Poot continued nervously and seemed to avoid looking them in the eye as Ezylryb would have. “I know you’re thinking that for an owl to ground sleep ain’t natural. But these ain’t natural woods. And it’s said that these trees might really belong to the scrooms. You never know which one a scroom might light down in and it’s best to leave the trees be. I’m older than you young’uns. Got more experience. And I’d be daft not to tell you that my gizzard is giving me some mighty twinges.”

“Mine too!” said Silver.

“Probably has a gizzard the size of a pea,” Martin whispered.

“Now don’cha go worry too much. We just got to be vigi-ful,” Poot continued.

“You mean ‘vigilant’?” Otulissa said.

“Don’t smart-beak me, lassie. We’s gonna set up a watch. I’ll take the first one with Martin. Otulissa and Ruby you take the next. And Soren you take the last. You have to do it alone, but it be the shortest one, lad. So nothin’ to fear.”

Nothing to fear? Then why doesn’t he take it? Soren thought, but he knew that the one thing a chaw owl never did was question a command. All of the owls turned their heads towards Soren.

Martin stepped forwards. “I’ll stay up with you, Soren.”

Soren blinked at the little Northern Saw-whet. “No, no – that’s very kind of you, Martin, but you’ll be tired. You must already be tired. I mean you’ve fallen into the sea. Don’t worry, Martin. I’ll be fine.”

“No, Soren, I mean it.”

“No, I’ll be fine,” Soren said firmly.

The truth was that during that first watch they were all too nervous to sleep and the ground was a terrible place to even try to sleep to begin with. But as the dark faded and the white of the trees melted into the lightness of the morning, they did grow sleepier and sleepier. The owls’ heads began to droop lower and lower until they were resting on their breasts or on their backs, as it was the habit of very young owls to twist their heads around and rest them just between their shoulders.

“Your watch, Soren,” Ruby said.

His eyes blinked open. He lifted his head.

“Don’t worry. There is nothing out here. Not a raccoon, not a scroom, not a scroom of a raccoon.” Otulissa churred softly, which was the sound that owls made when they laughed.

Soren walked over to the watch mound that was in a small clearing. He spread his wings and, in one brief upstroke, rose to settle on the top of the mound. The fog in the forest had thickened again. A soft breeze swirled through the woods, stirring and spinning the mist into fluffy shapes. Some of the mist clouds were long and skinny, others puffy. Soren thought of the silly jabber of the young owlets when they had been flying earlier, before encountering the hurricane. The owlets were sort of cute, he guessed, in their own annoying little way. It was hard to believe, however, that he had ever been that young. He had barely known his parents before he had been snatched, and he had never known his grandparents. There had been no time.

He blinked his eyes at the mist that was now whirling into new shapes. It was strange how one could start to read this ground mist like clouds, find pictures in them – a raccoon, a deer bounding over a tree stump, a fish leaping from a river. Soren had tried sometimes to make up stories about cloud pictures when he was flying. The vapours just ahead of him had clumped together into one large shapeless mass, but now they seemed to be pulling apart again into two clumps. There was something vaguely familiar about the shapes that these clumps were becoming. What was it? A lovely downy bundle that looked so soft and warm. Something seemed to call to him and yet there was no sound. How could that be?

Soren grew very still. Something was happening. He was not frightened. No, not frightened at all. But sad, yes, deeply and terribly sad. He felt himself drawn to these two shapes. They were fluffy and their heads were cocked in such a familiar way as if they were listening to him. And they were calling to him, and they were saying things but there were no sounds. It was as if the voices were sealed inside his head. Just then, he felt himself step out of his body. He felt his wings spread. He was lifting, and yet he was still there on the mound. He could see his talons planted on the mossy top with the tangle of ivy. But, at the same time, he could see something moving out of him. It was him – but not him. It was his shape, pale and misty and swirling like the other shapes. The thing that was him but not him was lifting, rising, and spreading its wings in flight to perch in the big white tree at the edge of the clearing where the two other misty figures perched.

False light?

No, not false light, Soren.

Scrooms?

If you must.

Mum? Da?

The mist seemed to shiver and glint like moonlight scattered on water.

He floated over the mound but when he looked back he saw his own figure still standing there. He extended a talon but it was transparent! And then he lighted down on the branch. In that instant, Soren realised he felt in a strange way complete. It was as if there had been a hole in his gizzard and now it had been filled and closed. He reached out with his talon to touch his mum but it simply passed through her.

Am I dying? Am I becoming a scroom?

No dearest. No one had called him ‘dearest’ like that since he had been snatched.

Soren cocked his head and tried to look at his parents, but the mist was continually shifting, sliding and recomposing itself into their shapes. They were recognisable but yet it was not images he was seeing. It was more like a foggy shadow. Still, he knew without a doubt it was them. But why, why after all this time were they here, seeking him out?

Unfinished business? Is that what it is?

We think so. It was the voice of his father in his head.

You don’t know?

Not exactly, dear. We’re never sure. We know something isn’t right. We have feelings, but no real answers to these feelings.

Are you trying to warn me of something?

Yes, yes. But the hard part is we don’t know what it is we should warn you about.

Soren wondered if they knew about Kludd. He wanted to tell them how Kludd had pushed him from the nest, but he couldn’t. Something stopped in his brain. Words began to tumble out of his mouth, and now he could actually hear those words. He was telling them about Kludd, but his mum and da were unmoved. They were not hearing anything of what he was saying. And there was a blankness now in his head. This was all very weird. When he could hear his own voice, the words in the normal way, his parents could not. Their only way of speaking to one another was this silent language that seemed to exist only in their heads. And yet Soren could not form the ideas in his head to tell them about Kludd, and they could not tell him about the danger.

Metal! Beware Metal Beak! The words exploded in Soren’s head. It was the voice of his father but it seemed to have taken all his energy to do this. His father was dissolving before his eyes. His mother as well. The mists that had been their shapes were swirling, seeping away. Soren reached out with his talons to hold them. “Don’t go! Don’t go. Don’t leave me! Come back.”

“What’s you yelling about, lad? Wake us all up, will you?” Soren was suddenly on the ground and Poot was standing in front of him, blinking. How had he got on the ground? He had been in that tree a second ago but he had no memory of flying down from it. And there was no mist now. None at all.

“I’m sorry, Poot. I flew up into that tree there. I thought I saw something.” Soren nodded.

“No, you didn’t,” Poot said. “I woke a few minutes ago. You were standing right here on the mound. Perfectly alert – being a good lookout. Believe me, I would have had your tail feathers if you hadn’t been.”

“I was right here?” Soren was incredulous.

“Course you were, young’un,” Poot said and looked at him curiously as if he’d gone yoicks. “Right here you were. I would have noticed you up in the tree, believe me.”

Was it just a dream? Soren thought. But it felt so real. I heard Mum’s and Da’s voices in my head. It was real.

“Time we be takin’ off.” Poot looked at the sky that was turning a dusky purple. Pink clouds sliding against it. “Wind’s going our way,” Poot remarked, after studying the clouds for a minute. “We’ll catch a westerly and come in on a nice reach.” A reach was easy flying with the wind being not on the beak or on the tail feathers directly, but a little aft of the wing, giving a nice steady boost to their flight. The others were beginning to stir from their daytime slumbers.

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