(GoG Book 07) The Hatchling (10 page)

Never?
Nyroc thought. Nyroc recalled how his mum cursed in front of him all the time.

Phillip continued, “It was also around this same time that Wortmore showed up with Stryker. This is one of the Pure Ones’ best strategies for finding new recruits. They go into regions where forest fires have destroyed the land, where owls feel lost, confused, disoriented, and are almost starving to death. They promise them a good hollow with soft moss, plump voles, and rock rats. The new recruits are promised a chance to become the pioneers and leaders of a new empire.”

“But the Pure Ones only recruit Barn Owls, right?”

“Yes. Stryker and Wortmore said that only Barn Owls were worthy of joining this elite union. That the Union must be kept pure and only Barn Owls were pure enough.”

“I know that’s what Mum always tells me—that we Barn Owls are Glaux’s favorites.”

“Yes, but what they didn’t tell us was that some Barn Owls are
more pure
than others. No, no. My da thought he was going to be a big important squadron leader. He had become very bitter. It seemed that now that he had lost most of his family, he was ready to kill.”

“So what happened when your father joined?”

“What happened? Ha! He got killed!”

“Killed?”

“In the first battle he ever went into. Kludd had managed to kidnap one of the leaders of the Ga’Hoole Tree. But the great tree sent the Chaw of Chaws to rescue him.”

“I know of the Chaw of Chaws. I heard Mum talk about it. I think my uncle Soren was a leader of it. Was he the one who killed your father?”

“No, it was a Short-eared Owl. Female. I forget her name. She is supposed to be an incredible flier—fast, with unbelievable precision.”

“Not the Great Gray who killed my father, then.”

“No, not Twilight.”

“Twilight? Is that what they call him?”

“Yes.”

Nyroc now knew the name of his father’s killer.

A silence stretched between the two friends. Outside the den, they could hear the wind whipping through the narrow canyon. An occasional gust of snow was sucked into the den from a downdraft. Finally, Nyroc spoke. “So what happened to you after your da died?”

“Nothing good. Without him, I was just another mouth to feed. Because I was a Sooty, I was given the most menial tasks and never trained for the elite units. I was miserable
until you came along. Then everything changed.” Phillip shook his head in wonder. “I was the one chosen to be the closest friend, companion to the hatchling, the little chick that had emerged from the egg they called the Sacred Orb. My life changed. I got the choice pieces of freshly killed vole. I got to fly out and gather insects for your First Insect ceremony. I occupied a place of honor at all your First Ceremonies—right next to your mum. And although I did not much care for Nyra, I was liking, loving you more every day.”

Again there was silence. Nyroc peeked out of the den. “It’s really dark out there now.”

“Yes,” Phillip replied, “but I think it would be foolish to leave. We should stay here until daylight. Less chance of them keeping up the chase through the daylight. Besides”—Phillip gave a wink to Nyroc—“they don’t have a free pass from the crows.”

“That’s right. I never thought of that.”

“So let’s rest up and wait for daybreak.”

So the two friends wedged themselves into the most comfortable corner they could find and tried to fall asleep. But Nyroc couldn’t sleep. Too many thoughts were swirling through his head. His gizzard was in a twitter.

“Phillip, you still awake?”

“Sort of,” Phillip replied sleepily.

“I was wondering…Was your name really Phillip when you were a young owlet and lived back there in Silverveil?”

“I can’t exactly remember. It began with a
P-h,
I’m pretty sure.”

“What’s a
P-h
?” Nyroc said.

“It’s a letter or two letters.”

“A letter?”

“Yeah, for reading and writing. My mum knew how to read. She taught me my letters.”

“You mean that it’s not just the Guardians of Ga’Hoole who know how to read and write?”

“They know better than any other owls, but no, they are not the only ones. Some owls do learn a bit about letters.”

“Can you read?”

“A little bit.”

“I’d like to learn how to read,” Nyroc replied. There was a wistfulness in his voice.

“I can teach you the letters of your name, but to really learn, you’d have to go to the Great Ga’Hoole Tree.”

“Phillip…” Nyroc began.

“I’m really tired, Nyroc. We should get some sleep.”

“I promise this is the last question.”

“All right. What?”

“Well, isn’t it odd that both our fathers were killed by the Guardians of Ga’Hoole, and that we’ve both lost our mothers?”

At this, Phillip’s eyes blinked wide open. “Nyroc, I lost my mother. Your mother lost you. There’s a difference.”

“You mean I left.”

“Yes, and with good reason.”

“What do you mean good reason?”

“To seek the truth and…” Phillip hesitated.

“And what?”

“Nyroc, you were too fine for her, too very fine. You have standards, Nyroc. Standards!”

Standards,
Nyroc thought.

But standards aren’t practical,
Phillip thought.
You can’t eat standards. You can’t live in them.

Finally, the young owls fell asleep.

A
thin ribbon of light lay diagonally across Phillip’s facial disk. He blinked one eye open.
Morning,
he thought miserably. Owls were supposed to go to sleep in the morning and rise at night. “Everything’s turned frinking upside down,” he muttered to himself. Nyroc was still sleeping peacefully in his corner. No sense waking him up until he had a peek outside. He walked over to the opening of the den and poked his head out. “Ooph!” he exclaimed, clamping his eyes shut. The sunlight splintered blindingly across a thin blanket of white snow. He dared to open his eyes in a half squint and look up to see if there was any sign of the posse. He searched the sky for several minutes, flipping his head this way and that. It was a beautiful day—if one was a day kind of creature. Very little wind. The sky was a brilliant flawless blue and there was no sign whatsoever of the posse. Time to wake up Nyroc. Except for the unfortunate fact that it was daylight, the conditions were perfect for flying.

“Nyroc! Nyroc! Time to go.” He gave his friend a shake. “Come on, we have to make time while we can in the day. I don’t think they will be flying.”

Then as the two birds made their way to the edge of the den, Phillip suddenly remembered something. “Hold it!” He slammed Nyroc back with one wing just before he had stepped into the fresh snow.

“What’s the matter?”

“We can’t take off from out there. We’ll leave talon prints in the snow. Stryker will find them. We’ll have to do a dry takeoff.”

“I’ve never done one,” Nyroc said.

“Don’t worry. They’re easy. We’ll practice in here.”

“In here?” Nyroc looked around the confines of the den.

A dry takeoff was one from the ground when there was no perch—branch, rock, or limb—available, and very little room to spread one’s wings in the normal way.

“All right, Nyroc, now watch me.” With a great
whoosh
, Phillip lifted his wings straight up into a sharp V shape. Then he slashed downward in a power stroke. Instantly, he was aloft. He flew out of the den and then back in. “Now you try it.”

It took Nyroc just a few times before he mastered it.

“Now here’s the next thing,” Phillip said.

“Next? What do you mean? I did it perfectly that time. Let’s just go.”

“Look down. There are talon marks all over the floor of this den. If Stryker came in here he would find them. See that pile of lichen over there? You take part of it and I’ll take part and we’ll sweep the marks away.”

It did not take them long to erase the signs of their presence in the fox’s den. Nyroc’s dry takeoff was flawless, and together the birds rose higher and higher out of the canyon.

It was a lovely day for flying, even for dedicated night fliers. There was the extra shimmer of excitement as they flew past a cliff line with crows and saw twenty or more of them nod their heads in a silent salute.

“How about that!” Phillip shouted, and slid in next to Nyroc. “Slam four!” and the two birds touched their four talons from their adjacent legs midflight.

They had been flying for some time when the clouds began to roll in behind them, smudging the perfect blueness of the sky. But ahead it was still clear. They were holding a north-northeast course so as to avoid the Shredders of the Shadow Forest. It was a course toward Silverveil but first they would have to cut through The Barrens. Nyroc had wanted desperately to go to Silverveil.
If he was going to see trees for the first time in his life, he wanted to see the most beautiful trees of all and that was where they grew. Phillip wanted to return because he wanted to see how much had grown back in The Brooklets since the fire.

They kept a keen lookout in case Nyra and her troops had followed them into the daylight, but so far they had seen nothing. They stopped to hunt a couple of times. They were very careful not to leave tracks of any kind—either pellets or talon marks. Nyroc now swiveled his head back toward the clouds that rolled in thicker and thicker behind him. Weather coming in—snow or rain, he guessed, this time of year. He noticed something dark in the cloud but it was just a speck. But as soon as he swiveled his head back to face forward he felt a funny little
ping
in his gizzard. This time, he flipped his head all the way back and cranked the muscles in his facial disk to orient his ear slits toward any sound that might come from that speck of darkness. He heard a rhythmic
wuff wuff wuff
…so soft, no other creature except a Barn Owl could have ever detected it.

“Phillip! We’re being followed!”

“No!” Phillip flipped his head back and then gasped. “You’re right. What should we do?”

“Split up for now,” Nyroc said, surprised at the certainty
in his own voice. “It’ll be harder for them to follow both of us.”

“But where should we meet? I sort of know this territory, but you don’t know it at all.”

Nyroc thought a moment, then said, “We’ll circle back. They won’t expect us to do that. We’ll meet back at the fox’s den tonight.”

Phillip had to admit it was a good idea. The overhanging ledges of the canyon gave them some protection from being seen. No owl would expect another owl to dive into a deep box canyon that was full of rattlesnakes.

“All right, let’s go.”

And so the two young owls peeled away from each other in opposite directions.

N
yroc peeked out of the fox’s den to scan the sky for a sign of Phillip. He had arrived a good time before and had expected Phillip by now. But there was not a speck in the sky. Well, he supposed he should consider this lucky. There was no sign of Phillip—then again, no sign of the posse. But what if the posse had caught Phillip? That was a scary thought. Nyroc turned to walk deeper into the shadows of the den. He yarped a pellet, picked it up, and walked farther into the den to scratch out a place to bury it.

As he was digging with his talons, he felt something odd drop from his tail. He wheeled around and saw a feather, one of his undertail coverts, lying on the ground. “Great Glaux! What’s happening to me?” He stared in a mixture of dismay and horror. Another smaller covert slipped lazily to the ground. He began to tremble uncontrollably and moan. His gizzard shuddered and grew squishy.

“What in Glaux’s name is going on in here?” Phillip said as he flew into the den.

“Phillip! I’m so glad you’re here.”

“What is wrong?”

Nyroc straightened up and tried to look brave. He gulped and then blinked several times. “Phillip, I hate to tell you this but…but I think I am dying.”

“Dying? What are you talking about? You look perfectly healthy to me.”

Nyroc nodded toward his feet and then bent down and picked up one of the feathers. “How do you explain this, Phillip?”

“Explain it? What’s to explain? You’re molting, that’s all.”

“Molting?”

Phillip sighed deeply. “Hasn’t that idiot mother of yours told you about molting?”

“No.”

“First of all, it’s natural.”

“You mean I’m not ill? I’m not going to die?”

“Not from molting. Sorry to disappoint you. Molting is a sign of maturity. When you were a very young hatchling, your first fluffy down fell off and you were pretty unsightly. We had a First Molting ceremony, don’t you remember?”

“Maybe I kind of remember. But what’s this?” Nyroc
waved the feather in front of Phillip. “This isn’t down. This is an important flight feather. An undertail covert. Lose too many of those and how will I rudder, or make a decent turn?”

“When feathers get old and worn you shed them. Another feather will be coming in a short time.”

“When?”

“Don’t be so impatient, Nyroc.”

“I wouldn’t be if I weren’t being chased by my own mum, her best tracker, and her fiercest lieutenants. I need all the feathers I have.”

“It’ll be a few days.” Phillip paused and a worried shadow fell across his eyes.

“What is it?” Nyroc was quick to detect even the subtlest emotions in his friend.

“We’re going to have to bury these feathers like we buried the pellets. We don’t want them able to track us through your feathers.”

“Oh, Glaux! I never thought of that.” Nyroc began trembling all over again.

“Let me check you to see if any others are missing.”

Phillip crowded close to Nyroc and with the special edge on his middle talon began combing through the feathers. He had been Nyroc’s chief preener since the young owl had hatched. Preening was one of the most pleasant
social interactions an owl could have. As he picked through the feathers, he was careful to examine for any ruptured shafts where feathers might have broken away. He could feel Nyroc begin to shake once again with fear. “Find anything?” Nyroc asked desperately.