(GoG Book 07) The Hatchling (16 page)

Something was. But it was not his next meal. A young Burrowing Owl emerged from a hole Nyroc had not noticed. It had been so long since Nyroc had spoken to an owl, he actually went into the frozen defense posture hoping that he would blend in with the boulder on which he perched. But such was not the case. The young Burrowing Owl saw him and froze herself, dropping the small bundle she was carrying in her beak. It was young Kalo, daughter of Harry and Myrtle. They were just preparing for the family’s move to Silverveil. Harry had finally talked Myrtle into trying tree living just for the summer.

Kalo opened her eyes wide at the sight of Nyroc.
Could this really be her?
she thought, staring hard at him.

There was not a corner of the owl kingdom that had not welcomed with joy the news of the Pure Ones’ defeat by the Guardians of Ga’Hoole. But it had been rumored that although the one called Metal Beak, the leader, had been killed, his mate, Nyra, was still alive. There had been sightings of her all over. Kalo looked at this owl in front of her and, though she had never seen Nyra, everything seemed to fit what she had heard of her: the face, unusually large and white for a Barn Owl, shaped more like a moon than a heart. And yes, she blinked, the scar was
there, too, slashing diagonally across the face—just like the scar Nyra was supposed to have. Kalo was so frightened that she did not notice that this owl was male, not female. As far as Kalo was concerned, this was Nyra.

Finally, the Burrowing Owl gathered up her courage and spoke. “W-w-what are you doing here?”

“Just resting. I’m on my way to Silverveil,” Nyroc replied.

“Silverveil,” a voice from the burrow pealed out. Myrtle waddled from the opening, stopped dead in her talon tracks, and wilfed at the sight of Nyroc.

Nyroc, trying to be sociable, took a step forward. “My name is Ny—”

He never got to finish. Both owls screeched and dove back into their burrow. “She’s here, Harry. Nyra is here. And she’s going to Silverveil. We’re not going to Silverveil. Enough of your yoickish ideas.”

Nyroc listened in a dazed state to the squabbling from the burrow. His gizzard seemed numb but his mind slowly began to process what he was hearing.
They think I am my mother. They think I am a Pure One come to capture or kill them.

Without another thought, he spread his wings and lifted off. He was half mumbling, half crying all the things he had meant to say to the Burrowing Owls, but never had the chance. “I only came for rest. I wasn’t going to stay. My
name is Nyroc, not Nyra. I am nothing like my mother or my father…”

But you are, Nyroc! You are!
a chorus of voices swirled in his head.
You will never escape. And no matter where you go, you shall be hated and feared. Go back to the Pure Ones. Go back. You shall be revered. You are their leader, their king.

It was a night in which the black was thick and neither moon nor stars shone above. A glaring gray light slowly whirled around Nyroc, first on one side of him, then the other. It was not his father’s scroom. It was three others—made of shreds of gray mist that appeared like tattered owls with fierce yet colorless eyes. They flew with him, one at the tip of each wing, another at his tail feathers.

They looked as if they had come from hagsmire—hagsfiends caught up in a frenzy of hag winds. These singing gray shadows whirled about him and sang out in screechy voices:

We are the voices of the dead.

We’ve come to tell you what to dread.

A feeble prince, you’ve taken flight.

You shall be ours before the night.

But if your gizzard gallgrot gets

A king of kings it shall beget.

The words of their gruesome song made Nyroc shiver. Were they threatening him with death—“You shall be ours before the night”? Nyroc realized that despite the violent circling of these scrooms about him, they caused no wind. Indeed, the headwind he had been battling before he had landed in The Barrens had all but vanished.

Nyroc flicked his port wing first, then his starboard one, ruddered his tail, lowered his head, and said in a very quiet voice, “You are nothing. Not even wind.” And he thrust forward through the misty figures that seemed to dissolve into the night.

Yet still his gizzard quivered. Why had they followed him? Why had their voices seeped into his head?

He was more determined than ever to get to Silverveil.

I
n the distance, Nyroc saw a low range of hills. His gizzard fluttered. This must be the northern border of The Barrens. Phillip had told him about these hills. Just beyond them, not far was the most beautiful part of Silverveil, a region called Blythewold. There were all sorts of owls in Blythewold, including Barn Owls of all breeds. Surely he would be welcome here. He flew faster.

Soon the hills were beneath him, and the moon had finally risen in the sky. Everything was awash in its silvery light. Oh, he knew what green was now. Never had he seen such greenness. He could hear the rippling silver sound of what seemed like a hundred brooks. A light wind stirred the sedges that grew along their banks. There were trees of all sorts. Trees with broad leaves that whispered in the breeze, some whose leaves were not green but red, and some even yellow. And trees that had no leaves at all, but long, thin, drooping branches like golden strands. These trees grew by the lakes, of which there were many, and
these strands of gold swept over the surface of the water, making beautiful sighing sounds. Oh, this was where he would live forever and ever. This would be his home. He would explain who he was. That he was nothing like his mum or da, that he had left them and the Pure Ones.

Nyroc felt he was on the brink of a whole new world, a whole new life. No more day-for-night living. He would join the wonderful nighttime of owls—fly with them, hunt with them, live with them. But night was now thinning into the dawn. He would have to wait through a long day for First Black. Oh, he was so impatient!

Nyroc had decided it might be a bit forward to try for a hollow in one of these lovely trees. He didn’t want to have to go poking his beak into places that might be occupied just when mums and das were trying to get their young’uns to sleep with lullabies and stories. He would be patient. He’d settle for something on the ground. And he should find it quickly. It had been exceedingly hot, and now in the dwindling night, the sky pulsed with silent flashes of light—heat lightning. The air was heavy with the smell of a summer storm about to break. He should find shelter. There were several old rotted-out stumps that would do for a day. Just one day.

He soon tucked himself into a lovely old stump, overgrown with mosses and lichen. In a tree not too far away,
he had heard a mother Barn Owl begin to tell a story from the Fire Cycle. He had been sleepy, but he was suddenly alert. “You see,” the mother was saying, “it was Grank, the first collier, who became the ryb for King Hoole.” Hoole! He knew there was a connection. “Now, dears, you know, of course, how the legend of the coming of Hoole begins.” And for once Nyroc knew what the storyteller would say next. The words were among the most beautiful of any of the legends.
Once upon a time, before there were kingdoms of owls, in a time of ever-raging wars, there was an owl born in the country of the North Waters and his name was Hoole…

But now the mum was telling something he had never heard before. Was it part of the Fire Cycle or the Hatching Cycle stories? Her voice was lovely on this summer night. “But, young’uns, even before the great Hoole had been hatched, there were others who feared his coming. It was rumored that a hagsfiend from hagsmire had been sent to destroy the egg. The father of the hatchling Hoole had been murdered several days before the egg had hatched out. And with his dying breath, he said to his mate, ‘Seek out my old ryb, Grank, and he shall know what to do. There is no choice, my dear. You must give the egg to Grank. He shall care for it and raise the chick as if it were his own. These are dangerous times.’ And the mother knew that the father was right. It must be the hardest thing in
the world for a mother to part with her young’un before it even hatched.”

“Oh, Mum,” one of the little chicks interrupted, “you wouldn’t do that to us, would you?”

“If it meant you would die if I did not give you up, I would certainly do it.”

Nyroc could hardly believe what he was hearing. This was a part of the cycle he knew nothing of. That Hoole was taken from his mother and raised by Grank.

“So, what happened?” said another voice. “Did the hatchling learn how to be a collier like Grank?”

“Soren’s a collier, isn’t he?” said another.

Now Nyroc stood straight up, as straight as he could in the cramped hollow of the old stump.
Soren…a collier! They’re talking about Soren? My uncle.

“Yes, so they say.”

“Quit interrupting,” said one of the chicks. “Tell the part about the Ember of Hoole and how Hoole found it.”

“That’s a story for another day, young’uns.”

“Oh, no…please, Mum…just a little more…” They all began pleading for another little bit of the story, and Nyroc felt like joining in. The problem was that young chicks could never concentrate on anything for long so by the next dawn, they might be asking for a completely different story. It might take forever for Nyroc to hear the
story of Grank and Hoole and the Ember. Especially the Ember. And he needed to. He was almost desperate in his need to hear the story of Grank and Hoole, and especially the Ember of Hoole. Somehow this story of the coal had something to do with him. He wasn’t sure what, but he had to find out. He would have to wait, however. Story time was over. He yawned sleepily although it was nearly time for him to start hunting. He could see the dawn through the cracks in the rotted stump.

Hoole is from the time of legends, and the Ember of Hoole was hidden in ancient times by the collier Grank. But Soren lives and the tree is real. Maybe,
Nyroc thought,
someday I will go to the Great Ga’Hoole Tree and meet my uncle Soren and become a collier.

Maybe not!
said another voice in his head. Nyroc felt his gizzard lurch. He opened one eye halfway and peered out from the hollow in the stump. A gray shadow loomed against the rising sun. The dawn wind drove the tatters of mist, which swirled, then clumped together. Nyroc felt dread in his gizzard as he saw the familiar shape of the horrible mask—first the beak, then the hollow eyes. Just as the sun slipped up over the horizon, breaking like a bloodied yolk low in the sky, the mask seemed to turn molten, a fiery red. The beak moved.

Maybe not!
The two words thundered in Nyroc’s head.
His gizzard froze, and he felt himself wilf with a terror he had never known before.

Suddenly, he heard a loud crack in the sky. Lightning crashed through the forest. There was an enormous explosion, and he heard the screech of owls fleeing from the very tree where the mum had minutes before been reciting the legend of the Coming of Hoole. And they were fleeing from other trees as well. The stump where he had taken refuge for the night was suddenly squirming with the sounds of all manner of small animals fleeing—snakes, rats, and squirrels. The snapping and sizzling of dry wood was deafening. The forest was ablaze. But Nyroc remained in the stump. He could not move once he had peeked out and saw the fire. It was as if he was hypnotized. Huge flames, immense flames reached for the moon, now merely a dim outline in the dawn sky.

Odd shapes leaped from the flames, shapes of creatures he had never seen before, or so he thought, until he saw the flash of green in the strangely tilting eyes as the four-legged creatures loped through a fiery mist in the middle of the flames. The heat was building fiercely. But Nyroc hardly felt it. The young Barn Owl was entering a state that experienced colliers knew to be the most dangerous of all. He was fire-yeep. As the fire raged with its
terrible beauty Nyroc stared, transfixed by the flames. His wings hung heavily at his side. He had no thoughts of flying. He read the fire and its flames. He loved them. He could hear songs in the fire. He was the fire and the fire was he.

G
rank, the first collier, was more than just a collier. He became one of the most revered rybs in Ga’Hoolian history.” Otulissa spoke quietly. The Spotted Owl looked at the students who were listening to her raptly in the library of the Great Ga’Hoole Tree in a late-night predawn class. “He was, in fact, the ryb for our very first King Hoole, and you all know the story of Hoole.” The little owlets nodded. Although Otulissa was a strict, no-nonsense ryb, and most of the owls were quite shy in her presence, they all loved to hear her stories of the very old days. There was a little owl who was not shy, however. She was a very inquisitive little Pygmy Owl who would never let anything stand in the way when she wanted to know something. “Yes, Fritha, you have a question?”

“Is it true that King Hoole…well, that they knew he was the real king for all of the owl Universe, because he found the Ember of Hoole and could hold it in his beak?”

“Well, so they say,” Otulissa said. “I mean, that is part of
the legend. Before King Hoole discovered it, it was called the Glauxian Coal. It was Grank, the first collier, who found it. He knew it had special powers that could be used or misused. According to the legend, he dropped it into the cone of a volcano to hide it to keep it safe. Although those first colliers could dive into volcanoes, he felt that only the noblest of owls would sense its presence there and retrieve it.”

“Can colliers still dive into volcanoes? The ones who live in Beyond the Beyond?”

“Oh, no. That is an art that has been long lost. No owl has dived into a volcano in probably a thousand years.”

“Not even Ruby?” Fritha asked.

The little owl was listening intently. She blinked, and the white tufts of feathers that arched over her bright yellow eyes made her look remarkably studious. Ruby was a very powerful collier. A Short-eared Owl, she was known for her spectacular flying.