(GoG Book 07) The Hatchling (18 page)

She opened the first book, entitled
Four Leggeds: Ancient
and Extinct,
written by a highly respected Burrowing Owl of the previous century. Burrowing Owls, perhaps because of their digging abilities, had led the field in the study of fossilized bones. Otulissa settled down to read, and her attention was immediately attracted to the drawing of an immense tooth larger than any canine fang she had ever seen.

“My, my,” Otulissa muttered. The tooth was as long as her own leg!

The dire wolf,
the text stated,
is far more robust than its cousin the ordinary wolf, Canis lupus.

“I would say so!” Otulissa softly exclaimed.

Although similar in many ways to a large modern gray wolf, the dire wolf had a larger, broader head. The most obvious differences to its modern-day relative were its massively sturdy legs. Despite being shorter than a gray wolf’s legs and perhaps not as good for running, they were excellent for pouncing and bringing down prey. This characteristic, coupled with enormous teeth capable of crushing bones, made the dire wolf of ancient times a formidable predator. It has furthermore been speculated that because of its larger and broader head, it possessed a great brain as well.

Although no expeditions have been sent into the territory known as Beyond the Beyond at this date, some scholars maintain that large migrations of wolves went there eons ago at about the same time sheets of the last great ice covered much of the earth. It was this
ice age that was accountable for the extinction of many large carnivores. Most scholars agree it is doubtful that any dire wolves could have survived.

“Well, dead is dead,” Otulissa said, “and extinct is even more dead than dead.”

“So they say,” a voice croaked from behind a high stack of books.

Otulissa was so startled that she rose up in a sudden hover from where she had been perched reading.

“Ezylryb!” she exclaimed. The ancient ryb of the great tree had been concealed behind his stack of books.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“I might ask the same of you,” he replied.

“Oh, I’m just reading up on dire wolves. They’re extinct, you know.”

“So they say,” he repeated.

“No, they really are!” Otulissa said forcefully.

“Extinct perhaps in books of science but, of course, poetry, literature, and legends are timeless. Is it not the purpose of legends to transcend the humdrum rhythms of our lives, the ordinary, crude borders that confine us to the present, that we may live instead in the ever-gleaming light of knowledge? I direct you to the third canto of the second book of the Fire Cycle, lines 47–99.” The old ryb, now almost as white with age as a Snowy, raised his foot to
point, the same foot with only three talons that had so intimidated Otulissa when she had been a youngster.

“Yes, sir, I have a copy of the Fire Cycle in my hollow. I think I’ll read it there.”

The words Ezylryb had spoken had deeply agitated Otulissa. Ezylryb was known for his devotion to science, but here he was saying that she should go read the Cycles—as if this would provide evidence of dire wolves. She could not shake the feeling that Ezylryb was aware of the deeper disturbance in her—which had something to do with the dreams that had been robbing her of sleep. Well, if she was going to read these legends she would prefer to do so in the privacy of her own hollow. So she returned there. The sun was still well above the horizon. There was ample time until tweener and night flight.

When she entered the hollow, it seemed chilly although it was the middle of summer. She poked at the almost dead coals in the grate of her fireplace. As a full-fledged Guardian and ryb, she was allowed a hollow with a coal grate, which was quite nice for chilly days. Then she noticed that she had stirred up some dust. She hated any kind of untidiness. She supposed she could call for a nest-maid snake but it would be easy to clean up herself. Otulissa found one task after another to do. But she finally realized that she could no longer avoid the real task awaiting her. The pursuit of
knowledge was a noble one, yes, almost sacred. Only cowards and fools shunned it. So she went directly to her bookshelf and reached for her old tattered copy of the Fire Cycle and picked through it gently with her talons. She found the canto and the verses that Ezylryb had told her about and began reading.

And in the whisper of moon’s last light

The dire wolf, Fengo, traversed the night.

And then another and still another followed him,

Until a pack across the earth did roam

Ever onward to seek a warmer home.

Bereft of hope and gnawed by hunger,

They sought a better place to dwell.

Far from the ice-locked country whence they came,

Far from the coldness that was their hell.

And each time a wolf did ask, “Where will this journey end?”

Fengo, their leader, did reply, “Just beyond the yonder. There!

See those fires that scorch the sky

Beyond the mountains that scrape the air?

See the blackness that bleeds hot coals

And makes the darkness shine with light?

Where fires turn the moon bloodred,

These same fires melt snow and ice

And leave the land unlocked, undead.

Beyond the next beyond!” Fengo’s howl the air did rend.

The wolves howled in return, “Will this journey never end?”

Yet end it did and in its end a new beginning now was found.

And thus did Fengo and his wolves come to this land beyond beyond.

Beneath the fiery cones they made their den.

In rocks and caves of black mountains

That glittered with shards of volcanic glass,

Between the coal fields and fires they came to dwell.

This was their heaven and not their hell.

And with that fire monster they made amends.

Yet in that place beyond beyond

Many others met their ends.

Otulissa read on. She had known about the time of the great ice sheets. It had caused a mass extinction among large animals, and it had taken thousands of years for life to regenerate itself. But smaller creatures had somehow managed to survive. Many of the most desperate of these sought their way, like the dire wolves, to Beyond the Beyond. It seemed that since history began desperate creatures have been drawn to Beyond the Beyond and made its inhospitable landscape their home. Even in the present day, it was known that a lot of hire claws lived there.

The next canto was very poetic and one of Otulissa’s favorites. It went on to describe how Grank hid the Ember of Hoole to keep it safe. She loved the rousing lines that came next, telling of Grank’s rescue of the hatchling Hoole:

In the darkness of that same night,

Another came in desperate flight

To rescue the prince now called Hoole

Sent to end the wars so cruel.

Then came the last canto, the meaning of which was still being argued by scholars. Otulissa read slowly, carefully.

So bring him back with flames of gold.

Bring him back with burning fire.

For he reads what flames have told,

And his will is Hoole’s desire.

He shall not cease his endless flight.

He shall fly on through days and nights.

Though an outcast in despair,

He has a gizzard that is so fair.

He shall return at summer’s end,

Coal in his beak, a shadow king no more,

Tempered wise and brave for war.

Otulissa stopped reading.
How can this be?
she wondered. She reread the last stanza. There had always been talk of missing cantos near the end of the Fire Cycle. It was felt that lines might have been lost. There were some scholars who insisted that the last stanza was a prophecy and that the missing materials would support this. Otulissa had always dismissed this as second-guessing. But when she read this last stanza yet again, it now seemed to be talking about another owl, not Hoole at all, as she had always thought.
For he reads what flames have told, And his will is Hoole’s desire.
It was as if Hoole was speaking of another owl. Was Hoole making a prophecy?

Otulissa felt a shiver run through her own gizzard. The light in her hollow was dim despite the sun outside the opening that heralded a clear sunny morning. Goodness! She had read by candlelight all through the night and into the next morning. She had completely missed night flight. She was about to blow the candle out but stopped a moment to sleepily watch its flickering flame dancing on the wall of the hollow. She knew that there were some owls who were said to be fire readers. Was that what this poem in the Fire Cycle was about? Was Hoole foretelling the coming of a flame reader?

Yes,
a familiar voice whispered in her head.

Otulissa blinked.
Strix Struma?

The candlelight cast a large shadow that stretched high against the wall of her hollow. As she looked up, the shadow seemed to be gathering together into a familiar shape.
I never believed in scrooms,
she heard her own voice speaking but only in her own head. And then there was the soft churring. It was Strix Struma!

I know, you were never much one for fancies of the imagination, were you, dear?

For once in her life, Otulissa simply did not know what to say. So she remained quiet. But then a disturbing thought came into her mind and it was almost as if the scroom read it.

No, I am not unsettled about my life. My business on earth is finished,
the scroom intoned in Otulissa’s head.
But there is other business, important business, and it must be settled.

What business is that?

I’m not sure,
replied Strix Struma.

Not sure? But you were always sure.

Yes, just as you were always sure that there were no such things as scrooms.

Please. Can’t you tell me? Don’t you know at all what it is?

And prophecies. You believed that prophecies were somewhat ridiculous.

The last stanza, Otulissa suddenly thought. And then another thought seemed to pop into her mind, and there
was a sensation in her gizzard she had never felt before, like a mighty tug.

An owl needs me, isn’t that so, Strix Struma? The owl I dream of…

The scroom nodded silently.

Do you know who it is? Please tell me. Who is it?

But the scroom of Strix Struma began to fade away, and suddenly, the hollow was filled with the bright light of the sun. Otulissa heard the last hiss of her candle as its flame guttered out. But she knew that an owl needed her and that she must go…go to Beyond the Beyond. Otulissa knew this not through her usually very rational mind. She knew this because of a dream, a dream she had had several days before of a desperate and very young Barn Owl, almost still a hatchling.

I have dreamed,
she thought.
I have dreamed!

The Spotted Owl slept a long, hard, dreamless sleep and did not wake until First Black. And when she did awake, she shook her head. “Simply not so,” Otulissa muttered. “It was all just a dream. There is no such thing as scrooms.”

But she was aware of the hollow sound of her own words. She walked over to the niches beneath the bookshelves where she kept her charts that showed every region and kingdom in the owl universe with detailed notes on the prevailing winds of each area. She knew what she must do even if she did not know why. “Number
thirty-seven, yes, that is the chart I need,” she whispered. She drew out a rolled piece of heavy parchment and spread it out on the hollow floor. “Unpredictable thermal volatility,” the notes said. “Prevailing winds usually from the southeast except during the eruption seasons. But those seasons are unpredictable as well.”

“Yes, yes,” Otulissa muttered. “What would one expect from a place like Beyond the Beyond?”

She rolled up the chart carefully after committing the terrain and the pertinent details to memory. She would have to travel light. A few navigation tools, no battle claws, fat lot of good they would do her against dire wolves.
Let’s see. What can I give for an excuse?
What would she tell Soren and Gyfie, Digger and Twilight? They would think she had really gone yoicks if she told them that Strix Struma’s scroom had shown up after a close reading of the Fire Cycle and she thought she better go directly to Beyond the Beyond. They wouldn’t believe her, for one thing. Probably think she was going there to find hireclaws. Ha! This job was way beyond hireclaws! But then she stopped.
What exactly is this job? What am I doing?

Otulissa for once could not even speculate. She just knew she had to go, and go soon, to Beyond the Beyond. This was in fact beyond rational thought.
Yes,
she thought
quietly.
I have dreamed dreams. I have spoken with scrooms. I am desperate. I am dire!

In a distant forest, another owl crouched low in the hollow of a rotted-out stump and felt the cold shadow of a metal mask pass over him. Nyroc’s gizzard clenched in despair.
No, no, it cannot be!

Yes!

He had faced so much. The death of his best friend, the wrath of his mother. He was an owl who could not even fly out into the darkness of the night but must hunt in the glare of the day.
Well, no more!
Nyroc was desperate. He flew out of the stump directly toward the mask that hung in the evening shadows. “You are a mask, you are nothing more! There is nothing behind your mask, not a face, nothing! I shall fly in the fullness of the night. I shall hunt the vole, the rat, even the fox under the moon and the stars. I shall become part of owlkind no matter where I have to go. But go I shall! And I shall never ever return to the Pure Ones. I defy you! I have free will!”