The Rescue (Guardians of Ga'hoole) (13 page)

Soren suddenly had an idea. Last summer, Eglantine had started to shake, to have her fit, and then she remembered who she was when she had seen the fragment of the isinglass on Trader Mags’ cloth. Just seeing the sliver of isinglass had jolted her out of her stunned state. And then all the owls from the Downing started clamoring to hear the music, for, indeed, Madame Plonk had just started harp practice. The owls of the Great Downing had been frantic to get to the music. And it did seem to restore them.

“Gylfie.” Soren turned to the little Elf Owl. “Don’t you have some isinglass from Trader Mags?”

“Yes, I was going to string it into a whirlyglass, but I haven’t had the time. It’s almost all strung but just not hung together yet.”

“May I have a piece for a minute?” Soren asked.

“Certainly,” Gylfie replied.

Just as Soren was picking up a string with sparkling pieces of the mica stone, the noonday sun flared into the hollow. Eglantine turned and gasped and her eyes fastened on the bits of glass that Soren held. Slowly, the colored spots of light dappled the air and the dancing colors spread across her brother’s pure white face. “You look just like the stained glass windows in the castle,” Eglantine said softly.

“A castle!” the other four owls exclaimed.

“Yes,” Eglantine said. “When we first got there, we thought it was so beautiful, even though it was in ruins with many of the walls down and just parts of others standing, but we soon learned.” Eglantine was talking now in a dreamy voice as if she were in some kind of a trance. “It was beautiful but there was ugliness, too. They called themselves the Pure Ones and, at first, they seemed kind. They wanted to teach us to worship Tytos because they said we were the purest of the pure of all the owls, and that is why we spoke the praising songs. But it wasn’t at all the way that Mum and Da used to read to us, Soren. No, not at all. I mean, you remember how Mum would try to hum a little tune and almost sing. We could not do that. They wanted nothing to do with music. They thought music was like poison.” It reminded Soren of St. Aggie’s, where
questions were thought to be poison and the worst punishments were reserved for those who asked questions.

“But it was the one they called the High Tyto
,”
Eglantine continued, “he was the worst. He never said much. But he was so frightening. He wore a kind of mask, and they said his beak had been torn off in a battle.” Then Eglantine realized what she had just said and fell into a faint.

“Metal Beak!” they all whispered in terror.

Gylfie immediately began flying over Eglantine, wafting drafts of air down upon her face to revive her. Twilight also tried, but his wings churned the air so violently that Eglantine was practically lifted off the floor of the hollow.

Eglantine’s eyes blinked open. “My goodness, I fainted, didn’t I?” Then she looked up at Soren as she staggered to her feet.

“Take it easy now, little one,” Twilight said. “You’ve just had a bad fright.”

“No, no I’m fine. I’m really fine. I feel so much better. But just imagine—I came face-to-face with Metal Beak. It’s all coming back to me now. He was the one who hated music the most. He thought it was impure. In fact, he thought any owl who was not a Tyto alba was a little less than completely pure. He made the Sooties and the
Masked Owls and the Grass Owls do all the worst jobs. Oh, and yes, before we could become true members of the Way of Purity, we had to sleep in stone crypts with the bones of the old Tytos that they called the Purest Ones.”

“The Purest Ones?” Soren said, perplexed.

Gylfie had remained very quiet, but when she heard about the little owls being put in the stone crypts, she began to speak. “I think that they did to Eglantine with stone what the owls of St. Aggie’s did to us with the full moon.” Gylfie was referring to the horrendous moon-blinking process during which the young owlets at St. Aggie’s were forced to sleep with their heads directly exposed to the scalding light of the moon. It disturbed their gizzards in a profound way and seemed to destroy their will, along with any of the individual characteristics that made up an owl’s personality.

Gylfie continued, “Only instead of being moon blinked, they were stone stunned. I think I’ve heard of it. In the Desert of Kuneer, there are a series of deep, blind canyons—a maze really—and if one gets lost in them, the stone can affect the brain. If the owls come back, they are a bit odd, you know, weird in the head.” But there was something else that Gylfie felt in her gizzard but did not mention. She was almost sure that the bones in those
crypts were not the bones of owls, but of the Others. The thought, however, was too chilling, too sickeningly terrifying to even mention.

Soren’s eyes fastened on Eglantine’s wing where she had suffered her most severe wound from the Great Downing. The feathers had grown back, but patchily. He felt swollen with anger at this vile owl Metal Beak. “I can’t believe how he hurt you, Eglantine. It makes me want to kill him. No wonder Mum’s and Da’s scrooms warned me.”

“But you don’t understand, Soren. It wasn’t the Tyto owls of the castle that did this to my wing. Oh, they did plenty. Feelings in my gizzard are just really coming back now, but it was the other owls, the ones who raided the castle and snatched us. That is really how I and all the rest of us got hurt. They nearly got away with us but the owls from the castle, the High Tyto and the Pure Ones, followed. There was this huge battle as they tried to snatch us back, and I dropped. So did a lot of us because something came along and scared them all. I was surprised that I survived the fall. But then I was worried that I would be snatched again. That is why I dragged myself to hide under that bush where Digger and Twilight found me.”

“Were the owls who snatched you, Barn Owls as well?” Gylfie asked.

“Oh, no. All sorts. There was a raggedy-looking Great Horned, and she had a huge bare patch on her wing that made her fly all funny.”

“Skench!” Gylfie and Soren both blurted out at once. Skench, whose cruelty knew no bounds, the Ablah General of St. Aegolius Academy for Orphaned Owls had just such a patch on her wing.

“So they were from St. Aggie’s!” Soren said.

It had all come back so clearly to Eglantine that now she could hardly stop talking. But meanwhile, one thought prevailed in Soren’s mind. Were they actually any closer to finding Ezylryb? Could Eglantine remember where this castle was with its odd rituals that celebrated the purity of Barn Owls in such an awful way? Was Ezylryb there, or had he simply gotten lost? Had he been stone stunned? Or was he dead?

I
n times of trouble, however, there can come a certain closeness, a kind of coziness of spirit. It was never so true as in the hollow of Soren and his mates, Gylfie, Twilight, Digger, and now Eglantine. The stories that Eglantine told held a peculiar fascination for the owls in the hollow. Finally, it was Digger who asked, “Eglantine, can you remember what the ground was like around the castle? I mean, was it like Silverveil or The Beaks?”

“I’ve never been to The Beaks, but how do you mean, Digger?”

“Well, were there tall trees, or was it scrubby with short bushy plants? Was it hard-packed earth, bare, or maybe sandy like a desert?”

“Oh, none of those, I think. I can’t remember exactly, for they hardly ever let us out. Although from the broken walls, I could catch a glimpse. They didn’t permit us to fly up high. I think there was grass, though. And they used to speak of a meadow. But I don’t think there were big trees
or trees with leaves, because I can remember when I was just hatched, the hollow in our fir tree—remember, Soren, how you could hear the wind through the leaves of the nearby trees? No, we only heard the wind whistling around the stone corners of the castle.”

“Well, that’s helpful,” Digger said thoughtfully.

“Why?” asked Gylfie.

“I was just thinking, that’s all.” There was a tense silence in the hollow.

But Soren was thinking, too. Of course, Digger would be interested in the ground. Digger knew the ground—what kind of plants grew there, the feeling of every kind of soil. He had become one of the best in the tracking chaw. In fact, when Soren gazed around he realized that within this hollow were the best of the best of each chaw.

“Eglantine,” Soren asked, “do you remember how long you had been flying before you were dropped?”

“Not long, I think.” There was another pause.

“Eglantine, do you think that there is any way you might be able to lead us back to the castle? You see, I am thinking that it’s been more than two months since Ezyl-ryb disappeared. Endless search parties have been sent out but so far nothing. In fact, Boron just assumed that was what we were doing when we went to Silverveil. Indirectly
it was, but really we went to find out more about Metal Beak. Now, what’s to stop us from trying to find Ezylryb? Between us…” Soren stopped and looked around. “We could put together a pretty good chaw.”

“What are you talking about, Soren?” Gylfie asked.

“Gylfie, you are the best navigator Strix Struma has ever taught. I heard her telling that to Barran. Digger, you can track like no one else, and Twilight you can fight”—Soren’s voice dropped off—“if that’s necessary.” Twilight swelled in anticipation. “Don’t you see?” Soren continued. “We have the makings here of a great chaw—the best of the best of the chaws.”

“Let me get this straight,” Gylfie said. The little Elf Owl stepped right up to Soren and stood directly under his beak. “Are you proposing that we should undertake this search for Ezylryb on our own? No rybs, no grown-up owls?”

“That’s exactly what he’s proposing, Gylfie,” Twilight boomed. “For Glaux’s sake, we went to Silverveil on our own. Found the rogue smith. She gave us our first real clue, in a sense, about Metal Beak.” Twilight paused and nodded deferentially to Soren. “Well, after the scrooms of your mum and da that is.”

“Well, if that is the case…” Gylfie’s voice fell to a whisper.
Soren was nervous. If he didn’t have Gylfie’s support, he couldn’t do it. “If that is the case, Soren, you must be our leader.”

All of the owls in the hollow nodded their heads in agreement. Soren was stunned. He didn’t know what to say. Finally, he spoke. “I thought the plan up, that is true. But the plan would be nothing without each one of you. Your faith in me has stirred my gizzard. I shall do my best for you.”

“Soren!” Otulissa suddenly flew into the hollow. “I want to come, too.” The meddlesome Spotted Owl had been perched on a branch just outside the hollow. Otulissa’s yellow eyes were dim with tears. “Ezylryb made me believe in myself and not just my…my…” It was the first time Otulissa had ever been at a loss for words. “You know how I was before I joined the chaw. Ezylryb made me believe I could do things because I was just me, and not just because I was a Spotted Owl. I hate that thing that you were talking about before.”

“What thing?” Soren asked.

“That stuff about purity, that one kind of owl is more pure or better than another. The most ancient order of owls, the owls that all of us are descended from—whether we are Barn Owls, Snowies, Spotted, or whatever—those first owls were all called Glaux. And every
owl celebrates the spirit of Glaux. My mum told me that, and it is true. For indeed with that ancient order began a special kind of bird. As owls, we owe our uniqueness, our ability to fly silently, to see through the darkness of the night, to spin our heads almost all the way around to those first owls. And you know from navigation that we call our grandest constellation that shines through every season the Great Glaux. But for those owls that Eglantine talked about, that was not enough. They want to destroy all the others.”

They were all dismayed by Otulissa’s gracious speech. Soren thought that she must have been eavesdropping more than once to have learned all this. She almost started to blubber now with tears and chokes. It was the most un-Otulissa moment any of them had ever witnessed. “I feel so strongly about this. You know me, I’m not an emotional kind of owl but this…this…I…I can’t explain, but you must let me be a part of this.”

“Of course,” Soren said. Otulissa was very smart and beyond being smart, she of all of them possessed the most sensitivity to atmospheric pressure changes. She had proved herself invaluable to the weather chaw.

And this would be the best of the best of the chaws! Indeed, it would be the chaw of chaws!

T
hey had picked an evening to leave when there were no classes and no chaw practices, but still they were careful to leave the tree in twos or threes near First Black and then once again take off from the cliffs where they would not be spotted. And they all, even the smallest, wore battle claws. They had filched them from the armory in the forge. Bubo happened to be gone so it was not a problem. Twilight had gone early in the morning of their flight and taken them from the forge and placed them in the crags of the cliffs.

Soren had insisted that they practice with the claws, for none of them had flown that often with them. Eglantine had never flown “clawed,” as the expression went.

“You need a lot of tail ruddering, Eglantine. See, you don’t have the same balance as before,” Soren called out as
he watched his sister fly in a wobbly line out from the cliffs.

“She’ll get it,” Twilight said.

But Soren wasn’t sure. Eglantine still seemed so fragile to him. Was she ready for this? She was the only one who would be able to recognize the ruined castle where she had been imprisoned. But then suddenly her flight seemed to even out.

“That’s it! That’s it!” Soren cheered her on, her wings set and balanced on a smooth horizontal plane. “Phew!” Soren blew through his beak in relief. Still, it disturbed him that he was in fact doing just the opposite of what Ezylryb had sworn never to do again. Soren was not only picking up battle claws but arming a young innocent owl with them, as well. Then he thought of Octavia and the words she had spoken to them in the very chamber where Ezylryb’s old claws hung rusted but not forgotten. I
swore an oath of peace, as well. But you know, now I think it is time to break it. I’ll do anything to rescue my beloved master.