The Rescue (Guardians of Ga'hoole) (5 page)

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 vapors 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 realized 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 recom-posing itself into their shapes. They were recognizable 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 blank-ness 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 gotten 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.”

Had it just been 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.

“Form up!” Poot commanded. It was to be a ground start, which was a bit harder than taking off from a branch. But they did it nonetheless. Soren and Martin were the last to rise in flight. They ascended in tight spiraling circles and were soon clear of the spirit woods.

When Soren looked back, he saw the mist gathering again. Like silky scarves, it began to wind through the trees. He strained his eyes to find those two familiar shapes. Just one more glimpse, that’s all he wanted. One more glimpse. But the mist lay thick and shapeless over the white forest. Had Soren been able to see through it, however, he might have spotted a feather, just like one of his, but nearly transparent, drifting lazily down from the branch of a tree in the spirit woods.

S
oren had been back for two days. But he had said nothing of his strange experience in the spirit woods to anyone, not even his closest friends, his friends in the “band”—Gylfie, Digger, Twilight, himself, and now, since her rescue, his sister, Eglantine. But every day when he fell to sleep he dreamed of the scrooms of his parents. Had it been a dream in the spirit woods as well, just a dream? And the words
Metal Beak,
those two words seemed to almost clang in his brain and send ominous quivers to his gizzard. The words took on a life of their own and grew more dreadful with each passing hour.

“Something’s spooking you, Soren, I just know it,” Digger said as they were sitting in the library one evening after navigation practice.

“No, nothing at all,” Soren said quickly. Soren had been reading a really good book, but he was distracted and had read the same sentence about five times. Leave it to Digger to pick up on the worries that haunted him day and night.

“Nothing at all, Soren?” Digger blinked and looked at him closely. The fluffy white brow tufts that framed his deep yellow eyes waggled a bit.

Soren looked back at Digger.
Should I tell him about the scrooms
—
about Metal Beak? The best thing is to be honest, yet…

“Digger, something is bothering me, but I can’t tell you just now. Do you understand?”

Digger blinked again. “Of course, Soren. When you’re ready to tell, I’ll listen,” the Burrowing Owl said softly. “No need to say anything until you’re ready.”

“Thank you, Digger, thank you so much.”

So the Barn Owl got up, closed the book he was reading, and went to put it on the shelf. The shelf was next to the table where Ezylryb always sat absorbed in his studies, munching on his little pile of dried caterpillars. The library wasn’t the same without the old Screech Owl. Nothing seemed the same without him. Soren slid the book back into its place on the shelf. As he turned to leave, a book on metals caught his eye. Metals! Why hadn’t he thought of this before? He must go to see Bubo, the blacksmith. He must immediately go to Bubo’s forge. Soren might not be ready to tell Digger, but he was ready to tell Bubo—not all of it, but part of it—the part about Metal Beak.

He flew out of the Great Ga’Hoole Tree, spiraled down
toward its base, and then swept low across the ground to a nearby cave. This was Bubo’s forge. The forge was just outside the entry of the cave and the rock had blackened over the years from Bubo’s fires. It was to this forge that Soren and the other members of the colliering chaw brought the live coals that fed the fires, which smelted the metals used for everything from pots and pans to battle claws and shields for the great tree. If anyone knew about metal beaks, or whatever it was that the scrooms had spoken of in the whispery voices that still swirled in Soren’s head, it would be Bubo. The fire had been dampened down, however, and there was no sign of Bubo. Perhaps he was inside.

Although Bubo was not a Burrowing Owl, who always made their nests in the ground, he preferred living in a cave to a tree. As he had once explained to Soren, blacksmiths like himself, no matter if they were Great Horned Owls, Snowies, Spotted, or Great Grays, were drawn to the earth where, indeed, the metals lodged.

Soren now stepped into the shadow of the overhanging rock ledge of the cave’s opening. Deep inside, he could see the glints of the whirlyglasses that Bubo had strung up. These contraptions were made from bits of colored glass and when light crept into the cave and struck the glass, reflections spun through the air and bounced off the walls in swirling dapples of color. There was no moonlight
tonight, though. It was the time of the dwenking when the moon disappeared to barely a sliver.

“Bubo!” Soren called. He waited. “Bubo!”

“That you, Soren?” A large shadowy bundle of feathers started to melt out of the darkness of the cave. Great Horned Owls like Bubo were large, but Bubo himself was unusually large and towered over Soren. His two ear tufts, which grew straight up over each eye, were exceedingly bushy, giving him a slightly threatening demeanor. But Soren knew that beneath the gruffness there was no owl who had a gentler heart than Bubo. Although, like most Great Horned Owls, his feathers were basically the dull somber grays, browns, and blacks, they had been shot through with bright red and hot yellow like the hottest of fires—the ones said to have “bonk.” Bonk was the word that blacksmiths like Bubo used to describe the strongest and most energetic fires. Such fires have special hues and colors unlike ordinary ones. Bubo also could be said to have bonking colorful plumage. It was as if he had been clothed in the flames of his own forge instead of just the usual drab feathers of his species. “What brings you here, lad?”

“Metal Beak,” Soren blurted without preamble.

“Metal Beak!” Bubo gasped. “What’cha know about him, laddie?”

“Him?” Soren blinked. “It’s a him?” Until that moment, Soren thought that the scrooms of his parents had been referring to a thing—something that struck dread in him, like flecks. Yes, he had suspected flecks because it was Bubo himself who had first explained to him that the flecks they had been forced to pick at St. Aggie’s were a kind of special metal with what he had called “magnetic properties.” He had said that when all the tiny unseeable parts, the flecks in these metals were lined up, it created a force that was called magnetic. Now Soren didn’t know what to think. He was relieved that Metal Beak had nothing to do with flecks. But why was Bubo so agitated? The big, flaming Horned Owl was almost hopping out of his feathers.

“You stay clear of him. You ain’t to go tangling with that owl, Soren.”

“Metal Beak is an owl?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“What kind?”

“No one is for sure what kind he be. A bad kind, that’s all I can tell you.”