A Guide Book to the Great Tree (3 page)

(Weather-Interpretation Chaw)

Taught by the distinguished ryb Ruby

The weather-interpretation chaw is ready to fly in any condition, no matter how dangerous. But we never fly
into storms blindly, we always know our enemy before we engage. By using our brains, as well as our wings, we can learn to fly safely in all sorts of foul weather. With any luck, we will fly, as a chaw, through thunderstorms, hurricanes, tornadoes, blizzards, hailstorms, and even sandstorms. Owls in this course must always be ready to fly at a moment's notice.

(Open to All Chaws)

The rybs of the great tree promote the pursuit of knowledge beyond what's offered at the tree. Therefore, we offer an exchange program with the Glauxian Brothers' retreat in the Bitter Sea. The Glauxian Brothers are masters in the healing arts, as well as in bookmaking and poetry. Plus, their library rivals ours at the great tree. Guardians are encouraged to spend a season or two studying and meditating with the brothers.

THE GUARDIAN'S OATH

Most owls spend several years in chaw studies before they are welcomed into the brotherhood of the Guardians. When an owl is deemed ready, he or she takes owlkind's
most inviolable oath: the Oath of the Guardians. I took this oath on a crisp autumn night in the company of kindred spirits. As I repeated these words after Barran, the great Snowy Owl and then steward of the tree, they became forever etched in my heart and my gizzard.

I am a Guardian of Ga'Hoole. From this night on, I dedicate my life to the protection of owlkind. I shall not swerve in my duty. I shall support my brother and sister Guardians in times of battle as well as in times of peace. I am the eyes in the night, the silence within the wind. I am the talons through the fire, the shield that guards the innocent. I shall seek to wear no crown, nor win any glory. And all these things I do swear upon my honor as a Guardian of Ga'Hoole until my days on this Earth cease to be. This be my vow. This be my life. By Glaux I do swear.

S
cholars of Ga'Hoole, you know well the tales of Soren, of our new king, Coryn, and of our revered founder, Hoole. What you may not know is that there are multitudes of owls from the Great Ga'Hoole Tree whose stories remain untold. Theirs are the stories that will show you what the tree truly represents. No legends celebrate their deeds, yet they are heroes, many, and scoundrels, some, without whose stories the history of the tree is incomplete. I present to you just a few of these stories.

TWILIGHT

It is undeniable that Twilight is a force unto himself. He is a member of the Band and of the Chaw of Chaws, a fierce fighter, a powerful flier, an expressive poet, a notorious braggart, and a loyal friend. So, what more needs to be said about this Great Gray? Oh, you might be surprised to know what I have learned.

Many of us owls at the great tree are orphans, myself included. What sets Twilight apart is that he was orphaned at a very young age, possibly within a day of being hatched. He has no memories of his family or his nest. All he knows is that he was hatched at the edges of time. Most owlets would have died, but Twilight survived. Twilight
is
a survivor. Twilight has lived in every kingdom in the south and with every kind of creature. He was taken in by a family of woodpeckers in Ambala, an elderly eagle in Tyto, and even a family of desert foxes in Kuneer. He has also lived alone, drifting from one place to another, without the companionship and support of family or friends. All his experiences have made him tougher, but also more compassionate and more open-minded. When Twilight came to the tree, he had no memory of family, no idea where he came from. And even though he doesn't let on, I know that it has always weighed heavily on his mind.

Things took a curious turn for Twilight one night shortly after the Battle of the Burning. The Band and I were out for a night flight. We were enjoying some lovely thermal drafts near the edge of Ambala, when Twilight suddenly banked steeply and flew off by himself. He circled the sky in the distance for what seemed like an eternity before Digger decided to go fetch him so we could all go back to the tree together. It was almost Deep
Gray, and the sun would be rising soon. Moments later, the two owls came back toward us in a heated debate.

“No. I'm telling you for the last time, I didn't see any owl,” Digger said through clenched beak. “You were the only owl in the sky aside from us.”

“How could you not see her?” Twilight demanded. “Um, hello. She was big and gray against a clear night sky.” His yellow eyes were huge, and he had puffed himself up to almost twice his usual enormous size.

“Twilight! Get a grip!” Soren chimed in.

“Oh, for Glaux's sake. You guys saw her, didn't you?” Twilight asked.

“Who?”

“That Great Gray. She was flying not fifty pytes from me. And she was trying to tell me something, or ask me something, I know she was. She was right there.” Twilight searched the sky desperately with his eyes. Despite being right beside us, he seemed lost. “Didn't you see her? I know she was there.”

“Well, I didn't see anything, but maybe I just wasn't paying attention,” Gylfie said. She sensed that this was very important to Twilight. This was as pensive as she had ever seen him, and she wasn't about to dismiss his sighting of a phantom owl as a mere optical illusion. “Let's get back to the hollow, and we can talk about it there. Okay, Twi?”

Back in the Band's hollow, we all settled onto perches as the sun rose. (I often joined the Band in their hollow after a night on the wing together.) Twilight continued to look uneasy.

“She was just so…I don't know…familiar. And then she was gone.”

Soren inhaled deeply. His words came out cautiously, “Hmm. Was she all misty? What I mean is, do you think, Twilight, that maybe she was a scroom?”

Scrooms, of course, are the disembodied spirits of owls who have died. Usually, they come back into our world because they have some unfinished business. As young owls, Soren and his sister, Eglantine, had encounters with the scrooms of their parents. So Soren knew firsthand what it was like to be in their presence. Twilight, on the other hand, had never considered himself to be—well, how should I put it—scroomishly inclined.

“What did she say to you?” Soren pushed on.

“Well, it sounded like she said ‘cash us'.”

“That doesn't make much sense,” I told him, a bit too bluntly, now that I think about it.

“Oh, you mean, like ‘cache us,' maybe?” Gylfie piped up. “'Cache' means ‘to store something away in hiding, especially for later use'.”

“Or, it was ‘catch.' She was saying, ‘catch us!'” I offered. That made a lot more sense to me, but Gylfie shot me an exasperated look.

Digger, the constant theoretician, had another idea. “You can't catch a scroom. That couldn't be it. And who's ‘us,' anyway? You said there was only one scroom, right? Maybe she was saying ‘cautious.' That you should be cautious. She was warning you about something. You recognized her, you said?”

We all offered other suggestions, but Twilight appeared overwhelmed. “Look, I'm not even saying it
was
a scroom.

Maybe it was a reflection or something…I'm not sure about anything anymore. Let's just forget it happened.”

But it was clear that Twilight did not forget. For the next few nights, he seemed constantly distracted. He went about chaw practices with uncharacteristic absentmindedness, sometimes even missing his targets during aerial search drills. At mealtimes, we could hardly get more than two words out of him, despite our talk about the newest battle claws that Bubo was working on. I counted eight entire nights without a single chant or song or rhyme from our resident verse-maker. His behavior, his personality was so changed, it was as if the Twilight we knew had disappeared, dissolved like the mist of the
scroom that he supposedly saw. Soren, Gylfie, and Digger were clearly worried, and so was I.

During this time, the library of the great tree made some extraordinary acquisitions. I had volunteered to help catalog these precious new finds. I thought it might help to give my gizzard a little lift. And did it ever! Among them were the latest treatises on herbal medicine, an original illuminated manuscript about the Battle of the Ice Palace, and my personal favorite—
Ode: Intimations on Life and Love in the Forest,
a book of contemporary poetry by a
Strix nebulosa
named Skye. Skye was the most notable and celebrated poet of our time; “a prodigy,” many learned owls called her. She was said to have disappeared not long ago, and her last book was feared lost. Luckily, a Glauxian Brother found it in an abandoned hollow in the forest of Ambala. The master bookmakers at the retreat made a copy, and, as a gesture of goodwill, gave the Guardians the original.

I immediately checked the book out from the library and began reading. Oh, the poems were lovely and cerebral at the same time, the finest combination, in my opinion! I liked the one called “Moonlight at Midnight” the best, that is, until I read “Elegy for Lone Pine.” And, of course, there was “Shall I Fly Into a Storm.” I was in glaumora. Needless to say, I finished the entire book in two
nights. It was while I was closing the book that I found something intriguing.

Carefully tucked into the lemming leather of the back cover was another poem, written on a folded piece of parchment. I began to read…

At twilight, you came

so fragile so slight

I gave you your name

Your song I shall write

My heart you have won

from the moment you hatched

My precious new son

your worth is unmatched

Now it's for you that I sing

my soul filled with pride

To me you can cling

till you can fly alongside

I offer you this, my melodic phrase

For you are my most beloved of Grays

I looked at the title again. My gizzard leaped. I was off at once to gather the Band.

The four of us took shallow, guarded breaths, and watched intently as Twilight read the poem for the fifth, and then sixth time. Bit by bit, it sank in.

“My mum? You mean, this was written by my mum?” He asked all of us and none of us. “This was written by
my mum.
” He read the title of the poem aloud one more time, “Ode to My Son Cassius at Twilight.”

“Don't you see? The scroom you saw, it was your mum! And she was…”

“And she was calling my name,” Twilight finished the sentence for Digger. “Cassius. My mum named me Cassius.”

I couldn't tell exactly what the Great Gray was feeling at that moment. In his eyes, I saw contentment, confusion, surprise, and a little sadness.

“This must be why I was so drawn to twilight. I think she sang this to me just as I hatched, and all I remembered was the first line. Remember, Soren, when I told you that I knew I was hatched at the edges of time? Well, I think I know now why that was my very first memory.

“It was a family of Pygmy Owls who first took me in as a tiny owlet. Bluebell and Dahlia, mother and daughter. At least, I think Bluebell was the mother, and Dahlia was the daughter. But it could have been the other way around
because they only ever referred to each other as ‘Big Pyggy' and ‘Lil Pyggy.'” Twilight let out a small churr. “They told me that I kept saying the word ‘twilight' in my dreams, so they assumed it must have been my name. I quickly outgrew their hollow and moved on. This whole time, I thought it was that silvery border of time between day and night that gave me my name. Cassius. Son of the poet, Skye. Well, go figure.”

Twilight had always thought of himself as a plain, down-to-earth sort of owl because he had no proper upbringing. Now, an illustrious heritage was suddenly thrust upon him. Not only was Skye a preeminent poet, but she also had numerous relatives who were well-known writers and artists.

“I don't know…I wonder what my mother would have thought of me, if she were alive, I mean. And my aunts and uncles…I bet it's not every day they meet a graduate from the Orphan School of Tough Learning. Still, it's as if my gizzard is more whole somehow.”

“Your mum loved you, Twi,” Digger said softly. “That much is clear.”

Twilight acknowledged this with a barely visible nod.

Gylfie finally asked the question that had been on all our minds. “So, what do you want us to call you now? I mean, are you Cassius now?”

The Great Gray who had hatched as Cassius thought for a moment. “My name is Twilight. Now that I know how I got it, it fits me even better. My mum named me Cassius, but in a way, she also named me Twilight. And I think she would be proud of what I've become.”

That, no one could disagree with.

Twilight's chest swelled. “I am proud to be the son of Skye, but the world is still my family. You guys are still my family.” And with that, he went to the skyport and lifted into the air with one smooth power stroke. Shaking off the malaise of the last days, he raised his voice.

We met before moonrise

And then you left, without good-byes

To my rhymes you did give rise

Your name I chanced upon

Now you are with me, though you are gone

Our verses shall fly on

“It's good to have you back, Twilight!” Soren called out.

And indeed it was. You know, that might be my favorite rhyme of his yet.

STRIX STRUMA

No book about the Great Ga'Hoole Tree would be complete without the tale of Strix Struma. She was the venerated navigation ryb and a respected member of parliament for years. Not long ago, she gave her life in defense of the great tree in the fight against the Pure Ones when they besieged us. I fought at her side as a member of Struma's Strikers. She was my mentor and my inspiration, and I loved her well. She shared with me this story as we prepared for battle against the Pure Ones.