Book 12 - The Golden Tree (5 page)

would have become that as wel . She is an
extraordinary owl, one of vast intel igence.' "Is?" Coryn blurted out. "She stil lives?" "Oh, most definitely." Soren paused and lowered his voice. "You must understand, Coryn, Bess is the best-kept secret in the owl kingdom. When we left Bess that first time, we vowed to tel only three other owls: Otulissa, Ezylryb, and Strix Struma." "And it was hard enough getting her to agree to that! Believe me!" Twilight said. "But tel Coryn about the stone Others."
Coryn was speechless, his eyes wide.
50 62 "Ah, yes, the stone Others," Soren replied. "Bess asked us if we would like a tour of the university. So we fol owed her in a spiraling flight down from the bel tower, winding in and out of the pil ars of a garden where there were stone pictures."
"Stone pictures?" Coryn asked, "Yeah, you've seen some of those scraps of

paintings of Others that Mags brings around,
haven't you?" Twilight asked.
"Sure."
"Wel , this was sort of the same thing but cut in stone," Twilight replied. "Some were of animals, and there was even a strange-looking bird. And some of the stone figures were of the Others, but they might be missing a head, or a head might be missing a body."
"What in the world?" Coryn gasped. "Were they once alive?"
"Oh, no. It was part of the Others' art, like the paintings." "But that wasn't the most interesting thing at al ," Gylfie said.
"Sounds pretty interesting to me," Coryn replied. "There were these maps,' Soren said. "Maps like we'd never seen before."
"What do you mean?" Coryn asked. A pale lavender light began to suffuse the hol ow. Lavender

was the
51 63 prelude of twilight and soon it would be First Black. They had told and listened to stories of Bess through an entire day. Coryn almost wished to stay the sun and fend off the night - a most un-owlish response. Owls lived for darkness, for the black pierced, by a sliver of moon, or perhaps the silver disc of a ful -shine floating eerily just above a horizon But now he wanted not the darkness, not the silver, not the joys of flight through a long night, but to remain in the hol ow of this fir tree reliving this fantastic tale of discovery, grief, mystery, and riches that were neither jewels nor gold,
'"These maps"Soren. continued, 'were not ones of the owl kingdoms. There was no Sea of Hoolemere, no Ever-winter Sea. No Northern Kingdoms. No Southern Kingdoms. So I asked. Bess, 'Where at" the kingdoms of owls?'"
"And what did she say?" Coryn tipped forward. "She said they were maps of elsewhere and beyond,"

Soren said, softly,
"It was even beyond our Beyond! We cal ed it The Elsewhere," Digger whispered. The white feathers that streaked across the Burrowing Owl's brow seemed to intensify Digger's penetrating gaze. It was as if he were imagining this place.
Coryn was astonished. Fie was trying to take it al in.
64 "You mean there is a place that is not here? Not in this owl world? It's like ..." Coryn looked out of the fir tree hol ow and tipped his head toward the sky.
"Yes," Gylfie said. "And even the stars look different there - the constel ations are different. One rarely sees the Golden Talons or the Little or the Big Raccoon. It's just a different world. It's The Elsewhere."
"Have you ever been there?" He looked first at Soren and then to each of the other Band members. They al shook their beads.
"But Bess knows the way there even though the

stars are different," Gylfie said. She shook her head
in wonder. "Bess is so very smart." "That is why we cal her 'the Knower,'" Soren said. By the time Soren had finished the story of Bess and the Palace of Mists, it was night. The wind had shifted, so they set out on a course for Anibala, But they did not make much progress, for they were tired and shortly after midnight the wind shifted once again and became a fierce headwind with driving rain replacing the swirls of snow.
"No use fighting this," Twilight cal ed out to the rest. If Twilight said it was too much
- beating into this wind - the rest of the Band were quick to agree, for the Great Gray was the largest of them al and possessed
65 the most wing power. They found an ancient cedar with a good-size hol ow. The rain made the pungent scent of the tree even sharper.
"I can't say cedar is my fragrance of choice," Gylfie sniffed, but within two seconds she had fal en asleep.

Al of the owls were soon asleep except for Coryn.
For him sleep seemed beyond reason. "The Knower." Coryn repeated softly. He began to think deeply about Bess, the Knower.
His mind whirled with notions about Bess and this place dedicated entirely to learning, with many libraries. The Band had said they had never seen such maps and star charts. Coryn knew that the Others were thought to have been very7 advanced, but not so advanced as these stories of the Palace of Mists seemed to suggest. From the stonework to the star charts it seemed beyond belief, almost magical. Coryn's eyes began to droop. His last thought was, Magic, or nachtmagen?
Then Coryn began dreaming of stone gardens with the fragments of the Others and stone animals, and the strange-looking stone bird that Soren had described. In his sleep he saw a head. It was the head of the strange bird. But no, not just any strange bird - Kreeth!
He woke up immediately. "Why would I ever dream of Kreeth?" he whispered to himself. Kreeth,

the infamous
54 66 hagsfĂÂŹend of the legends, was long dead. Surely if the strange stone bird looked like Kreeth, the Band would have said something. Although they had not known about the hagsfiends of the legends when they had first gone to the palace of Mists, they had first gone to the Palace of Mists, they would have remembered now. This is total y irrational! Coryn thought to himself. Kreeth was a hagsfiend through and through, but she cal ed herself by al sorts of other names -a philosopher , an experiment, a scientist. It wasn't, however, science she practiced. It was
nacthmagen. Although he had begun to suspect that beneath the plumage of a Barn Owl his mother might be a hagsfiend herself, a grotesque thought occurred to him again -that Nyra might be even worse than haggish. She might be some
descendant of a remnant of Kreeth's experiments with natchtmagen. It was al too frightening to imagine. Coryn blinked. But imagine he must. He was a King leader. He must lead! And to lead was to imagine boldly.

He looked at the Band sleeping soundly around
him. Outside the sun was high in the sky. He must go. He must risk being mobbed by crows. He must find out the truth about his mother. Hagsfiends were thought to have become extinct sometime long after King Hoole had retrieved the ember. And yet shadows of hagfiends much less potent stil lingered. And was that not what
67 made the ember so puzzling? For with al its many blessings, there was always the lurking fear that, with the good magen, nachtmagen could return and real hagsfiends could slip back through what Otulissa cal ed the ether sreil of the owl universe. The ether was a windless layer of air in the upper regions of the. sky that enveloped the entire universe of owls. The ancients believed that infinitesimal y smal tears in this layer could permit the intrusion of alien matter such as nachtmagen, the magic of hagsfiends. The ember could seal up these tears as wel as open them, And if the ember came into the possession of a bad owl, or graymalkin as they were, sometimes cal ed, the ether could be ripped to shreds.
Coryn. was fairly sure that no such thing had

Coryn. was fairly sure that no such thing had
happened to the ether veil - yet. According to the legends, Kreeth had died. But were al her kind extinct? Like the Others? Perhaps not, if Nyra lived. Coryn knew what he had to do. He had to go to the Shadow Forest. However he did not need to see Bess. The Knower would not know what he needed to know, There was, however, a rabbit who might. And he needed to find that rabbit. Fie quietly stepped to the rim of the hol ow. He looked back at the Band. They're just going to have to understand, he thought, and spreading his wings, he took off. 56 CHAPTER EIGHT
Otulissa Perplexed
Can you feel it, Mrs. Plithiver?" Octavia asked. The elderly nest-maid snake was coiled on an upper limb of the Great Ga'Hoole Tree.
"Yes, they're flying in unison. I can feel the wing beats."
And indeed a surge of vibrations rol ed up through the tree. The slender branch upon which they had

arranged themselves was almost like a tuning fork,
at least for nest-maid snakes. These snakes had extremely refined sensibilities and despite their blindness, they could pick up on the subtlest atmospheric pressure changes, sounds, wind shifts, even the feelings and moods of those around them. Octavia, a snake of ample girth with a very fat head, found it most comfortable to twine herself in a spiral around the branch. Lying flat on it was out of the question; she was simply too chubby to find it comfortable. Mrs. P., however, was suspended from the branch in an artistic configuration halfway between a question mark and an
57 exclamation point. This peculiar geometry was perhaps a reflection of her mental state. What is happening here? These four words were spiraling through the length of Mrs. P.'s cylindrical body, and she thought they should be likewise screaming in every mind, gizzard, or whatever of every owl in the tree. Unfortunately, such was not the case. "Why aren't you down there weaving your way through the harp?" Octavia inquired of Mrs. P.

"Don't be ridiculous. You wouldn't catch me
jumping octaves or making music for this stupid ceremony. What do they cal themselves - Guardians of the Guardians? AH this folderol about guarding the ember! Sil y rituals and al ." Octavia gave a funny little pneumatic snort in response to Mrs. P.'s outburst. This was her way of laughing. Mrs. Plithiver was a member of the harp guild directed by Madame Plonk. For centuries, the harp guild had been considered the most
prestigious of al the nest-maid snake guilds of the great tree. Half the snakes played the lower strings and half played the upper ones. But there were a precious few, the most talented of the snakes, who were confined to neither. These snakes were cal ed sliptweens, and their job was to jump octaves, which contained al eight tones of the scale. It was an energetic leap they had to make. It took skil , muscle, and timing. In her thinner
70 days Octavia had been a sliptween. However, she had al but retired from the harp, Mrs. P. was now considered one of the finest sliptweens in the

history of the tree.
"So how did you get out of playing the harp for this whatever-they-cal -it ceremony?"
"I told them I sprung a tendon on that cantata the other night."
"I'm surprised that Otulissa didn't think up some way to excuse herself," Octavia said. "She should have. I can feel her rage al the way up
here,"
"I know," Octavia replied.
The two snakes became very stil and shut their slitted eyes. From at least forty feet above the Great Hol ow, they could feel the waves of anger, frustration, of sheer embarrassment that rose from the Spotted Owl's plumage like thermal drafts on a hot summer day. Such were the sensibilities of a nest-maid snake.
Rough air, to put it mildly, Mrs. P. thought.

On the balcony of the Great Hol ow, Otulissa
perched, blinking in disbelief. Her gizzard was in a nauseating, dizzying turmoil. Fler heart was aggrieved as she watched the tawdry spectacle below. An "Honor Guard"- the term itself made her almost
yarp - was flying around the ember, which had been removed from Coryn's hol ow
59 71 and put in the center of the Great Hol ow. The old box
was encased now in a newer, larger, fancier one that had been designed by Gemma and reluctantly forged by Bubo.
It was the Whiskered Screech, Gemma, and the Great Gray, Elyan, who were at the front of the procession of owls that flew in circles around the elaborately "en-hol owed" ember. "En-hol owed!'- yet another newly coined term that nearly made a pel et swim up Otulissa's gul et. She swal owed hard and tried not to belch. But perhaps the most revolting word of ail right now was "elevation.' For this was the Elevation ceremony of Gemma, Elyan,

and a Barn Owl cal ed Yeena. They were to be
elevated to the highest of the high honor guards, an order cal ed the Guardians of Guardians, not of the great tree, but of the Ember of Hook. Madame Plonk's voice soared in a newly composed celebratory song cal ed "Chant of the Ember." Oh, dearest Ember of fir eat Hook,
guard our tree most great
Warm our gizzards, make us wise,
lead us in your holy ways.
Give us comfort, let tumult cease,
bless each owl so safe we'l keep.
We sing m you, your glowing splendor
72 Radiant with magen's grace
So we ask that peace be with us,
and in you our trust do place.
Madame Plonk was in ful voice. The song was

quite beautiful, except for the words, Otulissa
thought. And what a bunch of' racdrops they were! Look at Madame Plonk, strutting about in the air. One would have, thought her a peacock. Yet it wasn't even her own feathers she was showing off It was the frinking cloak she'd gotten from Trader Mags, It was purple - royal purple as she liked to remind everyone - and it was trimmed in ermine. ' Ermine is to eat, not to wear!' Otulissa muttered. Another owl. a Barred, swung her head around and blinked furiously at her.
"What did you say?' the owl cal ed Quinta hissed. "I said" - Otulissa said furiously - "Strumina Von Fleet would stare.'
"Huh? I thought you said, something about eating ermine."
"No, not at al ," Otulissa lied. "Strumina Von Fleet, you might not know her. An ancient sage from the Northern
Kingdoms, known as much for her unparal eled elegance as for her bril iant mind. A relative of mine,

actual y. Thirteenth cousin once removed."
73 "Sssh!" someone else hissed, ' It's almost time for the Ultimate Elevation."
Ultimate Elevation, my butt feathers! Otulissa thought, but she did not say a word this time. One could not be too careful these days.
Something strange had befal en the tree. It had real y begun before the Band left but she had not taken notice of it then. The tree seemed to have entered a phase of eternal golden glory. But no one at that time had likened it to the glow of the ember itself. If anything, they spoke of it as a lingering tinge of color from the summer. But now owls compared it to the glow of the ember. It was, they said, as if the radiance of the ember had infused the very fabric of the tree. New nest-maid guilds had been started. One was a choir, the Choir of the Ember, that sang only songs composed for praise of the ember. Another group of nest-maids combined with a smal er group of owls wrote these hymns of praise. Owls who had once spent their days practicing their fighting skil s with battle claws and ice swords were now painting and composing poetry. And young'uns