(GoG Book 02) The Journey (2 page)

Crows are simple birds. And what this crow had just seen and heard—a snake hissing curses and rising from the back feathers of an owl—stunned him. He went “yeep,” which meant that he simply froze in flight and began to plummet to earth.

The crows by this time had begun to disappear. Twilight flew up to Soren’s windward side. “Digger’s hurt.”

Indeed, when Soren looked in the direction of Digger,
he saw the Burrowing Owl tipping dangerously to one side. “We’ve got to find a place to land.”

Gylfie flew up breathlessly. “I don’t know how much longer Digger can last. He’s not flying straight at all.”

“Which way is he tipping?” Mrs. P. asked.

“Downwind,” said Twilight.

“Quick!” she ordered. “Let’s get over there. I might be able to help.”

“You?” Twilight asked somewhat incredulously.

“Remember, dear, how Digger had been asking me to ride on his back in the desert? This might just be the time.”

A few seconds later they were coming in on Digger’s upwind wing.

“Digger,” Soren said, “we know you’re hurt.”

“I don’t know if I can make it,” the Burrowing Owl groaned. “Oh, if I could only walk.”

“There’s a stand of trees really close,” Soren said. “Mrs. P. has an idea that might help you.”

“What’s that?”

“She’s going to get on your good wing. That will tip your injured wing up again, lighten the drag on it. Gylfie meanwhile will fly under your bad wing and create a little updraft for it. It might work.”

“I don’t know,” Digger moaned miserably.

“Faith, boy! Faith!” exhorted Mrs. Plithiver. “Now let’s get on with it.”

“I really don’t think I can make it,” Digger gasped.

“You can, boy! You can!” said Mrs. P. Her voice grew amazingly strong. “You shall go on to the finish. You shall fly to the forests, to the trees, to Hoolemere. You have defended yourself against these crows. You have strode across deserts. You shall defend yourself now by flying. You shall fly into the wind, into the light, into this new day. Whatever the cost, you shall fly on. You shall not fail or falter. You shall not weaken. You shall finish the flight.” Mrs. P.’s voice swelled in the growing light of the morning and somehow it filled them all with new courage.

Now Soren flew in so close to Digger that his wing was touching the tip of Digger’s good wing. They were ready for the transfer. “Now, Mrs. P.! Go!”

The old nest snake began to slither out onto Soren’s wing. Soren felt the pressure of air around his body and the cushions of wind under his wings shift. The air surrounding him seemed to fray. He had to concentrate hard not to go into a roll. But if he was frightened, he could not imagine what Mrs. P. was feeling as she blindly slithered out to the tip of his wing and began the precarious transfer to Digger.

“Almost there, dear, almost there. Steady now. Steady.”

Suddenly, she was gone. His wing felt light. Soren turned his head. She had made it. She was now crawling up toward the base of Digger’s wing. It was working. Digger’s flight grew even.

“We’re bringin’ him in! We’re bringing him in!” Twilight shouted triumphantly. Creating direct updrafts that supported Digger’s flight, Twilight flew below, along with Gylfie who, under the injured wing, was doing the same.

Finally, they landed in a large spruce tree. There was a perfect hollow for them to spend the day in, and Mrs. Plithiver immediately launched into a frenzy of action. “I need worms! Big fat ones, and leeches. Quick—all of you! Go out and get me what I need. I’ll stay here with Digger.”

Mrs. Plithiver crawled onto Digger’s back. “Now, this won’t hurt, dear, but I just want to feel what those awful crows did to you.” Gently, she began flicking her forked tongue over his wound. “It’s not deep. The best thing I can do is to curl up right on the wound until they come back. A snake’s skin can be very healing in many cases. We’re a little too dry for the long run, however. That’s why I want the worms.”

Soon the owls were back with the worms and leeches that Mrs. P. had ordered. She directed Soren to place two
leeches on the wound. “That will cleanse it. I can’t tell you how filthy crows are!”

After the leeches had done their work, Mrs. Plithiver pulled them off and gently replaced them with two fat worms.

Digger sighed. “That feels so good.”

“Yes, there’s nothing like a fat slimy worm for relief of a wound. You’ll be fit to fly by tomorrow night.”

“Thank you, Mrs. P. Thank you so much.” Digger blinked at Mrs. P., and there was a look in his large yellow eyes of seeming disbelief that he could have ever considered such a snake a meal, which, as a desert owl, Digger often did.

Within the spruce tree where they perched, there was another hollow that housed a family of Masked Owls.

“They look almost exactly like you, Soren,” Gylfie said. “And they’re coming to visit.”

“Masked Owls look nothing like me,” Soren replied. Everyone was always saying this. He had heard his parents complain about it. Yes, they had white faces and buff-colored wings, but they had many more spots on their breasts and head.

“They’re coming here to visit?” Mrs. P. said. “Oh, dear,
the place is a mess. We can’t receive company now. I’m nursing this poor owl.”

“They heard about the mobbing,” Gylfie said. “We’re even a little bit famous.”

“Why’s that?” asked Soren.

“I guess that gang of crows is really bad. They couldn’t believe we battled back and survived,” Gylfie replied.

Soon, they heard the Masked Owls arriving. One poked her head in. “Mind if we visit?” It was the female owl. And although Masked Owls belonged to the same species of owls as Soren’s family, which were Barn Owls, and they were all known as Tytos, they were hardly identical.

“See what I mean?” Soren whispered to Gylfie. “They are completely different. Look at how much bigger and darker they are.” The point was lost on Gylfie.

“We wanted to meet the brave owls who battled the crows,” said the owl’s mate.

“Yeah, how’d you ever do that?” a very young owlet who had barely fledged peeped up.

“Oh, it wasn’t all that hard,” Twilight said and dipped his head almost modestly.

“Not that hard!” Mrs. Plithiver piped up. “Hardest thing I’ve ever done!”

“You!” the male Masked Owl exclaimed.

“She certainly had nothing to do with the defeat of the crows. She’s a nest-maid,” his mate said in a haughty voice.

Mrs. Plithiver seemed to fade a bit. She nudged one of the worms that had begun to crawl off Digger’s wing.

“She had everything to do with it!” Soren bristled up and suddenly seemed almost as big as the Masked Owls. “If it hadn’t been for Mrs. P., I would have been dive-bombed from the rear and poor Digger would have never made it back.”

The Masked Owls blinked. “Well, well.” The large female chuffed and stepped nervously from one talon to another. “We just aren’t used to such aggressive behavior from our nest-maids. Ours are rather meek, I guess, compared to this…What do you call her?”

“Her name is Mrs. Plithiver,” Soren said slowly and distinctly with the contempt in his voice poorly concealed.

“Yes, yes,” the female replied nervously. “Well, we discourage our nest-maids from socially mingling with us at any time, really.”

“That was hardly a party, what happened up there in the sky, ma’am,” Twilight said hotly.

“Well, now tell me, young’uns,” said the male as if he was desperately trying to change the subject. “Where are you heading? What are your plans?”

“We’re going to Hoolemere and the Great Ga’Hoole Tree,” Soren said.

“Oh, how interesting,” the female replied in a voice that had a sneer embedded in it.

“Oh, Mummy,” said the young owlet. “That’s the place I was telling you about. Can’t we go?”

“Nonsense. You know how we feel about make-believe.”

The little owlet dipped his head in embarrassment.

“It’s not make-believe,” said Gylfie.

“Oh, you can’t be serious, young’un,” said the male. “It’s just a story, an old legend.”

“Let me tell you something,” said the female, who Soren disliked more and more by the second. “It does not do any good to believe in things you cannot see, touch, or feel. It is a waste of time. From the look of your flight feathers’ development, not to mention your talons, it is apparent that you are either fly-aways or orphans. Why else would you be out cavorting about the skies at such dangerous hours of the morning? I think your parents would be ashamed of you. I can tell you have good breeding.” She looked directly at Soren and blinked.

Soren thought he might explode with anger. How did this owl know what his parents might think? How dare she suggest that she knew them so well that she knew they would be ashamed of him?

And then there was a small soft, hissing voice. “I am ashamed of anyone who has eyes and still cannot see.” It was Mrs. Plithiver. She slithered from the corner in the hollow. “But, of course, to see with two eyes is a very common thing.”

“What is she talking about?” said the male.

“What happened to the old days when servants served and were quiet? Imagine a nest-maid going on like this,” said the female.

“Oh, yes,” said Mrs. Plithiver. “And I shall go on a bit more, if you permit me.” She proceeded to arrange herself in a lovely coil and swung her head toward Soren.

“Of course, Mrs. Plithiver. Please go on,” Soren said.

“I am a blind snake, but who says I cannot see as much as you?” And then she swung her head sharply toward the female Masked Owl, who seemed startled, and it did appear indeed as if Mrs. Plithiver was looking directly at her with her two small eye dents. “Who says I cannot see? To see with eyes is so ordinary. I see with my whole body—my skin, my bones, the coiling of my spine. And between the slow beats of my very slow heart, I sense the world here and beyond. I know the Yonder. Oh, yes. I have known it even before I ever flew in it. But before that day did I say it did not exist? What a fool you would have called me, milady, had I said your sky does not exist because I cannot
see it nor can I fly. And what a fool you are to believe that Hoolemere does not exist.”

“Well, I never!” gasped the Masked Owl. She looked at her mate in astonishment. “She called me a fool!”

But Mrs. Plithiver continued. “Sky does not exist merely in the wings of birds, an impulse in their feathers and blood and bone. Sky becomes the Yonder for all creatures if, indeed, they free their hearts and their brains to feel, to know in the deepest ways. And when the Yonder calls, it speaks to all of us, be it sky, be it Hoolemere, be it heaven or glaumora.” Glaumora was the special heaven where the souls of owls went. “So perhaps,” Mrs. Plithiver continued, “there are some who need to lose their eyes to discover their sight.” Mrs. P. nodded her head gracefully and slithered back into the corner. A stunned silence fell upon the hollow.

The four young owls waited until First Black to leave. “No more flying during light,” Mrs. Plithiver said as she coiled into Soren’s neck feathers. “Agreed?”

“Agreed,” the owls replied at once.

They were now skirting the edges of the Kingdom of Tyto, the kingdom from which Soren’s family came. Although he was as alert as ever and flying most skillfully, Mrs. Plithiver could sense a quietness in him. He did not
join in the others’ flight chatter. She knew he must have been thinking of his parents, his lost family, and, in particular, his sister, Eglantine, whom he loved most dearly. The chances of finding any of them were almost zero, and she knew that Soren knew this, but still she could feel his pain. Yet he had not exactly described it as pain. He had once said to Mrs. P. shortly after they had been reunited that he had felt as if there were a hole in his gizzard, and that when he and Mrs. P. had found each other again, it was as if a little bit of the hole had been mended. But Mrs. P. knew that despite the patch she had provided there was still a hole.

When the first stars began to fade, they looked for a place to land and settle in before morning. It was Gylfie who spotted an old sycamore, silvery in this moonless night. The full moon had begun its dwenking many nights before, growing slimmer and slimmer until it dwenked and disappeared entirely, and there would not be a trace of it for another night or so until the newing began.

O
h, yes, dear. I’ve heard of it, but you know they say it’s just a story, a legend.”

“Well, it’s not exactly that, Sweetums,” said the Sooty Owl’s mate.

The four owls had been warmly welcomed into the large and spacious hollow in the sycamore by a family of Sooty Owls. These two owls were much nicer than the Masked Owls. Indeed very, very nice and, Soren thought, very, very boring. They called each other by nicknames—Sweetums and Swatums. They never said a cross word. Everything was just perfect. The children had all grown up.

“Left the nest a year ago. Still nearby,” said Swatums, the male. “But who knows, Sweetums might come up with another clutch of eggs in the new breeding season. And if she doesn’t, well, we two are enough company for each other.” Then they began preening each other.

It seemed to Soren and Gylfie that they preened incessantly. They always had their beaks in each other’s feathers,
except, of course, when they were hunting. And when they were hunting they were exceptional killers. It was as predators that these Sooty Owls became the most interesting. Sweetums and Swatums were simply deadly, and Soren had to admit he had never eaten so well. Twilight had told them to watch carefully, for Sooty Owls were among the rare owls that went after tree prey and not just ground prey.

So tonight they were all feasting on three of a type of opossum that they called sugar gliders. They were the sweetest things that any of the young band of owls had ever tasted. Maybe that was why the two Sooties called each other Sweetums and Swatums. They had simply eaten too many sweet things. Perhaps eating a steady diet of sugar gliders made an owl ooze with gooiness. Soren thought he was going to go stark raving yoicks if he had to listen to their gooey talk a moment longer, but luckily they were now, in their own boring way, discussing the Great Ga’Hoole Tree.