(GoG Book 02) The Journey (20 page)

“Well, if it isn’t real, what is it?” Soren asked.

“It’s an unreal flower,” Bubbles answered.

“But why have an unreal flower?”

“It ain’t never gonna die. Ya see?”

Soren didn’t see but moved along. Despite all the merriment, he noticed that Boron and Strix Struma were always huddled together in tense conversation. They seemed, in fact, very apart from the entire festive spirit of the evening.

Soon Soren and Eglantine joined Twilight and Digger and Primrose. Primrose had traded one of her strung milkberry bracelets for a tiny comb. And Digger had traded a very smooth pebble for a shell. “They say it comes from a very faraway ocean and that once a tiny animal lived inside it,” he explained.

The moon was beginning to slip away, and Mags had begun to pack up her wares. It would be time for good light, but suddenly Soren noticed that Eglantine was not by his side. He had a terrible moment’s panic but then spotted her standing rigidly in front of a cloth covered with fragments of glass and pretty stones. Bubbles was packing up. “She ain’t moved an inch,” Bubbles said. “Just staring at this stone here, with the sparkles. Ain’t really gold, Mags says—just little bits of something she calls isinglass, some calls it mica. But makes a right pretty rock. Kind of sparkly in places and, if you hold it up, light can shine through it a bit. It’s kind of like a dusty mirror. Certainly
caught your sister’s fancy. There be something wrong with her, I s’pose?” she said quietly to Soren. “Here, dear, I’ll show you something real pretty we can do with it.” She picked up the stone, which was as thin as a blade. “See what it does now.” She held it up to the moon as it swept down on the dark horizon. When the light of the moon touched the stone it grew luminous. At that very same moment, the harp could be heard as the guild began their evening practice. No one else noticed, of course, but for one fraction of a second the stone blade shimmered in a swirl of flickering light and sound.

Eglantine began to shake uncontrollably. “The Place! The Place!” Eglantine screamed.

Something started in a dim way to make sense to Soren. He put a talon on his sister’s shoulder and spun her around to face him. “Eglantine,” he said softly.

His sister blinked. “Soren? Oh, Soren!” she cried as he swept her under his wings.

“I ain’t done nothing, Mags, I swear. Nothing.” Bubbles was crying and sputtering in near hysterics. “I just held up this here piece of glass we got from that castle over in Am-bala and she done gone yoicks.”

“Take me to the music, Soren. Take me to the music. Take us all to the music,” Eglantine cried.

S
oren perched on a slender branch next to Eglantine. He draped one wing over her shoulders. It seemed like a miracle. His sister was back—really back. And now she said they must listen to the harp music. If she had told him to hang upside down and be mobbed by crows, he would have. He had never been happier in his life. The other owlets that had been rescued were now gathering on the limbs outside the concert hollow. Madame Plonk rarely allowed owls to observe harp practice but she made an exception now. Boron came and perched on the other side of Eglantine. They all watched as the nest-maid snakes of the guild gathered at the harp and took their positions. Half of the guild snakes played the higher strings and the other half played the lower strings, and then there were a very few, the most talented harp snakes, that were called sliptweens. The job of the sliptweens was to jump octaves. An octave contained all eight tones of the scale. This harp had six and a half octaves, from C-flat below middle C to
the G-flat. G-flat was three and a half octaves above middle C. To find a snake that could do that jump and do it well in a split second, causing the most beautiful liquid sound to pour from the harp, was rare. And it could be exhausting work, depending on the composition.

Mrs. P. was a natural sliptween. And Soren now blinked as he saw a pink streak pass through the strings of the harp and a beautiful sound drifted into the air. It was Mrs. P. Then, in a flash, she was back in her original position, weaving bass notes. It was lovely to watch. Not only was the music magnificent but the snakes themselves, in their varying hues of rosy pinks, wove a continually shifting pattern as they shuttled through the strings of the harp.

They were now playing an old forest cantata. And Madame Plonk’s voice blended perfectly with the sounds of the harp.

Soren looked at Eglantine. She had a relaxed, dreamy look in her eyes. All of the rescued owlets seemed different now. There was not one clack of a babbling beak. The owls were silent and happy.

Boron had been watching them all from a higher perch. He was deeply perplexed. Happy, of course, that all the owls they had rescued had stopped their babbling. But mystified as to how it had happened. Beyond Hoole, he
sensed that there was a danger lurking that was worse than the owls of St. Aggie’s. And why had Ezylryb not returned yet? Barran had come back during the harp practice, but she was surprised that Ezylryb was not yet back. She thought he had a head start on her. “Don’t worry, dear. He’ll show up.”

Soren looked at Boron and Barran. Despite their words, they did seem worried. And Soren himself had a funny feeling in his gizzard. Gylfie suddenly turned to him.

“I think they’re worried about Ezylryb.”

Soren blinked. “Maybe tomorrow we should go out and take a look.”

Twilight and Digger alighted at that moment next to them on the branch.

“Take a look?” Digger asked. “A look for what?”

“Ezylryb,” Twilight said. “I heard them talking, too.”

There was a sudden pulsing of light in the sky and then a gasp from all the owls as a radiance swept the black night.

“What is it? What is it?”

“Oh, great Glaux, we are blessed!” hooted Barran.

“It is the Aurora Glaucora,” Boron sang out.

Soren, Gylfie, Digger, Twilight, and Eglantine all looked at one another. They had no idea what Barran and
Boron were talking about. But the sky seemed rinsed with colors, colors that streamed like banners through the night. Suddenly, Madame Plonk abandoned her perch by the harp and flew out into the brilliance of the night. Still singing, she swept through the long lances of light, her white body reflecting the colors. It was irresistible. Soren remembered that morning months ago when he and Madame Plonk had flown through the rainbow. But the rainbow was pale next to these pulsing banners of light that draped the sky. His worries about Ezylryb grew dimmer as the colors grew brighter. The sky beckoned, the shimmering light drew them. But there was a strangeness to it all. He felt a shudder deep in his gizzard. Behind those banners of throbbing light he knew there was blackness. Ezylryb was still missing, St. Aggie’s was still a threat, and now there was the almost unthinkable, the nearly unspeakable “you only wish.” Yes, Eglantine was back, but was she really back? Was it the same dear Eglantine? Soren felt as if he could no longer trust. For the world on this night had suddenly become too strange. It was as if everything had been turned inside out and the thing that owls called heaven, glaumora, had come down to Earth and swallowed the night. But this was not quite right, Soren thought. Just at that moment Eglantine swept in beside her brother.

“Isn’t it beautiful, Soren? Isn’t it just beautiful?”

“Just beautiful,” Soren said absently.

But even as he spoke, he felt a strange dread in his gizzard.
Well,
he finally thought,
Eglantine and I are together at last, and we need no colors, for just flying with her at my side is as good as glaumora on Earth. Tomorrow, yes tomorrow, I shall search for Ezylryb.
Soren recalled the amber squint of the old Whiskered Screech’s injured eye that indeed sparkled with the glint of deepest knowledge. But tonight…Soren and Eglantine tipped their white faces to the tinted sky and flew off into the painted night just as the GoldenTalons began to rise.

And yet the talons were no longer golden, just as the sky was no longer black.

SOREN: Barn Owl,
Tyto alba
, from the kingdom of the Forest of Tyto; snatched when he was three weeks old by St. Aegolius patrols; escaped from St. Aegolius Academy for Orphan Owls

His family:

KLUDD: Barn Owl,
Tyto alba
, older brother

EGLANTINE: Barn Owl,
Tyto alba
, younger sister

NOCTUS: Barn Owl,
Tyto alba,
father

MARELLA: Barn Owl,
Tyto alba,
mother

His family’s nest-maid:

MRS. PLITHIVER, blind snake

GYLFIE: Elf Owl,
Micrathene whitneyi
, from the desert kingdom of Kuneer; snatched when she was three weeks
old by St. Aegolius patrols; escaped from St. Aegolius Academy for Orphan Owls; Soren’s best friend

TWILIGHT: Great Gray Owl,
Strix nebulosa
, free flyer, orphaned within hours of hatching

DIGGER: Burrowing Owl,
Speotyto cunicularius
, from the desert kingdom of Kuneer; lost in desert after attack in which his brother was killed and eaten by owls from St. Aegolius

BORON: Snowy Owl,
Nyctea scandiaca,
the king of Hoole

BARRAN: Snowy Owl,
Nyctea scandiaca,
the queen of Hoole

MATRON: Short-eared Owl,
Asio flammeus
, the motherly caretaker at the Great Ga’Hoole Tree

STRIX STRUMA: Spotted Owl,
Strix occidentalis
, the dignified navigation ryb (teacher) at the Great Ga’Hoole Tree

ELVAN: Great Gray Owl,
Strix nebulosa
, the colliering ryb (teacher) at the Great Ga’Hoole Tree

EZYLRYB: Whiskered Screech Owl,
Otus trichopsis,
the wise weather-interpretation ryb (teacher) at the Great Ga’Hoole Tree; Soren’s mentor

POOT: Boreal Owl,
Aegolius funerus
, Ezylryb’s assistant

BUBO: Great Horned Owl,
Bubo virginianus,
the blacksmith of the Great Ga’Hoole Tree

MADAME PLONK: Snowy Owl,
Nyctea scandiaca
, the elegant singer of the Great Ga’Hoole Tree

OCTAVIA: Madame Plonk’s blind nest-maid snake

TRADER MAGS: Magpie, a traveling merchant

OTULISSA: Spotted Owl,
Strix occidentalis
, a student of prestigious lineage at the Great Ga’Hoole Tree

PRIMROSE: Pygmy Owl,
Glaucidium gnoma
, rescued from a forest fire and brought to the Great Ga’Hoole Tree the night of Soren and his friends’ arrival

MARTIN: Northern Saw-whet Owl,
Aegolius acadicus
, rescued
and brought to the Great Ga’Hoole Tree the same night as Primrose

RUBY: Short-eared Owl,
Asio flammeus
; lost her family under mysterious circumstances and was brought to the Great Ga’Hoole Tree

T
he dawn bled into night, faying the darkness, turning the black red, and Soren, with Digger by his side, flew through it.

“Strange isn’t it, Soren, how even at night the comet makes this color?”

“I know. And look at those sparks from the tail just below the moon. Great Glaux, even the moon is beginning to look red.” Digger’s voice was quavery with worry.

“I told you about Octavia. How she thinks it’s an omen, or at least I think she thinks it is, even though she won’t really admit it.”

“Why won’t she admit it?” Digger asked.

“I think she’s sensitive about coming from the great North Waters. She says everyone there is very superstitious, but I don’t know, I guess she just thinks the owls here will laugh at her or something. I’m not sure.”

Suddenly, Soren was experiencing a tight, uncomfortable feeling as he flew. He had never felt uncomfortable flying, even when he was diving into the fringes of forest fires to gather coals on colliering missions. But, indeed, he could almost feel the sparks from that comet’s tail. It was as if they were hot sizzling points pinging off his wings, singeing his flight feathers as the infernos of burning forests never had. He carved a great downward arc in the night to try to escape it. Was he becoming like Octavia? Could he actually feel the comet? Impossible! The comet was hundreds of thousands, millions of leagues away. Now, suddenly, those sparks were turning to glints, sparkling silvery-gray glints. “Flecks! Flecks! Flecks!” he screeched.

Book One:
The Capture

Book Two:
The Journey

Book Three:
The Rescue

Book Four:
The Siege

Book Five:
The Shattering

Book Six:
The Burning

Book Seven:
The Hatchling

Book Eight:
The Outcast