(GoG Book 08) The Outcast (6 page)

He was perched on a rock with a dead mouse firmly beneath one talon. It was curious, he thought. At first, he found the featherless legs of Burrowing Owls unattractive, almost disgusting. But now as he watched Kalo striding toward a molehill, he thought them downright pretty. And she looked so elegant as she walked. Her tail didn’t drag at all on the ground like most owl tails would have. And just the way her shoulders set was something special. It wasn’t, however, simply how Kalo looked. She was smart.
Oh, why, oh, why do I have to leave everything nice behind and go beyond? To Beyond the Beyond!

Kalo came back as Coryn was in the midst of all these thoughts.

“It’s grosnik,” she said as she lofted herself onto the rock beside him.

“Grosnik? What’s that?”

“You’ve never heard of grosnik?” She blinked.

“No.”

“Well, there were only baby moles in the nest. We don’t eat baby anything. We call it grosnik.”

“Oh, you’re talking about standards!” Coryn replied.

“Yes, standards. But ‘grosnik’ is the word used for forbidden food—at least among Burrowing Owls.”

“My best friend, Phillip, told me about such standards. You see, his father once had to kill a baby fox when they were starving to death.”

“Oh,” Kalo said and was very quiet for a moment. Coryn hoped that she didn’t think poorly of him because he had had a friend whose father killed a baby. “Coryn, I know so little about you, really, except where you came from and who your parents were.”

“Isn’t that enough?” Coryn looked down at the dead mouse clamped beneath the toes of his talons.

“Not really. I don’t mean to pry. But this is the first time you have ever mentioned a best friend. And why must you leave us tomorrow? Why must you go to Beyond the Beyond?”

Coryn sighed. “I am not even exactly sure myself, Kalo.” He didn’t want to tell her about his fire sight. It was such a freakish thing. He didn’t want to scare her in any way. “You know sometimes that you just have to do something. You might not be sure why.”

“Like you had to bring the egg back to us.”

“Well, yes, but I knew that was the right thing to do. It was simple.”

“Simple! Are you yoicks? There was nothing simple
about it, Coryn. You were incredibly courageous.” Coryn felt a delicious quivering in his gizzard. “You must know that this is the right thing to do.”

“Yes, yes. That’s it,” Coryn said. “I wouldn’t dare do it if I thought it was wrong. If I thought it was grosnik.”

Kalo churred softly.

“Why are you laughing?”

“It’s just that grosnik is usually a word meant for food, forbidden food, but I know what you mean. You wouldn’t do it if you thought it was against your standards.”

“Yes, that’s it,” said Coryn.

“But, Coryn, would you tell me about your friend, Phillip?”

“It’s a very sad story. Are you sure you want to hear it?”

“Yes, Coryn, I am your friend. That is what friends are for, to share the sad stories as well as the happy ones.”

So Coryn told Kalo about Phillip, and together the two young owls wept in the moonlight.

T
he last thing the family of Burrowing Owls told Coryn before he left the following evening was that he should be careful of the Pure Ones.

Then Harry had said, “I have heard rumors, however, that Nyra has been killed.”

“What?” Coryn had said.

“Yes, her scroom, or some say it was a hagsfiend, was spotted in the southwest corner of Silverveil near the border of the Shadow Forest.”

It was all Coryn was able to do to keep from bursting out laughing. He had never told the Burrowing Owls, not even Kalo, of his ruse. Apparently, it had worked better than he ever dreamed.

And, indeed, there were rumors!

The northerly winds had continued to build and it had taken several days of very slow flying to reach the edge of the Shadow Forest. He had found what he thought
was only an empty hollow in a fir tree. But now as the sun rose high in the sky, he could hear the voices of a family of Great Horned Owls talking.

“They say a hagsfiend of Nyra was spotted over by Cape Glaux.”

“Cape Glaux? I thought it was just in the southern part of Silverveil.”

“Well, there was another rumor that her scroom was in Ambala.”

“Hagsfiend, scroom—there are rumors all over the place. The important question is: Is she dead or not? Hagsfiends can’t lead armies. They can just scare owls, but they have no real power.”

“At least not anymore,” another owl added.

The conversation was fascinating. The dry wood of the tree was a perfect conductor for the family’s every word.

“What do you mean, not anymore?”

My question precisely,
Coryn thought.

“In ancient times…”

“You mean the time of the legends, Da?”

Coryn’s gizzard quickened. Nothing stirred him like hearing the fragments of the legends of Ga’Hoole. When he had first fled from the Pure Ones and spent the long winter hiding out in tree stumps, flying by day and sleeping by night, his only solace had been to listen to the
bedtime stories and legends told by parents to their young’uns toward dawn. He had heard mostly fragments, rarely complete stories. Now he pressed his ear slit to the rough wood of the hollow’s sides.

“In the time of the Coming of Hoole, when Grank, the first collier, rescued the egg that was the good King Hoole.”

Rescued the egg! The egg of good King Hoole
! Coryn’s gizzard did a flip-flop, his heart skipped a beat.

“The hagsfiends tried to snatch that princely egg. But Grank saved it and even raised it in the great Northern Kingdoms in a secret forest far from any other owls. But when Hoole was no longer a hatchling, somehow the hagsfiends and other evil owls found out where he was, and Grank and Hoole were forced to flee to Beyond the Beyond. Some say it was Grank’s plan all along to take the young prince there, for that was where his education would be completed. You know that Grank was not only the first collier, and a great one at that, but he had what some called wizardly powers. He had fire sight.”

The similarity to recent events in Coryn’s life seemed both incredible and confusing. Was the egg he had rescued that of a king? Was little Coryn destined to be king and save the owl universe? Was he himself, like Grank?
No wonder I must go to Beyond the Beyond. For if I am to be little
Coryn’s teacher, maybe it is in Beyond the Beyond that I’ll complete my education to become a wizardly owl. And Grank had had fire sight just like I do!
Coryn had never heard this detail before. And didn’t it make sense that he should become little Coryn’s tutor since he had rescued the egg? Oh, there were too many coincidences to be ignored. Coryn could hardly wait to leave for Beyond the Beyond.

Now he finally knew why he must go. If he had only known this when Kalo asked him why he was going.
But then again,
he thought,
that might have been a little too much.
He tried to imagine himself saying to her, “Well, you see, Kalo, your little brother, the egg I rescued, he’s actually a king and I am supposed to be his tutor. Therefore I have to go to Beyond the Beyond to complete my education before I can start helping your brother.”

First Black couldn’t come too soon! Coryn was very excited but finally he slept. He was awakened hours later at tween time, by the rustling in the Great Horned Owls’ hollow as they prepared to go out and hunt. He would wait until they left and then he would find the Star That Never Moves in the north sky and take his bearings as Mist and the eagles had taught him. He would head four points west of the star into Beyond the Beyond. This was his destiny: to teach a prince to become a king.

A
s Coryn left the Shadow Forest for Beyond the Beyond, the contrary winds increased and he was forced to stop again and again. He tried flying through the trees rather than above them, thinking that this would afford him more wind protection. But the branches of the trees were being tossed wildly, and dodging them was as much of an effort as flying against the wind. Then when the winds finally died down one morning, he was tempted to fly in the light of day. Tempted, that is, until he heard the loud cawing of crows.
Why get mobbed now,
he had thought,
after all this flying.
So he counseled himself to be patient. He slept through that day, then flew night after night, stopping only to hunt enough to keep up his strength. And always, always he avoided the notice of other owls. Finally, he reached his destination.

The sky sparkled with stars. The moon was full and low, a “perching moon,” owls often called it as it seemed to perch like an immense silver ball on the horizon.

The moon appeared to tremble slightly as if it might fall off the horizon.
This could be the edge of the world,
Coryn thought, for it seemed as if he had indeed flown far enough to take him to the edge of the world.

Coryn had perched on a high ledge just within the border of Beyond the Beyond and was surveying the strangest landscape he had ever seen. It was an unimaginable landscape and yet he had seen it before—in the fire that Gwyndor had made to burn the bones of Kludd, his father.

Everything about this place was strange, even its color. There were patches of snow and between these patches of white, the land glistened black for the most part. But oddest of all—and this, too, he had seen in the flames of the fires—were the weird cone-shaped mountains. On top of them were openings like huge mouths that belched steam and occasionally fire into the night. Like streaks of boiling blood, coals spilled down their slopes.

He saw Rogue colliers in the distance flying over the cone mountains, but none of them flew near the mouths. They dove for the coals most distant from the mountaintops, the ones that were cooling at the edges of the tumbling rivers of embers.

Although Coryn had arrived only a few hours before, it was not hard to see that weapons were the main business of the Beyond the Beyond. The landscape was dotted
with the glowing forges of Rogue smiths. He supposed it was because so many good coals were available for building fires. The sound of hammers striking anvils rang out constantly. And when he had taken a quick flight over one patch of forges set closely together, he saw Rogue colliers and Rogue smiths haggling over the price of embers and, farther along, hireclaws and Rogue smiths arguing over the price of a set of battle claws. He hadn’t seen this much activity in a long time.

Returning from this brief foray to his perch on the high ledge, something else drew his attention—a swift silken movement against the horizon. It flowed like a river but clearly was no river. And as it crossed the perching moon it darkened. Soon there were black shadows printed against the silver roundness of the moon. Coryn’s gizzard quickened. He had seen these figures before. These were the weird long-legged creatures loping across the land that he had seen in Gwyndor’s fire. Yes! One turned now to look at him. Even at this distance, Coryn could see the creature’s eyes—two sparkling green slits!

The creatures were beautiful to watch. They seemed to flow rather than run, to stream like liquid, like a river. The line of animals gradually turned toward the ridge where Coryn perched and he saw the glint of many green eyes, the greenest green he had ever beheld. Not the soft velvety
green of moss, or the dark green of the fir or pine, or the blue-green of the spruce tree. No, if fire were green, this was what it would look like—sparkling, fizzing with intensity. But where were they going?

In another second it became clear. While Coryn had been concentrating on the distant view, another strange herd of animals had appeared. Larger than the River Legs, as Coryn now thought of them, and spindly but with odd, branchlike things on top of their heads.
Why would an animal wear branches on its head?
Coryn wondered.

One of the River Legs broke away from the group. It circled wide around the Running Trees that had sped up. It seemed to scan the herd and then quickly found one lagging at the rear and steered it away from the rest of the Running Trees. It bolted ahead. Another River Legs suddenly streaked up with an amazing blast of speed on the other side of the bolting animal. Then it slowed down in such a way that the Running Tree could not return to its herd.

Coryn lifted off the ledge where he perched and began to follow the pursuit. It was fascinating. The River Legs were using a very complicated strategy. He was sure that the two chasing the Running Tree were capable of greater speed, but it seemed as if they deliberately chose to keep their pace steady with their intended prey. Perhaps they
were trying to tire it out so it would not fight so hard at the kill. He knew that certain birds did this. The Running Tree had now slowed considerably as it came to a patch of ground free of snow. It began to graze, casually, as if it did not have a care in the world.

Is the animal yoicks, or what?
Coryn thought. He was dimly aware of another bird flying near him in the vicinity. Not an owl, but most likely a raven, from the sound of its wing beats.

Now he saw that the other River Legs had drawn closer. They sunk their bodies down close to the grass and were creeping toward the Running Tree. From his vantage point high above, Coryn could see that they were stalking the animal. The Running Tree raised its head and scanned the area.
It must be terrifically dumb, blind, or have no sense of smell,
Coryn thought as the creature went back to eating. The River Legs were stealing closer. Now Coryn observed one of the River Legs give a signal to another. It did something with its tail. The other hunter noticed it and was off. The signal seemed to spread through the River Legs. They formed a circle around the animal, tightening it every few moments through some invisible code or signal that Coryn could not understand.

The Running Tree was suddenly aware. It reared up, its eyes wild with terror. The four River Legs pounced on
it and brought it down. One of the hunters slashed a hip wide open, another ripped open a shoulder. But the Running Tree staggered to its feet somehow. It stared hard at its attackers as if it were taking a death stand, as if saying,
I cannot run, but I can stand and stare you down even as you set to kill me.
Coryn was rapt. He had never seen anything like this. It was as if in that moment something was exchanged between prey and predator.