The Shattering (Guardians of Ga'hoole) (12 page)

“You mean it’s a hostage?”

“Exactly!”

Now Primrose blinked at Eglantine. In that moment, she knew that Eglantine had changed. It was as if she had suddenly grown, not just up but much, much older. She would sacrifice her life for that egg. She would die to save that egg from the Pure Ones. Until that moment, Eglantine
had only thought about death as depriving her of something she loved—her mother, her father, the place she had once called home. But now Primrose knew that Eglantine realized that you could die for something. You could die for something you loved. You could die fighting against something you hated. You could die for freedom, the freedom of the owl kingdoms.

“I see them, Primrose. I see them,” Eglantine whispered.

The two owls huddled closer and pressed themselves deeper under the stump.

The smoke was clearing. Nyra had her vision back and now she would use her powerful abilities to hear. She must find her egg. Thus, the moonfaced owl began to swivel her head in smooth and precise movements, scanning not for just any sound, but a very special one that only owl mothers were attuned to. She filtered out the sound of a mouse’s heartbeat as it skittered across the forest floor, and that of a snake slithering over a log. There was the labored breathing of a mother rabbit as she gave birth to a new litter.
Bunnies, yum!
Nyra thought, but then admonished herself to listen for only that one sound—those tiny stirrings and muffled pulses of an egg with an owl chick just beginning to grow. The chick itself, a tiny speck, floated in the hugeness of the liquid sea contained
within that egg, that Sacred Orb. Oh, she had planned it so carefully. The egg was to hatch on a night just as she’d hatched on: the night of a lunar eclipse. Nyra had been named for the Nyra of ancient legends, born when the moon dropped from the sky and rose in the face of a hatchling. It was said that when an owl was hatched on the night of an eclipse, an enchantment was cast upon that creature; a charm, and that this charm was either good and led to a greatness of spirit or was bad and led to great evil.

“Aaah,” she sighed and cocked her head once more to be sure.

“They’re coming!” Primrose gasped. The two owls peered in astonishment from the hole. There was no way that they could be seen, but it was as if the squadron headed by Nyra had pinpointed their exact location.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” Eglantine said.

“Leave the egg!”

“No!” she shouted. “Never!”

The two young owls burst out of the hole.

“There they are!” shrieked Nyra.

“To the fire! To the fire! Eglantine, we must go back into the fire.”

Eglantine knew Primrose was right. They didn’t know how to fly in fire, not like the colliering chaw, but they
were better at it than the Pure Ones and, more important, they could fight with fire—as expertly as the Pure Ones fought with battle claws.

The two young owls rose in the night and raced in flight toward the flame-scorched sky.

A
gannet flying in the vicinity had pointed them in the direction that Gylfie and Digger were now flying. The gannet thought that he had seen something that might have been two owls flying low. So Gylfie and Digger were now skimming just above the ground. On occasion, Digger lighted down to walk, using his tracking skills to find any sign of the two missing owls. This was difficult work, for Digger was not simply looking for tracks of the two owls but “tracks” of Soren’s strange dream, as he had explained it to them. Ahead was a tree stump with a hole at its base. Could a hole be considered a clear space, too? Digger knew that he might be prejudiced in this case. He was a Burrowing Owl after all, and Burrowing Owls lived in similar holes. Any ground cavity was always extremely attractive to an owl such as Digger. So he walked forward a few paces. Suddenly, he stopped in his tracks and blinked. Quivering on a low shrub next to the hole was a feather.
Not just any feather. A Barn Owl’s, and not just any Barn Owl’s, but Eglantine’s.

“What is it, Digger?” Gylfie asked, seeing that the Burrowing Owl had stopped.

“Eglantine has been here.”

“No!” Gylfie said excitedly. “How can you be sure? I mean, how can you tell one Barn Owl feather from another?”

Digger gave the Elf Owl a withering gaze. “My friend, need I remind you that when Eglantine was first rescued all those months ago, I was the one who tracked her? I am more than familiar with Eglantine’s plumage. And from the looks of it Primrose has been here, too!” The Burrowing Owl plucked from another bush a short black feather, just like the ones that grew on the back of the head of a Pygmy Owl.

Gylfie lighted down beside him. “Bless my gizzard! That is a Barn Owl feather, from its neck band.” Barn Owls were brown and white. Their faces and the front of their necks were all white.

“I’m going inside to explore,” Digger announced. “You keep a lookout, all right?”

Seconds later, the Burrowing Owl called up from the hole. “They’ve been here for sure. Talon marks, pellets, a few more feathers.” Digger paused. “And…”

“And what?” Gylfie was almost hopping with excitement.

“You’re not going to believe this.”

“What?”

“There is a mark here that could have only been made by one thing.”

“What, for Glaux’s sake?” By this point, Gylfie was almost jumping out of her feathers.

“An egg—a Barn Owl egg.”

A stunned silence followed. Then Gylfie, recovering her senses, stuck her head into the hole and said out loud to no one in particular, “That can’t be. Eglantine is too young.”

“Who says it’s Eglantine’s?” Digger asked, crawling out of the hole. “There are other Barn Owls as we know all too well.”

Gylfie nodded and blinked.
All too well,
she thought.

“If you want to go in and see for yourself—” Digger offered.

Gylfie twisted her head no. Digger was one of the best in the tracking chaw, and this was exactly what the tracking chaw was trained to do: read the almost invisible signs left behind; the clues to where a lost owl might be; where a bobcat might have trodden; where crows might have mobbed and settled to peck away at their dying victim. But the mark of a single egg must indeed be one of
the most subtle of all signs. What a cunning eye that Burrowing Owl had!

Gylfie looked overhead. She could spot Soren and the rest of the chaw. “We better go back and tell them.” But she had hardly finished speaking when she saw a flame-colored dart whistling down from the sky. It wasn’t, however, a ball of fire. It was Ruby, the Short-eared Owl, who was a superb flier.

“Enemy spotted!” Ruby called out.

Digger and Gylfie spiraled up and followed Ruby to a cliff where the chaw had assembled.

“We found signs of a hole where Eglantine and Primrose have been,” Digger said. But there was no time to report about the strange markings left by an egg.

“No idea where they were heading?” Ezylryb asked.

“We didn’t have time to explore any farther before Ruby came. But there was no blood. No signs of violence,” Gylfie added and looked at Soren, who was shaking so hard she thought he might just tumble from his perch.

“Well, we’ve spotted a squadron of Pure Ones,” Ezylryb said, “and they have not yet spotted us. So that gives us some advantage. I guess they are chasing Eglantine and Primrose. So if we can continue to follow them without being seen, so much the better.”

Gylfie blinked. How could they follow them without being detected? Indeed, how could they follow them if
two of the best scouts, Twilight and Ruby, were perched right here with the rest of them as was Sylvana, leader of the tracking chaw.

“Gannets,” Ezylryb replied tersely, seeming to read Gylfie’s mind.

Of course
, thought Gylfie.
Gannets. And who would know those seabirds better than Ezylryb?

Ezylryb knew all the ocean birds. The old Whiskered Screech, who came from the Northern Kingdoms and the land of the Great North Waters, was as close as an owl could get to being a seabird. Intimate of seagulls, gannets, shearwaters, and cormorants, he knew their ways and they respected him and, more important, trusted him as they did no other land bird. So the gannets were scouting the Pure Ones for Ezylryb.

Suddenly, the striking white wings tipped in black cut through the night.

“There he is!” said Soren.
Oh, maybe—just maybe—he’s seen Eglantine. No blood, no signs of violence,
Soren kept repeating to himself what Gylfie had told him. He blinked and gripped with his talons the stone edge on which he was perched. Gannets were huge.
This one’s wingspan,
Soren guessed,
was four—no, maybe five feet across.
The bird glided onto the stone cliff with barely a wing flap.

Gannets are formal birds with many odd customs that
involve the bowing and bobbing of their heads, the touching of their beaks in light clashes like swords crossing. With great deference this gannet stepped toward Ezylryb and extended his beak. Ezylryb did likewise, but because his beak was so much shorter, he had to take several steps forward. There was the click of the beaks clashing. This was the signal that conversation could begin.

“What have you to report, sir?” Ezylryb asked.

“Honorable Ezylryb of the Great North Waters and Stormfast Island. It is with great displeasure that I must bring you this news.” The gannet’s voice was a deep guttural croak.

“Go on,” rasped Ezylryb.

“There is not one but two squadrons and an incoming platoon of Pure Ones.”

“A platoon!” several of the owls said in stunned voices. A platoon was composed of at least four squadrons. They would be vastly outnumbered.

The gannet continued, “They are heading for the forest fire that still burns in the eastern regions of The Beaks.”

“That seems odd. They aren’t good in fire. Can’t fight with fire. Why are they going there?”

“They are chasing two rather young owls—a Pygmy and a Barn Owl.”

“Eglantine and Primrose!” Soren blurted out.

The gannet swung his head toward Soren and glared. “And,” he continued, “the young owls were leading them there.”

Now Barran spoke. “Tell me, sir. Do you think you were spotted?”

“Oh, most certainly. It is hard for white wings of my breadth to go unnoticed. As I am sure you must understand, being a Snowy yourself. But it is common for gannets to fly inland when there are forest fires near lakes. The flame glare on the lake makes fishing rather easy for us, and we do enjoy an occasional spot of lake fish. So I made sure to make a few feints at the lake to sustain the guise of casual fishing.”

“Very smart.” Ezylryb nodded and paused. Soren could tell that Ezylryb was thinking very hard because he had blinked his eyes shut and kept them that way for several seconds. Then he opened his eyes. The one held in the perpetual squint looked as it always did, completely unreadable and scary. The other eye had a gleam in it. “Thank you, sir, for your excellent reconnaissance.” He paused again, and then added, almost as an afterthought, “And thank you for your use of the word ‘feint.’” Even the gannet looked puzzled by this.

Soren and Gylfie exchanged glances.
Why in the world was Ezylryb thanking the gannet for a word?

“Always at your service, Honorable Ezylryb.”

And then an equally elaborate sequence of bows and accompanying gestures commenced as the gannet took his leave. Soren watched him slide gracefully through the black night until the gleaming white wings were just slivers in the darkness.

“A squadron and a platoon,” Barran said tensely. What was left unspoken was that they were up against an enemy that outnumbered them, and there was no Strix Struma to lead her Strikers into battle. Of course, they had originally thought that they were merely coming on a search-and-rescue mission, and since the fires had been spotted, the colliering chaw had decided to fly that night. In all, they had the search-and-rescue chaw, the tracking chaw, which always accompanied search-and-rescue, the colliering chaw, and then, of course, embedded within this assemblage of chaws was the Chaw of Chaws, composed of Soren, Gylfie, Twilight, Ruby, Martin, Digger, and Otulissa. Each was a member of other chaws, but their uncanny ability to work together made them a fearsome fighting force.

“Yes, indeed, a squadron and a platoon,” Ezylryb said crisply. “We are outnumbered, but we are not outwitted.” All of the owls seemed to perch a little straighter; their feathers fluffed up a little more. What did the old ryb mean? “You might have wondered why I found that word
‘feint’ so…so…How should I put it…fetching?” He swiveled his head about and seemed to fix each owl in the yellow glare of his crinkled-up eye. “Because, that is precisely what we are going to do—create a feint. But not just a feint, but an immense illusion, the likes of which has never been seen. We number only a little more than twenty owls, but they will think we are hundreds.”

“How is that, Ezylryb?” Barran asked, genuinely perplexed.

“All of those owls—the Pure Ones—are Barn Owls, are they not?”

Everyone nodded.

“And Barn Owls are known for what?” He looked directly at Soren. “Their hearing, of course. Their superb, unequaled ability to hear. We are going to get within range of the fire but still be undercover. We are going to divide up into three teams and peg-out as we used to say up in the Northern Kingdoms. I shall lead one peg, Barran shall lead one, and, my dear, your estimable mate Boron”—he swung his head to the old Snowy monarch of the tree, who along with Barran led search-and-rescue—“will lead the third. The reason I have chosen the three of us is because we know the odd language of the Northern Kingdoms and the Great North Waters, for they were once home to all of us.”

“I know a little bit, too, Ezylryb,” Otulissa piped up.

“Of course, wouldn’t you know it?” Gylfie whispered to Soren. “The gift of blab works in all languages.”

“Yes, I do recall your study of the Northern Kingdoms for your mission into St. Aggie’s, my dear. That will be helpful.” The previous winter, when the Chaw of Chaws had been sent on a special spy mission into St. Aggie’s, their cover story was that they had been blown off course up into the Northern Kingdoms and then had fled. To be convincing, they had had to study a bit about this place that was so different from the Southern Kingdoms. Otulissa, of course, had overdone it. She had studied everything including the language.