“You see, young’uns,” said the male puffin, “nine days out often, the wind slams full force up these Ice Narrows. That’s how you got sucked into here in the first place. But on the tenth day, it can turn around and suck you right back out. Nice high stream coming through that could pull you right back to The Beaks, if you want to go that far.” He paused and each of the owls stole a glance at one another. The Beaks sounded lovely. This place was so harsh and cold and there was the terrible stench of the fish and the awful oiliness that seemed to make their gizzards greasy. How could they help but think of the Mirror Lakes, where it was always summer and the voles were fat and the flying spectacular? They would be liars if they said they weren’t tempted.
“So when should we leave?” Soren asked.
“I think since you owls like night flying you should go tonight. Just when it’s getting dark is when the wind will begin to turn. It’ll be easy flying out of here, and then when the wind finally gets behind your tail feathers, you’ll really go, straight out to Hoolemere.”
“But the blizzard?” Gylfie said. “When will that start up again?”
“Not before tomorrow, I think, at the earliest.”
“We should all get some rest now,” Soren said. “If we’re going to fly tonight.”
“Good idea,” Mrs. Plithiver nodded.
“Better go to the back of the hollow,” the female puffin called. “Sun’s coming out and it reflects so brightly off the ice you won’t be able to shut your eyes against it.” It was dimmer in the back, but still rather bright as streams of sunlight bouncing off the ice-sheathed rocks pried into the shadows of the hollow.
Soren could hear the steady drip as some of the ice began to melt. But finally he fell asleep. Perhaps it was the melting ice that made him think of that warmer place with the pools of crystal-clear water, his lovely white face shimmering on the surface. Why couldn’t they go back there? Where were they supposed to be going instead? Soren kept forgetting. All he could remember were the rolls of warm wind to play on, the still, glasslike lake, the everlasting summer. No ice, no blizzard. Why not live there happily ever after? The dream tugged on him. In his sleep, he felt his gizzard turn and something begin to dim, while the longing for The Beaks and the Mirror Lakes grew stronger and stronger.
“Time to get up, young’uns.” It was the male puffin, nudging Soren with one of his large, orange, webbed feet. “Wind died down. You can fly out of here now. The wall’s weeping.”
“Huh?” Soren asked. “What do you mean the wall’s weeping?”
“The ice is melting. Means warm air, the thermals have come. Easy flying.”
The other owls were already up and standing at the rim of the hollow. The wall certainly was weeping. Glistening with wetness, it appeared shimmering, almost fiery as the setting sun turned its ice into liquid flames of pink, then orange and red.
“Dumpy,” his father called. “Come over here, son. I want you to step up here and watch the young’uns fly. They are the masters of silent flight. Never going to hear a wing flap with these owls!”
Just before they took off, Soren looked at each of the owls. He wasn’t the only one who had dreamed of the Mirror Lakes. They all wanted to go back. Could it be that wrong if they all wanted to do it? Twilight slid in close to him. “Soren, the three of us have been thinking.”
“Yes?”
“Thinking about The Beaks and the Mirror Lakes. We’ve been thinking, why not go back there for just a little while? You know, just to kind of rest up, get this fish out of our system. Eat us some nice fat voles, then go on to the Great Ga’Hoole Tree.”
It was so tempting, so tempting. Soren felt Mrs. Plithiver shift in the feathers between his shoulders.
“I…I…” Soren stammered. “I think there’s a problem.”
“What’s the problem?” Twilight pressed.
“I think that if we go there, we won’t go on—ever—to the Great Ga’Hoole Tree,” Soren replied.
Twilight paused. “Well, what if some of us think—you know, kind of differently? Would that be wrong of us to go? I mean, you’d be free to go on.”
After they took off, Soren could feel Gylfie flying nervously beside him. He turned and looked directly at Gylfie. Together, they had survived moon blinking and moon scalding. Together, they had escaped St. Aggie’s. He spun his head toward Twilight and Digger. They had fought with him and Gylfie in the desert and, together, killed the murderers of Digger’s brother and parents. It was in that desert stained with blood that the four of them had, within the slivers of time and the silver of moonlight, sworn an oath and become a band. And it was as a band they had sworn to go to Hoolemere and find its Great Ga’Hoole Tree. That was no dream. That was real. But it was a dream that now threatened them, a dream of the Mirror Lakes and endless summer that could, in fact, destroy their reason for living.
Twilight continued, “I mean, Soren, as I said, you could go on if you wanted. What would be wrong with each of us doing what we want to do?”
Soren looked hard at Twilight. “Because we are a band,” he said simply. And he sheered off toward an inlet near the end of the Ice Narrows that streamed into the Sea of Hoole-mere.
CHAPTER SEVEN
This Side of Yonder
The puffins had told them that there was a current of darker green water that swirled out from the Ice Narrows, then curved into the Sea of Hoolemere and, if they followed it, it would lead to the island. Soren was very thankful that they had found the current quickly. For, although the other three owls seemed to understand what he had said about being a band, he did not know what he would have done if they hadn’t found the current. At least for now he could assure them that they were on course. One more navigational error, one more time getting blown off in some wild direction—well, Soren wasn’t sure if he could hold the band together. The draw of The Mirror Lakes was powerful. It was odd, but he often thought of the night that he and Gylfie escaped from St. Aggie’s. When Skench, in her full battle regalia with claws and helmet, had burst in on them in the library, something had drawn her into the wall where the flecks were stored. She had actually slammed into the wall and become completely immobilized for a few brief seconds. But it had provided them with the time to escape. Somehow The Beaks and the Mirror Lakes had a similarly powerful draw for them. But it was just a dream and that is what Soren didn’t understand. How could a dream do this? However, this current of dark green water beneath them was real. All they had to do was follow it.
They had been flying hard and fast for a while now. With each stroke of their wings, they felt surer of their course, and their gizzards began to tremble with excitement. And with each stroke that drew Soren closer to the island with the Great Ga’Hoole Tree, he knew he was flying somehow farther away from St. Aegolius Academy for Orphaned Owls. How dare they call that place an academy? For nothing was learned there. Indeed, one of the worst rules that an owl could break was that of asking a question. The most severe and the bloodiest punishments were reserved for questioners. The foulest words one could utter at St. Aggie’s were the cursed wh words: what, when, why. Soren at one point had all of his just-budging flight feathers ripped out and his wings left with a slick of blood because he had asked a question. Knowledge was forbidden.
Soon it began to snow, rubbing the pinpoints of starlight into smears, feathering the edges of the moon into a blurry softness, and smudging the dark green line of the current. I can’t lose the current! Soren thought.
“I don’t know how we’ll ever see this Island of Hoole,” Digger said. “Look down. Everything is turning white.”
“Where’s the current?” asked Gylfie anxiously.
Soren felt Mrs. Plithiver shift nervously in his neck feathers. So near but so far! They couldn’t lose the current now. Soren thought that the Island of Hoole and the Great Ga’Hoole Tree seemed almost like the sky did to Mrs. Plithiver, the Yonder. And right now it felt as if they were just this side of the Yonder.
The condition
s became increasingly confusing for the owls to fly in. Accustomed in night flying to opening up their pupils so wide that they nearly filled the entire size of their eyes, on this snowy night the owls had to do the reverse and yet it was not like day flying. There was too much light and it was all the same color, a shadowy gray. Water would appear no different from the surrounding land. Were they still over water? Or could they be over the Island of Hoole? Or maybe they had been blown off course again! Soren remembered what Mrs. Plithiver had said, that one had to see with one’s entire body. Mrs. P.’s words came back to him. The four owls were bunched together in a tight V–shaped formation with Twilight at the point. Soren realized that flying on one side of the V or the other was not the best place to take advantage of the uneven placement of his ears and his good hearing.
“Let me fly point, Twilight. I’ll be able to hear better.”
Twilight slowed his speed and Soren stroked past him. “Hang on, Mrs. P., I’m going to have to do some head rolls.”
An owl’s neck is a strange thing. Unlike most birds, owls have extra bones in their necks that allow them to swivel their heads far to each side, in an arc much wider than any other living creature. Indeed, an owl can flip its head back so that its crown touches its shoulders, or turn its face almost upside down as Soren was doing just now. “Hello!” said Soren to Mrs. P., who nestled now directly beneath his beak as he flipped his face about. “Just scanning.”
After several minutes of this, Soren noticed a change in the night. He was not sure exactly what it was but something seemed different. “Digger, remember that coyote song you were singing?”
“Yes.”
“Sing it again and tip your head down.”
“Hard to tell which way is down tonight.”
Indeed it was, for the entire world, thick with snow, had suddenly turned completely white. But Digger began to sing in the thin grainy voice of a desert owl. Soren meanwhile was moving his head in small, minute movements. Finally, he said, “I think we’re still over water.” The sound of Digger’s song that was reflected back was different from when he had sung it when they were over land and his sound had disappeared into the softness of an earth clad with trees. Now the song came back sharp and crisp.
And then there came a moment when the wind died and the snowflakes seemed to stand still. Twilight spoke. “It’s time for me to fly point again, Soren.”
Soren knew he was right. The snowflakes had evaporated into a thick dense fog. The world, the water below, was shrouded in mist. It was time for the vision of Twilight—that time that Twilight had spoken about when Soren and Gylfie had first met him, that time that had given Twilight his name, when boundaries become dim and shapes begin to melt away. It was the time for the Great Gray Owl, who lived on the edges and saw invisible connections, the joinings in a world that had turned foggy and confusing. Maybe Twilight could find the current again.
Soren drifted back as the big owl stroked by him to the point position.
It seemed as if they had flown for hours since they had last seen the current. Gylfie was getting very tired and Digger’s wing, the one injured by the crows, had begun to hurt. The wind was kicking up again and not in a favorable direction.
“I can’t believe that a current can just disappear. The puffins said it would lead us right to the island,” Soren muttered.
“What do they know?” Twilight hooted. “They even admit they’re dumb.”
“I don’t think they’re all that dumb,” Soren said. “We’ve got to be able to find it.”
“And there’s no place to even fetch up out here and rest,” Gylfie sighed.
“We got to go back,” Twilight said.
“Go back where? Not to The Beaks,” Soren spoke sharply.
“To any dry land. If The Beaks is the closest, then The Beaks it is,” Twilight replied.
“No!” Soren said more fiercely. “Look, I’m going to fly down close to the water.”
“That could be dangerous,” Digger said. “Soren, that wind is kicking up big waves. You could be caught by one, and believe me, I don’t think that you’re the swimmer that the puffin was. You could be dragged right under.”
“I’ll be careful. Mrs. P., if you want to slither onto Twilight, you can.”
“No, dear, I’ll stick with you. I’m not frightened.”
“Good.”
Soren began a banking turn down toward the water. Now, amid the blizzarding snow, the spume from the crests of waves spun up. How would he ever see a current in this mess? He flew lower. Still nothing. What if the others had flown off? Just given up. Could he truly blame them? He had the most dreadful feeling in his gizzard. What if he was left alone out here—just him and Mrs. P.?
Suddenly, Soren felt something stir in his gizzard. He said nothing but contracted and expanded his pupils. The world was absolutely white now. Oh, this was when he needed Twilight!
“Right here, Soren.”
“Twilight! You followed me down.”
“Call me a fool.” Twilight peered into the whiteness, stretched, then shortened his actual eye tubes so that one second he was focusing near and the next far. Within the depths of the impenetrable white, Twilight saw two even whiter patches.
“Come, young’uns. You’re right over the current. Can’t tell it on a night like this, though. So, welcome to the Island of Hoole.”
Two giant Snowy Owls had melted out from the night and they were so white that by comparison the mist seemed gray.
“I am Boron and this is my mate, Barran.”
“You are the king and the queen of Hoole.” Twilight whispered.
Digger and Gylfie, exhausted, plummeted down near them.
“Yes, my dears. But we prefer to be called teachers, or rybs. The word ryb means teacher and deep knowledge,” said Barran.
“We’re not keen on titles,” chuckled Boron.
“But you came out to meet us?” said Soren.
“Of course,” replied Boron. “You’ve done the hard part. Now let us guide you the rest of the way. It’s not far.”
The blizzard had been swallowed by the mist and the mist now seemed to melt away against the whiteness of Boron and Barran. The night turned black again and the stars broke out. As a half moon rose, the four young owls looked below and saw the vast sea glinting with silver spangles from the moonlight and then, directly ahead, spreading into the night, were the twisting branches of the largest tree they had ever seen, the Great Ga’Hoole Tree.
“We are here, Mrs. Plithiver. We are here!” Soren whispered.
“I know, dear. I feel it. I feel it!”
The four young owls, led by Boron and Barran, threaded their way through the branches toward the center of the tree where the opening of a hollow was revealed. Two Great Horned Owls held the moss curtains apart using their beaks as the young ones flew through. They alighted down inside. Soren thought that this hollow was not only huge but different from any other tree hollow he had ever seen, for it was light even though it was night. On the inside were strange flickering things.
Boron came up to Soren and the other three owls. “I see you have noticed our candles. You see, here in Hoole we have discovered how to capture fire and tame it for our own uses. You shall learn all about this, young ones. And who knows? One of you might even become a collier.”
“A what?” asked Soren.
“A collier—a carrier of coals. It is a very special skill. But there are many skills you shall be able to learn here in the Great Ga’Hoole Tree, and we are all here to teach you. These shall be your rybs.”
With those words, Boron swept his wings toward the walls of the hollow. There were ledges that hung like galleries above. Soren, Twilight, Gylfie, and Digger gasped as they saw a great gathering of owls—all kinds of owls from Burrowing ones to Barn Owls, from Pygmy Owls to Elf Owls, from Screech Owls to Sooty Owls, from Great Horned Owls to Snowy Owls. Every kind of owl imaginable was here within the hollow of the great tree, their yellow, black, and ambe
r eyes blinking and winking in the most friendly and inquisitive manner at the five new arrivals.
Barran continued, “Welcome, young ones. Welcome to the Great Ga’Hoole Tree. One journey has ended…”
Just one? thought Soren.
But just then a series of deep, rolling gongs began to shake the entire tree. Barran stopped mid-speech.
“Chaws—back up to your positions!” This hoot came from a Great Gray Owl in the gallery. Then, it seemed as if the entire hollow suddenly brightened as owls began donning battle claws and helmets, and the flames of the candles flickered off the bright polished surfaces of the armored owls.
“Great Glaux—a battle! Quick, let’s get our claws!” Twilight began to hop up and down, pumping his wings.
“Not so fast, young’un.” A plump, Short-eared Owl waddled up to them.
“But where’s the battle?” Twilight said.
“Beyond the Beyond.” The Short-eared Owl fixed him in the glow of her amber gaze. “And it’s not for you or you,” she said, turning to Gylfie, “or you or you.” She nodded to each one of the band. “And who are you?” She blinked at Mrs. P.
“Mrs. Horace Plithiver, nest-maid. I do have references.”
“I see. Come along, all of you.”
“But what about the battle?” Twilight sputtered.
“What about it? Not much really, just a skirmish on the borderlands between Silverveil and Beyond the Beyond.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
First Night to First Light
They had begun by following the Short-eared Owl, known as Matron, through the enormous trunk of the Great Ga’Hoole Tree, which was honeycombed with passages of varying widths, all quite twisty and none that seemed to go in a straight line. Off the passageways there were hollows of different sizes. Some, it seemed, were for sleeping, others for study of some sort, some for stores and supplies. Soren peeked into one and saw stacks and stacks of the strange flickering things that Boron said were called candles. Sometimes Matron led them through a passage to the very end, where there might be a hole from which they would fly to another level of the tree, then reenter through another opening and resume their interior trail through the trunk of the tree. As best as Soren could figure out, the sleeping quarters were closer to the top of the tree, meeting hollows for large and smaller congregations of owls seemed to be below, along with a hollow that was called a kitchen, from which very good smells issued. There were places along the way where small groups of owls gathered to socialize. These seemed to be near the points where some of the larger branches of the tree joined the trunk. There were good-sized openings at these points so that owls could either sit inside on specially constructed perches or outside on the branches themselves.
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