“ ‘She winds’?” Coryn asked. “What are they?”
“They are the hot drafts that come off the volcano. I guess if you fly, they are considered a very sporting wind to ride. You’ll see.”
The first glimpse of the Sacred Volcanoes came at midnight. The Star Wolf, the wolves’ name for the constellation that owls call the Little Raccoon, had not yet risen in the sky. But the sky itself was slashed with flames and the flames drenched the moon like blood. “It’s like the whole sky is bleeding,” Coryn whispered to himself as he perched on a very high ridge.
“Bleeding? An interesting word to use. Yes, perfect, I would say.”
“Who’s that? Who’s there?” Coryn thought he was alone. He started to tremble uncontrollably. What if it was his mother? But it didn’t sound like his mother. Who could it be? He was frightened. Should he fly or what? There was a cleft in the rock behind him, perfect for a young Barn Owl his size to hide in. He stepped backward and began to wedge himself in. Not so perfect. He really had to push himself in hard. He turned around and tried going in headfirst. He was sure his tail was sticking out. He then heard a nearby flutter. Something touched his tail.
“What in the name of glaumora are you hiding from? I’m not going to hurt you. I just thought we could have a nice little conversation. Creatures here are rather brusque. Or let’s just say they have not mastered the fine art of conversation. Now turn around, and let’s have a little chat. I’m here on a mission—vague, I must say—not quite sure what—but give it time, Strix Struma said, give it time.”
This owl sounded friendly enough and nothing like his mother. Her voice had more the sound of a Spotted Owl, if anything. And it was interesting that she, too, was on a mission and wasn’t quite sure what it was supposed to be.
“Yes, I am on a mission as well and am a little bit confused about what it is I am supposed to do,” Coryn replied.
“Turn around and tell me.”
“Well, actually.” Coryn churred a bit. “I’m kind of stuck.”
“Would you feel that it was overly familiar if I pulled on your tail a little?”
“Oh, no, not at all,” said Coryn.
“I’ll try not to yank any rudder feathers.”
“Don’t worry, some are about to molt, anyhow.”
“You’re certainly a well-spoken young man.”
Coryn didn’t quite know what to say to that. “So, can you tell me a little bit about your mission?” Coryn asked.
“Oh, it’s so nice to find someone interested in real conversation. It’s almost like a code here—don’t ask any names, don’t ask about anyone’s business or where they come from. So, yes, I’ll tell you.” She began pulling on his tail feathers, and Coryn felt himself budge slightly. “Now, don’t think I am totally yoicks, but the scroom of a dear friend and teacher of mine appeared to me one morning.”
“What?” Coryn wheeled around, freeing himself in the process. Could she be speaking of the kind old scroom who had haunted him and told him about the owl he was supposed to wait for in the spirit wood? The one who never came? The one called…
“Otulissa!” Coryn shouted. This was unbelievable. But then a terrible scream split the night.
“NYRA!” the Spotted Owl in front of him screeched. Her wings dropped and folded. She went into a yeep state and began to plummet from the ridge.
“Oh, Great Glaux, I’ve killed her!” Coryn exclaimed.
At that moment, a large Masked Owl intercepted the free fall of Otulissa.
“Pull yourself together, ma’am. Come on, get those wings pumping. Atta girl.”
“I am not a girl! I am a commander of the Strix Struma Strikers and a ryb of the Great Ga’Hoole Tree.”
The two owls had lighted down on a shelf that jutted out beneath the ridge. Coryn glided in quietly.
“Is she all right?” he asked. Then he blinked his eyes in amazement. “Gwyndor!”
“Nyroc, lad! Oh, Nyroc! You’re here. I hoped you would come.”
“Nyra!” Otulissa screamed again.
“No, no, ma’am,” both Gwyndor and Coryn were now saying.
“It’s not Nyra, ma’am. Can’t you see he’s a male not a female Barn Owl?”
“But the face…the face.” Otulissa was hysterical at this point. “I put that scar there myself with my own battle claws in the Battle of the Siege just after she killed Strix Struma. I’d know that face anywhere.”
“No, ma’am, you did not put this scar here. My mother, Nyra, clawed me.”
Otulissa stared at the young Barn Owl and saw that, indeed, he was not Nyra. “Your own mother!” she said with a mixture of horror and awe.
“Yes,” Coryn said, “when I tried to leave the Pure Ones. You must believe, ma’am, that I am nothing like my parents. And my name is not Nyroc, Gwyndor. I am now called Coryn.”
“Coryn,” Otulissa said softly and thought to herself how close the name was to “Soren.” Indeed, once over the initial shock of his face, she saw a great resemblance to Soren in the young’un.
“But how did you know my name?” Otulissa asked.
“I heard it first in a dream. And then a scroom came to me.”
“A scroom?” Otulissa said. Her voice was taut. “What did she look like?”
“She was old. A Spotted Owl like yourself. I met her in the spirit wood.”
“In the spirit wood,” Otulissa said softly.
“Yes, she said that we should wait for you. She said your name, Otulissa, and I remembered the name from my dream.”
“Why were you waiting for me?”
“I think you were supposed to take me here to Beyond the Beyond. But you never came.”
“I am sorry. I had doubts. And I think I was frightened, young ‘un.”
“Yes, I was, too,” said Coryn.
And so here we both are, thought Otulissa. Now what? And she swiveled her head as if scanning the air for her old mentor, the scroom of Strix Struma.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Who’s the Teacher?
He has fire sight, ma’am.”
“You know that for a fact, Gwyndor?”
“Yes, I seen it meself when I did the Marking ceremony for his father. I could tell that he was seeing things in the fire. I tried him a few more times and could tell then, too. He saw the whole bloody history of his parents.”
“Poor dear.”
“And guess what else he saw?” The two owls huddled closer. They had been traveling now with Coryn and the MacDuncan clan. Coryn was roosting below with the yearling Hamish in a small cave. But Gwyndor, knowing of the superior hearing skills of Barn Owls, took no chances. He had found a ledge far from that cave. One could never be too careful around Barn Owls. So pressing even closer to Otulissa, he whispered directly into her ear slit. “He has seen the Ember of Hoole.”
Otulissa felt her gizzard still. Is this a surprise? she thought. When she had read that last canto from the Fire Cycle that dawn, after the scroom of Strix Struma had appeared, the meaning of it had come to her in a whole new way, a new light. It seemed to be talking about another owl, not Hoole at all, as she had always thought. But someone else. The words of the canto came back to her.
So bring him back with flames of gold
Bring him back with burning fire
For he reads what flames have told
And his will is Hoole’s desire.
He shall not cease his endless flight
He shall fly on through days and nights
Though an outcast in despair
He has a gizzard that is so fair.
He shall return at summer’s end
With a coal in his beak
A shadow king no more
Tempered wise and brave for war.
Could that someone else be Coryn, son of Kludd and Nyra, son of tyrants?
“Does he know what his visions mean?” she asked Gwyndor.
“I don’t think so. I think he sees things but he cannot always fit them together. I was talking
to the gnaw wolf Hamish, and he said Coryn thinks that he has come here for an education.”
“Well, he certainly has, and I am to be his ryb, as we say in the great tree.”
“Coryn doesn’t see it that way,” Gwyndor replied.
“What do you mean?” She narrowed her eyes.
“Well, first of all you must realize that the lad knows little of the legends of Ga’Hoole. The Pure Ones forbade such things.”
“Yes, I would assume so. That would explain his ignorance.”
“But he is not completely ignorant of them. He apparently has heard some fragments of the Fire Cycle and such. He knows a little about Grank, the first collier.”
“Oh, dear,” Otulissa sighed. “A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.”
“Yes, it can. Coryn seems to see himself in the role of Grank.”
“What?” Otulissa seemed flabbergasted. “Has he ever done any colliering? Ever retrieved a coal?”
“Not that I know of. But, you see, he really sees himself as a teacher.”
“ For whom?”
“A little Burrowing Owl back in The Barrens who he believes is the true heir of Hoole.”
“Where does he get these yoickish ideas?” Otulissa was genuinely perplexed.
“I don’t know, but I only tell you all this because you’re going to have to go carefully with him. Remember he believes that he’s to become a teacher.”
“But he also believes that the scroom of Strix Struma sent me to help in some way.”
“Yes, that’s true.”
“How do you suppose we begin this entire undertaking? I mean, Gwyndor, do you believe that he is the heir of Hoole?”
“I am not sure. But I know that he saw the ember in the fire, I suspect more than once.”
“Orf, the great Rogue smith of the Northern Kingdoms has fire sight.”
“But there’s a difference. Orf ain’t never seen the Ember of Hoole. No. No owl has seen the Ember of Hoole since King Hoole himself.”
Otulissa was persistent. “But tell me, Gwyndor, how do you know that Coryn actually saw it?”
“I can’t explain it, ma’am. It’s something I just know. Perhaps it is because I am a Rogue smith and I know how certain flames can well be felt in the gizzard. I sensed his gizzard lurching at that moment.”
“Hardly scientific,” Otulissa sniffed.
“It ain’t science, ma’am. It be more like magic from the old times, the ancient times.”
Otulissa was about to say that she didn’t believe in magic, but a short time ago she hadn’t believed in scrooms, either. And now here she was in this Glaux-forsaken place talking to this “old codger” of a Rogue smith because of a scroom. Otulissa sighed deeply. “Well, seeing the Ember of Hoole is one thing, retrieving it is another.”
“Yes, ma’am. I think that is where you come in.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you. You are known as one of the finest colliers in the colliering chaw of the great tree.”
“Oh, you’ve heard.” She lowered her eyes modestly.
“Yes, ma’am,” he continued. “I’ve heard, and as you said, seeing the ember is not the same thing as retrieving it.”
“But I can’t teach him to retrieve an ember in the boiling crater of a volcano!”
“This young’un has never retrieved an ember from anyplace. You can teach him the fundamentals.”
“You think so?”
“Ma’am, I know so.”
“Well, I have heard that the south slopes of the volcanoes of the Sacred Ring are good for finding bonk coals and that the gnaw wolves of the watch permit colliering there.”
“That they do. I’m no collier, but I’ve tried a bit of coal diving myself.”
“Any luck?”
“No. Don’t have the touch, ma’am.”
“Well, let’s hope young Coryn has it.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Basic Colliering
The most enormous wolf Coryn had ever seen was making its way toward them. He stood erect, his tail in a horizontal line with his spine, his brilliant green eyes staring at Hamish. Coryn would not notice until much later that he was missing one paw. Hamish immediately lowered himself, his belly scraping the ground, his ears laid back flat in a gesture of total submission. His lips were pulled in a grimace that revealed his teeth in a kind of grin that signaled complete obedience. Then Hamish lowered his head farther and twisted it so he was looking up at the higher-ranking animal. This final signal of appeasement was transmitted as he flashed his eyes white.
“Welcome, Hamish MacDuncan.”
“My Lord Fengo, I am here to serve,” Hamish said.
Coryn felt a current pass through him. Where had he heard that name “Fengo” before? Had he seen the wolf or the name written somehow in the fire? But he could not read then. He would not have recognized the letters. Yet he knew the name.
“And before you serve, you shall learn,” Lord Fengo continued.
“I am your obedient student,” replied Hamish.
“Your taiga is Banquo.” Another huge wolf approached. He was missing an eye.
If Coryn had thought this land was strange, nothing could compare to the bizarre and extraordinary region of the Beyond he had now entered. There were towering bone cairns at intervals encircling the ring of the Sacred Volcanoes. They rose from glistening black beds of sharp grit, which was a kind of glass that the volcanoes’ lava was ground into after years upon years. Atop each one of the cairns sat a gnaw wolf. And patrolling the space in between were other gnaw wolves. Hamish would begin his training period on the ground and then, when he was deemed ready, he would climb a cairn. From this vantage point, the gnaw wolves could keep watch on owls, look out for intruders. It was said that a gnaw wolf on a cairn could jump as high as an owl in flight and catch him on the wing.
“But what are they afraid of?” Coryn asked as he watched Hamish trot off behind his taiga.
“Well, two things, really. They don’t want some yoickish owl diving into the crater and losing its life, and…” He paused and looked at Otulissa as if for help.
“Coryn, dear, they don’t want the wrong owl retrieving the ember. An owl might come along who is Glaux-blessed with fire sight and sees in which volcano the ember is buried. But it is also possible that a vicious, tyrannical owl might try to retrieve the ember, and it would have to be killed immediately. The powers of the ember are too great for it to fall into dangerous talons.”
“But how do they know if it is a good or a bad owl?”
“I don’t know,” Gwyndor replied. “They say it’s in the gnaw wolf’s bones—their own bones and the ones they gnaw for the cairns. It’s a kind of code that has been passed down for centuries through the MacDuncan clan. That is why it is so important that only MacDuncans guard the ember.”
Above them, owls wheeled in the sky, plunging to catch the edge embers, as they were called, that ran off the spills on the slopes of the volcanoes. There were other owls as well, mostly Rogue smiths hoping to strike a deal with the colliers for bonk coals. But the land was bleak and the dire wolves that slinked between the cairns did not have the easy camaraderie that Coryn had seen among the wolves of a clan. Perhaps it was because as young pups and yearlings, they had always been the lowest-ranking members, scorned yet feared, destined to always live at the edges of wolf society.
He already missed Hamish and wondered if he would be permitted to visit his wolf friend. He had not dared to ask when Fengo and Banquo has led him away. Fengo! Where had he heard that name before?
They were perched on a ridge now, and Otulissa had been observing the owls careening overhead, riding the hot drafty winds. She was saying that she had yet to see a bonk caught on the fly just as Coryn remembered where he had heard the name. It was spoken by the mystic rabbit in the Shadow Forest. The one who could find messages and visions in the designs of a spiderweb. The name “Fengo” had shown up in the web that the rabbit was reading, and she had told Coryn.
The frustrating thing about the information in a web was that it never told the whole story. It seemed to Coryn that was always the way it was for him. He never got the whole story—not from the scrooms, not from Mist, not from the web-reading rabbit, and not even when he eavesdropped on parents telling the legends of Ga’Hoole to their young chicks before bedding down for the day. Always, either sleep or a squabble in the hollow would interrupt the storytelling, so Coryn would be left only with fragments. Why am I here? What am I supposed to be doing? Am I really to be the teacher of a new king?
“No, I’m the teacher,” Otulissa’s shrill voice blasted in his ear slit. He thought he had been thinking to himself but apparently he had said something out loud. “Coryn, have you heard anything I’ve said?”
“Oh, sorry, Otulissa.”
“I was saying that not one of the colliers out there,” she nodded toward the nearest volcano, “not a single one has caught a bonk coal on the fly, which is a shame. Bonk coals retain their strength if caught on the fly and not scavenged from the ground. Very inferior grade of bonk, ground bonk is. Am I not right, Gwyndor?”
“Oh, yes, ma’am, very inferior.” She’s mighty picky, Gwyndor thought. I’d take any bonk coal, ground or on the fly.
“But first we should start you with harvesting ground coals. Catching on the fly is very difficult. Now watch me scoop up a ground coal, and please note the position of it in my beak when I come back. It is called the ‘Classic Grank Grip,’ named, of course, for the first collier.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Now, before I lift off, I want to always check for wind direction.” This was exactly what Otulissa now did. Then she circled overhead and called down, “You want the wind behind you when you begin to spiral in to collect the coal. You do not want the coal blown into your face. All right, here I go!”
The Outcast Page 9
