The Keepers of the Keys

by Kathryn Lasky

  “It’s what they call night here. First black. I think I remember Mum telling us.” She paused, and her voice became wistful. “That’s when the owls fly off to hunt or do their valiant deeds.” There was a distinctly sour note in Jytte’s voice when she said the word valiant. Mrs. Minette slithered into the hollow.

  Balanced perfectly on her back were some rather disgusting-looking items.

  “Yes, first black. And they call dawn the thief—the thief of the night. That’s when they come home to roost. But it is also called twixt time.”

  “What are those?” Stellan asked.

  “Fried caterpillars—a specialty of the tree. And my associates are delivering some other delicacies—a milkberry sponge, as well as some deliciously roasted sugar gliders. We are well aware that you are mainly meat-eaters. We serve the sugar gliders on a stick. Hooliebobs, we call them.”

  “Sugar gliders?” Third asked.

  “Yes, left over from tweener. They’re sort of half squirrel–half mouse, but they glide through the tree like flying squirrels.”

  Just what I’ve always longed for, thought Jytte. A flying rodent with a side of caterpillars. Not exactly an “oh yum” moment! But she kept her mouth shut.

  “What’s tweener?” Froya asked.

  “Preflight meal. You see, this is tween time. Some call it dusk or twilight. The time between the last drop of sun and the first shadows of evening. Oh, how the owls love the shadows! I, of course, being blind, cannot see them, but I feel them—sliding over me like a cool silken cloak, the cloak of the night.” She tipped her head and shivered a bit as if savoring these moments.

  “But, young’uns,” Mrs. Minette continued briskly, “you should look out your port. It’s so beautiful to see the owls take flight into the yonder.”

  “But you said yourself you’re blind and a snake. Maybe you can feel the shadows, but flight? How do you know about flying?”

  “How do I know? Well, in fact, I have flown.”

  “You have?”

  “Yes. My great-aunt Mrs. Plithiver was the first blind snake to fly.”

  “How?” Stellan asked.

  “She coiled up and flew on Soren’s back. Oh, this was years ago. But we all now occasionally hitch a ride into the yonder.”

  “I don’t understand. Yonder? Yonder what?” Jytte asked, and crouched down closer to Mrs. Minette with her nose almost touching the snake’s head.

  “Sky is the yonder for all wingless creatures and even blind ones to feel, to simply attempt to know. Of course, there are those creatures who have eyes and still cannot see. Poor things! But for us blind snakes living in the heart of this Great Tree, the yonder calls very strongly. Once we found out about Mrs. Plithiver, we all wanted to go. To fly.”

  Third tipped his head to one side and regarded this snake. She was very peculiar in so many ways. She seemed to have a deeply philosophical turn of mind.

  “I don’t fly so much anymore. Lower back problems.”

  “Lower back? I’ve never imagined a snake as having a lower back,” Stellan said.

  “Oh, indeed we do. We have almost three hundred vertebrae. I think my problem is around number two hundred forty-five and two hundred forty-six. At least that’s what Cleve says. He’s the healer for the tree. So with this problem, it makes it difficult for me to hold a coiled posture in a stiff wind. I like coiling up as opposed to flying flat. Nothing like maintaining a good strong coil and flying into the breeze on a starry night.”

  The bears were having a difficult time imagining what this nest-maid snake was describing.

  “But go, young’uns. Look out the ports of the galls and watch them take flight. There is nothing like it.”

  So the four of them crowded around the two ports on the southeast side of their gall hollow and blinked at the sight. A slow moon climbed into the deep blue of the night. They watched spellbound as hundreds of wings silvered by the moon’s light were printed against the darkening sky.

  “Look!” Stellan whispered to his sister. “There’s the Great Bear constellation with our skipping stars. Our name stars!”

  “But that’s the one that they call the Great Glaux.” Jytte paused and shook her head. “Maybe it’s all just the same, Stellan. We see paws and shoulders. The owls see wings.”

  “Maybe, Jytte, maybe,” Stellan replied sleepily, and yawned. The sky was wingless now. The owls had flown far off. The moon too was slipping down into another world. And then, gradually, the night would become starless as the dawn thief approached, and the breaking sun would smear the horizon with the unspeakable gaudiness of pinks and lavenders and vile oranges—the colors that were anathema to all creatures of the night.

  The moon was growing slender again. It had been too long since the cubs had left. Svern was nervous, for he had heard no news of their arrival. Not a tap had come through from the roots of the Great Tree. He knew he could depend on Blythe, one of Soren and Pelli’s owlets—the three Bs, they were called, Blythe, Bell, and Bash. They each had their talents, but Blythe proved to be an excellent coder and decoder. She could crack any cipher and had invented a few of her own.

  The listening nook at the Great Tree, however, did not depend on Forever Frost ice. There were special roots that burrowed deep into the ground beneath the tree that could resonate and had proven excellent for transmitting coded messages. Svern felt that they must have arrived there by now, if Roguers hadn’t caught them. But so far, the Roguers of the Nunquivik had not traveled as far south as Ga’Hoole. He had alerted Blythe to inform her immediately of their arrival. So far there was nothing, so he had taken to sleeping in his listening nook, rarely leaving the special ice den that Yinquis used to amplify sounds from far away. It was ideal for listening in and spying on an enemy.

  He waited impatiently as hunger gnawed at his stomach, but he did not want to risk leaving in case he missed a coded message from Blythe at the Great Tree telling him that the cubs had arrived safely. Although only two, Stellan and Jytte, were of his blood; the other two, Third and Froya, might as well be. He had grown fonder of these yosses than he ever could have imagined.

  But that of course was the strangeness of it all. Male bears were never supposed to care about their offspring. It was regarded as odd, even freakish. It was the females’ task to rear the cubs. The fathers most often would never see them again. Never give them a thought. But these four cubs had sought him out. There were never more insistent young bears. They had forced him to notice them, to teach them.

  Svern had been in terrible shape when they found him, for he himself had escaped from a black ort ice den, where he had been tortured by Roguer bears. His ears torn off. Starved and beaten. But the cubs had not only found Svern—they’d nursed him and brought him back to a self he had never known—that of a father. Fatherhood! Who could have ever imagined such a thing? Svern had trained the cubs as best he could, and then they had gone into the Den of Forever Frost and done what no bear thought was possible—found the key to the clock.

  Now he waited impatiently, reviewing in his head all the codes that Blythe might use. It was Soren’s closest friend, Gylfie, who had found the roots with “voices,” as she called them. Soren then told Ezylryb, the great sage of the tree, and Ezylryb began to figure out a method for sending messages to the Yinqui bears of the Northern Kingdoms during the tail end of the war with the Pure Ones.

  Ezylryb taught Soren, but when the three Bs were hatched, it became immediately apparent that Blythe had a natural gift for coding. By the time she grew up, many of the old codes of the tree had been cracked. The spying system between the owls and the Yinqui bears was left vulnerable. So Blythe began to work on a new system that so far had proven to be unbreakable.

  Ezylryb’s code had been based on old stories and lore of the owls and the bear kingdoms. But codes based on these well-known old stories had become too simple. Any half-educated creature would know them and would be quite capable of breaking the cipher, as the secret code elements were called. Blythe
, however, had discovered a hidden trove of Ezylryb’s poetry, and she had begun to use that. And then she even began to compose poems herself. A single word from a poem was selected as the key. Each letter was assigned a number value, and then through a “transposition formula,” a message could be tapped out either on the resonant roots of the Great Tree or the ice of a Yinqui’s den.

  And just at this moment, when Svern was thinking about the cleverness of Blythe’s code, he heard something. Tiny clicks penetrating the ice. He caught his breath. Forgot his hunger. It was Blythe’s talons! Svern pressed what was left of his mangled ear stubs to the ice and listened. Then, taking his sharpest claw, he started to record the clicks by scratching them into the ice. Quickly, he began to transpose the sequences of clicks into numbers that indicated which letters in the key poem could be grouped into words.

  Blythe was using as the key Ezylryb’s love poem to his valiant wife, Lil, who was killed in the War of the Ice Talons. He began to count in from the left each letter according to the key he had just transposed:

  Lil of my life

  Lil of my breath

  Lil I shall not sleep

  Lil I shall ever weep

  “Great Ursus!” He sighed and sank back against the ice wall of the listening den. The code was one of Ezylryb’s simplest poems. The repetition of the four identical words all beginning with L meant the four yosses. Then, counting in from the L beginning each line as the key specified for this transmission, one got the word ILIS—an old Krakish word for safe. The four cubs had arrived and were safe. And so must the key be safe! Svern breathed an immense sign of relief. If only he could know that his mate, Svenna, was safe as well. He left the listening nook and crawled though the long tunnels of his den to the opening.

  The moon was gone. The Great Bear constellation had lumbered off into another night far, far to the west, dragging with it the lovely blackness that the owls treasured. The night had frayed to a dull gray, too dull for any star to shine. Svern squeezed his eyes shut. His world seemed empty. Empty and lonely. He had never felt lonely in his life until those cubs showed up. Why had he never realized what he had until it was almost too late?

  For the better part of an hour, as the night faded, the yosses inside their gall hollows heard the rustlings of the owls returning to the Great Tree. Not long after they had all returned, there was a bit of chatter followed by quiet and then something that the bears had never heard—music, an unearthly music.

  “What’s that?” Jytte asked.

  Mrs. Minette, who had curled up on a ledge on the outside port of their hollow, stuck her head in. “Shush. It’s the grass harp.” The bears had no idea what a harp was.

  But then weaving through the strains of the harp was a shimmering voice. It was as if the stars were singing.

  “It’s Madame Luella Plonk. She comes from the Plonk family, a long line of singers of the tree. Listen!”

  Night is done, gone the moon, gone the stars

  From the skies

  Fades the black of the night

  Comes the morn with rosy light

  Fold your wings, go to sleep

  Rest your gizzards

  May Glaux keep

  Safe you’ll be for the day

  Glaux is nigh

  Far away is first black

  But it shall seep back

  Over field

  Over flower

  In the twilight hour

  We thank thee for our nights

  Neath the moon and stars so bright

  We are home in our tree

  We are owls, we are free!

  At the end of the song, Mrs. Minette poked her head in again.

  “Good light, bears. Sleep well.”

  Oddly enough, the bears, who were not at all accustomed to sleeping in the day, felt themselves growing sleepy. They were each alone with their thoughts. Jytte was still disappointed that Soren had not immediately pledged the help of the owls of the Great Tree but set what seemed to be an impossible task for them—to journey all through Ga’Hoole and create an allied force.

  Stellan, however, was curious about the lessons that Soren said they must learn before setting out. Chaws; Stellan reflected on the word. What exactly did it mean? And there was the owl who sang, but who actually made the harp sounds that were not like a voice of any creature? What was a harp exactly?

  Froya was entranced by the wondrous tree, which provided a place between sky and earth for a community of owls and these odd snakes. It was almost too marvelous to believe, for from what she heard, the Ice Clock in the Ublunkyn of the Nunquivik was the very opposite of this tree. How could earth have two such places? Was this indeed a kind of Ursulana, a heaven? She yawned—now what was it that the owls called their constellation, the Great Glaux? And their heaven—glaumora! Yes, that was it—glaumora.

  Meanwhile, Third, a dreamwalker, wandered through a dream where he seemed to be climbing that ladder to Ursulana. Or was he on drafts of starlit air making his way to glaumora? Might he be perched between the shoulder stars of Askryll and Augden or on the wing tip of the Great Glaux constellation? But then, as Third wandered through his dream, the stars began to shift into another configuration that was smaller than a bear but larger than an owl. What could it be—a fox? A Nunquivik fox. Not much bigger. Was this another heaven?

  The bears were not sure how long they had slept, but they began to hear a distinct rustling in the tree. Mrs. Minette suddenly appeared at the portal. “Tweener!” she rasped.

  “Oh joy!” Jytte muttered. “More caterpillars.”

  “The sugar gliders were pretty good,” Third said.

  “Doubt if you’ll find a seal in the tree,” Stellan sighed.

  Mrs. Minette either didn’t hear them or simply ignored their chatter.

  “Follow me, bears,” Mrs. Minette said crisply. Jytte had to admit that she did love the fact that Mrs. Minette called them bears—not cubs, not even yosses.

  “Which way?” Stellan asked.

  Mrs. Minette tipped her head, and the two little dents where her eyes should have been bulged a bit. Perhaps this was a blind snake’s way of blinking. “That is a very good question. Given your size, the interior route to the dining hollow would be a bit of a tight squeeze. You recall how narrow the passageway was coming up to your hollow. But you bears are good climbers, are you not?”

  “Well … ,” Stellan began hesitantly.

  “Yes, we are,” Jytte snapped. “Or at least I am. I really kind of …” She dipped her head, trying to affect modesty. “Kind of invented it.”

  “Jytte!” Stellan exploded. “You did not invent climbing!”

  Jytte’s shoulders slumped. “Not exactly invented it.”

  “Not exactly!” Stellan said testily. “You were forced to escape a skunk bear!”

  “Yes, but I did it!”

  “And, Stellan,” Third began to say, “you have to admit she did teach us a thing or two about tree climbing. We felt we might need it coming here.”

  “Thank you, Third.” Jytte nodded.

  Stellan immediately felt abashed. “Sorry, Jytte.” He reached out and patted her shoulder. “That was nasty of me.”

  Jytte shook her head. “I was stupid.”

  “Nasty! Stupid!” Mrs. Minette interrupted. “Isn’t anyone hungry? Now, stop this chatter and follow me—the outside route.” She slithered out of the portal. Her rose-scaled body shimmered in the twilight as she began winding through limbs, all while swiveling her head and giving a constant stream of instructions.

  “Take a starboard turn at the next limb, then turn to port. We’re going to descend a bit more. A gall portal will appear on the trunk, and you can take a shortcut to the other side of the tree. Just cut through the gall; it’s hollow. I’ll meet you there.”

  A short time later, they were entering the dining hall. And it was the most peculiar sight they had ever seen. At least a dozen or more nest-maid snakes were stretched out to their full lengths with perhaps five or mor
e owls on either side of them.

  “The snakes are tables?” Stellan said in amazement.

  “Indeed! We serve in many ways,” Mrs. Minette said proudly.

  “B-b-but … I think it might be difficult,” Jytte stammered.

  “Don’t give it another thought!” a mellow voice whooped. “Because I have. Hello, dears. We’ve been expecting you. I’m Otulissa. Spotted owl, or more formally identified as a Strix occidentalis.” She fluffed herself up a bit and spread her wings, which were perhaps a span almost three or four times her standing height. The sight was quite dazzling, and all four bears blinked madly to take in the spectacle. Her wings and belly were splashed with white spots. Her facial disc was marked with concentric circles except where an eye patch covered one of her eyes, which apparently was missing. A war wound, Mrs. Minette had told them. The entire effect was somewhat dizzying. Like being caught out on the ice in a midnight blizzard, Third thought.

  “We have made a special table,” Otulissa continued, “for our ursine guests.”

  Ursine guests, thought Jytte. Fancy!

  “My mate, Cleve, will join. He is the healer here at the Great Tree, and I am a ryb.”

  “Ryb! Scholar, historian of the tree. My mate is being too modest.” Another spotted owl waddled over.

  “And former WARRIOR!” Otulissa seemed to double in size before their eyes and spread her wings to an even greater span.

  “Otulissa!” Cleve gasped. “A threat display is not necessary, my dear, for them to believe you were a warrior.”

  “This should prove it, I suppose,” Otulissa said, tapping the eye patch with her talon. “Lost my eye in the Battle of the Blue Brigade. Alas!” she sighed. “But follow me to our table.”

  “I have never … ,” Jytte gasped.

  “Never what?” asked Otulissa.

  “Never seen, uh …”

  “Such an arrangement of snakes,” Stellan replied.

  All four bears appeared stunned as they looked at the nest-maid snakes stretched out and stacked up, one upon the other lengthwise and side by side providing a platform for eating. At each corner, a single snake was coiled up as a support so that the platform could be raised higher.