The Capture

by Kathryn Lasky

  “A band of owls, very strong, very brave.” Twilight seemed to swell up even bigger before their very eyes as he spoke.

  “And,” Soren continued, “do these owls rise each night into the blackness and perform noble deeds?” The words of his father flowed through him. “And speak no words but true ones, and their purpose is to right all wrongs, to make strong the weak, mend the broken, vanquish the proud, and make powerless those who abuse the frail? And with hearts sublime, they do take flight…Is this the place of which you speak?”

  “Indeed it is,” Twilight replied. “All these owls work and fight together, for the good of all kingdoms.”

  “Do you really believe this place exists?” Soren asked.

  “Do you believe you can fly?” Twilight shot back.

  Soren and Gylfie both blinked. What a strange answer. It was not an answer at all. It was a question. How far they had come from St. Aegolius Academy for Orphaned Owls!

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Empty Hollows

  You two are going to have to learn how to hunt. Whatever did they feed you in that place?” Twilight asked. Soren’s and Gylfie’s beaks were bloody from tearing at the tender flesh of a vole that Twilight had brought. They had never tasted anything so good. There was an acorn fragrance to this vole, mixed with the withered berries that had dropped from the Ga’Hoole tree in which they still perched. Finally, Gylfie answered, “Mostly crickets, unless you worked in the hatchery.”

  “That’s all?”

  “Crickets—day in, day out, every meal.”

  “Great Glaux, how can an owl live on that—no meat?”

  Soren and Gylfie shook their heads, not wanting to miss a bite.

  Twilight realized that it would be useless to talk to these two half-starved owls until they were well fed. So when Soren and Gylfie had finished with the vole, he fixed them in the hard glare of his yellow eyes. “So, I want to know—are you two interested in finding the Great Ga’Hoole Tree?”

  Soren and Gylfie exchanged nervous glances.

  “Well, yes…” said Soren.

  “And no,” said Gylfie.

  “Well, which is it? Yes or no?”

  “Both,” Gylfie said. “Soren and I talked about it when you were off hunting. We would like to go there, of course, but first…” Gylfie hesitated.

  “But first you want to see if your families are still there.”

  “Yes,” both owls answered meekly. They knew that for Twilight, who had been an orphan almost from the moment he had hatched, it must be hard to understand. He had no memories of nest or family. He had flitted from one place to another, one kingdom to another. He had even lived with creatures not of his own kind—there was a family of woodpeckers in Ambala that had taken him in, an elderly eagle in Tyto, and, most extraordinary of all, a family of desert foxes in Kuneer, which was why Twilight never, ever hunted fox. To eat a fox was unthinkable to Twilight.

  “All right. From what you tell me we would not have to go too far out of the way. Our main route follows the river and, Soren, you said your family lived within sight of the river and, well, Gylfie, I know Kuneer very well. I think from what you’ve told me that your family must have lived by the big gulch.”

  “Yes, yes! We did.”

  “That gulch is a dry riverbed that was made by the River Hoole a long, long time ago. So we don’t have to go that far off our route.”

  “Oh, and we promise we’ll learn how to hunt. We really will,” Soren said.

  “Is hunting like flying and…” Gylfie offered tentatively, “finding the Great Ga’Hoole Tree—one must believe?”

  “Oh, for Glaux’s sake, it’s only food!” Twilight said with mild disdain.

  The three owls left at first black. It had turned quite cold. No thermals to ride, and both Soren and Gylfie realized how lucky they had been—or rather how smart Grimble had been to insist on their leaving at the time of the unseasonable drafts of warm air. It was a lot easier flying on those rising thermals. There were none on this bright winter night but still it was lovely to be free, and the world below, keen with frost, sparkled fiercely. Oh, how Soren wished his parents could see him fly. He flapped his wings, increased his forward thrust, and sailed higher into the sky. “The Yonder! The Yonder!” as Mrs. Plithiver called the sky. Dear Mrs. P. He missed her, too. Oh, he could tell her about the Yonder now. He could tell that dear old blind snake all about the Yonder himself.

  By the next day, it had begun to snow very hard. At times, the snow was a blinding fury. Soren’s transparent eyelids swept back and forth almost constantly to clear off the snowy crystals. Sometimes the snow was so thick that the sky and the earth below seemed to blend into one mass of grayness. There were no edges. The horizon had melted into nothingness and it was through this blurry world that Twilight navigated with unbelievable skill and grace. They followed him closely, Soren flying on his upwind or weather wing, with Gylfie on the other side in the lee of Twilight’s downwind wing.

  “You see, you two, the world is not always black and white—what did I tell you?” Twilight spoke as he expertly guided them through the thickening snow flurries.

  “How do you do it?” Soren asked.

  “I learned the hard edges of things in the daylight and the night, but then I learned how this is not the only way of seeing. That, in fact, other things might be hidden when it seems the clearest. So I unlearned some things.”

  “How do you unlearn something?” Soren asked.

  “You decide not to trust only in what you can see. You look for a new way and clear your mind of the old way. You try to feel new things in your gizzard.”

  “Sounds hard,” Gylfie said.

  “It is. Oh! All right, enough talk. Prepare to glide. Remember, Gylfie, what I told you about sticking out your talons. We don’t want you upside down again.”

  “Yes, Twilight, I’ll remember. Talon extension is vitally important.”

  “Little owl, big words,” Twilight muttered to himself.

  “Well, maybe I was wrong. Maybe it wasn’t so close to the river. Maybe it wasn’t a fir tree after all.”

  Twilight and Gylfie looked at each other. This was the third tree that they had visited. There was not a sign of an owl family living in any of the trees, but in two of the three, this last one included, there were hollows and definite signs of owls having once nested in them. “You know my memory isn’t really perfect,” Soren said weakly. “I…I…could have—”

  Gylfie interrupted. “Soren, I think they’ve gone.”

  Soren turned on the little Elf Owl. “How can you say that, Gylfie? How can you ever say that?” Soren was trembling with rage. “You don’t know them. I know them. My parents wouldn’t have left—ever.”

  “They didn’t leave you, Soren,” Gylfie said in a very small voice. “They thought that you were gone forever, snatched.”

  “No! No! They would believe! They would believe like the way we were taught to believe in flying. They would believe, and my mother would never agree to leave this place. She would always hope that I would come back.”

  And it was when Soren said the word “hope” that something deep inside him collapsed. It almost felt as if his gizzard was shriveling up. He began to weep with the unthinkable notion of his parents giving up hope for him. Shudders racked his entire body. His feathers, stiff with frost, quivered.

  Then Twilight spoke, “Soren, they’re gone. Maybe something happened to them. You shouldn’t take it personally. Buck up now, old buddy.”

  “Personally? What do you know, Twilight, that is personal about any family? You’ve never had a family. Remember, you’re always telling us about how much you learned in your own orphan school of tough learning. You don’t know the feel of a mother’s down. You don’t know what it’s like to hear stories from a father, or to hear him sing. Do you know what a psalm is, Twilight? I bet you don’t. Well, we Barn Owls know about psalms and books and the feeling of down.”

  Twilight’s feathers had ruf
fled up, spiky with ice crystals. He looked fearsome. “I’ll tell you what I know, you miserable little owl. The whole world is my family. I know the softness of a fox’s fur, and the strange green light that comes into their eyes during the spring moons. I know how to fish because I learned from an eagle. And when meat is scarce I know how to find the ripest part of a rotten tree and peck the juiciest bugs from it. I know plenty.”

  “STOP FIGHTING!” Gylfie screamed. “Soren, you’re broken, you’re sad. I will be the same way.”

  Soren looked up, startled. “What do you mean ‘will be’?”

  “What do you think the chances are of my family being found?” She didn’t wait for Soren to answer the question. “I’ll tell you. None.”

  “Why?” Soren said. Even Twilight seemed surprised. “We were snatched, Soren. Do you think any owl parents would stay in the same place? Those St. Aggie’s patrols know where to find owls. They’d come back. They’d look for young owl chicks. Any family with any sense would move on. They wouldn’t want to lose all their chicks. And I think I know where mine would go.”

  “Where?” Soren asked.

  “The Great Ga’Hoole Tree,” Gylfie spoke quietly.

  “Why?” Soren blinked. “You’re not even sure it’s a real place. What did you call it?”

  “Tales of Yore.”

  “Yes, Tales of Yore. Why, in the name of Glaux, would your family take off for a Yore place, not proven, not real?”

  “Because maybe they were desperate,” Gylfie said.

  “That’s no reason.”

  Then Gylfie answered in a stronger voice, “Because they felt it in their gizzards.”

  “How do you feel a legend in your gizzard? You’re talking racdrops, Gylfie.” It made Soren feel good to use a bad word. But at the same time he felt he was betraying his own father. For hadn’t his father said that one began to feel a legend in one’s gizzard and over time it could become true in one’s heart? “Racdrops!” he repeated. “Complete nonsense, Gylfie, and you know it.” As angry as Soren was, what he had just uttered made him feel worse.

  “Since when has anything made sense? Does St. Aggie’s make sense? Do Skench and Spoorn make sense?”

  “Grimble made sense,” Soren said in barely a whisper.

  “Yes,” Gylfie replied, and reached out with the tip of her wings to touch Soren.

  Twilight had remained quiet. Finally, he spoke. “I am going to search for the Great Ga’Hoole Tree. You two are welcome to join me. Gylfie, it is not far out of our way to go by the Desert of Kuneer. Even though I think you’re right about your parents, maybe for your own peace of mind you should make sure. We can start for there tonight.”

  “Yes, I suppose you’re right.”

  “You’ll never be at peace if you don’t know for sure,” Twilight added.

  At peace? Soren thought. Am I at peace now? And it was as if a tiny sliver of ice had burrowed into his gizzard, for Soren knew only one thing for sure, which was that the two owls who had loved him most in all the world were gone, gone far away, and he was far from feeling peaceful.

  They would sleep for the rest of this day and begin their desert flight at night. Nights were the best for desert flights, Twilight said, especially in the time of the dwenking. Soren was too tired to ask why. Too tired to hear some long explanation of Twilight’s. Twilight seemed to know an awful lot and liked talking about it, always weaving in some story of a narrow escape or something that pointed up his extreme cleverness. But Soren was simply too tired to listen this morning. “Good light,” he said in a small voice.

  “Good light, Soren,” Gylfie said.

  “Good light, Soren and Gylfie,” Twilight said.

  “Good light, Twilight,” Soren and Gylfie both said together.

  Soren was soon asleep in the hollow. It felt good to sleep in a hollow, even if it was an empty one, with his head tucked under his wing in a normal sleeping position.

  Then a voice, a familiar voice, pierced his sleep. He felt himself frozen and unable to move. It was as if he had gone yeep, his wings locked. Was he dreaming or sleeping? It was Grimble’s voice. They were back in the library of St. Aggie’s. Soren was madly pumping his wings. “Go! This is your chance,” the voice cried. And then a terrible shriek. “Don’t look back. Don’t look back.” But they did.

  “Wake up, wake up! You two are both having terrible dreams. Wake up.” It was Twilight shaking them. Soren and Gylfie awoke together with the same terrible image of a torn owl, bleeding and mortally wounded.

  “It’s Grimble,” Gylfie said. “He’s dead.”

  “I know. We both dreamed the same dream but…but…but, Gylfie, it was just a dream. Grimble might be fine.”

  “No,” Gylfie said slowly. “No. I tried not to look but I caught a glimpse. The torn wings, his head at a weird angle.” Gylfie’s voice dwindled into the first dim gray of the coming night.

  “Why didn’t you say anything?”

  “Because,” she hesitated. It sounded so stupid, but it was the truth. “Because I was flying. I had just felt that first soft cushion of air beneath my wings. I was about to soar and I forgot everything. I was just wings…and…”

  Soren understood. It was not stupid. It was just the way they were. In the moment Grimble had died, they had become what they were always intended to be. Their destiny had been rendered. Flight was theirs.

  “Well, buck up, you two,” Twilight said gruffly. “I want to leave at first black. That will be in minutes. So it should be a perfect night for flying to Kuneer. And let me tell you, there is nothing, simply nothing, like desert flying. And you two can get in some hunting practice. Nice juicy snakes they have in Kuneer.”

  “I don’t eat snakes,” Soren said tersely.

  “Oh, racdrops!” Twilight muttered under his breath. This owl was finicky. He mustered all the patience he could. “You don’t eat snakes? Kindly explain.”

  “Well,” said Gylfie. “You don’t eat foxes.”

  Twilight blinked. “It’s an entirely different situation. Few owls do eat foxes anyway. But snakes—snakes are a basic owl food. Look, I can’t handle this kind of stuff. Are you stark-raving yoicks? Don’t eat snakes. When I was your age I ate anything. Anything to keep me alive and flying. What do you mean you don’t eat snakes? What owl doesn’t eat snakes?”

  “He doesn’t,” Gylfie said calmly. “It’s a family thing. They had an old nest-maid who was a snake, a kind of nursemaid, as well, for the young ones, so it’s out of respect for her, Mrs. Plithiver.” Soren was touched that Gylfie remembered Mrs. Plithiver’s name.

  “And as much as I would love to see Mrs. Plithiver, I surely hope she does not hear our conversation,” Soren added.

  Twilight blinked and shook his head in an exaggerated manner and muttered something about coddled owls and the orphan school of tough learning. “Nest-maids? Nursemaids?” His head seemed to spin around entirely on his neck as he walked out to the end of the branch, muttering to himself and punching the air with his talons in frustration. “Unbelievable! Bless my sweet gizzard. Next thing they’ll be telling me is that they had another owl to do the family flying for them and hunt as well. I tell you, I wouldn’t give a pile of racdrops for such a life.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Mrs. P.!

  They were on a border of scrub between the forest they had left behind and the desert that glimmered ahead in the distance. Twilight said they should take a rest and Soren, still irritated with Twilight’s muttering about his and Gylfie’s “coddled” upbringing, was determined now to prove himself as a hunter. So while Twilight and Gylfie tucked their heads under their wings for a quick nap, Soren flew off to find a vole or a mouse or perhaps even a rat.

  It was not, however, the heartbeat of a mouse that Soren heard, for it was much too slow, but it was a heartbeat. And between two beats did he hear something else as well? A soft whispering sound full of strange agony. Very few creatures have ever heard a snake weep. There are no tears but th
ey weep nonetheless, and that is how Soren found Mrs. Plithiver. He alighted on an old moss-covered stump. There, nestled at the bottom of the stump where two roots poked up, he saw a pale coil glimmering in the light of the nearly full moon. He tipped his head over the edge.

  “Mrs. P.?” Soren blinked. He was incredulous.

  A tiny head lifted out of the coiled body. There were the two dents where eyes might have been. “Mrs. P.,” Soren said again.

  “Mercy! It can’t be.”

  “Mrs. P. It’s me, Soren.”

  “Of course it is! Dear boy! Even an old blind snake like me would know that.”

  This was incredible. She recognized him. All his worst waking dreams vanished. Mrs. P. uncoiled and began to crawl up the stump.

  Oh, it was a joyous reunion. They touched each others’ faces gently, and had Mrs. P. possessed eyes, they would have shed tears of joy, but she insisted on slipping, slithering, and slinking her way across and over and under Soren’s wings. “Be patient, dear. I want to get a sense of your plumage. Oh, my, you have fledged out beautifully. I bet you fly magnificently.”

  “But Mrs. P., where are Mum and Da and Eglantine and Kludd?”

  “Don’t mention that owl’s name.”

  “My brother?”

  “Yes, dear. He’s the one who shoved you from the nest. I knew he was no good from the minute he hatched.”

  “But you couldn’t see him shove me. How did you know?”

  “I sensed it. We blind snakes can sense a lot. I knew you weren’t on the rim of the hollow. You would have to be right on the rim to really fall out. You were just looking over the edge. You see, when he shoved you, I had been taking a snooze very close to Kludd’s talons. I felt him stir. I felt the talons raise up and, well, sort of lurch. And then, of course, did he want me to go get help? No. He tried to stop me, blocked up my exit hole, but I found another all the same. Still, by the time I got back you had been snatched.”