As they flew, Soren began to think deeply about St. Aggie’s and the absolute evilness of the owls there. The evil seemed to have touched almost every kingdom—egg snatching in Ambala, chick snatching in Tyto, and now the worst horror of all, cannabalism in Kuneer. Hortense had told them that a few of the owls in Ambala had somehow figured out that the source of the evil was St. Aggie’s, but his own parents had just thought it was something random, perhaps a small gang of renegade owls—nothing as large and powerful as St. Aggie’s. They never could have imagined such a place, and Soren felt that few owls in any of the kingdoms could have, either. Was it possible that Soren, Gylfie, and Twilight were the only ones who were aware of the scope and power of St. Aggie’s? Were they the only ones who had all the pieces to this horrible puzzle of violence and destruction that was touching every single owl kingdom? If this was true, they must stick together. There was strength in numbers even if the number was only three. They were the three who knew the terrible truth of St. Aggie’s. This knowledge alone could help them save other owls.
Soren remembered when he was still a prisoner of St. Aggie’s and first realized that it was not simply enough to escape. How awful it had been to imagine his beloved sister, Eglantine, a victim of the brutality of St. Aggie’s. He remembered thinking that there was a world of Eglantines out there. So now they had escaped, and now he knew for certain that their task was greater than he and Gylfie and Twilight had ever imagined. Soren knew he must think carefully about how he could explain all this to Twilight and Gylfie.
Every now and then, the three owls would look down and spot Digger trudging through the desert sand. Occasionally, Digger would lift into flight but always skimmed low, combing the desert for any burrow that might shelter his parents. Mostly, however, he would run, his long, nearly featherless legs striking out across the sand, his short stubby tail lifted to catch any wind from behind that would give a boost to his speed. Or if there was a head wind, as now, he would lean into it, tucking his wings close to his body, and ram ahead.
“That fool owl has the strongest legs I’ve ever seen,” Twilight muttered as the first slice of the moon rose in the sky.
“Strongest legs and the stubbornest head,” Gylfie added.
But deep within Soren there was a flicker of bright admiration for this odd owl. One had to marvel at Digger’s determination. Just as Soren was pondering this, he heard something. He cocked his head one way, then the other.
As in all Barn Owls, Soren’s ear openings on either side of his face were not evenly placed—the left one being higher than the right. His uneven set of ears actually helped him to capture sound better. And now he instinctively worked certain muscles in his facial disk to expand its surface and help guide the sounds to his ear. The noise was coming from his windward side, his right ear, because it was that ear that was picking it up before his left ear. Now the sound was arriving almost at the same time in both ears, perhaps with one-millionth of a second difference.
“Triangulating, are you?” Twilight asked.
“What?” Soren said.
“Fancy word for what you Barn Owls do best. Figure out exactly where a sound is coming from. Something tasty down there? I could use a bite.”
“Well, there’s something below but it’s not on the ground. It’s off to windward. You can line it up with that bright star on my wing tip.”
Then, suddenly, Soren and Gylfie saw them. “Great Glaux, it’s Jatt and Jutt!” Soren exclaimed.
“Look!” said Gylfie. “They’re closing in on Digger. I hope there’s a burrow nearby.”
“47-2 is with them,” Soren said. “Look at that stupid owl. It’s huge now.”
“It’s a Screech Owl,” whispered Twilight. It certainly was, and 47-2 now resembled that other terrible Screech Owl—Spoorn.
“They must have let her grow flight feathers and taught her to fly,” Gylfie said weakly.
“Sheer off to downwind,” Twilight ordered. “We don’t want them to hear us.”
“Right, but hush!” said Soren. “I’m picking up something. Let me listen.”
The words that Soren picked up from the three owls that flew below them were chilling, even though the conversation broke up on the rising wind currents.
“47-2, once you taste a Burrowing Owl—well…nothing…like it…run fast…no burrows here…no place…hide…”
“We’ve got to do something,” Soren said.
“The three of them against the two and a half of us.” Twilight sighed as he turned his head toward Gylfie.
“I can be a diversion,” said Gylfie quickly. And giving the other two owls no time to reply, she plunged into a quick downward spiral.
“What’s she doing?” Soren asked. Gylfie was already on the ground and she was doing the best imitation imaginable of a burrowing owl, kicking out her feet as she tried to run across the desert sand.
“Look, it’s working!” cried Twilight. And sure enough, 47-2 was turning toward Gylfie.
“Charge!” roared Twilight.
“Hang on Mrs. P.,” Soren gasped.
Jatt and Jutt were just lighting down on the sand when Twilight and Soren struck. Soren, his feet forward, spread his talons and thrust his legs straight out. He shut his eyes but felt his talons sink into the feathers between Jatt’s ear tufts and then one talon hit something not like feathers at all. It was flesh, then bone. A terrible cry ripped through the night. But now Soren was tumbling in the sand. There was a whirlwind of feathers and dust. Something slithered nearby. He hoped it was Mrs. P. finding herself a safe hole.
Then there was a deep hoot that reverberated across the vastness of the desert. It was Twilight beginning his battle cry. Jatt and Jutt, however, had their own fierce thrum that seemed to shake Soren to his gizzard. Twilight was hooting as only Twilight could.
You ugly rat-faced birds.
You call yourself a bird?
You call yourself an owl?
You ain’t no decent kind of fowl!
They call you Jatt?
They call you Jutt?
I’m gonna toss you in a rut!
Then I’m gonna punch you in the gut!
Then you’re gonna wind up on your butt!
Think you’re all gizzard!
I seen better lizards.
One-two-three-four,
You’re goin’ down, won’t ask for more.
Five-six-seven-eight,
You ain’t better than fish bait…
Nine-ten-eleven-twelve,
I’m gonna send you straight to hell.
The air was laced with Twilight’s taunts. From the corner of his eye, Soren saw Jutt trying to jab at Twilight. But Twilight was as fast as his smart-talking beak. He dodged, he feinted with his jabs, seeming to aim for one place, then stabbing at another, and all the while yammering away in his hooting singsong taunts. First at Jatt, then Jutt. He would lure them in close for a strike and then strike back faster. His talons became a blur. Soren had never seen anything as fast and as light as the immense Great Gray Owl.
Soren tried to keep his focus on closing in on 47-2 before, indeed, she caught up with Gylfie. Suddenly, however, Soren felt something strike him from behind. He flipped in the air and came down on his back. Jatt, much bigger, loomed like a monster owl above him. One ear tuft had been torn off completely. The owl was in a mad frenzy. “I’ll kill you! Kill you! I’ll rip out your eyes!”
Just as the sharp beak began to come toward him, Soren felt the air stir and a shadow slide across them. Then, miraculously, the huge weight that had pinned him down lifted. Still lying on his back, he blinked in utter amazement as he saw the owl rise above him—not in free flight but in the talons of the most immense bird he had ever seen. Its white head glistened in the light cast from the crescent moon that was now directly overhead. On the ground to the left, another bird, also with a white head, stalked about the lifeless forms of Jutt and 47-2.
Then Gylfie and Digger walked up. “I’ve never seen anything like it
,” Digger said. “Who are they? Who are these white-headed birds?”
“Eagles,” Twilight spoke softly with great reverence. “Bald eagles.”
“Hortense’s eagles!” Soren and Gylfie both said at once.
“Hortense?” said Mrs. Plithiver as she crawled out of her hole. “Who’s Hortense?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Hortense’s Eagles
My name is Streak,” said the smaller eagle, “and this is my mate, Zan. She is mute and cannot speak.” Zan nodded to the four owls and dipped her beak almost to the desert floor. “Her tongue,” Streak continued, “was torn out by the evil ones.”
“The evil ones?” Soren said. “Jatt and Jutt?”
“And Spoorn and Skench, and the wicked creatures of St. Aggie’s. I dare not call them birds!”
“Was Zan the one who tried to rescue Hortense’s egg?”
Zan bobbed her head excitedly.
“Yes, indeed, and she did rescue it but it was on that mission that she lost her tongue,” Streak explained.
Soren turned to Zan. “We saw you that terrible day. We saw what happened. You are both so brave to have helped Hortense.”
“Hortense was the brave one. There was never an owl quite like Hortense. Do you know that in Ambala nearly every other newly hatched owl chick is being named Hortense, even if it’s male?”
“Oh, my goodness!” Gylfie sighed. “And she hated the name so much. At least, that’s what she told us.”
“Well, a hero is known by one name now in the Kingdom of Ambala and that name is Hortense.”
“What are you doing here in Kuneer?” Twilight asked.
“We fly patrol over Kuneer,” Streak said, nodding at Digger. “We have a great liking for these desert creatures. While we were out hunting once, one of our little ones tried to fly before she was really ready. You know young ones. It’s the one thing we always tell them not to do—don’t try to fly too soon, never leave the nest when Da and Mum are away, and, bless my beak, don’t a few always go and try it? She got a far piece but didn’t know how to land and broke a small wing bone. One of these strange little owls, the ones that burrow in the sand, found our little Fiona and tucked her into their hole, fed her, coddled her, took the best care of her till her bone mended and she could fly. They found out where she came from and brought her back to us. Zan and I have always believed that there is more goodness than evil in the world. But you know, you still got to work at it. So that’s what Zan and I do, now that all the little ones are gone. We work at it—doing good, that is.”
Soren, Gylfie, Digger, and Twilight looked at the two large birds in wonder.
“I don’t know how to thank you,” Digger said.
Zan made a few nodding movements with her head that Streak observed carefully. “My dear mate says—you see, I can understand her even though she does not speak—Zan says that you must quit that foolish walking about in the desert all day and night. Too dangerous. What are you looking for so hard, my dear?”
“My family,” Digger said. He then told Streak and Zan the story of what Jatt and Jutt had done to his brother Flick and how he had run off and was now lost.
Streak and Zan exchanged a long look. In that instant, Digger sensed that the two eagles knew his parents’ fate. Zan stepped up to Digger and began preening his feathers with her beak in a soothing gesture. Streak took a deep breath. “Well, my son, I am afraid that we know what happened to your parents. You see, the feathers of the little brother you described were still there by the burrow and we saw your mum and da weeping mightily. So we asked what happened, and they told us how this had been their son Flick and they didn’t know where in the world their two other young ones might be. Zan thought that this surely was the worst thing she’d ever heard. And though she can speak nary a sliver of a sound, she came back each day to preen your mother—to simply say in her own way ‘I’ve been a mother, too, and though I have not lost a young one in this way I can feel how terrible it must be.’
“Then one day we got there a mite too late. The same two owls that nearly killed you just now came back for another run at the burrows and this time they came with reinforcements. There must have been fifty of them and they were wearing the most ferocious battle claws we’d ever seen. Well, we can take ’em on if there are only two or three in a war party, even with the claws, but fifty—no, no, that’s no match.”
“D-d-d-did…” Digger began to stutter. “Did they eat them?”
“No, just killed them. Said they were too tough and gristly.”
There was a long silence now. No one knew what to say. Finally, Gylfie turned to Digger and spoke, “Come with us, Digger.”
“But where is it you’re going?” he asked.
“To the Great Ga’Hoole Tree.”
“What?” said Digger, but before Twilight could answer, Streak broke in. “I’ve heard of that place, but isn’t it just a story, a legend?”
“To some it might be,” Twilight said, and blinked at the eagle.
But not to owls, thought Soren. To owls, he thought, it is a real place.
The dwenking moon had begun to slide down the bowl of the night. It hung like the curve of a talon low in the desert sky, spilling a river of silver across the land that seemed to flow directly to the four owls, lapping at the edges of their own talons. This light, flooding low and cool, seemed so different from the moon’s scaldings and blinkings. It was a light that seemed to clear the mind and make bold the spirit. And something strange began to happen. Soren, with Mrs. P. on his shoulder, and Twilight and Gylfie stepped close to one another until their feathers were touching, and even Digger tucked in on the other side of Twilight. Where a short time before, Soren had wondered how he would explain his thoughts to the other owls, now he knew that no explanation was needed, that they had within the slivers of time and the silver of moonlight become a band. They were four owls who had lost their parents. But the time had come for them to become something else. They were not simply orphans. Together they were much more. Hadn’t the Great Ga’Hoole Tree of the Ga’Hoollian Legends been the source of their greatest inspiration when they had been at St. Aggie’s? Hadn’t the Tales of Yore and the nobility of the knights of the Great Ga’Hoole Tree saved them from moon scalding? Could the legend become real? Could they, in fact, become part of the legend?
Soren’s dream of Grimble was the worst sleeping dream he had ever had, but there was another dream, a waking dream that haunted the borders of Soren’s mind and made his gizzard quiver. It was a dream that filled him with despair. In it, Soren was flying and spotted his parents perched in a tree. They had found a new hollow, and there was a brand-new nest lined with the fluffiest down. In the nest, there were new little owlets. Soren alighted on a limb. “Mum? Da? It’s me, Soren.” And his parents blinked, not in amazement but in true disbelief. “You’re not our son,” said his da. “Oh, no,” said his mum. “Our son wouldn’t look like you even grown up and fully fledged.” “No,” said his da, and both owls turned and ducked into the hollow. This, Soren realized in the deepest part of his gizzard, was why they had to go to the Great Ga’Hoole Tree. For when the world one knew began to crumble away bit by bit, when not only your memories but the memories that others might have of you grew dim with time and distance, when, indeed, you began to fade into a nothingness in the minds of the owls that you loved best, well, perhaps that was when legends could become real.
But at the heart of this nightmare was another deeper truth. Soren had become something else. He turned slowly to look at the three other owls in the cool moonlight. Their eyes burned with a new intelligence, a new understanding. Yes, thought Soren, and so had Gylfie and Twilight and Digger become something else. No words were spoken. No words were needed. But a silent oath was sworn in that desert river of moonlight and the four owls all nodded. In that instant they knew that they were a band forevermore, bound by a loyalty stronger than blood. It was as a band they must go to Hoolemere and find its great tree that loomed n
ow as the heart of wisdom and nobility in a world that was becoming insane and ignoble. They must warn of the evil that threatened. They must become part of this ancient kingdom of knights on silent wings who rose in the blackness to perform deeds of greatness.
And, indeed, Soren knew still another truth: Legends were not only for the desperate. Legends were for the brave.
“Let’s go,” said Soren.
“To Ga’Hoole!” cried Twilight.
“To Ga’Hoole!” echoed the others.
“All for owls and owls for all!” shouted Soren.
And in the still, deepest part of the night, four owls lifted into flight, their shadows printed on the hard desert sand below by the last spray of the moon’s light. A Great Gray flew in the lead, to windward a handsome Barn Owl, downwind flew a minute Elf Owl, in extremely quiet flight for such a talkative owl with no fringe on her feathers. Flying in the tail position, grappling with his talons across the windy wake of Twilight, flew Digger. All flew toward the River Hoole, which would empty into the great sea of Hoolemere, and an island where the Great Tree of Ga’Hoole grew and where, once upon a very long time ago, in the time of Glaux, there was an order of knightly owls who would rise each night into the blackness and perform noble deeds.
And Soren knew in his heart that now was the time for the legend to be true.
About the Author
Kathryn Lasky has had a long fascination with owls. Several years ago, she began doing extensive research about these birds and their behaviors. She thought that she would someday write a nonfiction book about owls illustrated with photographs by her husband, Christopher Knight. She realized, though, that this would indeed be difficult since owls are shy, nocturnal creatures. So she decided to write a fantasy about a world of owls. Even though it is an imaginary world in which owls can speak, think, and dream, she wanted to include as much of their natural history as she could.
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