The Siege

Otulissa, however, a serious and proper young Spotted Owl, abhorred gleeking about in general, and wet poop jokes in particular. It was a never-ending debate between her and Soren.

“Soren, I just don’t believe that exchanging wet poop jokes with seagulls should be part of any mission.”

Otulissa and Soren, both members of the weather chaw, perched on a branch just outside the dining hollow waiting for Matron to announce that breaklight was ready. Breaklight was the meal the owls enjoyed at the end of the night, just before the break of dawn. After this, they would sleep for the rest of the daylight hours until the evening shadows began to creep over the earth and darken the sky.

“You can learn a lot from seagulls, Otulissa,” Soren was saying.

“I beg to differ. All that churring and guffawing and giggling over their pathetic humour interrupts the pressure-front vibrations.” Spotted Owls were known for their extreme sensitivities to atmospheric pressure that came with changes in the weather.

“Well, you picked up on the fact that a blizzard was behind this gale, and look, it’s starting to snow now. So I don’t see how it damaged your prediction.”

“Soren, I could have predicted a lot more precisely when and how much snow we would be getting if there hadn’t been all that gleeking about. Also, I just don’t find wet poop jokes funny. As owls, we should be proud of our digestive system and our unique manner of eliminating waste.”

“Oh, it’s yarping, for Glaux’s sake.” A large Great Grey Owl named Twilight had just lighted down on to the branch next to them. Twilight was one of Soren’s closest friends.

“It’s not simply yarping, Twilight. That we pack the bones and fur of our waste into neat little packets for excretion is quite extraordinary in the bird kingdom. That so little of our waste is liquid is exceptional. Yarping pellets through our mouths is magnificent,” said Otulissa.

“Seen one pellet, seen them all,” Twilight growled.

“I’m getting cold,” Soren said. “When is breaklight going to be ready? I, for one, am ready for something hot.”

Before a mission, the owls of the weather chaw were not permitted to eat their food cooked. Ezylryb insisted that they eat their food raw and with all the ‘hair’ – as he called it – on the meat. Of course, the owls of the Ga’Hoole Tree were special in that they often ate cooked food. Most owls ate their food raw and bloody because, unlike the owls of the great tree, they did not possess knowledge of fire.

The owls of the Great Ga’Hoole Tree enjoyed a civilisation unrivalled by any of the other kingdoms of owls. With their knowledge, they tried to protect the lives of owls in other kingdoms. Lately, however, the dangers had increased alarmingly. Not the least of these dangers were the evil owls of St Aegolius Academy for Orphaned Owls where Soren had once been imprisoned. At St Aggie’s he had met his best friend Gylfie, an Elf Owl. And now there was an even more destructive group, the Pure Ones. It had been on the mission to rescue Ezylryb that Soren had discovered that his own brother, Kludd, was the leader of this group.

Matron, a bunchy Barred Owl, poked her beak out of an opening near the branch where Soren and the others perched. “Breaklight!” she announced cheerfully.

“At last!” Soren said.

“Ooh, bats! I smell roasted bat wings!” Gylfie suddenly swooped in.

“Where’ve you been?” Soren turned to the Elf Owl.

“Helping Octavia in the library,” she replied.

“Octavia in the library? Why?” Soren asked.

“Orders from the top, I guess. We were supposed to organise all the books on higher magnetics and flecks.” Soren felt his gizzard lurch. He would never get used to hearing the word ‘flecks’.

“But Octavia? Why Octavia? What use is a blind snake in the library? No offence, Mrs P,” Otulissa asked as they crowded around Mrs Plithiver, another blind snake.

“None taken, dear,” the rosy-coloured snake replied.

For centuries, blind snakes had served as maids in the nests of owls, keeping them free of vermin and pests. In the Great Ga’Hoole Tree, they served in other tasks as well. Among such tasks were providing the dining tables upon which the owls ate. They could easily and quickly extend their bodies to accommodate more diners.

Answering Otulissa’s question, Gylfie replied, “Why Octavia? Well, she might be blind, but she has served Ezylryb for so long that she knows which books he wants on the special reserve shelf for higher magnetics. And it was too much work for just the book matron. She doesn’t know the collection as well as Octavia – at least not these books. But then, of course, Dewlap came in and started bossing us around.”

There was a sigh from the owls. Dewlap was the most boring teacher, or ryb, of the Great Ga’Hoole Tree.

“What’s she doing in the library?” Soren asked. “Higher magnetics has nothing to do with the stuff she teaches.”

Otulissa plumped up her feathers. “Oh, never mind. I am just so excited about studying higher magnetics, I can’t tell you.”

“Then don’t,” said Twilight.

“Yes, spare us, learned one,” Gylfie said under her breath in a barely audible whisper to Soren, who laughed. Otulissa was a very smart owl. No one would deny that. She had been the one to figure out how the Devil’s Triangle worked, and how to destroy it with fire. And she knew of the protective qualities of mu metal that guarded against the hazards of the magnetic flecks. But she wasn’t shy about flaunting her knowledge and sometimes it became boring. Especially now as she began talking about her long list of distinguished relatives who were all scholars, in particular the genius, long gone, great-great-great-aunt of hers, Strix Emerilla, who had written countless scientific books. It was always Strix Emerilla this or Strix Emerilla that. After a little while, the other owls at Mrs P’s table ignored her and went on with their own conversations.

Gylfie turned to Soren again and whispered in his ear, “You notice that Ezylryb and none of the other parliament members are here?”

Soren nodded.

“Well, big doings,” Gylfie said, then blinked with one eye. Soren felt a surge of excitement. Gylfie must be on to something. Soren needed a distraction. Life had been, well, not quite the same since the appalling revelation that his own brother had trapped Ezylryb in the Devil’s Triangle. And his own brother had vowed to kill him. Soren spent entirely too much time remembering those dreadful images of Kludd flying off, his face molten as the hot metal mask melted, screaming, “Death to the Impure! Death to Soren!”

My own brother. My very own brother is Metal Beak and he wants to kill me.

After breaklight, the owls departed the dining hollow and made their way back to their respective hollows. Outside the great tree, the blizzard lashed. The gale-force winds had turned the sky white. It had been on a night like this in the thick of a blizzard that Soren, Gylfie, Twilight and Digger had first arrived at the great tree. Now as soon as the four friends and Soren’s sister, Eglantine, were alone Gylfie spoke in a low voice.

“As I said to Soren at breaklight, something big is going on.”

“How do you know?” Digger asked.

“Not one of the parliament members was in the dining hollow. There’s an important meeting taking place.”

“Getting ready for war, I bet!” Twilight said. “I’ll bet they’ll put us each in charge of a division.”

“It’s not war, Twilight. Hate to disappoint you,” Gylfie said.

Twilight was disappointed. He loved fighting, and with his amazing quickness and ferocity, Twilight had proved that he had no equal.

“No, no war,” repeated Gylfie. “It’s higher magnetics.”

“Oh, for Glaux’s sake,” Twilight growled. “How boring. As if we don’t get enough of HM, as she now calls it, from Otulissa all the time.”

“It’s important, Twilight. We have to learn about this stuff,” Digger said.

“That’s just the problem,” Gylfie said in a low hiss. “This stuff is spronk.”

“Spronk?” the three other owls said at once.

“What’s ‘spronk’?” Soren asked.

“Spronk is forbidden knowledge,” said Gylfie. There was a deep silence in the hollow.

“Forbidden knowledge? No, Gylfie,” Soren said, “You have to be wrong. Nothing is spronk in the Great Ga’Hoole Tree. That’s just not the Guardians’ way. They would never forbid knowledge. They only want us to learn.”

“Maybe not forbidden forever, but at least some things are spronk for right now,” she replied.

“Well, I don’t like it,” Soren said firmly. “I’m completely against things being declared spronk.”

“Me too,” Twilight said.

Digger blinked and then in that slow way he had of speaking when he was considering a problem, he said, “Yes, I think it’s awful when they keep knowledge from young owls. Just suppose that Otulissa had not been permitted to read that book about the Devil’s Triangle. We might never have been able to free Ezylryb.”

“I think we should go and tell them that this is all wrong,” Eglantine spoke up for the first time.

“Before we do anything,” Soren said now in a firm voice, “I think that we have to find out for sure.”

“To the roots, Soren?” Gylfie asked.

“That’s how you found out isn’t it, Gylfie?” Soren asked.

Gylfie nodded. She was a bit embarrassed, for this was an acknowledgment that she had been engaged in the less-than-admirable activity of eavesdropping on the parliament.

Thousands of inner passages wound their way through the Great Ga’Hoole Tree and some months before, Gylfie, who often had trouble sleeping and would rise for a wander through the tree, had discovered a place deep in the roots where there was a strange phenomenon. Something happened to the timber at a certain point so that the sounds coming from the owl’s parliament chamber resonated within the roots. Entering the root structure itself was a challenge for the roots were huge and tangled, but Soren and his friends had found an ideal place where they could listen.

“Oh, I’m so excited!” Eglantine was nearly hopping up and down. “I’ve heard you talk about going to the roots but I’ve never been there. I’ve been dying to go.”

There was a sudden silence as the other four owls exchanged glances. “You’re not thinking of leaving me out. You’d better not leave me out. No fair!” Eglantine said in a desperate voice.

“I’m just not sure, Eglantine,” Soren said. “I mean, first of all you would have to promise not to tell Primrose.” Primrose, a Pygmy Owl, was Eglantine’s best friend, and she told her everything.

“I won’t, I won’t, I promise. Listen, if it hadn’t been for me, none of this stuff with higher magnetics would have started,” Eglantine said.

This was true. If it hadn’t been for Eglantine, who had been captured by the Pure Ones, imprisoned in the stone crypt of a ruined castle and exposed to the destructive powers of the flecks, none of this would ever have happened.

“Well, all right,” Soren finally said. “But not a word of this to anyone. Promise?”

“Promise.” The young Barn Owl nodded her lovely heart-shaped face solemnly.

CHAPTER FOUR

Sprink on Your Spronk!

“I cannot believe that teaching young and impressionable owls about such matters can really be helpful in the long run. Higher magnetics is a strange business. We ourselves have only begun to understand it all.” Dewlap, the Ga’Hoolology ryb, was speaking.

The five young owls were perched among the roots, listening to the parliament’s debate. Soren was ready to explode. Of course higher magnetics was a strange business, especially compared to Ga’Hoolology, which was one of the most boring studies and chaws of the Great Ga’Hoole Tree. Ga’Hoolology was important, for it taught the processes of the tree itself and how to best keep the environment healthy and thriving, but it was also dull.

In this debate, Dewlap and Elvan, another ryb, were on the spronk side while Ezylryb and Bubo, the blacksmith at the Great Ga’Hoole Tree, were on the antispronk side. Strix Struma was undecided. Suddenly the five young owls were aware of another presence. They felt a shadow slide over them in this darkest of places within the tree and they froze. Then all of them together flipped their heads around. It was Otulissa!

What was she doing here? Soren was furious. Racdrops! he thought. Then Twilight beaked silently the words they were all thinking. “This really frinks me off!”

‘Racdrops’ and ‘frinks’ were two of the worst curse words an owl could say. There was only one worse – sprink, but no one ever said that. Not even Twilight. Say these words in the dining hollow and you were out in a flash. But Otulissa seemed unrattled. She merely lifted a talon to her beak to warn Twilight not to make any noise. Soren settled back down. There was absolutely nothing he could do about this now. They might as well just listen as the debate continued.

“Higher magnetics is not a science,” Dewlap was saying. “It’s dark magic, one of the shadow arts. And that book, Fleckasia and Other Disorders of the Gizzard, says as much and must instantly be removed from the shelves.”

“Wrong!” a voice boomed and sent the roots quivering so hard that little Gylfie nearly fell from her perch. It was Ezylryb speaking. “First, with all due respect, Dewlap, I must take issue with the term ‘dark magic’. You use it in a derisive manner, as if something that is dark is negative. How can darkness in our world of owls ever be thought of as negative, something less than good? For is it not in darkness that we come alive, that we rise in the night to fly, to hunt, to find, to explore, to defend and to challenge? It is in darkness that our true nobility begins to bloom. Like the flowers that open to the sunshine, we open to the dark. So let us hear no more of such expressions as ‘dark magic’. It is neither dark, nor is it magic. It is science. A science that we do not fully understand.”

“All right, we need an explanation, Otulissa!” Soren demanded when they were back in the hollow. “You followed us. Who gave you permission?” But Otulissa cut him off.

“Who gave you permission to eavesdrop?” she shot back.

“Well, no matter,” said Soren. “How come you’re following us around?”

“I have as much right to as anyone. I don’t want to be left out. I flew with you to rescue Ezylryb. You know that’s true. And who was it who figured out the Devil’s Triangle? Tell me that. And who knew about mu metal? Tell me that. Not to mention the fact that it was I who knew that fire destroyed magnetic properties. So who has more right to know about higher magnetics?”

Now it was Digger who stepped forwards. “You,” he said simply. Otulissa breathed a sigh of relief. “And,” he paused, “I honestly don’t believe that one owl has more of a right than anyone else to know something. Isn’t that what our objection to this whole spronk thing is about – our right to know? We should all be able to know.” A stillness had fallen on the group. “Now, tell us, what do you think is spronk about higher magnetics, and why don’t they want us to know about it? What are they scared of?”

“I don’t know really. I think it probably has something to do with …” she hesitated. “Well, with what happened to Eglantine after the Great Downing – to her mind, to her gizzard.”

“Was that different from what happened to Ezylryb?” Soren asked.

“Yes, I think so. Ezylryb just lost his sense of direction. He couldn’t navigate, but Eglantine …” Otulissa turned to Eglantine.

“I couldn’t feel. I was like stone – like the stone crypts they kept us in,” Eglantine said.

“So why don’t they want us to know about this?” Soren asked.

“I’m not sure. Maybe because they don’t know that much about it themselves,” said Otulissa.

“So,” said Soren, “what do we do about all this?”

“We need to confront them,” Twilight said. “I’m not much for book learning, but I don’t like the idea that someone can tell me I can’t learn something. Makes me want to learn it all the more.”

“But if we confront them,” Gylfie said, “we’re back to that same old problem again.”

“What’s that?” asked Otulissa.

“The last time we listened in at the roots and found something out and wanted to say something about it, way back last summer, well, we couldn’t because then we would have had to admit that we had been eavesdropping and we would get into really big trouble,” said Gylfie.

“Hmmm,” Otulissa blinked her eyes shut and kept them that way while she thought a moment. “I see the problem.” Then suddenly she opened her eyes. The amber light in them flickered with a new brightness. “I have an idea. Remember that book they were talking about, the book that had to be removed from the shelves – Fleckasia and Other Disorders of the Gizzard?”

“Yes,” Soren replied.

“Well, what if I go to the library and ask the book matron to fetch it for me? Then we’ll see what happens. This will be a test case, so to speak,” said Otulissa.

The other owls looked at one another. Otulissa was smart. And this was a very good idea.

So it was planned that as tween time neared, when the last drop of the day’s sun began to vanish and the first shadows of twilight gathered, they would all go to the library and Otulissa would request the forbidden book. Of course, they would not go in all at once. Soren and Gylfie would already be there, and Otulissa would arrive with Eglantine and Digger. It was decided that Twilight would not be there at all because he was seldom in the library. Now Soren wondered if Ezylryb would be there, for he often was. What would he say when Otulissa requested the book?

The whole idea of forbidden books sickened Soren. At St Aggie’s, all books were forbidden. Entry into the library was not permitted for any owl except Skench and Spoorn, the brutal leaders of the academy. Academy! What a name. No one had learned anything there except how to become a slave and stop thinking.

Soren and Gylfie could hardly concentrate on the weather charts they were studying in the Ga’Hoolian weather atlas. Ezylryb was in the library, his usual uncommunicative self, sitting at his special desk. The only sound that came from that desk was the crunching of the dried caterpillars that he munched while he read.

He was the most inscrutable of owls and only rarely revealed anything that could be called emotion. Yet Soren was drawn to him. He loved the old Whiskered Screech because it was Ezylryb who had first looked upon him and seen him as more than a young orphaned Barn Owl, more than just an owl scarred by the horrors of St Aggie’s. Ezylryb had seen Soren as a real, thinking owl who knew things not only through books and the information that the rybs taught, but through his gizzard. Gizzuition was, according to Ezylryb, a kind of mysterious thinking beyond normal reasoning, by which an owl immediately perceived the truth.

Gylfie gave Soren a nudge. Soren looked up. Otulissa had just entered the library with Eglantine. And suddenly Dewlap had appeared behind the circulation desk with the book matron. Soren felt his gizzard turn squishy. He saw Otulissa’s feathers droop as an owl’s feathers do when he or she feels fear. She seemed to shrink. But then Soren watched and saw a fierce glint in the amber of her eyes. Otulissa’s feathers seemed to puff up slightly and she flew the short distance between where she had stood and the desk. “Book Matron, would you be so kind as to look for a book that I can’t seem to find on the shelves?”

“Certainly, dear. What is the title?”

“Fleckasia and Other Disorders of the Gizzard.”

Complete silence fell upon the library. It loomed up as thick as fog on a humid summer night. Soren lifted his eyes towards Ezylryb, who was staring directly at Dewlap. His gaze bore into her like two fierce points of golden light. The book matron stammered, “Let me go see if I can find it.”

“Oh no, Book Matron,” Dewlap said. “That is one of the books that has been temporarily removed from the shelves until certain decisions are made by the parliament.”

“Removing books? Decisions? Since when are there decisions about books I want to read?” Otulissa drew herself up taller. Her feathers were now fully fluffed up. Otulissa’s plumage was puffed to a degree that was most often associated with a posture of attack. She looked huge.

“There are plenty of other good books for you to read, my dear,” Dewlap said in a soft voice.

“But I want to read that book,” Otulissa replied. She paused a second. “Strix Emerilla, one of my distinguished ancestors, the renowned weathertrix, who has written several books on atmospheric pressure and weather turbulations, mentioned it.”

Dewlap interrupted her. “The book you have requested has nothing whatsoever to do with weather.”

“That’s possible. But you see, Strix Emerilla had a wide-ranging mind, and I think that she mentioned this book as referring to a possible connection between gizzard disorders and atmospheric pressure variations.”

“So?” Dewlap said.

“So, I have a wide-ranging mind too. Now, please may I have the book?”

Glaux bless Strix Emerilla, Soren thought. If anyone had ever told him that he would be blessing Strix Emerilla, whom Otulissa brought up whenever possible, he would have said they were completely yoicks.

“I’m very sorry, my dear, but that is absolutely impossible. That book has been declared temporarily spronk,” Dewlap said primly and turned to the list she had been making.

“SPRONK!” Otulissa gasped. There was such emotion in her voice that every owl in the library looked up in genuine alarm.

“Yes, spronk.” A testy note had crept into Dewlap’s voice.

“There is nothing more ordinary, less noble, more ignoble, less intelligent, more common and completely vulgar than spronking the written word,” Otulissa sputtered. “It is completely lower class.”

“Well, the book is spronk,” Dewlap growled.

Then Otulissa swelled up to twice her normal size. “Well, SPRINK ON YOUR SPRONK!”

CHAPTER FIVE

A Mission Most Dreadful

“She fainted? Dewlap actually fainted?” Twilight said with stunned disbelief.

“Yes, they rushed her to the infirmary,” Soren said.

Soren, Gylfie, Twilight, Digger and Eglantine swung their heads towards Otulissa, who stood very still except for her quivering beak. “I don’t regret a word. Not even the you-know-what word. I shall not apologise. Spronking is very lower class, and it is against everything that the Guardians of Ga’Hoole are and everything they stand for. I don’t care if I get a flint mop for this. I don’t care if I get chaw-chopped.”

The other owls blinked in horror. To be chaw-chopped was not simply a flint mop, which was the owls’ form of punishment. It was the ultimate humiliation that could befall an owl of Ga’Hoole. It meant being dropped for an indefinite period of time from one’s chaw.

The five owls had returned to their hollow after the episode in the library. Otulissa had come too. They peered at her now in awe and wonder. This very prim and proper owl had not only said the worst curse word in the owl vocabulary, but she had spat it at a ryb. What would happen to her? They could only imagine.

Suddenly the parliament matron poked her head into the hollow.

“The lot of you are required in parliament immediately!” She did not sound pleased. “Except for Eglantine – she can stay.”

Oh Glaux! they all thought.

“Why don’t I get to go?” Eglantine asked in a quavering voice. “I want to be included.”

“You want to be included in a flint mop?” Twilight asked. “The last flint mop we got, if you recall, was having to bury pellets for Dewlap for three days. You were excluded from that too and, believe me, you were lucky.”

As the owls made their way down to the parliament hollow, Gylfie muttered, “Good Glaux, we’re going to be burying pellets from now until summer.”