The Rescue

Blood Dawn (#ulink_a5259c04-053d-5b9c-8081-8e9a6bc2ea51)

The tail of the comet slashed the dawn and in the red light of the rising sun, for a brief instant, it seemed as if the comet was bleeding across the sky. Every other owl had already tucked into their hollows in the Great Ga’Hoole Tree for the day’s sleep. Every owl, that is, except for Soren, who perched on the highest limb of this tallest Ga’Hoole tree on earth. He scoured the horizon for a sign, any sign of his beloved teacher, Ezylryb.

Ezylryb had disappeared almost two months before. The old Whiskered Screech, indeed the oldest teacher, or ‘ryb’ as they were called, of the great tree had flown out on a mission that late summer night to help rescue owlets from what was now referred to as the Great Downing. Scores of young orphan owlets had mysteriously been found scattered on the ground, some mortally wounded, others stunned and incoherent. None of them had been found anywhere near their nests, but in an open field that for the most part could boast no trees with hollows. It was a complete mystery as to how these young owlets, most of whom could barely fly, had got there. It was as if they had simply dropped out of the night sky. And one of those owlets had been Soren’s sister Eglantine.

After Soren himself had been shoved from his nest by his brother Kludd nearly a year before, and subsequently captured by the violent and depraved owls of St Aggie’s, he had lost all hope of ever seeing his sister or his parents again. Even after he had escaped from St Aggie’s with his best friend Gylfie, a little Elf Owl who had also been captured, he had still not dared to really hope. But then Eglantine had been found by two other dear friends: Twilight the Great Grey and Digger the Burrowing Owl, both of whom had flown out with others on the night of the Great Downing on countless search-and-rescue missions. And Ezylryb, who rarely left the tree except for his responsibilities as leader of the weather interpretation and the colliering chaws, had flown out in an attempt to unravel the strange occurrences of that night. But he had never returned.

It seemed grossly unfair to Soren that once he had finally got his sister back, his favourite ryb had vanished. Maybe that was a selfish way to think but he couldn’t help it. Soren felt that most of what he knew he had learned from the gruff old Whiskered Screech Owl. Ezylryb was not what anyone would call pretty to look at, with one eye held in a perpetual squint, his left foot mangled to the point of missing one talon and a low voice that sounded like something between a growl and distant thunder – no, Ezylryb wasn’t exactly appealing.

“An acquired taste,” Gylfie had said. Well, Soren had certainly acquired the taste.

As a member of both the weather interpretation and the colliering chaws, which flew into forest fires to gather coals for the forge of Bubo the blacksmith, Soren had learned his abilities directly from the master. And though Ezylryb was a stern master, often grouchy and suffering no nonsense, he was, of all the rybs, the most fiercely devoted to his students and his chaw members.

The chaws were the small teams into which the owls were organised. In the chaws, they learned a particular skill that was vital to the survival of not just the owls of Ga’Hoole but to all the kingdoms of owls. Ezylryb led two chaws – weathering and colliering. But for all his gruff ways, he was certainly not above cracking a joke – sometimes very dirty jokes, much to the horror of Otulissa, a Spotted Owl who was just Soren’s age and quite prim and proper and given to airs. Otulissa was always carrying on about her ancient and distinguished ancestors. One of her favourite words was ‘appalling’. She was constantly being “appalled” by Ezylryb’s “crudeness”, his “lack of refinement”, his “coarse ways”. And Ezylryb was constantly telling Otulissa to “give it a blow”. This was the most impolite way an owl could tell another to shut up. The two bickered constantly, and yet Otulissa had turned into a good chaw member and that was all that really counted to Ezylryb.

But now there was no more bickering. No more crude jokes. No more climbing the baggywrinkles, flying upside down in the gutter, punching the wind and popping the scuppers, doing the hurly burly and all the wonderful manoeuvres the owls did when they flew through gales and storms and even hurricanes in the weather interpretation chaw. Life seemed flat without Ezylryb, the night less black, the stars dull, even as this comet, like a great raw gash in the sky, ripped apart the dawn.

“Some say a comet’s an omen.” Soren felt the branch he was perched on quiver. “Octavia!” The fat old nest-maid snake slithered out onto the branch. “What are you doing out here?” Soren asked.

“Same thing as you. Looking for Ezylryb.” She sighed. But of course Octavia, like all nest-maid snakes, who tidied up the hollows of owls and kept them free of vermin, was blind. In fact, she had no eyes, just two small indentations where eyes should be. But nest-maids were renowned for their extraordinary sensory skills. They could hear and feel things that other creatures could not. So if there were wing beats out there, wing beats that had the sound peculiar to those of Ezylryb, she would know. Although owls were silent fliers, each stirred the air with its wings in a unique fashion that only a nest-maid snake could detect. And Octavia, with her musical background and years in the harp guild under Madame Plonk’s guidance, was especially keen to all sorts of vibrations.

The harp guild was one of the most prestigious of all the guilds for which the blind nest-maid snakes were chosen to belong. Dear Mrs Plithiver, who had served in Soren’s family’s hollow and with whom he had been miraculously reunited, was also a member of this guild. The snakes wove themselves in and out of the harp’s strings, playing the accompaniment for Madame Plonk, the beautiful Snowy Owl with the shimmering voice. Octavia had served as a nest-maid for Madame Plonk and Ezylryb. Indeed, she and Ezylryb had arrived at the Great Ga’Hoole Tree together from the land of the North Waters of the Northern Kingdoms years and years ago. She was completely devoted to Ezylryb and, although she had never said much about how she and the old Screech Owl had first met, there were rumours that she had been rescued by Ezylryb and that she, unlike the other snakes, had not been born blind. Something had happened to make her go blind. She certainly did not have the same rosy scales as the other snakes. She was instead a pale greenish blue.

The old snake sighed again.

“I just don’t understand,” Soren said. “He’s too smart to get lost.”

Octavia shook her head. “I don’t think he’s lost, Soren.” Soren swung his head round to look at her. Then what does she think? Does she think he is dead? Octavia said very little these days. It was almost as if she was afraid to speculate on the fete of her beloved master. The others, Barran and Boron, the monarchs of the great tree, speculated constantly, as did Strix Struma, another revered teacher. But the creature who knew Ezylryb the best and the longest offered no such speculations, no ideas, and yet Soren felt she did know something that truly scared her. Something so horrible as to be unspeakable. Thus her impenetrable silences. Soren felt this about Octavia, he felt it in his gizzard where all owls sensed their strongest feelings and experienced their most powerful intuitions. Could he share this with someone? Who? Otulissa? Never. Twilight? Not Twilight. He was too action-oriented. Maybe Gylfie, his best friend, but Gylfie was too practical. She liked definite evidence and was a stickler for words. Soren could imagine Gylfie pushing if he said that he felt Octavia knew something: what do you mean by “know”?

“You better get along, young’un,” Octavia said. “Time for you to sleep. I can feel the sun. The dawn’s getting old.”

“Can you feel the comet too?” Soren asked suddenly.

“Ooh.” It was more like a soft groan or a whispering exhalation. “I don’t know.” But she did know. Soren knew it. She felt it and it worried her. He shouldn’t have asked, and yet he could not stop himself from asking more. “Do you believe it really is an omen like some say?”

“Who is some?” she asked sharply. “I haven’t heard anyone in the tree nattering on about omens.”

“What about you? I heard you just a few minutes ago.”

Octavia paused. “Listen, Soren, I’m just a fat old snake from the Northern Kingdoms, the country of the North Waters. We’re a naturally suspicious lot. So don’t you pay me any heed. Now flutter back down to your hollow.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Soren replied. It didn’t pay to upset a nest-maid snake.

So the young Barn Owl swooped down through the spreading branches of the Great Ga’Hoole Tree to the hollow he shared with his sister, Eglantine, and his best friends, Gylfie, Twilight and Digger. As he flew, looping through the limbs, he saw the sun rise fierce and bright. As clouds the colour of blood crouched on the horizon, a terrible apprehension coursed through Soren’s hollow bones and set his gizzard aquiver.

Digger! Why had he never thought of sharing his feelings about Octavia with Digger? Soren blinked as he stepped into the dim light of the hollow and saw the sleeping shapes of his best friends. Digger was a very odd owl in every sense of the word. For starters, he had lived his entire life – until he was orphaned – not in a tree but in a burrow. With his long, strong, featherless legs, he had preferred walking to flying when Soren and Gylfie and Twilight first met him. He had planned to walk all the way across the desert in search of his parents until mortal danger intervened and the three owls convinced him otherwise. Nervous and high-strung, Digger worried a lot but at the same time, this owl was a very deep thinker. He was always asking the strangest questions. Boron said that Digger possessed what he called a “philosophical turn of mind”. Soren wasn’t sure what that meant exactly. He only knew that if he said to Digger, “I think Octavia might know something about Ezylryb,” Digger, unlike Gylfie, would go deeper. He would not be just a stickler for words or, like Twilight, say, “Well, what are you going to do about it?”

Soren wished he could wake Digger up right now and share his thoughts. But he didn’t want to risk waking the others. No, he would just have to wait until they all rose at First Black.

And so Soren squashed himself into the corner bed of soft moss and down. He stole a glance at Digger before he drifted off. Digger, unlike the others, did not sleep standing or sometimes perched, but in a curious posture that more or less could be described as a squat supported by his short stubby tail with his legs splayed out to the sides. Good Glaux, that owl even sleeps odd. That was Soren’s last thought before he drifted off to sleep.

CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_de0c120d-5431-5b4e-999a-8d174c65c280)

Flecks in the night! (#ulink_de0c120d-5431-5b4e-999a-8d174c65c280)

The dawn bled into night, flaying the darkness, turning the black red, and Soren, with Digger by his side, flew through it.

“Strange isn’t it, Soren, how even at night the comet makes this colour?”

“I know. And look at those sparks from the tail just below the moon. Great Glaux, even the moon is beginning to look red.” Digger’s voice was quavery with worry.

“I told you about Octavia. How she thinks it’s an omen, or at least I think she thinks it is, even though she won’t really admit it.”

“Why won’t she admit it?” Digger asked.

“I think she’s sensitive about coming from the great North Waters. She says everyone there is very superstitious, but I don’t know, I suppose she just thinks the owls here will laugh at her or something. I’m not sure.”

Suddenly Soren was experiencing a tight, uncomfortable feeling as he flew. He had never felt uncomfortable flying, even when he was diving into the fringes of forest fires to gather coals on colliering missions. But he could almost feel the sparks from that comet’s tail. It was as if they were hot sizzling points pinging off his wings, singeing his flight feathers as the infernos of burning forests never had. He carved a great downwards arc in the night to try to escape it. Was he becoming like Octavia? Could he actually feel the comet? Impossible! The comet was hundreds of thousands, millions of leagues away. Now suddenly those sparks were turning to glints, sparkling silverygrey glints. “Flecks! Flecks! Flecks!” he screeched.

“Wake up, Soren! Wake up!” The huge Great Grey Owl, Twilight, was shaking him. Eglantine had flown to a perch above him and was quaking with fear at the sight of her brother writhing and screaming in his sleep. And Gylfie the Elf Owl was flying in tight little loops above him, beating the air as best she could to bring down cool drafts that might jar him from sleep and this terrible dream. Digger blinked and said, “Flecks? You mean the ones you had to pick at St Aggie’s?”

Just at that moment, Mrs Plithiver slithered into the hollow. “Soren, dear.”

“Mrs P,” Soren gulped. He was fully awake now. “Great Glaux, did I wake you up with my screaming?”

“No dear, but I just had a feeling that you were having some terrible dream. You know how we blind snakes feel things.”

“Can you feel the comet, Mrs Plithiver?”

Mrs P squirmed a bit then arranged herself into a neat coil. “Well, I can’t really say. But it is true that since the comet arrived a lot of us nest-maid snakes have been feeling – oh, how shall I describe it – a kind of tightness in our scales. But whether it’s the comet or winter coming on I don’t know for sure.”

Soren sighed and remembered the feeling in his dream. “Does it ever feel like hot little sparks pinging off you?”

“No, no. I wouldn’t describe it that way. But, then again, I’m a snake and you’re a Barn Owl.”

“And why …” Soren hesitated. “Why is the sky bleeding?” Soren felt a shiver go through the hollow as he spoke the words.

“It’s not bleeding, silly.” A Spotted Owl stuck her head into the hollow. It was Otulissa. “It’s merely a red tinge and it’s caused by a moisture bank encountering random gasses. I read all about it in Strix Miralda’s book, she’s a sister of the renowned weathertrix—”

“Strix Emerilla,” Gylfie chimed in.

“Yes. How did you know, Gylfie?”

“Because every other word out of your mouth is a quote from Strix Emerilla.”

“Well, I won’t apologise. You know I think we are distantly related, although she lived centuries ago. Emerilla’s sister, Miralda, was a specialist in spectography and atmospheric gasses.”

“Hot air,” Twilight snarled. Glaux! She frinks me off, Twilight thought. But he did not say aloud the rather rude word for ‘supremely irritated’.