The Journey

by Kathryn Lasky

  Digger hooted the signal indicating a downed owlet.

  As Digger waited for Twilight to spiral down, the strangest feeling began to steal over him. Twilight settled down next to him.

  “What have we got here?” Twilight said.

  “Another Barn Owl, but not a Masked or a Sooty or a Grass Owl.”

  “No,” Twilight said in a whisper. “A Tyto alba.”

  “Like Soren,” they both said at once. Digger looked at Twilight. He almost didn’t dare say it. “Do you think it could be?”

  “Remember,” Twilight said, “how Soren once told us that his sister had a speckle near her eye. That it looked as if one of those dots from her head feathers had just slipped down to her eye and that it was the same with his mother, that she, too, had a slipped dot?”

  “Yes,” said Digger slowly.

  “Look!”

  The two owls brought their beaks close to the little owl, whose cries had grown weaker and weaker and then stopped. They almost forgot to breathe in their anguish. There was indeed a tiny speckle in the darker feathers on the inside corner of her eye. But if this was Eglantine, was she alive? Was she dead? Was she truly…?

  “Eglantine?” they both called softly.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  At Last!

  I need some more worms over here, quick!” the nest-maid snake called out.

  “The Ga’Hoolology chaw is digging them as fast as they can,” another snake called. “Oh, my goodness, what a mess this little Sooty Owl is.” The snake nudged the last worm of her supply on the gash in the Sooty’s wing. “Poor little fellow. Now stop that babbling, dear. You don’t have enough energy.” But the owlet kept up a steady singsong about a world of Tyto purity and supremacy.

  There had never been such a flurry in the Great Ga’Hoole Tree. The infirmary was brimming with stunned and wounded owls. And no one was spared a moment’s rest. The owls of the tree were cutting back and forth between branches, flying in the new arrivals, rushing about getting fresh worms for their wounds, plucking down from their own breasts to make up new beds, bringing cup after cup of milkberry tea. The nest-maid snakes were at the point of complete exhaustion and even Madame Plonk, who rarely lifted a talon around the tree to do anything, could not bear seeing her harp guild so worn out. So she joined in right beside them, learning how to place worms properly on the open wounds. Soren and Gylfie worked as hard as anyone, either fetching things for the nest-maid snakes or cleaning out new hollows, because the infirmary was too full to accommodate any more. There was barely time to wonder about what had brought this on. But, of course, in the back of their minds was the horrible nagging fear that St. Aggie’s was somehow involved, and if not St. Aggie’s, perhaps the “you only wish”! Were the poor little owls babbling about the same horror that the murdered Barred Owl had when he gasped the words “you only wish”? But what did it really matter? Owlets were wounded and dying.

  For the life of him, Soren could not understand this babble that seemed to pour out of the owlets’ ceaselessly clacking beaks. It never seemed as if there was an entire phrase. The words came out disjointed and broken, but always there was something about Tytos, or Barn Owls.

  Then overhead, Soren heard the arrival of a new batch of owlets being brought in. There was no quiet flying this day. Owls that once prided themselves on silent flight beat their wings furiously, in their desperate efforts to get the injured owlets to safety.

  “SOREN!” The sound of his own name split the warm air. Soren looked up from his task of pecking out worms. It was Twilight who had called down to him and he was flanked by Primrose and Digger. The rest of the search-and-rescue chaw was following.

  “Soren, get up here fast as you can,” Twilight called again.

  Then Digger spiraled down. “This is important. Bring that worm and come on.”

  “No! No!” another owl said tersely. “All worms must be put into the pile first. Our chaw ryb said so.”

  “Drop the worm, Soren, and just come.” Soren couldn’t imagine what could be so important that they needed him so quickly. He followed Digger to a new hollow they had just fixed up to take care of the overflow from the infirmary. Outside the hollow, Gylfie and Primrose perched on a branch. They were very still. Soren got an awful feeling in his gizzard. He hesitated. He really did not want to go into that hollow. Digger gave him a bit of a nudge. Then Gylfie came up on the other side. The shadows from the hollow seemed to draw him in against his will. He blinked. Twilight stood beside a heap of golden feathers splotched with blood.

  “So?” Soren said.

  Twilight’s usually gruff voice became a soft whisper. “So, Soren, is this your sister, Eglantine?”

  Soren felt his gizzard drop to his talons. He wobbled but Gylfie was on one side and Digger on the other. He forced himself to look down at the battered little owlet. But she really was hardly an owlet anymore. She was fully fledged and streaked with blood. A red bubble burbled from her beak as she, too, tried to babble.

  “No! No! This can’t be!” Soren wailed. He felt his legs collapse under him and he crumpled beside her. “Eglantine! Eglantine!”

  “Get Mrs. Plithiver, quick!” Gylfie rasped.

  Time began to have no meaning for Soren. Was it day? Was it night? How many nights had passed since they had brought in Eglantine? At first, he was numb. He could not do anything. Mrs. Plithiver nursed Eglantine ceaselessly. “Will she live?” That was all Soren could say.

  “I’m not sure, dear,” Mrs. P. said honestly. “All we can do is try.”

  Finally, Soren began to help. He tried feeding her a bit of milkberry tea and in a low voice kept saying, “Eglantine, it’s me, Soren. It’s your brother Soren.” But Eglantine, with her eyes half shut, only continued to babble a word or two of the singsong ditties they all sang. She did seem to be getting better, however, stronger. And when her eyes opened fully, Soren grew excited. “Eglantine!” He leaned over her. “Eglantine. It’s me. Soren! And Mrs. P. is here, too!” But there was not even a flicker of recognition in her eyes. She merely clacked her beak a couple of times and resumed the babble. Soren sighed.

  “Patience, dear. Patience,” said Mrs. Plithiver. “All things take time. See how much stronger her voice is.”

  But Soren did not like what he was hearing. She spoke only of Tytos,ofTytos reigning supreme, seeking vengeance, of Tyto purity, of Tyto superiority, of a world only of Tytos. How would he explain to her that his best friends were an Elf Owl,aGreat Gray, and a Burrowing Owl? That these were his very best friends in all the world, that they were a band?

  By the next evening, Eglantine was well enough to get up on her talons and take a few steps. Soren led her carefully out on the branch and stood beside her. But he might as well have been standing beside a stump. She did whatever he told her, but there was still no recognition. He brought her into the hollow he shared with Twilight, Digger, and Gylfie to sleep, and Primrose came just before Madame Plonk began her song, to show Eglantine some especially pretty berries she had strung.

  “See, Eglantine. Ever since I have been here, I have collected a few berries from each season. So I have white ones from winter and silver from spring and now I’ve got my golden ones from summer, and I’m making a necklace. I’ll make you one, too.” But Eglantine did not respond.

  “This is worse than being moon blinked,” Soren whispered to Gylfie.

  Gylfie didn’t know what to say. She felt desperately sorry for Soren. She knew that Soren had missed Eglantine so fiercely. But to have her back like this was almost worse than not having her back at all. Gylfie, of course, would never dare say such a thing to Soren. Just then Otulissa peeked her head in.

  “May I come in?”

  “Sure,” Soren said.

  “Look, I’ve been in the library all this time working on Tyto research, to see if there is anything that would explain this—all of them being Tytos and babbling about Tytos, but I somehow got distracted and started looking at a book by a distinguished Sp
otted Owl that’s about owls’ brains and feelings and gizzards.”

  “Great Glaux,” Twilight muttered and yarped a pellet out the hollow’s opening. “No doubt a relative of yours, Otulissa.”

  “Well, possibly. There were many distinguished intellects in our ancestry and we do go back so far. Anyhow, in this book it says that your sister might be suffering from something he calls ‘gizzlemia.’ It is a blankness of the gizzard. It is as if the gizzard is just walled off and nothing can get through, and because of this there is a malfunction in the brain as well.”

  “Well, that explains so much,” Soren said sarcastically. “What in Glaux’s name am I supposed to do about it?”

  “Well…well,” Otulissa stammered. “I’m not sure. I just thought you’d like to know what’s making her this way. It’s not as if she doesn’t want to remember you. She just can’t help it,” Otulissa said feebly. “I…I mean…I’m sure she loves you still.” Soren stared at her with a hard glint. “Oh, dear. None of this is coming out right.” Otulissa’s eyes welled with tears. “I was just trying to be helpful.”

  Soren just sighed, turned away, and began to fluff up the bed they had made for Eglantine.

  That day, as the darkness leaked away into the morning and the light of morning turned harsh in the glare of noon, in that hot slow time of the day when the silence pressed down despite the babble, Soren felt as lonely as he had ever felt in his life. Lonelier than that first frightening night on the ground when he had been pushed out of the nest by his brother, Kludd, lonelier than when he had been at St. Aggie’s, lonelier than when he had almost given up on ever seeing any of his family again. This was the most excruciating loneliness he had ever imagined. Eglantine was here at last, but was she really?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Trader Mags

  Soren had been looking forward, it seemed forever, to the day that Trader Mags would come with her wares. But now it meant nothing to him. Still, there was certainly a buzz of excitement as they roused themselves at the end of the day in anticipation of the magpie’s arrival around twilight. Everyone was excited except for Soren and, of course, the nest-maids, who considered magpies among the worst of the wet poopers, almost as bad as seagulls. He supposed he would go and drag Eglantine around, although he doubted it would mean anything to her. Mags would be showing her wares all evening, so there was no rush.

  She was late and no one was more upset than Madame Plonk. From his hollow, Soren could hear her several branches above him on a lookout perch, waiting with other owls. “If that bird was ever on time in her life, I’ll eat my harp!” Madame Plonk was fuming. “She has no sense of time. Here it is past twilight, nearly First Black.” But suddenly, curling out of the night, came a lovely warbling sound.

  “It’s the carol!” someone shouted. And a cheer went up. Mags was approaching and her caroling threaded through the night. The warble of magpies was known as a carol and was like no other birdsong in the world. He heard the owls now, swooping down through the branches to the base of the tree where Mags would set up her wares. She came with several assistants, carrying baskets of her latest “collection,” as she called her wares.

  “Want to go down, Eglantine?” Soren said. Eglantine, of course, said nothing but got up and followed Soren. She had recovered her flight skills almost immediately and the two alighted on the ground together as Mags and her assistants spread out the collection.

  There was a festive mood with much chattering and special treats that cook had whipped up. Bubo stomped forward and gave Mags a great hug with his wings that nearly knocked her over. Mags looked nothing like Soren had expected. Her feathers were mostly black and the sleekest, blackest black he had ever seen, but she did have some streaks of white feathers. Her tail was immensely long and, on this moonlit night, her black tail feathers had a greenish gloss. She wore a jaunty bandanna on her head. “More where these came from, my dears!” she squawked. Soren could have been knocked over by that squawk. How could the same throat that produced that lovely carol be squawking as raucous as a seagull?

  “Come on up, don’t be shy,” Mags said. “Bubbles, Bubbles!” she squawked at a smaller magpie. “Where’re them sparklies I got at the whatchamacallit for Madame? You know the ones. And I got you some nice velvet, dear,” nodding to Madame Plonk, “ever so squashy. Tassels, tassels anyone? Tie some crystals to them and yeh got yerself a charming windchime…Bubbles! Get them crystals out here on the double! I tell you, Boron, you can’t get a good apprentice these days. I mean one would think that to serve Mags the Trader, known from here toTyto, from Kuneer to Ambala, would be enough incentive, if you catch my drift, but no. How’s the missus, now where she be?”

  “Away,” Boron said cryptically.

  The little black eye almost covered by the bandanna gave a quick piercing stare. “Oh,” she said. Then muttered to herself as Boron walked away. “I just mind me own business. I don’t ask no questions, don’t butt my beak in where it ain’t wanted.”

  “Ha!” Bubo laughed. “If that ain’t a pile of yarped pellets.”

  “Oh, scram, Bubo,” she replied merrily. “Get out of here with your yarping pellet talk. Remember, we’re not fit to associate with you, we wet poopers.”

  “Now, Maggie. I ain’t no snob and you know it. I never held that against you. I mean, you’re different from seagulls, sweet gizzard.”

  “Don’t you go ‘sweet gizzarding’ me, Bubo. And I’ll say we’re different from seagulls. About twice as smart and ten times prettier. Not as pretty as Madame Plonk, though, in that gorgeous tapestry piece I found for her.” She flew over and began to help Madame Plonk arrange it more artfully on her high white shoulders.

  Soren felt Eglantine flinch. “You okay, Eglantine?” She said nothing but he noticed that she had turned toward Madame Plonk, who was admiring herself in a fragment of mirror that Mags had brought.

  They had moved on. Walking along, they looked at other simpler cloths that had been spread with a variety of items—a bright pocket watch, several broken saucers with a sign that said “mendable,” a strange flower that Soren paused to look at. “It ain’t real,” the little magpie, Bubbles, said.

  “Well, if it isn’t real, what is it?” Soren asked.

  “It’s an unreal flower,” Bubbles answered.

  “But why have an unreal flower?”

  “It ain’t never gonna die. Ya see?”

  Soren didn’t see but moved along. Despite all the merriment, he noticed that Boron and Strix Struma were always huddled together in tense conversation. They seemed, in fact, very apart from the entire festive spirit of the evening.

  Soon Soren and Eglantine joined Twilight and Digger and Primrose. Primrose had traded one of her strung milkberry bracelets for a tiny comb. And Digger had traded a very smooth pebble for a shell. “They say it comes from a very faraway ocean and that once a tiny animal lived inside it,” he explained.

  The moon was beginning to slip away, and Mags had begun to pack up her wares. It would be time for good light, but suddenly Soren noticed that Eglantine was not by his side. He had a terrible moment’s panic but then spotted her standing rigidly in front of a cloth covered with fragments of glass and pretty stones. Bubbles was packing up. “She ain’t moved an inch,” Bubbles said. “Just staring at this stone here, with the sparkles. Ain’t really gold, Mags says—just little bits of something she calls isinglass, some calls it mica. But makes a right pretty rock. Kind of sparkly in places and, if you hold it up, light can shine through it a bit. It’s kind of like a dusty mirror. Certainly caught your sister’s fancy. There be something wrong with her, I s’pose?” she said quietly to Soren. “Here, dear, I’ll show you something real pretty we can do with it.” She picked up the stone, which was as thin as a blade. “See what it does now.” She held it up to the moon as it swept down on the dark horizon. When the light of the moon touched the stone it grew luminous. At that very same moment, the harp could be heard as the guild began their evening practice. No
one else noticed, of course, but for one fraction of a second the stone blade shimmered in a swirl of flickering light and sound.

  Eglantine began to shake uncontrollably. “The Place! The Place!” Eglantine screamed.

  Something started in a dim way to make sense to Soren. He put a talon on his sister’s shoulder and spun her around to face him. “Eglantine,” he said softly.

  His sister blinked. “Soren? Oh, Soren!” she cried as he swept her under his wings.

  “I ain’t done nothing, Mags, I swear. Nothing.” Bubbles was crying and sputtering in near hysterics. “I just held up this here piece of glass we got from that castle over in Am-bala and she done gone yoicks.”

  “Take me to the music, Soren. Take me to the music. Take us all to the music,” Eglantine cried.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  In the Folds of the Night

  Soren perched on a slender branch next to Eglantine. He draped one wing over her shoulders. It seemed like a miracle. His sister was back—really back. And now she said they must listen to the harp music. If she had told him to hang upside down and be mobbed by crows, he would have. He had never been happier in his life. The other owlets that had been rescued were now gathering on the limbs outside the concert hollow. Madame Plonk rarely allowed owls to observe harp practice but she made an exception now. Boron came and perched on the other side of Eglantine. They all watched as the nest-maid snakes of the guild gathered at the harp and took their positions. Half of the guild snakes played the higher strings and the other half played the lower strings, and then there were a very few, the most talented harp snakes, that were called sliptweens. The job of the sliptweens was to jump octaves. An octave contained all eight tones of the scale. This harp had six and a half octaves, from C-flat below middle C to the G-flat. G-flat was three and a half octaves above middle C. To find a snake that could do that jump and do it well in a split second, causing the most beautiful liquid sound to pour from the harp, was rare. And it could be exhausting work, depending on the composition.