“What’s that?” Stellan asked.
“They have a secret language all of their own. It is a language that only the females speak. It is called Banuil Caint, which means she-wolf talk.”
“Do you know any words, Froya?”
“Not a word,” she said. “No one does except the she-wolves of the MacNamara clan. It seems that it’s impossible for a male wolf to even learn or pronounce these words. It’s as if their brain is not made for it.”
The weather eventually cleared. The bears and Rags were well rested, and the wind had changed. There was now a bit of a tail wind. “This is easy!” Rags exclaimed. “I’m not going to tire myself out flying back to keep up with your slow pace.” She churred.
They had all become deeply fond of Rags. She was such a smart little owl, and to think that her mother had left her. Froya and Third especially felt a deep sympathy for her, as they had had the worst mum in the world—Taaka. They had shared their own experiences with Rags and the little spotted owl had sighed and wilfed slightly. “I thought I was the only one. I guess you can say we belong to the Bad Mum Club!”
Stellan had said nothing at the time, but he felt it was a bit sad for such a young owl to be so cynical. This perhaps had been Rags’s strength. Helped her “soldier through.” Soldiering through, it was a term Stellan and Jytte’s mum, Svenna, often said. Mum … will we ever see her again? Stellan wondered, and felt his eyes fill with tears.
“Why does a puffin cross the straits?” The cackling cry came out of the thick fog of the Ice Narrows.
“Because … because … a chicken already had?”
“Oh, little Dumpy, you are brilliant.”
“What’s a chicken, Mum?”
“How should I know? I’m just a dumb cluck.” Then there was a deafening chorus of clucking puffins.
Svenna ignored the puffins as she swam through the Ice Narrows that had not yet frozen. She was exhausted, but she would not let up despite the adverse current slowing her pace. Svern had vanished as if by magic—and Great Ursus, she prayed it wasn’t some kind of ancient sorcery of hagsfiends. Could they be back? Svenna knew there was only one thing to do. Go to the Great Ga’Hoole Tree. Svern had known the owls, had fought in the last battle of the owls against the Pure Ones at the Battle of Fire and Ice, as it was often called. The bears of the Northern Kingdoms and the owls of the Northern Kingdoms had fought valiantly together. The time had come again. Something strange and evil had felled her dear Svern.
The ridiculous cackling of the puffins grew dimmer. Then at last she was out of the Ice Narrows. She spied solid ice ahead. It was just a quarter of a league to the ice shelf of the Sea of Hoolemere.
When she climbed onto the ice, she knew she was almost there. Her heart was pounding as she flopped down for just a few brief minutes—minutes, seconds, hours, milliseconds—that part of her life was over. She was no longer a slave of the clock … but what if the Ice Clock enslaved the whole world? Or destroyed it? The bungvik … Could Svern’s disappearance be connected in some way to the bungvik?
At the same time, Svenna was wrestling with the horror of total annihilation, her former enslaver, Galilya, now Illya, was explaining just this to Uluk Uluk. “It would be extinction, Uluk. Complete and utter extinction—except for them!”
Svenna herself, as she contemplated this eradication of all creatures, began to sob on the ice, sob so violently that she didn’t hear the scratch of talons as a tiny owl landed.
“Bear, why are you crying?” Sobs were so racking Svenna’s body that the little pygmy had to shout finally, “Why, why are you crying, beautiful bear?”
Finally, Svenna looked up. She blinked. Another tear spilled from her dark eyes and froze instantly. “Who are you?”
“Rosie, pygmy, a rather noisy flyer in comparison to other owl species. But your crying drowned out my wing beats, I daresay.”
“Are you from the Great Tree?”
“Yes, yes! I can be your guide. That’s one of my jobs. I fly surveillance over this part of the Sea of Hoolemere. You see I’m a HALO flyer.”
“What?”
“HALO—high altitude, low opening. Those are the conditions that we are used for. When it’s thick of fog or heavy cloud cover, I can drop down quickly. No one sees me approaching or, in your case, hears me.”
“Well, you have to guide me to the Great Tree. This is urgent!”
“Follow me. I’ll fly low.”
Rosie began skimming just inches above the ice as the thick fog roiled around them.
The fog began to thin a bit as they approached the island of Hoole. The tree was just becoming visible.
“There it is!” Rosie began to make a soft little too-too-too sound. Svenna looked up in awe. She had never in her life seen such a tree. It was not simply enormous, but its limbs spread out across the sky, across the earth, or so it seemed. From the limbs hung vines of white berries that swayed in a gentle wind. It appeared as if the tree was almost breathing. Svenna stopped. The sight was mesmerizing.
“Come along! Come along! Parliament is in emergency session.”
As Svenna entered the parliament hollow, her first thought was how many different kinds of owls there were—at least twenty different species of all sizes and colors. Then she spotted one of the smaller owls, a white-faced owl with a fringe of tawny feathers. And she immediately knew. So this is Soren! Svenna thought. Soren, the fabled leader of the Great Ga’Hoole Tree, seemed rather small and quite elderly. But size had nothing to do with it in this world of owls. Some said that the barn owl was the greatest leader since the first king, Hoole, son of Siv and Hrath. But Svenna was still somewhat astonished when she saw him, perched not on a throne of any kind but a curved birch branch. He wore no crown or jewels as the Grand Patek did. He was merely an owl, a very old owl. His plumage slightly faded, his talons gnarled with age. He peered at her with dim eyes, not glossy like the other younger barn owls in the parliament.
“Come closer, my dear. I hear you have some startling news. It seems to be a night for that.”
Svenna was unsure of what else he was referring to. “My name is Svenna. I am from the Sven clan in the—”
Before she could finish the sentence, there was a reverberation that passed through the hollow. “Aaaah … awwwh …” The entire parliament exclaimed softly.
“The clan of Svenka!”
“Yes.” She nodded modestly. “And the mate of Svern.”
“Svern?” A much younger barn owl gasped. This owl bore a close resemblance to Soren, and Svenna felt she must be his daughter.
“Yes, Svern.”
“And how is Svern?” the young barn owl asked.
“Not well, I fear. That is why I’m here.” The young owl staggered on her perch. “I think he has been captured.”
“Captured!” the owl shrieked.
“Steady, dear. Steady, Blythe.”
“Oh, Da, I was wondering why I hadn’t received any messages for the last few nights. Nothing … nothing at all.”
Soren leaned forward from his perch. “Tell us what you know, Svenna.”
And so she told him the story. By the time she finished, it was as if the very air of the parliament roiled with a fear so toxic the owls were almost afraid to breathe. It was paralyzing.
Soren finally broke the silence. “The bears of the Nunquivik must be on the move. They want to stop us and they want the key.”
All eyes were turned to Soren and Otulissa, who perched near him. They all had one thought. Those two owls, the barn owl and the spotted owl, were the only ones in the entire tree who knew where the key was hidden.
Soren swung around. “Blythe, any messages from the young bears Stellan, Jytte …” Svenna felt something seize within her. It was as if her heart had stopped and her breath had locked.
“Stellan and Jytte!” Svenna gasped. The entire parliament shook. “You know my cubs?”
“Yes, Svenna. They came here,” Otulissa replied with as much calm she could muster.
�
�I … I … don’t understand. They are alive? They live?”
“They live very well, madam. They are brave, courageous young bears. They along with two other yosses rescued the key from the Den of Forever Frost. They and their companions, Third and Froya, are now on a mission gathering allies for our cause, or I should say for war, I fear …”
But by this time, Svenna was swaying on her feet. “I must sit down, sir. You see I was never really sure if they were still alive …” Her voice dwindled away.
“Please, madam, of course. This must be a shock. A pleasant one. But these four young bears are quite remarkable.”
“Yes,” Svenna said in a vague voice. But would they even know her? Would she know them? And where had the other two bears come from?
In the dim light of a new dawn, as the rest of the tree’s inhabitants settled into their hollows, Soren and Otulissa met in the innermost part of the late Ezylryb’s hollow. It was a place where these two old owls often retreated to think and discuss critical matters of the tree. Ezylryb’s ancient battle claws hung on a hook forged by Bubo, the great blacksmith of the tree, now long dead. There was a soft, somewhat moth-ravaged velvet pillow that Octavia, the long-deceased nest-maid snake of Ezylryb, would often coil up on for a rest. There were some of the volumes he had written—his poetry, his memoirs of the War of the Ice Talons, which he had fought in nearly a century ago. It was a place where memory was stirred, thinking was clarified, and hopes emboldened. But it was not a place for useless nostalgia, as Otulissa often reminded her old friend, should he veer into that when he spoke of his mentor, Ezylryb.
“So here we are, Otulissa. Two old warriors ourselves now. How old do you think Ezylryb was when he fought?”
Otulissa cut him off. “Doesn’t matter, Soren. What matters is that we are on the brink of war. The reports coming in from the warblers and the other HALO flyers are not good. There is a steady flow of Roguer bears and we now know of at least a half dozen slipgizzle owls that Ambala and even Tyto, your old hatching ground, have reported.”
“What would an owl, or any creature from the Hoolian kingdoms, have to gain if war breaks out? If they were ruled by these mad bears from the Far Ice who worship a stupid mechanical clock, what would they gain?”
“Soren!” Otulissa said sharply, and clacked her beak in reprimand. “There is no time for wondering. We must act.”
“You mean declare war, before the young bears return with the allies secure?”
“Of course not! I have a more—how should I put it?—conservative approach.”
Soren blinked and cocked his head at what would have been an impossible angle for any other kind of creature. The word conservative and Otulissa just did not match up. “Do tell!”
“I think you and I need to go out on a reconnaissance flight. Now! In broad daylight, when supposedly owls never fly.”
“Otulissa, be realistic. We are two old owls.”
“Old warriors,” Otulissa interjected.
“All right, old warriors. You have one eye. My talons are gnarled and arthritic. I doubt they’d even fit into battle claws.”
“Yes, they will. Try this liniment. Cleve brewed it himself.”
Soren’s beak gaped. “You had all this planned, didn’t you?”
“Not exactly.”
“What do you mean, ‘not exactly’? You never equivocate, Otulissa. I’ve known you too long and too well.”
“Well, all right, yes. I think these bears of the Nunquivik, the Roguers, might be coming toward us. But the disappearance of Svern is mystifying, at least in the way Svenna described it. There is something else coming, and it might be beyond our control unless we find out what it is soon.” She took a step toward Soren and gently placed the small pot of liniment before him. “Listen to me, old friend. It’s time for us to claw up and fly. I might be missing one eye; you might have creaky bones.” They don’t even feel hollow, Soren thought, for suddenly he felt heavy. Heavy and so old. “But we can do this!”
She stretched out a single talon and touched him. He clamped his eyes shut for a moment. “What will Cleve think?” Soren asked.
“Cleve hates war. He’s a gizzard resister. You know that as well as I do. What would Pelli have thought?”
“Oh, Pelli,” he sighed as he thought of his old mate, who had died the summer before. “She would have said go—go for the children’s sake.”
“So?” Otulissa opened wide her huge dark eyes. He could see his own white face reflected in them.
“We fly now.” He reached for the liniment.
The two owls, one a spotted and one a barn owl, flew out of a secret exit of the tree, almost directly into a fog bank that had enveloped the island of Hoole, which seemed a blessing. Their flight would be concealed for at least a while.
“You all right, Otulissa, with your single eye?”
“Don’t fret, Soren. I see more with my one eye than most owls see with two. Don’t underestimate old owls. I’ve still got my brain. I’ve still got my plummels. I can tell a maverick wind coming before it even decides to go maverick.”
Soren himself tipped his plummels, those delicate fringe feathers that not only soften the sound of their flight but also detect the most minute wind shift. From the streaming wet winds, Soren sensed that they were approaching the Ice Narrows.
“Maximum climb,” he commanded. But none of his commands were delivered aloud. So they flew close and used a code-signaling system with their wing tips and tail feathers. Even in the thick fog, they did not want the puffins to know they were anywhere near and launch into their insanely stupid chatter. When they had cleared the Narrows and were bearing north by northeast, heading between Elsemere Island and the Ice Dagger toward the Hrath’ghar glacier, the fog began to lift. They flew on past the glacier to the far edges of the Hrathlands.
As Soren looked on, he realized that the last earthquake had rearranged quite a bit of this landscape. The N’yrthgar Straits, frozen solid now, seemed closer the Nunqua Sea. It was not merely a question of a rejiggering of the land but actually the surface; the texture of the land seemed to have changed. From an owl’s-eye view, this change was clear.
“How odd!” Soren whispered, then signaled that he was going down to investigate but that Otulissa should keep a lookout from above. The barn owl went into a steep dive. He landed on top of one of the runnels and began walking tentatively along it, peering at these odd swellings. These are … oh, what’s the old Krakish word? Mydlsvarls! And in that same moment, the ice seemed to split open and swallow Soren.
Otulissa emitted a panic hoot and staggered in flight. Soren was gone! She felt herself going yeep. The split in the ice gaped at her from below as if to suck her in. She was spinning downward, having lost control of her flight. An immense clawed paw reached out of the crack. “NO!” she screamed, and began to pump her wings and clamber her way up and out from her own spiral toward death. She only had one thought in her mind. Back … back to the tree. This is war!
The cubs headed now due north and east from the Slough toward the MacNamara territory. Their mood was somber, and each bear held the vivid image of the beautiful, slain wolf Alasdair in their memory. They were anxious and yet they were driven by her final words: Go to the Namara.
Jytte slowed just a bit and looked up. The night had melted into the dawn. The star ladder with the blue mist had dissolved into the new gray of the morning. And the world, in Jytte’s mind, seemed a little bit emptier.
“I miss her too,” Stellan said, plucking the thought right out of his sister’s mind.
“I think we’re on track,” Froya said even though the stars were gone. The MacNamara clan’s territory had been the least disturbed by the earthquake. “We should be approaching Broken Talon Point in a few hours. And this head wind is shifting. We’ll make better time as it comes ’round to the south.”
It was less than an hour when they spied a wolf approaching them.
“A scout!” Jytte said.
“The ques
tion is MacNamara or MacHeath?” Froya asked. “The two clans’ territories are woefully close. And they are enemies.”
The four bears slowed and looked suspiciously at the wolf.
“Glyncora!” the wolf announced. “MacNamara clan. You seek our chieftain?”
“Indeed.” Stellan slowed to a stop and instinctively began to lower himself into a series of submission postures.
“No need. What is your mission?”
“We come from the Great Ga’Hoole Tree, sooner than we had planned, as we now have some alarming and very urgent news.”
“Follow me to the gadderheal.”
But soon the scout stopped at a cairn of carved bones that rose out of the snow. A fox peeked out from behind the cairn.
“Aah, Ailfryd. Keeping things tidy, I see,” Glyncora said.
“Of course!”
“Foxes?” Jytte asked. They had seen so few, and this one was red, not white like the foxes of the Nunquivik.
“Yes, this is Ailfryd. She guards this sacred spot. This is where Hordweard, the first Namara, murdered her brutal mate, MacHeath. We keep it as a monument to remind others who have been abused of Hordweard’s courage.”
Ailfryd dipped her head. “My honor, Glyncora.”
“It has always been female red foxes who have been members of the fox guard, the Sionnach as it is called. The story of Hordweard has been carved in these bones. But there is not time now for us to tell that tale since your message is so urgent.”
“Auforaida!” The red fox lofted her silky red tail into the wind.
“What did she say?” Stellan asked.
“ ‘Farewell’ in old wolf. Not spoken often these days, however.”
They trekked on for another few leagues. Stellan caught up with the wolf, who kept a good pace. Undaunted by the deep snow, this gray wolf leaped over the biggest drifts as softly as a cloud scudding across the sky.
“Glyncora, I was wondering, will full submission postures be required when we arrive?” Stellan whispered to the scout.
The Keepers of the Keys Page 17