“Listen to me, Soren,” Gylfie said. “I found out a lot in the pelletorium after you fainted and they had to carry you out.”
Soren blinked and shivered his shoulders in the way young owls do when they are embarrassed or ashamed. “Yes, Gylfie, while I was stupidly asking questions you were listening.”
“Quit beating up on yourself,” Gylfie said sharply. “They’ve already done that.” Gylfie’s directness shocked Soren. He stopped blinking and looked straight at the Elf Owl. “Look. What did I just tell you? Everything here at St. Aggie’s is upside down and inside out. It’s our job not to get moon blinked and to stand right side up in an upsidedown world. If we don’t do that we’ll never be able to escape. We’ll never be able to think. And thinking is the only way we’ll be able to plan an escape. So listen to me.” Soren nodded and Gylfie continued. “Now first, I have figured out that tonight is the third night of full shine. In fact, the moon has already started to dwenk. Remember, I told you about this. You’ll see that in a few days it shall almost disappear and we won’t have to worry about being moon blinked. Every night in the glaucidium, it will become darker and darker and easier and easier for us to find the shadows. But in the meantime, we must act as if we are moon blinked.”
Soren resisted asking a question even though he knew there was no danger with Gylfie. But still, he simply did not want to break into Gylfie’s thoughts. It was clear to Soren that this Elf Owl might be very small in every way but her ideas. And he could tell that Gylfie was thinking very hard now.
“After one more newing,” Gylfie continued, “you shall be very close to having fledged all of your flight feathers, and certainly by the time of full shine, you shall be ready to fly.”
“But what about you, Gylfie? You will be ready in a few days.”
“I shall wait for you.”
“Wait for me!” It was not a question. Soren was simply shocked. Too shocked to even speak. So finally it was Gylfie who asked the question.
“What’s wrong, Soren?”
“Gylfie, I cannot believe what you just said. Why would you wait for me when you can get out of here?”
“That’s just the point, Soren. I would never leave you behind. You are my friend, first of all. If I escaped without you, my life would not be worth two pellets to me. And second, we need each other.”
“I need you more than you need me,” Soren said in a small voice.
“Oh, racdrops!” Once more Soren could hardly believe his ears. Racdrops, short for raccoon droppings, was one of the most daring, dirtiest, worst words an owlet could say. Kludd had gotten thumped good and hard by his mother when Mrs. Plithiver had reported that he had said “racdrops” to her when she insisted he stop teasing Eglantine.
“Soren, you were the one who realized that they were trying to moon blink us with our own names by having us repeat them. That was brilliant.”
“But you were the one who knew about moon blinking in the first place. I’d never heard of it.”
“I just knew something that you didn’t. That’s not thinking, just happening to know it. You would have known it if you had been hatched a little earlier or lived in the desert. But now I learned something new. You see, Soren,” Gylfie continued, “after they took you away, I made a discovery. That owlet 47-2, she sent me on an errand. It was outside the pelletorium and…” Gylfie looked about, then continued her tale in a low voice. The first shine of the moon was just beginning to slither over the dark horizon.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Gylfie’s Discovery
I was supposed to go and tell the pellet gatherers that new trays were needed in our area. So 47-2 pointed me in the direction of what she called the Big Crack. It was, in fact, very near our area and ran straight up a rock side of the pelletorium. I was told to go into the crack and I would find a line of other owlets also going to the storerooms and to follow them and not go off the trail. So I did just that.”
Gylfie was telling the story so well that Soren could imagine every little turn on the path through the rock crack. It was as if he were right there with Gylfie…
“There were many cracks leading off the main crack and sometimes voices could be heard. It was interesting that none of the other owlets who I followed seemed to even notice these cracks or hear the voices. Perhaps they had walked this trail so often it was meaningless to them. But I looked about and could see that at one point in the crack the sky cut through. Yes, it was quite beautiful, really, just a little piece of sky like a blue river flowing above, and then at one point the sky seemed very low. You know”—Gylfie stopped and mused for a moment—“ever since we have been here, Soren, I have had the feeling that St. Aegolius Academy is deep, deep in a stone canyon. That its very steepness and depth make it the perfect prison. But at this one point along the trail, I realized we were up higher and not so deep. Close to the sky.”
“Close to the sky,” Soren repeated softly. Once he, too, had been close to the sky. Once he had lived in a hollow high up in a fir tree lined with the fluffy down from his parent’s breasts. Once he had lived close to that blueness. That blueness of the day sky and the blackness of the night had been so near. No wonder a little owlet could almost believe it could fly before it really could. The sky was a part of owls and owls were a part of the sky.
Gylfie continued her story. “I thought that on the way back to the pelletorium I would try and look a little harder around this particular spot. Maybe slow down. Then I thought, maybe I could just pretend to be marching. You know, just like the Great Scheme idea. It would be a good test. Would anyone notice? Maybe not and better yet, there did not seem to be any monitors around.” Gylfie’s eyes brightened and she paused, hoping this idea would sink in with Soren and convince him that it could all work.
“So, on the way back, that is exactly what I did. No one seemed to notice at all. They just moved around me as if I were a part of the stone wall that jutted out. And then something extraordinary happened. An owlet seemed to stumble near me. This owl, a young Snowy, just blinked at me and I thought, ‘Great Glaux, I’ve been discovered standing here.’ So I pointed up toward the sky—as if I were admiring the view. “‘Sky,’ I said pleasantly. And the owl blinked, not a question blink, but a real moon blink. The same look that is in their eyes when they repeat their names on the sleep march.” Gylfie took a deep breath, as if what she was about to say was terribly important. And it was. “I realized then that many words for these owlets, just like their names, have no meaning, no meaning at all. Can you imagine, Soren, an owl not knowing what the sky is?”
Soren thought for a moment. It was indeed unimaginable. Or was it? He remembered what Auntie Finny had said about some birds not destined for flight. But Soren had another question. “Does this owlet just not know the word or does she really not know what the sky is?” Gylfie blinked. Soren truly was a deep thinker. He continued, “Mrs. Plithiver, our nest-maid snake, I told you about her, well, she is blind, but she knows about the sky. She says that all snakes, whether they are blind or not, call the sky ‘the Yonder’ because it is so far away for snakes. It is about as far as anything can be for a snake and that is why she loved working for our family—because she felt close to the Yonder.”
“No, Soren, I think this owlet truly has been completely and perfectly moon blinked. She does not know the word, nor does she have any idea of sky.”
“That’s so sad,” Soren said softly.
“It is sad, but you know it makes our job of escaping easier. Maybe the monitors have been moon blinked about words. But I have to tell you the other thing I discovered when I stopped at this place.”
“What’s that?”
“Well, down a side crack I saw a place that was guarded by an owl who looked familiar. As a matter of fact, I don’t know how I didn’t recognize him instantly. It was Grimble, the owl who snatched me. I’ve thought a lot about him. Do you remember what he said when we were flying here, something about it hardly seeming worth the effort and how the owl wh
o snatched you warned him that he might get a demerit if Spoorn heard him talking that way?”
“Yes,” Soren said slowly. He was not sure where Gylfie was going with this.
“Well, I think Grimble has perhaps not been perfectly moon blinked and that could be really good, too.”
“Wait! One time you say it will be helpful to us if someone is perfectly moon blinked and the next minute you say someone like Grimble, who might not be, can be helpful, too.”
“Grimble might be one of us, don’t you see, Soren? He might be pretending to be moon blinked the way we have. As a matter of fact, I am almost sure he is.”
“Why?”
“Because I went down that side crack and I found out what he was guarding.”
“You did?”
“Yes. And do you know how hard it is to find out information when it’s against the rules to ask a question?”
“Oh, yes!” Soren said.
“A couple of times I almost did ask questions, and Grimble seemed to sense it.”
“What did you find out?”
“Have you ever heard of books?”
“Of course I have,” Soren said indignantly. “Books and Barn Owls go very far back.” These were the exact words that his parents often said when they took out their few books to read aloud to the owlets. “Especially since so many of us once lived in churches. My parents had a book of psalms.”
“Psalms?” Gylfie was truly impressed. “What are psalms?”
“Like songs, sort of, I think.” Soren had not really heard that many. But when his mother read him the psalms it seemed that she sang the words more than spoke them. “But what about books? What did you find out from Grimble?”
“The place he guards is a book place. They call it a library. Have you ever heard of that—a library?”
“Never. How did you find out all this? You certainly didn’t ask questions.”
“No, of course not. You see, it is off-limits. Only Skench and Spoorn are allowed in. That’s how I sensed he might be one of us. He seemed to know the question before I ever had to think of a way of asking it. I want to get in.”
“Why? I think we just need to get out of here.”
“I want to know about the flecks,” Gylfie said.
“Flecks? What flecks?”
“The flecks we’re always singing about—the bright flecks at the core, the ones the first-degree pickers pick for.”
“Are you yoicks, Gylfie? You want to stay around this place long enough to become a first-degree picker?”
“Soren, something worse than just moon blinking young owls is going on here. I just sense it. Something very bad. Something that could destroy all the kingdoms of all the owls on all the earth.” Gylfie paused. “Something deadly.” The word seemed to hang in the air, and Gylfie stared ahead unblinkingly.
“These owlets are the walking dead. I think it would be better to be dead than be like 47-2, but you said all the kingdoms of all the owls on all the earth?”
“Total destruction,” Gylfie said. Her voice was like ice. “Look, Soren. I want to get out as much as you do. I think Grimble might be helpful, but we’ll have to be very careful, and that library with those books holds secrets, secrets I think that could help us escape and maybe help other owls—other owls in your Kingdom of Tyto and mine in the Desert of Kuneer. Would you want any other owls to go through what we’ve been through?”
Soren suddenly thought of Eglantine. He loved Eglantine. The thought of her being snatched, of being moon blinked, was almost more than he could bear. There was a world of Eglantines out there. Did he really want them to become empty-eyed, hollow-voiced, destined-not-to-fly owls? A shudder ran through Soren. It was not good enough to just escape. In fact, their task was greater than he had ever imagined.
A shriek split the night in the glaucidium. The moon had risen and the alarm for the first sleep march sounded. Soren and Gylfie felt the stir as thousands of owls began to move. The strange babble rose up as each owl repeated its old name over and over again. The two little owls looked at each other and moved their beaks, turning the sound of their numbers into something that might pass for a name—any name but their own. And now, tonight, they would try the second part of their strategy for the first time. The one that Gylfie had tested in the Big Crack. They would march in place giving the appearance of motion but never moving from the cast shadows. If it had worked for Gylfie in the Big Crack it should work here.
Almost immediately they felt the press of owls about them. They held their breath, fearful that their ruse would be discovered. But the throngs of owls simply parted, just as the waters of a stream split to flow around a rock. They were jostled a bit and they felt a terrible chill as a sleep correction monitor swept by, but the monitor did not look twice at them as they marched in place. No, the monitor seemed only concerned about a small Snowy Owl ahead who had apparently been caught sleeping last time with its head under its wing. “Wing alert on number 85-2. Monitors in the fourth quadrant, please be advised.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Moon Scalding
There was an odd rhythm to the days and the nights at St. Aggies, where owls were expected to sleep at night and work during the day. The moon dwenked, the world darkened, and then once more it was the time of the newing. It was not all dreadful at St. Aggie’s. Both Soren and Gylfie were the recipients of extra-special treats, beyond the usual cricket fare, from their pit guardians, Auntie and Unk. Indeed, the time in the pits began to seem like an oasis, verdant and green in the stone world of St. Aegolius Academy for Orphaned Owls. Gylfie received extra rations of snake, the occasional nap was permitted, and Soren, too, was even taught by Auntie how to eat a vole with bones. One could hardly call it a First Bones ceremony. But, nonetheless, Auntie slipped Soren a nice plump vole, just the right length to be swallowed whole. And even though questions were discouraged, Auntie was able to guide Soren through the consuming of his first creature, bones and all. She complimented him lavishly on his first yarped bone pellet. And Soren, of course, was struck by the bittersweet memory of his father complimenting Kludd after his First Bones ceremony.
But despite all the extras, the favors, the gentle coddling from Auntie, Soren could not forget Gylfie’s icy voice: “Total destruction. All the kingdoms of all the owls on all the earth.” Why? Soren had asked himself often, but then realized it didn’t really matter why, if indeed it this was the purpose of St. Aggie’s. Even more disturbing was a newer idea of Soren’s. Perhaps, he thought, these owls were not really owls at all but rather some kind of demon spirits in a feathered guise. This was why when Auntie came to him now with his favorite, a plump centipede, Soren stared deep into her yellow eyes as if trying to see the dark antic shadow of a demon. Are you really an owl, Auntie? he wanted to ask. Are you really a true Snowy Owl descended from Glaux, come from the North Kingdoms—or are you a white demon?
It was the third night of the second full shine now. The full shines seemed to last forever. Soren and Gylfie emerged from these periods of full shines exhausted, but they had somehow managed to resist moon blinking so far. Their strategy for the sleep marches had worked.
Had worked up until this second night of second full shine.
“Right, left. Right, left.” They clicked their talons in the precise beat that filled the two glaucidiums as they stood in the overhang of the shared arch.
“Hey, you two!” A hoot shredded the air around them, splitting right through the march. It wasn’t Jatt nor was it Jutt. It was none other than Spoorn, Skench’s dreadful second-in-command. “I saw you two here last round, and now this round. Lazy, no-good haggards!” Soren and Gylfie, caught in the fierce yellow glare of the Screech Owl’s eyes, began to tremble. “Avoiding the moon, that’s what I’d say! Well, we have remedies for that.”
Oh, Glaux, Soren thought. If I get plucked again! And Gylfie. She’ll never survive it. “March, you two, march to the moon blaze!”
“Don’t say anything,” Gylfie whispered. �
��We’re together, that should count for something.” For what? Soren wondered. We’ll get plucked together? We’ll die together?
The two youngs owls were marched into a stone chamber off to one side of one of the glaucidiums. The walls of this chamber were made of pure white stone and slanted outward at peculiar angles. Indeed, the moonlight seemed to pour into the white stone cell and blaze off the walls in a fierce brightness. “You shall remain here and be scalded by the moon’s light until the moon goes. See how you like that!” Spoorn blasted them with a screech to punctuate her remarks, and the screech, as powerful as a wind, nearly toppled the little Elf Owl.
“And no head ducking. We’ll be watching,” added Skench.
Gylfie managed to recover her balance and planted her tiny talons firmly on the stone. “Well,” she said, “at least we’re not plucked.”
“Gylfie, are you yoicks?”
“In these situations, Soren, you have to look on the bright side—no pun intended,” Gylfie said as she looked around and saw moonlight bouncing off every surface.
“Gylfie, I don’t think there is a bright side, pun or not. Plucked or moon scalded? You consider that a choice?”
“We’re not going to be either!” A new fierceness had crept into Gylfie’s voice.
“Well, how do you think we can avoid it? You can stand in my shadow but it’s not exactly as if I can stand in yours—you’re a midget.”
“That is not fair, Soren, and you know it. Stature jokes are not appropriate. They are considered very bad form where I come from. Indeed, there is a society, the Small Owl Society—SOS—and its charter is to prevent cruel and tasteless remarks concerning size. My grandmother and a Pygmy Owl founded it.” Gylfie brimmed with indignation. She seemed far more upset about Soren’s use of the word “midget” than being stuck in the white stone chamber for moon scalding.
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