no sugar gliders,” Digger added.
They had settled into the hollow of a fir tree and were eating some voles that Soren had brought back from his hunting expedition.
“Refreshing, isn’t it, after sugar gliders?” Gylfie said.
“Hmmm!” Digger smacked his beak and made a satisfied sound.
“What do you think the Great Ga’Hoole Tree will be like?” Soren said dreamily, as a little bit of vole tail hung from his beak.
“Different from St Aggie’s, that’s for sure,” Gylfie offered.
“Do you think they know about St Aggie’s – the raids, the egg snatching, the … the …” Soren hesitated.
“The cannibalism,” Digger said. “You might as well say it, Soren. Don’t try to protect me. I’ve seen the worst and I know it.”
They had all seen the worst.
Twilight, who was huge to start with, was beginning to swell up in fury. Soren knew what was coming. Twilight was not thinking about the owls of Ga’Hoole, those noble guardian knights of the sky. He was thinking about those ignoble, contemptible, basest of the base, monstrous owls of St Aggie’s. Twilight had been orphaned so young that he had not the slightest scrap of memory of his parents. For a long time, he had led a kind of vagabond, orphan life. Indeed, Twilight had lived with all sorts of odd animals, even a fox at one point, which was why he never hunted fox.
Like all Great Greys, he was considered a powerful and ruthless predator, but Twilight prided himself on being, as he called it, an owl from the Orphan School of Tough Learning. He was completely self-taught. He had lived in burrows with foxes, flown with eagles. He was strong and a real fighter. And there was not a modest hollow bone in Twilight’s body. He was powerful, a brilliant flier, and he was fast. As fast with his talons as with his beak. In a minute they all knew that the air would become shrill as he sang his own praises and jabbed and stabbed at an imaginary foe. Twilight’s shadow began to flicker in the dim light of the hollow as his voice, deep and thrumming, started to chant.
We’re going to bash them birds,
Them rat-feathered birds.
Them bad-butt owls ain’t never heard
’Bout Gylfie, Soren, Dig and Twilight.
Just let them get to feel my bite
Their li’l ol’ gizzards gonna turn to pus
And our feathers hardly mussed.
Oh me. Oh my. They gonna cry.
One look at Twilight,
They know they’re gonna die.
I see fear in their eyes
And that ain’t all.
They know that Twilight’s got the gall.
Gizzard with gall that makes him great
And every bad owl gonna turn to bait.
Jab, jab – then a swipe and hook with the right talon. Twilight danced around the hollow. The air churned with his shadow fight, and Gylfie, the tiniest of them all, had to hang on tight. It was like a small hurricane in the hollow. Then, finally, his movements slowed and he pranced off into a corner.
“Got that out of your system, Twilight?” Gylfie asked.
“What do you mean ‘out of my system’?”
“Your aggression.”
Twilight made a slightly contemptuous sound that came from the back of his throat. “Big words, little owl.” This was something Twilight often said to Gylfie. Gylfie did have a tendency to use big words.
“Well now, young’uns,” Mrs P was speaking up. “Let’s not get into it. I think, Gylfie, that in the face of cannibalism, aggression or going stark raving yoicks and absolutely annihilating the cannibals is perfectly appropriate.”
“More big words but I like them. I like them, Mrs P,” Twilight hooted his delight.
Soren, however, remained quiet. He was thinking. He was still wondering what the Great Ga’Hoole Tree would be like. What would those noble owls think of an owl like Twilight – so unrefined, yet powerful. So cheeky, but loyal – so angry, but true?
They had left the hollow of the fir tree at First Black. The night was racing with ragged clouds. The forest covering was thick beneath them so they flew low to keep the River Hoole in sight, which sometimes narrowed and only appeared as the smallest glimmer of a thread of water. The trees thinned and Twilight said that he thought the region below was known as The Beaks. For a while, they seemed to lose the strand of the river, and there appeared to be many other small threadlike creeks or tributaries. They were, of course, worried they might have lost the Hoole, but if they had their doubts they dared not even think about them for a sliver of a second. For doubts, each one feared in the deepest parts of their quivering gizzards, might be like an owl sickness – like greyscale or beak rot – contagious and able to spread from owl to owl.
How many false creeks, streams and even rivers had they followed so far, only to be disappointed? But now Digger called out, “I see something!” All of their gizzards quickened. “It’s, it’s … whitish … well, greyish.”
“Ish? What in Glaux’s name is ‘ish’?” Twilight hooted.
“It means,” Gylfie said in her clear voice, “that it’s not exactly white, and it’s not exactly grey.”
“I’ll have a look. Hold your flight pattern until I get back.”
The huge Great Grey Owl began a power dive. He was not gone long before he returned. “And you know why it’s not exactly grey and not exactly white?” Twilight did not wait for an answer. “Because it’s smoke.”
“Smoke?” The other three seemed dumbfounded.
“You do know what smoke is?” Twilight asked. He tried to remember to be patient with these owls who had seen and experienced so much less than he had.
“Sort of,” Soren replied. “You mean there’s a forest
