Kathryn Lasky - The Rescue

It was a bit peculiar that all of the owls who had been rescued in the Great Downing had been some kind of Barn Owl. They were either Greater or Lesser Sooties like Silver, or Grass Owls, or Masked Owls. But despite the different names and slightly different colouration, they all had the distinctive heart-shaped faces that marked them as belonging to the family of Tytos, or Barn Owls. Like Silver, they had all arrived with some very strange notions and behaviours. Even the most seriously wounded owls when they were rescued had babbled nearly unintelligible fragments, but they were entranced with music. As soon as they heard Madame Plonk and the harp guild, their strange babbling had stopped.

The young owlets were getting better every day as they spent more and more time with normal owls. Of course, the owls of Ga’Hoole were not quite normal. When Soren was very young, his parents would tell him and Kludd and Eglantine stories. They were once-upon-a-time stories. The kind that you might wish were true but somehow don’t quite believe could be. One of his and Eglantine’s favourites began, “Once upon a very long time ago, in the time of Glaux, there was an order of knightly owls, from a kingdom called Ga’Hoole, who would rise each night into the blackness and perform noble deeds. They spoke no words but true ones. Their purpose was to right all wrongs, to make strong the weak, mend the broken, vanquish the proud and make powerless those who abused the frail. With hearts sublime they would take flight …”

But it was true! And when he and Twilight and Gylfie and Digger had finally found the Great Ga’Hoole Tree on an island in the middle of the Sea of Hoolemere, Soren found that in order to fulfil this noble purpose, he needed to learn all sorts of things that many owls never learn. They learned how to read and do mathematics and, with their entry into a chaw, they learned the special skills of navigation, weather interpretation, the science of metals. This kind of learning was called the ‘deep knowledge’ and they were taught by the ‘rybs’. The word ‘ryb’ itself meant deep knowledge.

Tonight, the weather chaw would fly and, for Silver and another young Masked Owl named Nut Beam, it would be their first flight with the chaw. They had not been assigned yet, or ‘tapped’ as it was called, to the weather chaw. They were not even junior members yet. They were only going on a very minor training flight to see if possibly they might be suitable. Before his disappearance, Ezylryb seemed to be able to tell with one glance if an owl might work in the chaw. But now with him gone, Boron and Barran felt it was best for the young new owlets to be tried out for this particular chaw, which required highly refined skills.

“Are we really going to fly into a hurricane tonight?” Silver asked.

“Just a mild tropical storm,” Poot answered. “Nice little depression due south of here kicking up some slop in the bight and beyond.”

“When do we get to fly into a tornado?” Silver asked.

Poot blinked in disbelief. “You yoicks, young’un? You don’t want to fly into a tornado. You want your wings torn off? Only owl I ever seen who got through a tornado alive with his wings came out plumb naked.”

Now it was Soren’s turn to blink. “Plumb naked? What do you mean?”

“Not a feather left on him. Not even a tuft of down.”

Octavia gave a shiver, and their cups of milkberry tea shook. “Don’t scare the young’uns, Poot.”

“Look, Octavia, if they ask me I tell them.”

Ruby, a deep, ruddy-coloured Short-eared Owl, who was the best flier in the chaw, blinked. “How’d he fly with no feathers?”

“Not well, dearie. Not well, not well at all,” Poot replied.

“Meatballs! Good and juicy.” Poot swivelled his head and flung off a glob of weed, dead minnows and assorted slop from the Sea of Hoolemere that had landed between his ear tufts.

“Storm residue. He has a very coarse way of speaking,” Otulissa murmured primly to Nut Beam and Silver. She was flying between the two young owlets, and Soren was in their wake making sure that they didn’t go into a bounce spiral caused by sudden updrafts, which could be dangerous.

“See? That’s what you get,” Poot was saying. “You don’t have to go swimming to feel the water below getting warmer do you? You can feel it now, can’t you?”

Soren could feel warm wet gusts coming off the waves that crashed below. It was odd, for although they were on the brink of winter, the Sea of Hoolemere in this region of the bight and beyond held the summer heat longer than any other. “That’s what causes a hurricane, young’uns, when the cooler air meets up with warm water. Now, I’ve sent Ruby out to the edges of this mess to reconnoitre wind speeds and such.”

Poot paused and looked back at his chaw members. “All right now – a little in-flight quiz.”

“Oh, goody,” Otulissa said. “I just love quizzes.” Soren gave her a withering look despite the remnants of a meatball that were splattered around the rims of his eyes.

Poot continued, “Now, Martin. Which way does the wind spiral in a hurricane?”

“Oh, I know! I know!” Otulissa started waving her wings excitedly.

“Shut your beak, Otulissa,” Poot snapped. “I asked Martin.”

But then Nut Beam piped up, “My grandma did a special kind of dive called the spiral.”

“My grandpa had a kind of twisty talon like a spiral,” Silver said loudly.

“Great Glaux.” Soren sighed. He had forgotten how young owlets could be. It was clear that Poot did not know how to deal with such young ones. But Otulissa interrupted what was about to turn into a free-for-all bragging match about grandparents.

“Silver, Nut Beam,” she said sharply, and flew out in front of the two little owls. “Attention. All eyes on my tail, please. Now does anybody here have anything to say that is not about their grandparents, parents or any other relatives or spirals?” There was silence. Then Silver waggled his wings. Otulissa sighed. “I feel a wing waggle from behind.” She flipped her head back. “What is it, Silver?”

“My great-grandma was named for a cloud too. Her name was Alto Cumulus.”

“Thank you for that information,” Otulissa said curtly. “Now may we proceed? Martin, will you please answer the question?”

“The wind spirals inwards and this way.” The little Northern Saw-whet spun his head almost completely around in an anticlockwise motion.

“Very good, considering you’ve never flown in a hurricane,” Poot replied. None of them had as yet, except for Poot.

“We might not have flown in one yet but we’ve read all about them, Poot,” Otulissa said. “Strix Emerilla devotes three chapters to hurricanes in her book, Atmospheric Pressures and Turbulations: An Interpreter’s Guide.”

“The most boring book in the world,” Martin muttered as he flew up on Soren’s starboard wing.

“I’ve read every word of it,” Otulissa said.

“Now, next question,” Poot continued. “And all you older owls shut your beaks. Which is your port wing and which is your starboard?”

There was silence. “All right. Wiggle the one you think is port.” Nut Beam and Silver hesitated a bit, stole a look at each other and then both waggled their right wing.

“Wrong!” Poot said. “Now, you two have to remember the difference. Because when I say strike off to port, or angle starboard, you’re going to fly off in the wrong direction if you don’t know.”

Soren remembered that this was difficult for him to learn when he first started flying in the weather chaw. It took Ruby, the best flier, forever to learn port from starboard, but they all did – finally.