Kathryn Lasky - The Journey

COPYRIGHT

HarperCollins Children’s Books An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in the USA by Scholastic Inc 2003

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2006

Text copyright © Kathryn Lasky 2003

Kathryn Lasky asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780007215188

Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2016 ISBN: 9780008226800

Version: 2016-12-06

DEDICATION

To Max, who imagines universes

…the four owls looked below and saw the vast sea glinting with silver spangles from the moon’s light and then, directly ahead, spreading into the night, were the twisting branches of the largest tree they had ever seen, the Great Ga’Hoole Tree…

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter One: A Mobbing of Crows

Chapter Two: In the Company of Sooty Owls

Chapter Three: Twilight Shows Off

Chapter Four: Get Out! Get Out!

Chapter Five: The Mirror Lakes

Chapter Six: The Ice Narrows

Chapter Seven: This Side of Yonder

Chapter Eight: First Night to First Light

Chapter Nine: A Parliament of Owls

Chapter Ten: Twilight on the Brink

Chapter Eleven: The Golden Talons

Chapter Twelve: Hukla, Hukla and Hope

Chapter Thirteen: Books of the Yonder

Chapter Fourteen: Night Flight

Chapter Fifteen: A Visit to Bubo

Chapter Sixteen: The Voices in the Roots

Chapter Seventeen: Weather Chaw

Chapter Eighteen: Mrs Plithiver’s Dilemma

Chapter Nineteen: A Visit to Madame Plonk

Chapter Twenty: Fire!

Chapter Twenty-One: “A Coal in My Beak!”

Chapter Twenty-Two: Owlets Down!

Chapter Twenty-Three: At Last!

Chapter Twenty-Four: Trader Mags

Chapter Twenty-Five: In the Folds of the Night

Keep Reading

About the Author

Other Books By

About the Publisher

Soren felt the blind snake shift in the deep feathers between his shoulders as he and the three other owls flew through the buffeting winds. They had been flying for hours now and it seemed as if in the last minutes the darkness had begun to dissolve drop by drop, and they were now passing from the full black of the night into the first light of the morning. Beneath them a river slid like a dark ribbon over the earth.

“Let’s keep flying even though it’s getting light,” said Twilight, the immense Great Grey Owl who flew downwind of Soren. “We’re getting nearer. I just feel it.”

It was to the Sea of Hoolemere they flew, and in the middle of that sea was an island and on that island there was a tree called the Great Ga’Hoole Tree and in this tree there was an order of owls. It was said that these owls would rise each night into the blackness and perform noble deeds. The universe of owls was desperately in need of such deeds. For with its many kingdoms it was about to be destroyed by a terrible evil.

Hidden away in a maze of stone canyons and ravines there was a violent nation of deadly owls known as St Aegolius. The evil of St Aggie’s, as it was often called, had touched almost every owl kingdom in some way or another. Soren and his best friend Gylfie, the tiny Elf Owl, had both been captured by St Aggie’s patrols when they were young nestlings unable to fly. Twilight too had been snatched but, unlike Soren and Gylfie, he had managed to escape before being imprisoned. Digger’s youngest brother had been eaten by a St Aggie’s patrol and his parents later killed. Soren and Gylfie had met Twilight and Digger, a Burrowing Owl, shortly after their own daring escape from the stone canyons of St Aggie’s.

Although the four owls had met as orphans, they had become so much more. In a desert still stained with the blood of two of the fiercest of St Aggie’s elite warrior owls, whom they had defeated, they had discovered a knowledge, along with a feeling deep in their gizzards, where all owls felt their strongest emotions. And this knowledge was that they were a band for evermore, one for all and all for one, bound by the deepest loyalty and dedicated to the survival of the kingdoms of all owls. They had sworn an oath in that desert drenched with blood and tinged with the silver light of the moon. They would go to Hoolemere. It was as a band that they knew they must go and find its great tree, which loomed now as the heart of wisdom and nobility in a world that was becoming insane and ignoble. They must warn of the evil that threatened. They must become part of this ancient kingdom of guardian knights on silent wings.

They hoped they were drawing near even though the river they now followed was not the River Hoole, the one that led to Hoolemere. Still, Twilight said he was sure that this river would lead to the Hoole and on to Hoolemere, and the very thought of this legendary island in the sea made the four owls stroke even harder against the confusing winds. But Soren felt Mrs Plithiver stir again in his feathers. Mrs P, as he called her, had been the old nest-maid in the hollow where Soren’s parents had made their home. These blind snakes had been born without eyes, and where their eyes should have been there were only two slight indentations. The rosy-scaled reptiles were kept by many owls to tend the nests and make sure they were clean and free of maggots and various vermin that found their way into the hollows. Soren had thought that he would never see Mrs P again, and yet they had found each other just days after his escape from St Aggie’s. She had told him what Soren had long suspected – that it was his older brother, Kludd, who had pushed him from the nest when his parents were out hunting. Although he had survived the fall, still being flightless he was prey to any ground animal. Ground animal! Who would have ever thought another owl would be the greatest danger? Until that moment when he was snatched and felt himself being carried into the night sky by a pair of talons, Soren had thought that the worst predator in the forest, from an owl’s point of view, was a raccoon. And then Mrs P told him that she suspected Kludd had done the same thing to Eglantine, his baby sister. When Mrs P had protested, Kludd had threatened to eat her. So the poor old snake had no choice but to leave – very quickly.

Now Mrs P slithered towards Soren’s left ear, the higher ear and the easiest for her to reach. “Soren,” she whispered, “I’m not sure if it is a good idea to keep flying with all this light. We don’t want to get mobbed.”