The Siege

“Not one of the parliament members was in the dining hollow. There’s an important meeting taking place.”

“Getting ready for war, I bet!” Twilight said. “I’ll bet they’ll put us each in charge of a division.”

“It’s not war, Twilight. Hate to disappoint you,” Gylfie said.

Twilight was disappointed. He loved fighting, and with his amazing quickness and ferocity, Twilight had proved that he had no equal.

“No, no war,” repeated Gylfie. “It’s higher magnetics.”

“Oh, for Glaux’s sake,” Twilight growled. “How boring. As if we don’t get enough of HM, as she now calls it, from Otulissa all the time.”

“It’s important, Twilight. We have to learn about this stuff,” Digger said.

“That’s just the problem,” Gylfie said in a low hiss. “This stuff is spronk.”

“Spronk?” the three other owls said at once.

“What’s ‘spronk’?” Soren asked.

“Spronk is forbidden knowledge,” said Gylfie. There was a deep silence in the hollow.

“Forbidden knowledge? No, Gylfie,” Soren said, “You have to be wrong. Nothing is spronk in the Great Ga’Hoole Tree. That’s just not the Guardians’ way. They would never forbid knowledge. They only want us to learn.”

“Maybe not forbidden forever, but at least some things are spronk for right now,” she replied.

“Well, I don’t like it,” Soren said firmly. “I’m completely against things being declared spronk.”

“Me too,” Twilight said.

Digger blinked and then in that slow way he had of speaking when he was considering a problem, he said, “Yes, I think it’s awful when they keep knowledge from young owls. Just suppose that Otulissa had not been permitted to read that book about the Devil’s Triangle. We might never have been able to free Ezylryb.”

“I think we should go and tell them that this is all wrong,” Eglantine spoke up for the first time.

“Before we do anything,” Soren said now in a firm voice, “I think that we have to find out for sure.”

“To the roots, Soren?” Gylfie asked.

“That’s how you found out isn’t it, Gylfie?” Soren asked.

Gylfie nodded. She was a bit embarrassed, for this was an acknowledgment that she had been engaged in the less-than-admirable activity of eavesdropping on the parliament.

Thousands of inner passages wound their way through the Great Ga’Hoole Tree and some months before, Gylfie, who often had trouble sleeping and would rise for a wander through the tree, had discovered a place deep in the roots where there was a strange phenomenon. Something happened to the timber at a certain point so that the sounds coming from the owl’s parliament chamber resonated within the roots. Entering the root structure itself was a challenge for the roots were huge and tangled, but Soren and his friends had found an ideal place where they could listen.

“Oh, I’m so excited!” Eglantine was nearly hopping up and down. “I’ve heard you talk about going to the roots but I’ve never been there. I’ve been dying to go.”

There was a sudden silence as the other four owls exchanged glances. “You’re not thinking of leaving me out. You’d better not leave me out. No fair!” Eglantine said in a desperate voice.

“I’m just not sure, Eglantine,” Soren said. “I mean, first of all you would have to promise not to tell Primrose.” Primrose, a Pygmy Owl, was Eglantine’s best friend, and she told her everything.

“I won’t, I won’t, I promise. Listen, if it hadn’t been for me, none of this stuff with higher magnetics would have started,” Eglantine said.

This was true. If it hadn’t been for Eglantine, who had been captured by the Pure Ones, imprisoned in the stone crypt of a ruined castle and exposed to the destructive powers of the flecks, none of this would ever have happened.

“Well, all right,” Soren finally said. “But not a word of this to anyone. Promise?”

“Promise.” The young Barn Owl nodded her lovely heart-shaped face solemnly.

CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_9a748bcd-ae10-5198-a618-d31b5cd9df8d)

Sprink on Your Spronk! (#ulink_9a748bcd-ae10-5198-a618-d31b5cd9df8d)

“I cannot believe that teaching young and impressionable owls about such matters can really be helpful in the long run. Higher magnetics is a strange business. We ourselves have only begun to understand it all.” Dewlap, the Ga’Hoolology ryb, was speaking.

The five young owls were perched among the roots, listening to the parliament’s debate. Soren was ready to explode. Of course higher magnetics was a strange business, especially compared to Ga’Hoolology, which was one of the most boring studies and chaws of the Great Ga’Hoole Tree. Ga’Hoolology was important, for it taught the processes of the tree itself and how to best keep the environment healthy and thriving, but it was also dull.

In this debate, Dewlap and Elvan, another ryb, were on the spronk side while Ezylryb and Bubo, the blacksmith at the Great Ga’Hoole Tree, were on the antispronk side. Strix Struma was undecided. Suddenly the five young owls were aware of another presence. They felt a shadow slide over them in this darkest of places within the tree and they froze. Then all of them together flipped their heads around. It was Otulissa!

What was she doing here? Soren was furious. Racdrops! he thought. Then Twilight beaked silently the words they were all thinking. “This really frinks me off!”

‘Racdrops’ and ‘frinks’ were two of the worst curse words an owl could say. There was only one worse – sprink, but no one ever said that. Not even Twilight. Say these words in the dining hollow and you were out in a flash. But Otulissa seemed unrattled. She merely lifted a talon to her beak to warn Twilight not to make any noise. Soren settled back down. There was absolutely nothing he could do about this now. They might as well just listen as the debate continued.

“Higher magnetics is not a science,” Dewlap was saying. “It’s dark magic, one of the shadow arts. And that book, Fleckasia and Other Disorders of the Gizzard, says as much and must instantly be removed from the shelves.”

“Wrong!” a voice boomed and sent the roots quivering so hard that little Gylfie nearly fell from her perch. It was Ezylryb speaking. “First, with all due respect, Dewlap, I must take issue with the term ‘dark magic’. You use it in a derisive manner, as if something that is dark is negative. How can darkness in our world of owls ever be thought of as negative, something less than good? For is it not in darkness that we come alive, that we rise in the night to fly, to hunt, to find, to explore, to defend and to challenge? It is in darkness that our true nobility begins to bloom. Like the flowers that open to the sunshine, we open to the dark. So let us hear no more of such expressions as ‘dark magic’. It is neither dark, nor is it magic. It is science. A science that we do not fully understand.”

“All right, we need an explanation, Otulissa!” Soren demanded when they were back in the hollow. “You followed us. Who gave you permission?” But Otulissa cut him off.

“Who gave you permission to eavesdrop?” she shot back.

“Well, no matter,” said Soren. “How come you’re following us around?”

“I have as much right to as anyone. I don’t want to be left out. I flew with you to rescue Ezylryb. You know that’s true. And who was it who figured out the Devil’s Triangle? Tell me that. And who knew about mu metal? Tell me that. Not to mention the fact that it was I who knew that fire destroyed magnetic properties. So who has more right to know about higher magnetics?”

Now it was Digger who stepped forwards. “You,” he said simply. Otulissa breathed a sigh of relief. “And,” he paused, “I honestly don’t believe that one owl has more of a right than anyone else to know something. Isn’t that what our objection to this whole spronk thing is about – our right to know? We should all be able to know.” A stillness had fallen on the group. “Now, tell us, what do you think is spronk about higher magnetics, and why don’t they want us to know about it? What are they scared of?”

“I don’t know really. I think it probably has something to do with …” she hesitated. “Well, with what happened to Eglantine after the Great Downing – to her mind, to her gizzard.”

“Was that different from what happened to Ezylryb?” Soren asked.

“Yes, I think so. Ezylryb just lost his sense of direction. He couldn’t navigate, but Eglantine …” Otulissa turned to Eglantine.

“I couldn’t feel. I was like stone – like the stone crypts they kept us in,” Eglantine said.

“So why don’t they want us to know about this?” Soren asked.

“I’m not sure. Maybe because they don’t know that much about it themselves,” said Otulissa.

“So,” said Soren, “what do we do about all this?”