The Journey

“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 fire down there? I’ve heard of those.”

“Oh, no. Nothing that big. Maybe once it was. But, really, the forests of The Beaks are minor ones. Second-rate. Few and far between and not much to catch fire.”

“Spontaneous combustion – no doubt,” Gylfie said. Twilight gave the little Elf Owl a withering look. Always trying to steal his show with the big words. He had no idea what spontaneous combustion was and he doubted if Gylfie did, either. But he let it go for the moment. “Come on, let’s go explore.”

They alighted on the forest floor at the edge of where the smoke was the thickest. It seemed to be coming out of a cave beneath a stone outcropping. There was a scattering of a few glowing coals on the ground and charred pieces of wood. “Digger,” Twilight said, “can you dig as well as you can walk with those naked legs of yours?”

“You bet. How do you think we fix up our burrows or make them bigger? We don’t just settle for what we happen upon.”

“Well, start digging and show the rest of us how. We’ve got to bury these coals before a wind comes up and carries them off and really gets a fire going.”

It was hard work burying the coals, especially for Gylfie, who was the tiniest and had the shortest legs of all. “I wonder what happened here?” Gylfie said as she paused to look around. Her eyes settled on what she thought was a charred piece of wood, but something glinted through the blackness of the moonless night. Glinted and curved into a familiar shape. Gylfie blinked. Her gizzard gave a little twitch and as if in a trance she walked over towards the object.

“Battle claws!” she gasped. From inside the cave came a terrible moan. “Get out! Get out!”

But they couldn’t get out! They couldn’t move. Between them and the mouth of the cave, gleaming eyes, redder than any of the live coals, glowered and there was a horrible rank smell. Two curved white fangs sliced the darkness.

“Bobcat!” Twilight roared.

The four owls simultaneously lifted their eight wings in powerful upstrokes. The bobcat shrieked below, a terrible sky-shattering shriek. Soren had never heard anything like it. It had all happened so suddenly that Soren had even forgotten to drop the coal that he had in his beak.

“Good Glaux, Soren!” Gylfie said as she saw her dear friend’s face bathed in the red light of the radiant coal.

Soren dropped it immediately.

There was another shriek. A shadow blacker than the night seemed to leap into the air, then plummet to the ground, writhing and yowling in pain.

“Well, bust my gizzard!” Twilight shouted. “Soren, you dropped that coal right on the cat! What a shot!”

“I – what?”

“Come on, we’re going in for him – for the kill.”

“The kill?” Soren said blankly.

“Follow me. Aim for his eyes. Gylfie, stay clear of his tail. I’ll go for the throat. Digger, take a flank.”

The four owls flew down in a deadly wedge. Soren aimed for the eyes, but one was already useless, as the coal had done its work and a still-sizzling socket wept small embers. Digger sunk his talons into an exposed flank as the bobcat writhed on the ground, and Gylfie stuck one of her talons down the largest nostril that Soren had ever seen. Twilight made a quick slice at the throat and blood spattered the night. The cat was no longer howling. It lay in a heap on the forest floor, its face smouldering from the coal. The smell of singed fur filled the night as the bobcat’s pulse grew weaker and the blood poured out from the deep gash in its throat.

“Was he after the battle claws – a bobcat?” Soren turned to Gylfie.

When the two owls had been at St Aggie’s, Grimble, the old Boreal Owl who had died helping them escape, had told them how the warriors of St Aggie’s could not make their own battle claws so they scavenged them from battlefields. But a bobcat? Why would a bobcat need battle claws? They stared at the long sharp claws that extended from the paws of the cat and looked deadlier than any battle claws.

“No,” Twilight said quietly. He had flown over to the cave and now stood in its opening. “The cat was after what was in here.”

“What’s that?” the three other owls asked at once.

“A dying owl,” Mrs Plithiver said as she slithered out from the cave where she had taken refuge. “Come in. I think he wants to speak, if he has any more breath in him.”

The owls moved into the cave opening. There was a mass of brown feathers collapsed by a shallow pit that still glowed with embers. It was a Barred Owl. Although that was hard to tell, for the white bars of his plumage were bloodstained and his beak seemed to jut out at a peculiar angle. “Don’t blame the cat,” the Barred Owl moaned. “Only here after … after … they—”

“After they what, sir?” Gylfie stepped closer to the skewed beak and bent her head to better hear the weak voice.

“They wanted the battle claws, didn’t they?” Soren bobbed his head down towards the dying owl. Did he move his head slightly as if to nod? But the Barred Owl’s breath was going, was growing shallower.

“Was it St Aggie’s?” Glyfie spoke softly.

“I wish it had been St Aggie’s. It was something far worse. Believe me – if St Aggie’s – Oh! You only wish!” The owl sighed and was dead.

The four owls blinked at one another and were silent for several moments. “You only wish!” Digger repeated. “Does he mean there’s something worse than St Aggie’s?”

“How could there be?” Soren said.

“What is this place?” Gylfie said. “Why are there battle claws here but it isn’t a battlefield? If it had been, we would have seen other owls, wounded or dead.”

They turned towards the Great Grey. “Twilight?” Soren asked.

But for once, Twilight seemed stumped. “I’m not sure. I’ve heard tell of owls – very clever owls that live apart, never mate, not really belonging to any kingdom. Do for themselves for the most part. Sometimes hire out for battles. Hireclaws, I think they call them. Maybe this was one. And The Beaks is a funny place, you know. Not many forests. Mostly ridges like the ones we’ve been flying over the last day or so. A few woods in between. So not a lot of places for owls to end up. No really big trees with big hollows. Probably a real loner, this fellow.”

They looked down at the dead Barred Owl.

“What should we do with him?” Soren asked. “I hate to leave him here for the next bobcat to come along. He tried to warn us, after all. He said, ‘Get out! Get out!’”

It was Digger who spoke next in a quavery voice. “And, you know, I don’t think he was warning us about the bobcat.”

“You think,” Gylfie said in a quiet steady voice, “that it was about these others, the ones worse than St Aggie’s?”

Digger nodded.

“But we can’t just leave him. This was a brave owl … a noble owl.” Soren spoke vehemently, “He was noble even if he didn’t live at the Great Tree as a knightly owl.”

Twilight stepped forwards. “Soren’s right. He was a brave owl. I don’t want to leave him for dirty old scavengers. If it’s not the bobcats, it’ll be the crows; if not crows, vultures.”

“But what can we do with him?” Digger said.

“I’ve heard of burial hollows, high up in trees,” Twilight said. “When I was with a Whiskered Screech family in Ambala that’s what they did when their grandmother died.”

“It’s going to take too long to find a hollow in The Beaks,” Gylfie now spoke. “You said it yourself, Twilight – it’s a second-rate forest, no big trees.”

Soren was looking around. “This owl lived in this cave. Look, you can tell. There’s some fresh pellets just outside, and there’s a stash of nuts and over there, a vole killed not long ago – probably his next dinner … I think we should—”

“We can’t leave him in the cave,” Gylfie interrupted. “Even if it is his home. Another bobcat could come along and find him.”

“But Soren is right,” Digger said. “His spirit is here.” Digger was a very odd owl. Whereas most owls were consumed with the practical world of hunting, flying and nesting, Digger – with his legs better for running than his wings were for flying, with his inclination for burrows rather than hollows – was undeniably an impractical owl. But perhaps because he was not focused on the commonplace, the ordinary drudgeries and small joys of owl life, his mind was freer to range. And range it did into the sphere of the spiritual, of the meaning of life, of the possibilities of an afterlife. And it was the afterlife of the brave Barred Owl that seemed to concern him now. “His spirit is in this cave. I feel it.”