The Siege. Kathryn Lasky

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СКАЧАТЬ 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

       Sprink on Your Spronk!

      “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?”

      “We need to confront them,” Twilight said. “I’m not much for book learning, but I don’t like the idea that someone can tell me I can’t learn something. Makes me want to learn it all the more.”

      “But if we confront them,” Gylfie said, “we’re back to that same old problem again.”

      “What’s that?” asked Otulissa.

      “The last time we listened in at the roots and found something out and wanted to say something about it, way back last summer, well, we couldn’t because then we would have had to admit that we had been eavesdropping and we would get into really big trouble,” said Gylfie.

      “Hmmm,” Otulissa blinked her eyes shut and kept them that way while she thought a moment. “I see the problem.” Then suddenly she opened her eyes. The amber light in them flickered with a new brightness. “I have an idea. Remember that book they were talking about, the book that had to be removed from the shelves – Fleckasia and Other Disorders of the Gizzard?”

      “Yes,” Soren replied.

      “Well, what if I go to the library and ask the book matron to fetch it for me? Then we’ll see what happens. This will be a test case, so to speak,” said Otulissa.

      The other owls looked at one another. Otulissa was smart. And this was a very good idea.

      So it was planned that as tween time neared, when the last drop of the day’s sun began to СКАЧАТЬ