The Journey. Kathryn Lasky

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СКАЧАТЬ you heading? What are your plans?”

      “We’re going to Hoolemere and the Great Ga’Hoole Tree,” Soren said.

      “Oh, how interesting,” the female replied in a voice that had a sneer embedded in it.

      “Oh, Mummy,” said the young owlet. “That’s the place I was telling you about. Can’t we go?”

      “Nonsense. You know how we feel about make-believe.”

      The little owlet dipped his head in embarrassment.

      “It’s not make-believe,” said Gylfie.

      “Oh, you can’t be serious, young’un,” said the male. “It’s just a story, an old legend.”

      “Let me tell you something,” said the female, whom Soren disliked more and more by the second. “It does not do any good to believe in things you cannot see, touch or feel. It is a waste of time. From the look of your flight feathers’ development, not to mention your talons, it is apparent that you are either fly-aways or orphans. Why else would you be out cavorting about the skies at such dangerous hours of the morning? I think your parents would be ashamed of you. I can tell you have good breeding.” She looked directly at Soren and blinked.

      Soren thought he might explode with anger. How did this owl know what his parents might think? How dare she suggest that she knew them so well that she knew they would be ashamed of him?

      And then there was a small soft, hissing voice. “I am ashamed of anyone who has eyes and still cannot see.” It was Mrs Plithiver. She slithered from the corner in the hollow. “But, of course, to see with two eyes is a very common thing.”

      “What is she talking about?” said the male.

      “What happened to the old days when servants served and were quiet? Imagine a nest-maid going on like this,” said the female.

      “Oh, yes,” said Mrs Plithiver. “And I shall go on a bit more, if you permit me.” She proceeded to arrange herself in a lovely coil and swung her head towards Soren.

      “Of course, Mrs Plithiver. Please go on,” Soren said.

      “I am a blind snake, but who says I cannot see as much as you?” And then she swung her head sharply towards the female Masked Owl, who seemed startled, and it did appear indeed as if Mrs Plithiver was looking directly at her with her two small eye dents. “Who says I cannot see? To see with eyes is so ordinary. I see with my whole body – my skin, my bones, the coiling of my spine. And between the slow beats of my very slow heart, I sense the world here and beyond. I know the Yonder. Oh, yes. I have known it even before I ever flew in it. But before that day did I say it did not exist? What a fool you would have called me, milady, had I said your sky does not exist because I cannot see it nor can I fly. And what a fool you are to believe that Hoolemere does not exist.”

      “Well, I never!” gasped the Masked Owl. She looked at her mate in astonishment. “She called me a fool!”

      But Mrs Plithiver continued. “Sky does not exist merely in the wings of birds, an impulse in their feathers and blood and bone. Sky becomes the Yonder for all creatures if they free their hearts and their brains to feel, to know in the deepest ways. And when the Yonder calls, it speaks to all of us, be it sky, be it Hoolemere, be it heaven or glaumora.” Glaumora was the special heaven where the souls of owls went. “So perhaps,” Mrs Plithiver continued, “there are some who need to lose their eyes to discover their sight.” Mrs P nodded her head gracefully and slithered back into the corner. A stunned silence fell upon the hollow.

      The four young owls waited until First Black to leave. “No more flying during light,” Mrs Plithiver said as she coiled into Soren’s neck feathers. “Agreed?”

      “Agreed,” the owls replied at once.

      They were now skirting the edges of the Kingdom of Tyto, the kingdom from which Soren’s family came. Although he was as alert as ever and flying most skilfully, Mrs Plithiver could sense a quietness in him. He did not join in the others’ flight chatter. She knew he must have been thinking of his parents, his lost family and, in particular, his sister, Eglantine, whom he loved most dearly. The chances of finding any of them were almost zero and she knew that Soren knew this, but still she could feel his pain. Yet he had not exactly described it as pain. He had once said to Mrs P shortly after they had been reunited that he had felt as if there were a hole in his gizzard, and that when he and Mrs P had found each other again, it was as if a little bit of the hole had been mended. But Mrs P knew that despite the patch she had provided there was still a hole.

      When the first stars began to fade, they looked for a place to land and settle in before morning. It was Gylfie who spotted an old sycamore, silvery in this moonless night. The full moon had begun its dwenking many nights before, growing slimmer and slimmer until it dwenked and disappeared entirely, and there would not be a trace of it for another night or so until the newing began.

CHAPTER TWO

       In the Company of Sooty Owls

      “Oh yes, dear. I’ve heard of it, but you know they say it’s just a story, a legend.”

      “Well, it’s not exactly that, Sweetums,” said the Sooty Owl’s mate.

      The four owls had been warmly welcomed into the large and spacious hollow in the sycamore by a family of Sooty Owls. These two owls were much nicer than the Masked Owls. Indeed very, very nice and, Soren thought, very, very boring. They called each other by nicknames – Sweetums and Swatums. They never said a cross word. Everything was just perfect. The children had all grown up.

      “Left the nest a year ago. Still nearby,” said Swatums, the male. “But who knows, Sweetums might come up with another clutch of eggs in the new breeding season. And if she doesn’t, well, we two are enough company for each other.” Then they began preening each other.

      It seemed to Soren and Gylfie that they preened incessantly. They always had their beaks in each other’s feathers, except, of course, when they were hunting. And when they were hunting they were exceptional killers. It was as predators that these Sooty Owls became the most interesting. Sweetums and Swatums were simply deadly, and Soren had to admit he had never eaten so well. Twilight had told them to watch carefully, for Sooty Owls were among the rare owls that went after tree prey and not just ground prey.

      So tonight they were all feasting on three of a type of possum that they called sugar gliders. They were the sweetest things that any of the young band of owls had ever tasted. Maybe that was why the two Sooties called each other Sweetums and Swatums. They had simply eaten too many sweet things. Perhaps eating a steady diet of sugar gliders made an owl ooze with gooiness. Soren thought he was going to go stark raving yoicks if he had to listen to their gooey talk a moment longer, but luckily they were now, in their own boring way, discussing the Great Ga’Hoole Tree.

      Sweetums was questioning her mate. “Well, what do you mean, Swatums, by ‘not exactly’? Isn’t it either a legend or not? I mean, it’s not really real.”

      “Well, Sweetums, some say it’s simply invisible.”

      “What’s simple about being invisible?” Gylfie asked.

      “Ohh, СКАЧАТЬ