Guardians of Ga'Hoole 02 - The Journey

it all pretty. Well, Mags the trader, she knows where there are a lot of broken-down old churches with smashed-up windows. Leave it to a magpie to find such bits, but that’s their nature and she knows Plonkie.”
    Plonkie! Soren thought, They must have been close!
    “Plonkie has a weakness for all these colored bits and things. So Mags always brings a bagful with her here when she comes to trade. Plonk thought this place needed brightening up”—Bubo gestured around the cave with his talons—“so she made me this whirlyglass. Plonk has a number of them in her apartments—as she call her place—ridiculous name, if you ask me.”
    It did brighten it up, but Soren couldn’t help but ask another question. “Don’t you miss living in a tree? I mean, it’s not like you were born a Burrowing Owl used to living in holes. Don’t you miss the sky?”
    Soren thought of his own hollow that he shared with Gylfie and Twilight and Digger. There was an opening just the shape of an owl’s beak through which they couldglimpse the sky. So during the day there was always a pretty slice of blue in their hollow and when they came back from night flights before the dawn rose, it perfectly framed the last of the evening stars. They could feel the wind and hear the stirring of the milkberry vines. Soren did not think he would like living in a cave.
    “I warn’t born a Burrowing Owl, that’s the truth. I be a Great Horned, and it ain’t customary for any Great Horned to go about life in a cave. But you see, I be a smith. It’s in my gizzard, this feeling for the metals.” He gestured toward his bookshelf that indeed had many books about metals and forging. “And we smiths, no matter if we’re Great Grays or Great Horneds or Snowies or Spotted Owls, get these special feelings in the old gizzard, you know. We fly, yes, we love the sky, but we is drawn to the earth as well—not like the Burrowing Owls, not the same thing at all. It be a strange and most peculiar force. It’s as if all these years working with the iron, we get a bit of the magnet in us, you know. Like them special metals, you know, iron. It’s got what we call a field. Well, you’ll be learning this in metals class, in higher magnetics, where all the unseeable parts are lined up. It makes this force that draws you—same thing with me—I get drawn to the very earth from which them little flecks of iron come from.”
    “Flecks!” Soren nearly screamed. Flecks were part of Soren’s worst memories from St. Aggie’s.
    “What’s a matter, boy? You gotta yarp? Go right ahead. We ain’t formal around here.”
    “At St. Aggie’s, they made us pick apart pellets for bones and things and then something they called ‘flecks.’ Only first-degree pickers could pick for flecks.”
    “You don’t say?” Bubo blinked his eyes.
    “But Gylfie and I never knew what flecks were. And, of course, we could never ask. But we did know they were kept in the library.”
    “Odd place to keep iron.”
    “Is that what flecks are—iron?”
    “Yes, in their smallest bits, but better if you can find a nice big hunk of iron ore, just like if you can find a nice hunk of silver or gold in a creek. The metals chaw brought me back a very handsome piece of gold the other day. Wouldn’t you know Plonk spotted me with it practically as soon as they lit down and was all over me to make something for her. ‘Course Boron and Barran will have a thing or two to say ‘bout that. Silver, gold, that is all kept for the whole tree and not for one vain old Snowy with a taste for the glitter.” He made the soft churring sound of laughter. “Speaking of which, Plonk’s going to start singing good light any minute. You better fly on up to your hollow. A lotto do tomorrow. Elvan thinks you’ll be ready to fly with the coals. Now you pay attention, son. Don’t go smacking into Otulissa like you nearly did in practice.” Then he squinted at Soren. “You know, not everyone is chosen to be double chawed like you. Boron and Barran must think you got something special. And Ezylryb, too.”
    “But why me? I don’t get it. I’m not that special.”
    “Oh, but you are. You had the mark on you.”
    “The mark on me? What are you talking about?”
    “Ezylryb spotted it. None of the rest of us could see it, of course. He got something special with that squinted eye of his. You’d been messing about with coals—hadn’t you, lad? Ain’t nothing to be ashamed of. Good Glaux, no! Flew