Guardians of Ga'Hoole 02 - The Journey

with one, maybe?” Bubo cocked his head and looked quizzically at Soren.
    “I did, but I washed off the smudge.”
    “Ah, but you still be marked. Only none else can see it, except Ezylryb. He’s a tough one, Ezylryb. And smart! Smartest owl in the whole place. He wouldn’t just choose any old owl. He wanted you, mark or no mark. So you be all you can be, Soren.”
    Be all you can be. What exactly did that mean? Especially when he wasn’t even sure what he wanted to be, except not in a double chaw with Otulissa and have Ezylryb as hisryb. Soren kept thinking of Bubo’s words long after Madame Plonk’s song had ended, and Twilight and Gylfie and Digger were asleep. Or at least he thought so. But just then he heard the slightly raspy voice of Digger curling through the milky light that slipped in through the opening of their hollow.
    “Soren, are you all right?”
    “Yeah, why?”
    “I’m just worried about you. I mean, you’ve been so quiet since the tapping, and you didn’t come to tea, and all.”
    “Well, don’t worry, Digger, it’s not your problem.”
    “But it is.”
    “No, it’s not, Digger. You worry too much. You just need to worry about yourself. Not me. That’s not your job.”
    “It’s not a job, Soren,” Digger said with a slight edge in his voice. “It is what I am.”
    “Now what do you mean by that?”
    “Well, you might think I’m only a Burrowing Owl, you know, perfect for tracking with my long strong legs, but I am more than just this bunch of feathers and bare legs. I can’t explain it. I just feel things. And right now I am feeling very sorry, very bad for you.”
    Soren blinked. He thought about what Digger had just said. It made him think of his conversation with Bubo, who had, in a sense, said the same thing. When he askedBubo why he lived in a cave, he said that he was not simply a Great Horned Owl. In other words, Bubo, like Digger, was not just a bunch of feathers on a pair of legs, weak or strong, with a pair of wings. He was something more, and it was this that had drawn him to a cave in the earth to live, closer to the metals he knew and worked with. Maybe this was what Bubo had meant when he told Soren to be all he could be. Maybe it had something to do with an owl’s true nature that went beyond his or her species as a Barn Owl or a Burrowing Owl. Soren’s head swirled with these confusing thoughts.
    Then Digger asked a truly astounding question. “Soren, what do you think it means to be an owl?”
    “I don’t know. I mean, I’m not sure what you mean.”
    “I’m not sure, either,” Digger said. “But it’s just as if it is so easy to describe us. You know, there are so many things that we have that are different from other birds, but do you really think that is the meaning of being an owl? Just because our heads can spin nearly all the way around, that we can see what other birds cannot at night, that we fly slow and silent—is it just these differences that make us owls?”
    “Digger, why do you ask these questions? They’re impossible to answer.”
    “Maybe that’s why I ask them—because they are impossibleto answer. It’s kind of exciting. It means that there can be unexpected truths and meanings to why we are what we are. You see—that is why I know I am much more than strong legs and weak wings. And you are, too, Soren—you are more than your lovely white face and your sharp ears that can hear anything and your strange black eyes.”
    Digger was a curious owl. There was certainly no doubt about it. Soren looked out the opening into the last of the morning as it began to blare into the lightness of midday. If, indeed, what Digger said was true—that there were unexpected truths and meanings to be found, Soren wondered what that might mean for him. He looked at his friends sleeping peacefully now: Twilight, huge, a luminous silvery gray in the morning light; Gylfie, like a little dusty smudge not much longer than one of Twilight’s talons; and Digger, his peculiar, featherless legs, long and sinewy, his stubby tail, and his rather flattish head.
    Soren remembered when, in anticipation of going to the Great Ga’Hoole Tree, he and Gylfie imagined it as just the opposite of St. Aggie’s, but it was really much more. And maybe he could become more, too. The beak-shaped opening in the hollow flared white in the noonday sun as Soren finally fell asleep.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The Voices in the Roots
    P sst…pssst,” something hissed in