Guardians of Ga'Hoole 02 - The Journey

heard
    ’Bout Gylfie, Soren, Dig, and Twilight.
    Just let them get to feel my bite
    Their li’l ole gizzards gonna turn to pus
    And our feathers hardly mussed.
    Oh, me. Oh, my. They gonna cry.
    One look at Twilight,
    They know they’re gonna die.
    I see fear in their eyes
    And that ain’t all.
    They know that Twilight’s got the gall.
    Gizzard with gall that makes him great
    And every bad owl gonna turn to bait.

    Jab, jab—then a swipe and hook with the right talon. Twilight danced around the hollow. The air churned with his shadow fight, and Gylfie, the tiniest of them all, had to hang on tight. It was like a small hurricane in the hollow. Then, finally, his movements slowed and he pranced off into a corner.
    “Got that out of your system, Twilight?” Gylfie asked.
    “What do you mean ‘out of my system’?”
    “Your aggression.”
    Twilight made a slightly contemptuous sound that came from the back of his throat. “Big words, little owl.”This was something Twilight often said to Gylfie. Gylfie did have a tendency to use big words.
    “Well now, young’uns,” Mrs. P. was speaking up. “Let’s not get into it. I think, Gylfie, that in the face of cannibalism, aggression or going stark raving yoicks and absolutely annihilating the cannibals is appropriate.”
    “More big words but I like them. I like them, Mrs. P.,” Twilight hooted his delight.
    Soren, however, remained quiet. He was thinking. He was still wondering what the Great Ga’Hoole Tree would be like. What would those noble owls think of an owl like Twilight—so unrefined, yet powerful. So sassy, but loyal—so angry, but true?

CHAPTER FOUR
Get Out! Get Out!
    T hey had left the hollow of the fir tree at First Black. The night was racing with ragged clouds. The forest covering was thick beneath them so they flew low to keep the River Hoole in sight, which sometimes narrowed and only appeared as the smallest glimmer of a thread of water. The trees thinned and Twilight said that he thought the region below was known as The Beaks. For a while, they seemed to lose the strand of the river, and there appeared to be many other smaller threadlike creeks or tributaries. They were, of course, worried they might have lost the Hoole, but if they had their doubts they dared not even think about them for a sliver of a second. For doubts, each one feared in the deepest parts of their quivering gizzards, might be like an owl sickness—like grayscale or beak rot—contagious and able to spread from owl to owl.
    How many false creeks, streams, and even rivers had they followed so far, only to be disappointed? But nowDigger called out, “I see something!” All of their gizzards quickened. “It’s, it’s…whitish…Well, grayish.”
    “Ish? What in Glaux’s name is ‘ish’?” Twilight hooted.
    “It means,” Gylfie said in her clear voice, “that it’s not exactly white, and it’s not exactly gray.”
    “I’ll have a look. Hold your flight pattern until I get back.”
    The huge Great Gray Owl began a power dive. He was not gone long before he returned. “And you know why it’s not exactly gray and not exactly white?” Twilight did not wait for an answer. “Because it’s smoke.”
    “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 that was 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 just don’t settle for what we happen upon.”
    “Well,