Guardians of Ga'Hoole 03 - The Rescue

walls in swirling dapples of color. There was no moonlighttonight, though. It was the time of the dwenking when the moon disappeared to barely a sliver.
    “Bubo!” Soren called. He waited. “Bubo!”
    “That you, Soren?” A large shadowy bundle of feathers started to melt out of the darkness of the cave. Great Horned Owls like Bubo were large, but Bubo himself was unusually large and towered over Soren. His two ear tufts, which grew straight up over each eye, were exceedingly bushy, giving him a slightly threatening demeanor. But Soren knew that beneath the gruffness there was no owl who had a gentler heart than Bubo. Although, like most Great Horned Owls, his feathers were basically the dull somber grays, browns, and blacks, they had been shot through with bright red and hot yellow like the hottest of fires—the ones said to have “bonk.” Bonk was the word that blacksmiths like Bubo used to describe the strongest and most energetic fires. Such fires have special hues and colors unlike ordinary ones. Bubo also could be said to have bonking colorful plumage. It was as if he had been clothed in the flames of his own forge instead of just the usual drab feathers of his species. “What brings you here, lad?”
    “Metal Beak,” Soren blurted without preamble.
    “Metal Beak!” Bubo gasped. “What’cha know about him, laddie?”
    “Him?” Soren blinked. “It’s a him?” Until that moment, Soren thought that the scrooms of his parents had been referring to a thing—something that struck dread in him, like flecks. Yes, he had suspected flecks because it was Bubo himself who had first explained to him that the flecks they had been forced to pick at St. Aggie’s were a kind of special metal with what he had called “magnetic properties.” He had said that when all the tiny unseeable parts, the flecks in these metals were lined up, it created a force that was called magnetic. Now Soren didn’t know what to think. He was relieved that Metal Beak had nothing to do with flecks. But why was Bubo so agitated? The big, flaming Horned Owl was almost hopping out of his feathers.
    “You stay clear of him. You ain’t to go tangling with that owl, Soren.”
    “Metal Beak is an owl?”
    “Oh, yeah.”
    “What kind?”
    “No one is for sure what kind he be. A bad kind, that’s all I can tell you.”
    Soren was confused. “How can you not be sure about what kind he is?”
    “Because he wears a metal beak and a metal mask over most his face.”
    “Why’s that?”
    “Wouldn’t really know,” Bubo said as if he didn’t really want to discuss it. “Some say he flies noisy like a Pygmy Owl, but he ain’t no pygmy size, I’ll tell you that. Well, maybe Barn Owl but bigger, much bigger, but not as big as a Great Gray. Some swear he’s got ear tufts like a Great Horned, yours truly here. Others say no. But there’s one thing they all agree on.”
    “What’s that?”
    Bubo’s voice dropped. “He’s the most brutal owl in all the kingdoms of owls. He’s the most vicious owl on earth.”
    Soren swore that he felt his gizzard drop to his talons. When Soren and his band had been on their journey to the Great Ga’Hoole Tree, they had come across a dying Barred Owl. To Soren and his mates it looked like a murder by St. Aggie’s top lieutenants.
    “Was it St. Aggie’s?” Glyfie had asked. And the dying Barred Owl had responded with his last breath. “I wish it had been St. Aggie’s. It was something far worse. Believe me—St. Aggie’s—Oh! You only wish!”
    Soren, Gylfie, Twilight, and Digger could not imagine anything worse, anything more brutal than St. Aggie’s. But the Barred Owl had told them differently. There was something far worse. It was nameless and now possibly faceless, but so frightened were the four owls that theyhad begun to refer to this monster or possibly monsters as the “you only wish.” The few times they had begun to ask about this evil thing, the owls of the Ga’Hoole Tree, the rybs, had deftly turned the conversation to something else. But now Bubo was telling him of this brutal owl known as Metal Beak.
    Bubo would never turn away from a young owl’s question. That simply wasn’t his style. So Soren did not feel reluctant to press him. “You know, Bubo, how Gylfie, Digger, Twilight, and I found that dying Barred Owl in The Beaks?”
    “Yes, I heard tell of that and the bobcat that you four young’uns managed to kill right stylishly, I’d say. Dropped a coal in