Guardians of Ga'Hoole 03 - The Rescue

flat without Ezylryb, the night less black, the stars dull, even as this comet, like a great raw gash in the sky, ripped apart the dawn.
    “Some say a comet’s an omen.” Soren felt the branch he was perched on quiver. “Octavia!” The fat old nest-maid snake slithered out onto the branch. “What are you doing out here?” Soren asked.
    “Same thing as you. Looking for Ezylryb.” She sighed. But, of course, Octavia, like all nest-maid snakes, who tidied up the hollows of owls and kept them free of vermin, was blind. In fact, she had no eyes, just two small indentations where eyes should be. But nest-maids were renownedfor their extraordinary sensory skills. They could hear and feel things that other creatures could not. So, if there were wing beats out there, wing beats that had the sound peculiar to those of Ezylryb, she would know. Although owls were silent fliers, each stirred the air with its wings in a unique fashion that only a nest-maid snake could detect. And Octavia, with her musical background and years in the harp guild under Madame Plonk’s guidance, was especially keen to all sorts of vibrations.
    The harp guild was one of the most prestigious of all the guilds for which the blind nest-maid snakes were chosen to belong. Dear Mrs. Plithiver, who had served in Soren’s family’s hollow and with whom he had been miraculously reunited, was also a member of this guild. The snakes wove themselves in and out of the harp’s strings, playing the accompaniment for Madame Plonk, the beautiful Snowy Owl with the shimmering voice. Octavia had served as a nest-maid for Madame Plonk and Ezylryb. Indeed, she and Ezylryb had arrived at the Great Ga’Hoole Tree together from the land of the North Waters of the Northern Kingdoms years and years ago. She was completely devoted to Ezylryb and, although she had never said much about how she and the old Screech Owl had first met, there were rumors that she had been rescued by Ezylryb and that she, unlike the other snakes, had notbeen born blind. Something had happened to make her go blind. She certainly did not have the same rosy scales as the other snakes. She was instead a pale greenish blue.
    The old snake sighed again.
    “I just don’t understand,” Soren said. “He’s too smart to get lost.”
    Octavia shook her head. “I don’t think he’s lost, Soren.” Soren swung his head around to look at her. Then what does she think? Does she think he is dead? Octavia said very little these days. It was almost as if she was afraid to speculate on the fate of her beloved master. The others, Barran and Boron, the monarchs of the great tree, speculated constantly, as did Strix Struma, another revered teacher. But the creature who knew Ezylryb the best and the longest offered no such speculations, no ideas, and yet Soren felt she did know something that truly scared her. Something so horrible as to be unspeakable. Thus, her seemingly impenetrable silences. Soren felt this about Octavia, he felt it in his gizzard where all owls sensed their strongest feelings and experienced their most powerful intuitions. Could he share this with someone? Who? Otulissa? Never. Twilight? Not Twilight. He was too action-oriented. Maybe Gylfie, his best friend, but Gylfie was too practical. She liked definite evidence, and was a stickler for words. Sorencould imagine Gylfie pushing if he said that he felt Oc-tavia knew something: What do you mean by “know”?
    “You better get along, young’un,” Octavia said. “Time for you to sleep. I can feel the sun. The dawn’s getting old.”
    “Can you feel the comet, too?” Soren asked suddenly.
    “Ooh.” It was more like a soft groan or a whispering exhalation. “I don’t know.” But she did know. Soren knew it. She felt it, and it worried her. He shouldn’t have asked, and yet he could not stop himself from asking more. “Do you believe it really is an omen like some say?”
    “Who is some?” she asked sharply. “I haven’t heard anyone in the tree nattering on about omens.”
    “What about you? I heard you just a few minutes ago.”
    Octavia paused. “Listen, Soren, I’m just a fat old snake from the Northern Kingdoms, the country of the North Waters. We’re a naturally suspicious lot. So don’t you pay me any heed. Now flutter back down to your hollow.”
    “Yes, ma’am,” Soren replied. It didn’t pay to upset a nest-maid snake.
    So the young Barn Owl swooped down through the spreading branches of the Great