Guardians of Ga'Hoole 03 - The Rescue

difference?
    “So, as I was saying, I was looking for something new and different. I really wanted to separate myself from the Plonks. My sister had been good to me, but my father seemed not to care. I really had no one else to turn to. So I just left. I flew about in the Northern Kingdoms for a year or more, and then I came upon Octavia. You know Oc-tavia, don’t you?”
    “Of course,” they all cried.
    “She’s Ezylryb’s and your sister’s nest-maid snake,” said Soren.
    “Oh, she’s working for my sister now, is she? Well, she’s a good old soul. I, of course, met her before she was blind.”
    The owls all gasped in disbelief.
    “You mean,” said Gylfie, “she wasn’t born blind?”
    “I had heard a rumor that she had not been born blind, but I really didn’t believe it. I thought all nest-maid snakes were born blind,” Soren said.
    “They are—except for Octavia. Haven’t you noticed that she’s not rosy-scaled like the others?”
    Soren had noticed and wondered about Octavia’s pale greenish-blue scales.
    “But that’s a whole other story. It was Octavia who told me about a rogue smith on the island of Dark Fowl, a desolate place that is lashed constantly by ice storms and gales, rocky, not a tree, not a blade of grass. But this smith was supposed to be one of the most superb blacksmiths on earth. So I went there. I wanted to learn how to make battle claws. I wanted to avenge my mother’s death. I had a dream of making battle claws that would slice to shreds the clan that had killed my mum. I had the fire in my gizzard as they say. Smithing came naturally to me, more natural than singing, I’ll tell you.” She sighed and seemed to reflect happily for a moment. “And I did kill my stepmum with some magnificent claws I made.”
    “You killed your stepmother?” Twilight had swollen upwith excitement. Never having even known his own parents he had no romantic notions in general about them, and an evil stepmother set his gizzard to boiling. Then the Great Gray looked down at his talons in what Soren thought was a pathetic display of shyness—for shy was the last thing that Twilight was. “I don’t want you to think I’m a violent sort of bird.”
    “Ha!” the other three owls laughed.
    “Well, I’m not!” Twilight said stubbornly and blinked at his mates.
    However, any one of them could see the Great Gray could hardly contain himself.
    “But how’d you do it? Quick slice to the gullet? How? Talon to talon? Stab with the beak to the nether down?”
    “I don’t care about how,” Soren interrupted. “But why? I mean, I know she was bad, but that bad?”
    “She betrayed my father. Turned out she was a slipgizzle for the other clan. Had planned to marry him from the start—as soon as they got rid of Mum.”
    “How did you learn this?” Digger asked.
    “I had my ways. Working for a master rogue smith you find out a lot of things. All sorts come to you by the by.”
    Digger looked at the coal-dusted Snowy carefully. “Did Octavia have something do with this? Or maybe—” But the blacksmith cut him off.
    Cut Digger off too quickly, Soren observed. Then the rogue smith of Silverveil seemed to clam up. Oh, she was very hospitable, giving them the best parts of the voles and making sure that they had comfortable perches for the day.
    Soren did have one more question for her but something kept him from asking it. He wondered, however, if the rogue smith of Silverveil thought that Metal Beak was in any way connected with Ezylryb’s disappearance. Soren wrestled with his question all through their daytime sleep and finally, just before First Black when he noticed that the Snowy was stirring, he decided he just had to ask.
    He flew down to where the blacksmith was taking some coals from a niche in the wall to build up her forging fire.
    “I knew you’d come and ask,” the Snowy Owl said. Soren blinked. “You want to know if Metal Beak had something to do with Ezylryb.”
    “Yes. How did you know?”
    “Never mind that,” she snapped. “The fact is I’m not sure, but Ezylryb, well, how to explain? Ezylryb has a past. He is a legend. He does have enemies.”
    “Enemies?” This was unbelievable to Soren. Ezylryb never went into battle. This was a well-known fact at the great tree. He might be gruff, but he was the most nonviolentowl imaginable. How could such an owl have enemies? He didn’t even own battle claws. In fact, he once said he despised them. Thought the