Guardians of Ga'Hoole 04 - The Siege

Gylfie long to figure out that the reason for the march was to make hundreds of young owlets rotate through the moon’s glare. And no one was allowed to stay in the safety of the shadows for too long. For among older owls it was known that to sleep with one’s head exposed to the brightness of the moon’s light, especially a moon at the full shine, had a peculiar effect on the gizzards and the minds of owls, especially young impressionable ones. Through some mysterious process, their own personalities began to disintegrate, they lost any sense of their uniqueness, and their will simply evaporated.
    To aid in this process, they were each assigned a number in place of their name. While marching, they were told to repeat their old name endlessly. A name, or any word, repeated endlessly breaks up into meaningless sounds. It is no longer a name. It is just a senseless collection of noises. So Gylfie and Soren had pretended to say their names while marching, but instead, they had repeated their assigned numbers. Thus their numbers became meaningless, not their names.
    Soren and Gylfie had developed other tricks as well. Some were riskier than others. But the most effective strategy of all in resisting moon blinking had been tosilently whisper the legends of Ga’Hoole. At that time in Gylfie’s and Soren’s lives they had thought they were only repeating stories. They had no idea that the Great Ga’Hoole Tree really existed, and that the stories were true. By repeating these tales, Soren and Gylfie were able to resist moon blinking and even moon scalding, which was far more damaging.
    So their work in teaching the other owls these ruses began in earnest. Each owl was given one or two stories of the Ga’Hoolian cycle to remember and retell in a whisper to themselves and to one another. It was Soren’s belief that if one knew the story well enough, one did not have to say the words out loud. The story began to live within them, within their gizzards until each owl became a guardian of his or her story.
    Ruby found remembering the stories of Ga’Hoole much easier than sorting out and remembering the clans of the Northern Kingdoms. Since Ruby was the best flier of the group and a superb collier, it was her task to be the teller of the stories that were about forest fires. These were called the Fire Cycle.
    Twilight, of course, was the teller of the War Cycle. Gylfie, as a member of the navigation chaw and thoroughly knowledgeable about the stars and the constellations, told the stories of the Star Cycle. The Star, the Fire, and theWar cycles were the three main cycles. The rest of the stories were of weather, heroes, and villains. Otulissa, Digger, and Soren divided these up among themselves. They were the stories on which owls grew strong and bold. They were stories to be learned by heart and by gizzard.

CHAPTER SEVEN
A Special Flint Mop
    I t was the day before the mission. As the light grew dusky, the seven owls began to stir. They were all nervous and slept little during that day. The three owls who did not share a hollow with Digger, Gylfie, Soren, and Twilight were especially jittery. It wasn’t easy being alone in one’s hollow with only a couple of other owls who knew nothing of the mission you were about to embark upon. One was completely isolated with his or her thoughts and fears. A sense of dread inevitably began to creep through each owl’s gizzard. Will I do my part? Will I remember my section of the Ga’Hoole cycle? Will I be moon blinked? Moon scalded? Or perhaps even worse, would they be discovered and then subjected to some brutal punishment, such as the one called laughter therapy, in which feathers were plucked from an owl’s wings?
    Ruby looked enviously at her hollowmates, another Short-eared and a Great Horned Owl, as they snoozed, their sleep smooth as summer air, undisturbed by anythoughts of wing pluckings or moon scaldings. In her head she kept repeating the saga of the famous collier from ancient times. The words that opened this story of the Fire Cycle sang softly in her head.
    It was in the time of the endless volcanoes. For years and years in the land known as Beyond the Beyond, flames had scraped the sky, turning clouds the color of glowing embers both day and night. The volcanoes that had been dormant for years had begun to erupt. Ash and dust blew across the land and, although it was thought to be a curse from Great Glaux on high, it was something else. For this was the time when