Guardians of Ga'Hoole 06 - The Burning

top of the heap, he settled himself into his mess of a nest and, despite his worries, soon fell sound asleep.
    The rabbit-ear moss around Soren’s body folded him into a wonderful softness. I should be more particular about my nest and get more of this moss. But then the mossy softness began to dissolve into something else. How curious, he thought, for he could still feel the softness but it was as if it were becoming fog. A huge fog bank began to surge around him. Am I flying or am I sleeping? He felt an uncomfortable twinge in his gizzard. This was just like the fog that Gylfie had disappeared into. Maybe I can find her. I must find her. I must! Soren continued flying through the mossy fog, looking for the tiny speck of an Elf Owl. He blinked. In the distance, he saw something glimmering faintly. It was like a dim, pulsating golden light, and he was drawn toward it. But every time he thought he was near, it grew dimmer and receded deeper into the thick fog. And sometimes he thought he heard the soft strains of a song. The song wrapped around him like a vaporous mist, but then it simply melted away. This was a very strange world he was flying through. His senses seemed turned upside down. There were things that one usually heard—like a song—that he could almost feel, and there were thingsthat one usually felt—like the softness of the moss—that he was seeing instead, as if it were a fog. Fog or moss? What is going on?
    Suddenly, he heard a huge clap of thunder. A flash of lightning splintered the sky. Spume from the sea, branches, small animals were hurling past him, torn up from the earth below by the violence of the storm. There was another bone-shattering crack of thunder, and then, in a white-hot bolt of lightning that fractured the night, he saw the dark silhouette of an Elf Owl frantically beating her wings. “Gylfie!” he cried out. “Gylfie!”
    Someone was shaking him. “Wake up, Soren! Wake up!”
    “Digger! What time is it?”
    “Late. You almost slept through tweener. Cook still has some good roasted vole left, and I think there are a few slices of milkberry tart. Bubo’s waiting for you, too, and says to hurry along.”
    “Oh, yeah, Bubo,” Soren replied sleepily and then remembered that tonight was the night they were to begin their secret mission—cold coal drops into the fleck emplacements.
    “Soren?” Digger said tentatively. Soren hoped that Digger wasn’t going to ask him any questions about tonight’s mission.
    “Yeah, what is it?”
    “Soren, were you dreaming about Gylfie?”
    “Dreaming? I don’t think so.” And he didn’t think he had been dreaming about her. But this was how it was with Soren. He often didn’t remember a dream—until it became real.

CHAPTER NINETEEN
Deep in Enemy Territory
    J ust think of it, Kludd, this dear egg will hatch during the eclipse.” Nyra looked at the egg that lay in the downy nest she had made in their rock hollow in the canyonlands of St. Aggie’s. “Although I still grieve for the egg your horrid sister, Eglantine, destroyed, now we shall have a chick who will hatch as the moon is eclipsing. And you know what that means?”
    “Yes, yes.” Kludd tried not to sound impatient. He had heard this story so many times it was becoming boring. But it was a good sign, an important sign. Nyra herself had been hatched on the night of a lunar eclipse. It was said that when an owl was hatched on the night of an eclipse, an enchantment would be cast upon that bird, a powerful charm that made for a powerful owl. Some said the charm could be good and lead to greatness of spirit, but it could also be bad and lead to a profound evil. Nyra, however, had no time for thoughts of good and evil. She only believed in power. If an owl were powerful enough, it did not matterif they were what others called “good” or “evil.” These words had no meaning for her.
    Kludd had more on his mind than the hatching of his first chick. That chick might not be the only thing to arrive on the night of the lunar eclipse. That night could just as easily be the one on which the invasion began. It made perfect sense for the Guardians of Ga’Hoole to launch their invasion on a night when the moon would be blotted out by the shadow of the sun moving slowly across it. It would be the perfect cover for them. That was why Kludd had insisted that they find a hollow not right within the rocky fortress of St. Aggie’s, but out on its periphery.
    But when would these