Guardians of Ga'Hoole 07 - The Hatchling

except to say that the Pure Ones have very strange ideas.” The Rogue smith’s voice dwindled to a whisper.
    “Strange ideas about what? What do you mean?”
    “Ideas about what makes a courageous owl, ideas about power.” Gwyndor shook his head in frustration. “I cannot explain it. I hardly understand it myself.” The silence between them was thick as each retreated into deep,gizzard-stirring reflections. Gwyndor suddenly had a notion. He could say something. Something that might help the poor owl without really telling him the truth outright. He wondered if Nyroc knew much about St. Aggie’s Academy. “Lad, have you heard about St. Aggie’s?”
    “Oh, yes, we conquered them long before my hatching. Their place was rich in flecks.”
    “Well, there was more,” Gwyndor said. “There was a place called the glaucidium where the young owlets were moon blinked.”
    “Moon blinked?” Nyroc asked. “What’s that?”
    So Gwyndor explained about St. Aggie’s, a cruel institution despite its claim of being a refuge for orphans. “It was in the glaucidium that the young orphan owls were forced to sleep-march under the blazing light of the moon. It broke their will and made them docile creatures totally under the power of St. Aggie’s leaders. They could not think. They could not make any decision on their own. They had no will—no free will.”
    “Free will,” Nyroc murmured the two words softly. But what does all this have to do with me? Or the Pure Ones? Or my parents? It all happened when the St. Aggie’s owls were in power. It was over when the Pure Ones conquered them.
    Gwyndor drew the young owl close to him. The shadows of the early evening mingled with the dark patches ofthe Masked Owl’s face. His beak was blacker than Nyroc had first thought and was a bit twisted. “It has everything to do with you, lad. You see, Nyroc, you have free will! You can think things through, consult your own gizzard, do what you think is right. You can be what you want to be.”
    Be what I want to be …The words rang ominously in his head. He felt his gizzard grow very still.
    “But I only want to be the best, most perfect Pure One ever,” he said. “I must grow into my father’s battle claws. I must bring these claws great honor.”
    His words echoed hollowly in the cave and as hard as he tried to summon the great enthralling image of the burnished battle claws, he could not. The claws seemed to grow dim, to dissolve like mere mist into a deepening fog. He looked back into the fire for a long time, then he wilfed and grew slender as a fragile branch.
    “What do you see, lad, what do you see?” Gwyndor whispered.
    Nyroc turned from the fire. “Nothing.”
    Gwyndor knew that the young owl was not telling the truth. Nyroc had seen something in those flames, something so awful that he could not believe it. And he was denying it not only to Gwyndor, but to himself. The Masked Owl was feeling desperate.
    “Nyroc, there isn’t much time.”
    But Nyroc turned his back, hopped to the cave’s entrance, spread his wings, and lifted himself into the sky. From the cave mouth Gwyndor watched the young owl carve a slow circle above and head back to the stone hollow he shared with his mum, Nyra.
    Nyra and Nyroc had been flying their normal rounds on their evening flight through the canyonlands. Tonight, however, Nyra noticed that her son was unusually quiet and distracted.
    “Is something troubling you, my dear?”
    “No, Mum, nothing. Nothing at all.”
    They were flying over the jagged narrow canyons that had once been occupied by the owls of St. Aggie’s. Nyroc looked down. “Is that where the glaucidium was, Mum?”
    “Why, yes, how do you know about that?”
    “Just do. You know, talk and things.”
    A nervous twinge tweaked Nyra’s gizzard. “What did you hear?”
    “Something about how they moon blinked the orphan owls so that they couldn’t think.”
    “Probably couldn’t think to begin with,” she said dismissively. “Very few Barn Owls among them.”
    “Hmmm,” Nyroc said.
    Nyra looked at him suspiciously.
    “Mum, tell me once more about the night my da was killed.”
    “Of course, dear. It was in the Battle of The Burning. We had all been brutally attacked by the owls of Ga’Hoole. They outnumbered us and had more weapons, although we were much superior in our firefighting. Nonetheless, your father fought on bravely. He and a small contingent of owls had been chasing some of the