Guardians of Ga'Hoole 07 - The Hatchling

wheeled around suddenly. He could hardly believe it. How had she gotten here? Nyra looked at him sharply, coldly. “We thought you’d never come to. But you have. And except for the loss of feathers, you look quite fit.” She paused. “Fit enough to kill,” she added.
    “What?”
    “Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. It is time for your Special ceremony, my dear. Be pleased I am willing to forgive your offensive behavior.” Nyroc was so stunned he could hardly speak.
    “Well, what do you say?” Nyra hissed at him. “Aren’t you going to thank me for my generosity?”
    Nyroc stared at his mother. Flames seemed to leap before his eyes. Terrible images seared his brain, sizzled in his gizzard. He simply had to know.
    “Well?” Nyra asked again.
    “Mum, could I speak to you alone before the Special ceremony? I need to know certain things.”
    She regarded him silently for a long moment before speaking. “Of course, dear.” His mother flew a short distance away from the other Pure Ones who had accompanied her. Flight was too painful for Nyroc since so many of hisfeathers had been broken off. He waddled in a most humiliating fashion after her.
    When he reached her, she was running her beak through her own sparse breast feathers. This gesture of hers always made Nyroc’s gizzard squirm with guilt. “I’m quite a sight, aren’t I?” She laughed softly. It seemed to break the tension.
    “I missed you, Nyroc. You are all I have.”
    “But, Mum.”
    “You are my world.”
    Her world? What does that mean? Nyroc wondered. To be her world. Is that love?
    “You are the Union, the Empire.”
    “But do you love me ?” Nyroc asked.
    In that moment, Nyra wilfed. Confusion and anger swam in her dark eyes. The scar that ran down her face seemed to twitch. She tried to say the word “love.” Her beak opened and a guttural sound tore from it, but Nyroc did not understand it. She ran her beak through her breast feathers again. And once more, Nyroc felt that twinge of guilt in his gizzard.
    “You do! I know you do, Mum.”
    “You shall be great, Nyroc. You shall rule not like a general but like a king, an emperor. It is your destiny. You were hatched on the night of the eclipse. Not since theancient King Hoole has there been such an owl as you. I know it. I feel it in my gizzard.”
    “King Hoole,” Nyroc repeated.
    “Yes, King Hoole,” she whispered the words. “Are you ready for the Special ceremony, my…my…my love?”
    She said it. She loves me! “Yes, Mum. Yes. I am ready.” And the images he had seen in the flames receded, then simply melted away completely. After all, Nyroc told himself, she lied to me about my father’s death because she wanted me to be strong—and to love him more. Yes, that must be it.
    They returned to the circle of trees where Stryker, Uglamore, and several of the other top lieutenants perched, waiting. Nyroc was so excited by his mother’s proclamation of love that he did not notice at first that he was standing amid trees—real trees—just as his mother had promised. He looked at them now. “Mum, these are trees, aren’t they?”
    “Didn’t I promise you that I would show you a living tree?”
    “Oh, yes, General Mam.” And Nyroc raised his talon in a perfect hail Kludd salute.
    His mother’s gizzard trembled with pride. “Bring forth the prisoner,” she commanded. Blyrric and another officer walked in with a Sooty Owl tethered between them by vines. They quickly tied him to a tree.
    Nyroc stopped in his tracks and blinked. “Phillip?”
    “Who in hagsmire is Phillip?” Nyra replied.
    “Go, Nyroc! Fly away!” Phillip screamed.
    Nyroc peered forward and blinked. The world was coming into focus—sharply, all too sharply.
    “Oh, Dustytuft. So that’s what you call him. Well, you’re going to call him ‘dead’ soon,” Nyra said.
    Nyroc turned toward his mother in disbelief. “But it was supposed to be an animal like a fox or…or…” Nyroc did not want to let the vile words out of his beak. Only now did the true horror of what had been planned for his Special ceremony explode in his brain. He let the words come. “…Or Smutty, the prisoner.” He hated himself in the very core of his gizzard for saying those words. He would not do it. This was not combat. It was murder. But he had let the words tumble from his beak to keep from thinking something even more horrible.
    “But that’s too easy. You hardly know Smutty.