Guardians of Ga'Hoole 07 - The Hatchling

member of a noble avian species, despite his mum and da.
    Nyroc knew that he must lie low, literally, and wait quietly and patiently for his feathers to grow in. He thought he was most likely in some owl’s territory, and he knew that owls did not like their air and their earth invaded by other owls. So although Nyroc longed to live in a hollow like the ones in the great trees of Silverveil Phillip had described, he must settle for a ground nest. If any small rodents skittered across this pebbly beach he would certainly hear them, but with winter set in—even now it had begun to snow—he could not count on bugs.
    A tree on a high bank of the pond had toppled in aprevious storm. Its entire root base had been yanked up ferociously by the force of the winds. In a kind of limping flight that hardly got him off the ground, Nyroc went over to see if it might offer any refuge for a very tired and tattered owl.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
A Fallen Tree
    T he tree, in fact, offered Nyroc a variety of cozy nesting spots. In the huge exposed root-ball were snug little pockets heavy with clots of dirt and dangling twisted roots. In the thick trunk itself there were several hollows and smaller holes, none of which seemed to be occupied at the moment. He had worried that one of these spaces might make a nice den for a fox, and he certainly wasn’t up to taking on a fox. He had half hoped he might find a chipmunk, or a smallish rat, in one—he definitely was hungry.
    But more than hungry, he was tired. So just as the light began to shred the night, Nyroc settled down into a hollow that was halfway up the fallen trunk. He was so tired, he did not even realize that he had fallen asleep on a cushion of moss, the very same kind of moss that Phillip had once described to him, the softest to be found in a forest—rabbit’s ear moss.
    By the time Nyroc awoke the next evening, the worldhad turned white and the pond had disappeared entirely under a blanket of deep snow. His first thought was food ! He was starved. But the sounds that he had fallen asleep with, the creaking of the trees in the wind, the clicks of a small creature’s paws on the pebbles of the beach, seemed distant, almost erased by the snow. How would he ever hunt for anything in the thickness of this silence? How would he even hear the skitterings of a mouse or a vole?
    He stepped cautiously out of his hollow and blinked. He was very cold with so few feathers, but he was also very hungry. Then he did hear something, a very small sound coming from the inside of the tree. He quickly stepped back into the hollow and listened. It was a crispy, creeping sound, an insect of some sort. But it was so cold, how could there be any bugs alive? Then he realized that inside this tree trunk it was not cold at all. Despite his nearly featherless condition, as he slept he had not been cold. As he was realizing this, an odd-looking thing crept right by his beak. He snapped it up before he had time to even know what he was eating. It was crunchy on the outside and soft in the middle. Yum! He swallowed it whole and immediately felt his hunger lessen. Then to his wonder, another one crept by. He snapped it up and scratched withhis talon at the small opening it had come from. The wood seemed to be completely rotten and riddled with passageways that tunneled through the tree. Hadn’t Uglamore once told him that nothing was better than a good old rotten tree for food? And sure enough, inside the rotted trunk, there was a veritable feast of insects and worms and all variety of creepy-crawly things that he did not even know the names for, but they would certainly satisfy his hunger.
    Maybe his luck was finally turning. This uprooted massive and rotted tree was Glaux-sent. Bugs and worms were not as hearty fare as good bloody meat but he felt his energy coming back quickly and perhaps, he thought, when he had regrown enough feathers he would be able to go out and really hunt. And maybe by that time the snow would have melted.
    He ate and slept and rested. And for now he felt safe.
    Every day Nyroc grew stronger. He spent a great part of his time thinking, and although he was quite comfortable in the rotten tree trunk, well fed and warm, there was one incontrovertibly sad fact of his life. He was alone—completely alone. He thought a lot about this. The only friend he had ever had was dead. Although Phillip had never spoken the word “love,” the Sooty must have lovedhim, for he was willing to