Guardians of Ga'Hoole 07 - The Hatchling

the War Cycle, and one called the Star Cycle. But it was the legends of first fires and first colliers that most interested him. He wanted to know how King Hoole fit into this cycle. And he wondered what the Ember of Hoole had to do with King Hoole. It was frustrating because he caught only bits and pieces of the stories. Most annoying of all, however, was when the storyteller would say something like, “ Well, we all know what happened on that snowy night when Hoole was hatched. ”Nyroc wanted to scream, “ No, we don’t all know! Please tell the whole story! ” But, of course, he couldn’t. He had to remain hidden and completely silent and alone.
    Far away from the Shadow Forest, across the Sea of Hoolemere, a Spotted Owl had also been dreaming. She would not remember the dream when she woke. But as she dreamed, it seemed very real. She could almost smell the breath of the huge wolves, the ones they called dire wolves, as they loped around the cone of the volcano. They were guarding it because it held something more precious than gold, more powerful than flecks—the Ember of Hoole. But it did not make sense, of course, to guard it. “This isn’t logical,” Otulissa had heard herself saying to the largest wolf. “No owl can dive for this coal. They will die in the vapors and the flames. Why spend all this time guarding it?”
    The wolves stopped in their tracks and dropped open their muzzles. Their long fangs flashed in the moonlight as they bayed and then the baying turned to laughter. They’re laughing at me, she had thought. Why are they laughing at me? She flew down the steepest side of the volcano. She felt its shudders shake the earth. Sparks began to fly. I have to get out of here. I’ll be burned. A coal landed on one of her coverts. She shook it off. But she could smell the odor ofsinged feather. She had dived into hundreds of forest fires. Retrieved all kinds of coals in her job as a collier. She had fought with fire but she had never ever been singed before.
    And then that terrible image came back to her. The night Strix Struma had died in battle. One wing torn off. The other in flames as her beloved ryb and commander of the Strix Struma Strikers plummeted into the Sea of Hoolemere. In her dream, she had watched, horrified. “It’s too real…too real,” she whispered to herself as she saw the fiery bundle of feathers swallowed by the sea. Otulissa herself seemed to hang in midair, transfixed by the sea and not stirring a wing, crying for her beloved teacher. Then suddenly from the tumultuous waters, feathers spewed forth. But they were not the feathers of a Spotted Owl at all. Not the feathers of Strix Struma. They were buff-colored with tiny speckles of brown and then there was the terrible shree of a Barn Owl. She felt the desperation of that owl. She wanted to fly to him, but in her dream, her wings locked. She was yeep in her own dream. This cannot be, Otulissa protested in her dream. I have never gone yeep in my life. Not even in battle. Never!
    When Otulissa woke up the next evening at tween time, she had no recollection of the dream but that shree and the roar of the sea still rang in her ears. But then, shethought, a winter storm is brewing in the Sea of Hoolemere. Ezylryb had said that there was extremely nasty weather coming out of the Shadow Forest. Perhaps it had been the wind. Otulissa was a very rational bird. She did not believe in dreams. She believed in science. Even though she’d had a full day’s sleep, she was awfully tired. She sensed the low-pressure front being pushed in by the foul weather and decided that it accounted for her fatigue. She reached now for one of her favorite books, Atmospheric Pressures and Turbulations: An Interpreter’s Guide. It was written by a distinguished relative of Otulissa’s, Strix Emerilla, a renowned weathertrix of the last century.
    For Nyroc, on the other side of the great Sea of Hoolemere, the nights passed and the days lengthened. The winter storms that battered the forest and took their toll on the oldest and most frail of the trees before blowing out to that immense sea became fewer. Winter grew old and the snow gradually began to melt. The sun, which had barely risen above the horizon in days, began to climb higher, a sign that winter was wearing out and spring could not be too far away. Nyroc’s feathers were growing back, but he dared not go to the edge of the pond at night to look at his reflection in its black water. He