Guardians of Ga'Hoole 07 - The Hatchling

still feared that the mask made of mist might swirl up from thesurface and once more he would have to face the dreadful scroom of his father. So he flipped his head this way and that, pivoting his neck in fantastic swivels while counting feathers. The undertail coverts had at last all grown back, along with most of his plummels. But the cause for real celebration was when number eleven of his secondary feathers came in. Oh, how he felt like hollering and hooting. But he knew that he must remain quiet and hidden in the great rotten tree that he had come to love. Nyra might have scouts out looking for him. So instead, he made up a little song, a silly little ditty. Phillip had told him that mums often sang to their children, that his had. But Nyra had never sung to Nyroc. Even so, as spring approached, this song came to him. Someday when he was much older and had chicks of his own, he would sing it to them.
    In the meantime, he sang it quietly to himself.

There is a feather I’ve been told
    That helps owls fly high and bold.
    Oh, welcome back, number eleven,
    You lift me from hagsmire up to heaven.

    Nyroc hopped back and forth on his feet, entertaining himself with the whispered song. The rabbit’s ear mossbeneath him had grown quite tattered. He had replaced some of it with another moss he had found nearby but it was not nearly so soft as the rabbit’s ear moss.
    Nyroc knew that soon he would have to leave the safety of the old rotted tree. He didn’t know where he would go, but this part of the Shadow Forest was too close to where he had left his mother, and with the weather improving, he feared she would renew her efforts to find him. Then there was his father’s scroom that he had seen again, hovering over the pond one moonlit night. No, he would have to leave. He told himself he would go when spring came. He longed to go to Phillip’s hatching place—that magical and most beautiful forest of all—Silverveil.
    The first shoots of spring were pushing out of the ground. On the pond, flat green leaves spread. Yes, Nyroc now knew the color green. He was entranced by it. Spring passed into summer and he still had not left. On the water, splendid pink flowers unfolded on flat, round leaves, making the pond a beautiful watery garden.
    From his shelter in the rotted trunk, he had learned more than just the legends recited at daybreak. He learned about the lives of true owl families. He heard parents giving gentle scoldings and the homey lessons of kindness, and teaching something called “manners.” He loved thesoft lullabies the mothers crooned to their young to help them fall asleep as the night broke into day.
    Why did my mum never sing me one of those lovely lullabies? Nyroc wondered. Just above him as the first glimmer of pink stained the sky, he heard a Boreal Owl’s voice, which sounded like chimes, begin one of Nyroc’s favorite stories.
    Once upon a time, before there were kingdoms of owls, in a time of ever-raging wars, there was an owl born in the country of the North Waters and his name was Hoole. Some say there was an enchantment cast upon him at the time of his hatching, that he was given natural gifts of extraordinary power. But what was known of this owl was that he inspired other owls to great and noble deeds and that although he wore no crown of gold, the owls knew him as a king, for indeed his good grace and conscience anointed him and his spirit was his crown. In a wood of straight, tall trees he was hatched, in a glimmering time when the seconds slow between the last minute of the old year and the first of the new, and the forest on this night was sheathed in ice.
    By the time the owl finished the story, Nyroc knew that the owlets, as all the other owlets in this forest, would be asleep and it would be time for him to move out in the light of day and hunt. But he dreamed of someday going to a place where he would not have to hide. But not today, not tonight. He wanted to stay just a little bit longer, here in this fallen tree that was the best home he had everknown, with all its hollows and tunnels and plentiful supply of moss and insects of every kind.
    Not yet, Nyroc thought. Not yet. Even though every single one of his feathers had grown back and he was able to fly perfectly— just one more day, he thought, one more night.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The Riddle of the Forest
    T here is a difference between a day forest and a night forest—especially in the summer when a vast heat lies upon