Guardians of Ga'Hoole 07 - The Hatchling

exceedingly hot, and now in the dwindling night, the sky pulsed with silent flashes of light—heat lightning. The air was heavy with the smell of a summer storm about to break. He should find shelter. There were several old rotted-out stumps that would do for a day. Just one day.
    He soon tucked himself into a lovely old stump, overgrown with mosses and lichen. In a tree not too far away,he had heard a mother Barn Owl begin to tell a story from the Fire Cycle. He had been sleepy, but he was suddenly alert. “You see,” the mother was saying, “it was Grank, the first collier, who became the ryb for King Hoole.” Hoole! He knew there was a connection. “Now, dears, you know, of course, how the legend of the coming of Hoole begins.” And for once Nyroc knew what the storyteller would say next. The words were among the most beautiful of any of the legends. 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…
    But now the mum was telling something he had never heard before. Was it part of the Fire Cycle or the Hatching Cycle stories? Her voice was lovely on this summer night. “But, young’uns, even before the great Hoole had been hatched, there were others who feared his coming. It was rumored that a hagsfiend from hagsmire had been sent to destroy the egg. The father of the hatchling Hoole had been murdered several days before the egg had hatched out. And with his dying breath, he said to his mate, ‘Seek out my old ryb, Grank, and he shall know what to do. There is no choice, my dear. You must give the egg to Grank. He shall care for it and raise the chick as if it were his own. These are dangerous times.’ And the mother knew that the father was right. It must be the hardest thing inthe world for a mother to part with her young’un before it even hatched.”
    “Oh, Mum,” one of the little chicks interrupted, “you wouldn’t do that to us, would you?”
    “If it meant you would die if I did not give you up, I would certainly do it.”
    Nyroc could hardly believe what he was hearing. This was a part of the cycle he knew nothing of. That Hoole was taken from his mother and raised by Grank.
    “So, what happened?” said another voice. “Did the hatchling learn how to be a collier like Grank?”
    “Soren’s a collier, isn’t he?” said another.
    Now Nyroc stood straight up, as straight as he could in the cramped hollow of the old stump. Soren…a collier! They’re talking about Soren? My uncle.
    “Yes, so they say.”
    “Quit interrupting,” said one of the chicks. “Tell the part about the Ember of Hoole and how Hoole found it.”
    “That’s a story for another day, young’uns.”
    “Oh, no…please, Mum…just a little more…” They all began pleading for another little bit of the story, and Nyroc felt like joining in. The problem was that young chicks could never concentrate on anything for long so by the next dawn, they might be asking for a completely different story. It might take forever for Nyroc to hear thestory of Grank and Hoole and the Ember. Especially the Ember. And he needed to. He was almost desperate in his need to hear the story of Grank and Hoole, and especially the Ember of Hoole. Somehow this story of the coal had something to do with him. He wasn’t sure what, but he had to find out. He would have to wait, however. Story time was over. He yawned sleepily although it was nearly time for him to start hunting. He could see the dawn through the cracks in the rotted stump.
    Hoole is from the time of legends, and the Ember of Hoole was hidden in ancient times by the collier Grank. But Soren lives and the tree is real. Maybe, Nyroc thought, someday I will go to the Great Ga’Hoole Tree and meet my uncle Soren and become a collier.
    Maybe not! said another voice in his head. Nyroc felt his gizzard lurch. He opened one eye halfway and peered out from the hollow in the stump. A gray shadow loomed against the rising sun. The dawn wind drove the tatters of mist, which swirled, then clumped together. Nyroc felt dread in his gizzard as he saw the familiar shape of the horrible mask—first the beak, then the hollow eyes. Just as the sun slipped up over the horizon, breaking like a bloodied yolk low in the sky, the mask seemed to turn molten, a fiery red. The beak moved.
    Maybe not! The two words thundered in Nyroc’s head.His gizzard froze, and he felt himself