Guardians of Ga'Hoole 07 - The Hatchling

leaping and sliding through the cave. Nyroc blinked. Never had he seen such shadows. They were huge. The flickering light of the fire made them jigger and jump in an odd danceacross the stone walls of the cave. A bright realization flooded Nyroc’s mind. It is light that makes shadows. Look to the light. Look to the flames. Then he looked into the flames. His gizzard lurched. I am supposed to be seeing the bones of my father burning, he thought. But I am seeing something else.
    Nyroc saw a landscape he did not recognize. And across this land, creatures with four legs and peculiarly colored eyes loped. The fire was crackling loudly now but beneath its hisses and snapping Nyroc thought he heard low growls. Darker shapes like gray mist floated through the air above the four-legged creatures. Then he saw something else. His gizzard gave a deep strange quiver, and he felt a pull deep within himself. He peered harder into the fire. It seemed at first like one of the fire’s flames. It was orange and at its center there was a lick of deep blue like the sky on a clear day. As he looked closer, Nyroc saw yet another color around the edge of the blue. It was the same color as the creatures’ eyes. Was this green? Was this a leaf? Was this the color Dustytuft had tried to describe when he spoke of trees? Something about the tricolor shape still hovering in the dancing flames entranced Nyroc and he could not look away. He felt himself being pulled to this flame. He imagined himself plunging into it, diving right into its center.
    Nyra was chanting a song for fallen warriors and theother owls were watching her, all except for Gwyndor, the Rogue smith. He was watching Nyroc.
    The young’un was seeing something. The old Rogue smith could tell by the way Nyroc’s eyes stared, unblinking, into the gizzard of this fire. Gwyndor studied the reflection of the flames in Nyroc’s eyes. He felt his own gizzard give a twang. Was it the Ember of Hoole he saw reflected in those young eyes? Gwyndor, like all blacksmiths, looked upon fires as living creatures with an anatomy not entirely different from that of an owl. Just as owls had gizzards in which they felt their deepest emotions, fires had gizzards, too. There were some owls who had the gift to look right into the flames of a fire and find that gizzard, and with this came a special kind of vision. Few had it. Gwyndor did not. Even Bubo, the blacksmith of the Great Ga’Hoole Tree, did not possess it. Orf, who crafted the finest battle claws in the world on the remote island of Dark Fowl, was said to have it. Long ago, there had been a very few colliers who were said to be able to see a fire’s gizzard. Still, none of these had ever been able to find the legendary Ember of Hoole. There had been many stories about the Ember and the powers it held within its deepest blue. It was a blue like the color of the bonk embers that the smiths favored for their hottest fires. But the Ember of Hoole was more than just a bonk ember. Much more.
    Gwyndor had never seen an owl stare so deeply into the flames. And such a young owl at that! What was he seeing in that fire? The Rogue smith had not wanted to come to the canyonlands. He had no desire to have any dealings with the Pure Ones. Since the last battle, The Burning, he had wanted to fly clear of this very odd group of owls who had such strange beliefs about the pureness of Barn Owls. He had been quite surprised that the little Sooty was permitted to stand so close to the son of the great fallen leader, Kludd. There wasn’t a Rogue smith around when Kludd lived who had not been called upon to fashion a mask or claws for him or his followers.
    Gwyndor now wondered why he had come here—all the way from Ambala. He remembered the night that he decided to go. Earlier in the evening he had visited the strange little Spotted Owl called Mist where she lived with the eagles. It had been rumored for years that Mist was actually the legendary Hortense, hero of Ambala, because of the undaunted courage she had shown when she had worked as a slipgizzle, years ago at St. Aggie’s. The heroism of Hortense was so much a part of the lore and history of Ambala that almost every other owl you met there, male or female, had been named after her. Gwyndor was not sure if Mist was or was not the real Hortense. All he knew was that he enjoyed her company when he wentto visit the eagles. She was so elderly now and so faded that she did in fact seem more mist than