Guardians of Ga'Hoole 08 - The Outcast

them Pure Ones?”
    “A slipgizzle?” Nyroc had no idea what a slipgizzle was.
    “A spy,” the owl explained.
    “I can’t stand the Pure Ones, I tell you. I can’t stand them.”
    “Why should we trust you?” the owl called Silvertip demanded.
    “Why should we take your word?” the smallest of the Great Grays said. He was still much bigger than Nyroc.
    The older one spoke again. “Perhaps, young’un, you’ll prove yourself someday. But until that day, we suggest you leave. Yes, leave, or if you want…”
    “He’s got to leave Ambala, now, Tup.”
    “Ambala? I’m in Ambala?”
    “Yes,” the one called Tup said. “We are a peaceable place. We have suffered a lot through the years, first from the owls of St. Aggie’s when they stole the eggs from our very nests, and then from the Pure Ones. But since the last great battle when the Guardians of Ga’Hoole defeated them, we have had peace. We don’t want any more trouble.”
    “I promise I won’t be any trouble.”
    “Promises aren’t enough, young’un,” Tup said. There was a tinge of sympathy in his voice. He looked to his companions. “But seeing as it’s getting on to breaklight, why don’t we let him stay another day?”
    There was some grumbling from the other two.
    Then Silvertip spoke. “Well, as long as he agrees to stay right in this sycamore. There’s a hollow farther up the trunk that’ll do for the night.”
    “Thank you,” Nyroc said meekly. “That is very kind of you.”
    The third Great Gray added, “Well, you might change your mind about staying in that hollow. It’s haunted, you know.”
    “Hortense, no need to frighten him.”
    “Well, I just thought he should know,” Hortense said.
    “What’s haunted?” Nyroc asked and looked at the owl called Hortense, an odd name for a male owl, he thought.
    “The hollow,” Hortense replied.
    “Haunted by my father’s scroom?” Nyroc asked in alarm. But the scroom had appeared only over the lake. Never had his father’s scroom followed him into a nesting place.
    “Oh, no. It’s haunted by a Fish Owl named Simon. Your father killed him many years ago,” Hortense replied.
    “What happened?” Nyroc asked with a sick feeling stealing over his gizzard.
    “It was horrible.” Tup spoke now. “You see, Simon was a pilgrim owl who had come here from the Glauxian Retreat in the Northern Kingdoms to do good, help the weak, serve the poor. Your father, Kludd, had just been in a bloody and fiery encounter with the Ga’Hoolian owls. His mask was actually melting on his face. It was Simon who rescued him and nursed him back to health.”
    “And he killed this Simon?”
    The three Great Grays nodded.
    “But why? Why would he kill an owl who helped him?”
    Tup stepped forward on the branch and fastened his gleaming yellow eyes onto Nyroc’s black ones. “Because he was a brutal, insane owl. Simon knew he had survived, and Kludd wanted everyone to think he was dead. It would work to his purposes.” Tup paused, then added, “Of course, now he is dead.”
    “But your mother is far from dead,” the owl called Silvertip said. “She is alive and well, and flying about getting hireclaws and Rogue smiths. They say she wants to have them make her fire claws.”
    “But Gwyndor refused,” Silvertip said.
    “Gwyndor! I know Gwyndor,” Nyroc said. “He’ll tell you that I’m not like my parents.”
    “Gwyndor ain’t here to tell us any such thing, young’un,” Tup replied. “He’s gone to Beyond the Beyond.”
    “You might consider going to Beyond the Beyond yourself,” Silvertip said in a thoughtful voice. “They don’t ask questions there about who you are or where you come from. They don’t care.”
    “It’s a place for outcasts like yourself,” Hortense added.
    “Outcasts like myself,” Nyroc whispered softly. Is that what I am? Is that all I am ever to be? An outcast, destined to live in a desolate place full of creatures so desperate they have nowhere else to go?
    Was this to be Nyroc’s great destiny? The sum, the end result, of his so-called free will? His gizzard twisted in confusion.
    Without Nyroc noticing, the three Great Grays silently lofted themselves into the air and were gone.
    For three dreary days, Nyroc slept in the fishy-smelling hollow that had been Simon’s, and hunted in the patchy gray-violet light just before dawn, the dismal hours that owls called the “dregs of the night.”
    How Nyroc had hoped against hope that the