Guardians of Ga'Hoole 09 - The First Collier

“us.” Destiny had bound us together as strongly as if I were this chick’s father. But more than father or mother, I would become this hatchling’stutor and if what I had come to suspect was true, the destiny of the entire owl kingdom would rest upon him. I knew that the ember was somehow part of his special destiny. I had been too weak to deal with the owl ember myself. I simply did not have the Ga’. But I sensed that this unborn chick did have it. It was the Ga’ of this chick that made the egg so luminous. Now my fears of managing a demanding chick paled in comparison to the responsibilities this young owl would have to bear. A boy king would soon hatch. I sensed it would happen when the night was the longest and the day the shortest, and for that I must wait patiently and be constantly alert.
    Although I was never was far from the tree, I had begun to build fires outside of the fire hollow, in between the boulders that were strewn about in the forest. Each day I was discovering new things. In the Beyond, the land was scattered with nuggets of copper, gold, and silver. Here I found no such rocks, and I could not go as far to look for materials as Fengo had. I had to make do with what was near. But I did find red rocks that I sensed might contain metal. The bonk coal I had brought with me had, of course, hatched other coals, but no bonk ones. Those could be caught only on the fly, spit from an intense fire. There is no such thing as a second-generation bonk coal. This was a problem, for I knew that these rocks fromwhich I hoped to draw metal were very tough and needed a very hot fire.
    So I experimented with ways to increase the heat by other means. And it was through these trials that I invented a special fireplace that I came to call a “forge.” Near the tree where my hollow was located, there was one immense boulder that, through some cataclysmic event in our earth’s history, had a large crack that nearly split it in two. I had been studying this crack for some time. The ground breezes of the forest seemed to funnel directly into it, and then pass out the top of the crack. I began to think that this might provide the drafts that are so critical to the feeding of fires. So I started building fires inside the cracked boulder.
    It was hot, dirty work. My snowy-white spots turned sooty. My talons grew black. Although my original intent had been to coax metal from the hard red rock, I instead experimented with what kind of fires I could build in the split of this boulder. By this time, I was so absorbed with the different kinds of fires I could construct and the varying intensity of the heat that I rarely looked deeply into the flames to read them. Had I studied those flames I would not have seen Siv, but that smudge in the sky I had first noticed some days before. But I did not. It was only when I began to sense someone watching me that I grewuneasy and tried again to read the flames. I was shocked when I saw the image of a youthful Great Horned Owl flickering in the curve of the flame. Indeed, he was, at that very moment, roosting in the large blue spruce behind me! I spun my head around and blinked in astonishment. There he was—perched on a high branch—watching me. My gizzard seized.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The Arrival of Theo
    “ I want to learn.”
    Those were Theo’s first words to me.
    But how much had he seen already? I wondered. And does he know about the egg? How could I have been such a fool to ignore that smudge at the edge of the flames? How could I have thought I was so entirely alone, so isolated here when this owl was practically within yarping distance of me? And how long had he been here on the island?
    “W-w-w…what do you want to learn?” I stammered.
    “About fire.” He flew down from the tree and landed on the boulder.
    I fluffed my feathers in a dismissive way. “You’re too young. It takes patience, maturity, and I’m sure you don’t have the temperament.”
    “How can you tell? You only just met me. You don’t even know my name, let alone my temperament.”
    What gallgrot, I thought. “You’re a Great Horned,” I replied.
    “What does that have to do with it?”
    “They’re impulsive.”
    “That’s unfair. You can’t just exclude someone because of his breed. Besides, it’s untrue. I can’t help being young. I can’t help being a Great Horned. But I am mature, and I am not impulsive.” He paused as if waiting for me to reply. But I turned my back on him