Guardians of Ga'Hoole 09 - The First Collier

“Well, there was still no wind. And the water was perfectly still and, with the full-shine moon, every shadow was printed on the water. It was an amazing sight. I had a terrible feeling deep in my gut. My babes seemed to roil within me, sensing my own fear. I knew that Myrrthe had gone for lemmings. I had heard you begging her not to go. But she was right, you did need meat.”
    “No, no.” Siv shook her head in despair.
    “Well, I decided I had to go a-land. So I climbed out of the firth and followed those shadows. I began to see that unmistakable silky movement across the glacier. It appeared as if the ground was pulsing. It heaved and swelled. It was the lemmings, white as the snow in their winter pelts, surging across the landscape. It is an unforgettable sight.
    “And Myrrthe sailed overhead, plunging down at intervals to attack. The sea of lemmings would part, just like water as it meets an obstacle but, then mindlessly, the animals would flow back together. They showed no panic. They seemed barely conscious that one of their own had been taken. It was as if their brains, what little they have, were fixed on one thing—movement. No destination in mind, no thought of their course, just forward. They were no longer individuals, single creatures. They were the surge, and the surge was them. It was easy pickings for Myrrthe.
    “But unlike the lemmings, I could see that she was immediately aware of the danger. She veered off sharply to port. Her strategy was to get back to the water, any water at that point.”
    Once again, Siv shook her head. “If only she had been diving for fish. They wouldn’t have followed her to open water.”
    “Yes, indeed. They were on her so fast. I raced toward her, stomping on only Great Ursa knows how many hundreds of lemmings. I reared up in the night.”
    It was Siv who told me this, Dear Owl, and it was as if she had witnessed it all herself. “You can’t imagine how it must have been, Grank.” She described this enormous white bear. “So huge, so immense,” she said, “that you felt she could pluck the moon from the sky.” Siv continued Svenka’s tale exactly as it had been told to her.
    “But it was to no avail,” Svenka recounted. “For suddenly, a terrible yellow light began filtering into the moon-pale night. I saw strange shapes, like rags, streaking across the full moon. Now you must understand that we polar bears have little experience with hagsfiends. We don’t fly, and they don’t swim. I knew nothing of their ways. So although I batted at a few of them and I think injured some gravely, when that yellow glare began to envelop me, I felt completely paralyzed. I sank to the ground, crushing dozens of lemmings beneath me. And still they flowed over me, determined not to alter their course. And I, on my back, could see it all.”
    Siv said she tried to imagine this mountainous furry animal with lemmings crawling all over her. She understood that weird paralysis as the yellow light seeped fromthe hagsfiends’ eyes. “I don’t know how I ever escaped it,” Siv said. “How I ever broke from it.”
    But I know, Dear Owl, how she escaped it: Ga’! I doubted that King H’rath had Ga’, despite his being a king of infinite goodness and courage. In that moment, however, as Siv told me of her escape when she was up against the ice wall, I knew in my heart and my mind and, most important, in my gizzard, that she had Ga’.
    Svenka continued her story: “The worst part about it was that I was completely helpless. I stared into the sky. I stared into death…” She paused and could not continue. She simply could not say the words.
    “As they tore her apart,” Siv said.
    Svenka looked at her. “You know then how it is.”
    “Oh, yes, all too well. I saw my mate torn apart at the battle of H’rathmagyrr.” She paused a moment. “And then did they take her head and fly off with it on an ice sword?”
    “Yes.” Svenka’s voice was low and hoarse.
    When the hagsfiends had left and the yellow glare had melted away, the moon once more turned silver, and Svenka awakened from her stupor. The lemmings, too, had moved on, and the great bear searched the scene of this dastardly murder for the remains of Myrrthe. Whatshe found, which was little, was a foot with three of the four talons torn off, a wing. She buried them. But she saved one snow-white feather to bring back to Siv. She added in a growlish whisper, “And you know, Siv, the lemmings—they just