Guardians of Ga'Hoole 09 - The First Collier

and darker, she watched the water grow still, until a thin coating just skimmed the surface. That coat thickened and grew silvery. The wind had died. Not a breeze riffled the surface of the firthkin’s water. Indeed, it was as if everything conspired to make a pathway through these far reaches of the N’yrthghar for the hagsfiends to come directly to her. So she watched and she waited.
    On the second night after Svenka had left, Siv felt odd stirrings in her gizzard. She knew that tonight was the night her son would hatch. “I knew it as surely as I had ever known anything in my life,” Siv said. “He would come on this ice-sheathed, star-swirled night, the longest night of the year.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The Longest Night
    I myself had waited patiently through the early winter gales wondering when this chick might hatch. In the helter-skelter of my parting from Siv at the Ice Cliff Palace, I had forgotten to ask her when exactly she had laid the egg. I had a feeling it had not been long before H’rath’s death. Normally, it would take the complete moon cycle for it to hatch. But where the egg began in that cycle, I had no idea. Then one wind-bitten night, the longest night, the last night of the old owl year, when the day is but a dim thread in an endless darkness, the egg seemed to grow more luminous than ever, and I saw it jiggle forcefully. It was quickening! The jiggle then turned into a rocking motion. It was a glimmering time in this long night when the seconds slow between the last minute of the old season and the first of the new. The sky was alive with countless stars, sharp and bright, and the forest with its icy mantle caught their reflection so that itappeared as if the trunks and branches of every tree were encased in stars rather than bark.
    Theo poked his head into the hollow. “He’s coming, he’s coming,” I said.
    “May I come inside?” Theo asked.
    I nodded and dared not speak.
    The egg rocked harder and harder. I leaned over. My gizzard jumped as I saw the minuscule point of the chick’s egg tooth poke through.
    I learned later that at the precise moment the chick’s egg tooth pecked the shell, the hagsfiends attacked Siv.
    Siv had disciplined herself to accept as nothing exceptional that first tinge of yellow that would turn the ice tawny in the night. She stood at the ready, gripping the scimitar of her mate in her talons and, most important, in her mind’s eye she held the clear image of the hatching of her son. She could imagine everything about it. The egg tooth poking out, the fracture that began slowly and crept across the surface of the shell. She could imagine the tiny crackling sounds. She could even imagine the schneddenfyrr I had built but she willed herself not to imagine where it might be. This, she knew, could endanger the prince.
    She had forgotten the pain in her port wing. She had forgotten yellow. It was no longer even a word in her vocabulary. It was not a color in any spectrum of color. She was filled not with hatred, not with vengeance, but love. The great spirit was flooding through her hollow bones. Her gizzard was trim and burning with Ga’, her wits keen and her heart bold as she flew fearlessly out of that ice hollow in the berg with her scimitar raised to face the hagsfiends.
    And this time, it was the hagsfiends who were distracted and amazed. How could this crippled owl fly? How could she blast through their awesome yellow light as if it were nothing more than the pink tinge of a summer dawn? And what was even more astounding was that in her talons she held the scimitar of H’rath. She flew directly for Penryck.
    “What’s happening?” Lord Arrin cried out.
    I’m happening, Siv thought. She raised her scimitar and slashed at Penryck. But the hag veered off sharply. She was after him, but she began to feel an odd current in the frigid night air. It was Lord Arrin. He no longer flew like a Snowy at all. The leading edges of his flight feathers had turned even more ragged, chopping the air as he flew. She took a steep spiraling turn, plunging toward the frozenfirthkin. If only there were some open water. But there was none. Ahead, everything gleamed of solid ice in the moonlight. She skimmed as close as she could, hoping that the hagsfiends—there were several now chasing her—would be too fearful of encountering an open patch of sea. They were gaining on her. And now, finally, her wing began to hurt. I shall not be distracted! I shall not be