Guardians of Ga'Hoole 09 - The First Collier

I don’t understand what forty-two is exactly.”
    “l’ll explain tomorrow at twilight when you wake up.”
    Finally, the little owl gave a huge yawn and fell sound asleep.
    “So, we are no longer alone,” Grank said wearily, and clamped his beak shut. The first streaks of the dawn had spilled into the dark hollow, suffusing it with a rosy cheerful warmth—except Grank was far from cheerful over this news. “Well, we certainly can’t leave until Hoole can fly. That’s at least a moon cycle away and even then his flight skills won’t be good enough nor his wings strong enough to go far.”
    “Look, Grank, I don’t want to sound like a fool but, really, think about it. Sooner or later someone was bound to come here. We should be thankful it’s the Glauxian Brothers. They are owls of great devotion. They would never betray our secret. For Glaux’s sake, they take vows of silence. And although they hate war, they also hate Lord Arrin. And they had great faith in King H’rath and Queen Siv. They would do nothing to endanger the heir.”
    “They must not know that he is the heir. Never! No one must know that.” Grank paused and thought a moment. “I know what you say is true, and I don’t for one minute doubt their loyalty or their devotion. But you know as well as I do how word travels. They are bound to find us before we can get away, and even if we appear just what we are—two owls with an orphan chick—word will get around that there is a chick without a mum being tended on the island.”
    “The brothers will hardly ever leave the island. You know how they are. Too busy studying, meditating.”
    “‘Hardly’ is not never.” Grank sighed again. “Well, I suppose the first thing we should do is damp down the fires in the forge. If they haven’t spotted our smoke by now, they certainly will soon. So you better get on with that. Be sure to keep the embers healthy so we can take them wherever we’ll be going and start the fires anew.”
    “Yes, sir,” Theo said.
    He flew down and began to damp the fires in the slot of the immense boulder that they had used as a forge. The slot, with its natural updraft and slightly slanting walls, had proven to be perfect for creating intensely hot fires for the increasingly refined metalwork with which Theo had been experimenting. But now as he shut down these fires, he wondered why he was protecting the coals. Grank said new fires in some new place. But new fires for what? To make more battle claws? Or perhaps they were just for Grank’s firesight. Grank was a flame reader. He could see things in fires that no other birds could. Things that were happening elsewhere—or were yet to happen. Firesight was as valuable to Grank as any nachtmagen.
    Once again, Theo began to think about the Glauxian Brothers and their quiet scholarly lives. It was said that the Glauxian Brothers had learned how to inscribe things on pieces of special ice known as issen bhago. But these “bhags,” as they were called, were heavy to transport. So they had decided to transcribe the bhags into books with pages written on the cured hides of the small animals. So now, before eating, they skinned whatever rabbit or rat or mouse they ate. It was an odd diet not having the fur and the skin, but the brothers were accustomed to making sacrifices.
    Theo thought of all this as he smothered the fires while carefully putting aside the live coals in small, specially forged iron boxes that would keep them hot.
    And for the first time in the months since Grank had been on the island, smoke did not curl up into the air above the tree and the hollow where he lived.
    “Inside, Hoole! Immediately!” Grank said.
    “But I just got out here!” Hoole was perched on the tip of a branch. “You promised, Uncle Grank, that today would be the day for branching. My first flight feathers, remember? At last I have budged them.”
    “Back in the hollow,” Theo said sharply.
    This stunned Hoole. They never spoke this way to him. What had he done wrong—already? All he ever thought about was flying and now it was to be his first time and they hadn’t even let him out on a branch! He must have messed up. But how? He poked his beak out a tiny bit.
    “In!” Grank hissed.
    Hoole had caught a glimpse of something flying overhead. He heard a stirring in the thinner branches high in the tree. Was some owl actually landing here? Incredible! Except for Grank and Theo, he hadn’t ever seen any other owls.
    Of