Guardians of Ga'Hoole 10 - The Coming of Hoole

they had not only made weapons for war but things for peace—the ice harps, the first books, called bhags. He knew all about the illustrious line of H’rathian monarchs and yet he had no idea that he was now the last of this line, a prince being made ready to become a king.
    For the most part, Theo gave the lessons in geography and the sciences—geology, the art of forging metals, and some celestial navigation. Hoole had by this time learned all the constellations. It was Grank who gave the history lessons and the lessons of government, carefully explaining the knightly codes of honor and service.
    “How old do you have to be before you can get to be a knight?” Hoole asked Grank one day.
    “Well, it’s not simply a question of age. One has to prove oneself. Do something quite extraordinary.”
    “I am guessing,” Hoole said with a small glint in his amber eyes, “that fishing doesn’t count. Brother Berwyck said I am an extraordinary fisher owl.”
    Grank laughed. “No, fishing doesn’t count, young’un. But enough lessons for today. Why don’t you take yourselfoff to that cove you so love now that the weather has finally cleared?”
    “Phineas? Your name is Phineas?” Hoole asked.
    The tiny Pygmy Owl who barely stood as high as Hoole’s chest shook his head as if to clear it. This was the first time Hoole had returned to the cove to fish since Berwyck had left. For three days spring storms and tornadoes had raged in the region of the Bitter Sea. When he did come back and perched in an aspen tree—his favorite place for spotting fish—he found it quite incredible that although the ground was littered with the debris of broken branches, the wildflowers still trembled on the forest floor and banks of the cove. Hoole had been contemplating how these tiny fragile things had hung on while entire trees had been stripped of limbs, leaves, and even uprooted when he spotted a tiny dazed owl huddled close to the trunk of the tree on the same branch that he himself was perched.
    “Yes, Phineas is my name,” the little owl said.
    He appeared disheveled and disinclined to talk. Hoole scrutinized him. He had seen so few owls in his short life. Three to be exact. Uncle Grank, a Spotted Owl like himself; Theo, a Great Horned Owl; and Berwyck, a Boreal.Never had he seen an owl this tiny. Above each eye was a curve of short white feathers that reminded Hoole of minnows. And were those spots of lighter-colored feathers or bars or just smudges?
    “What do you call those…those things?” Hoole blinked and nodded with his head as if to indicate what he was referring to.
    “What things? My wings?”
    “I mean those patches of white. Are they spots or bars or what?”
    “Or what.”
    “What?”
    “Or what,” replied the owl.
    Now it was Hoole who was shaking his head in confusion. “What are you talking about?”
    “You asked me if my white feathers were spots, bars, or what. They are or whats.”
    “You mean they are not spots or bars.”
    “Yes,” the owl sighed wearily, “that is what I mean.”
    Hoole blinked again as if contemplating the “or whats.” “They look kind…kind of…”
    “Kind of what?” Phineas asked testily.
    “Kind of disorganized.”
    “You’d be disorganized, too, if you had been tossed about on the edges of tornadoes for three days, sucked upthrough the Ice Narrows, nearly smacked into a hagsfiend, and then blown here.”
    “What’s a hagsfiend?”
    The tiny owl blinked in dismay. “Where have you been all your life?” he asked.
    “Here,” Hoole replied.
    “Look, I’m really tired. I just have to sleep awhile.” Phineas closed his eyes tightly, stood rigid, and began to sleep in the classic sleep perch posture of owls outside of hollows.
    “Wait—just a couple more questions.”
    “Oh, Glaux have mercy!” Phineas sighed.
    “Are you grown up or what? I mean, you’re so weensy.”
    “Weensy? What a disgusting word.” The two little curves of white feathers above Phineas’s eyes collided with one another in a frown.
    “Small?”
    “Slightly better. Yes, I am grown up.”
    “How up?”
    Great Glaux in glaumora, this is the weirdest owl I have ever met. “I hatched a year ago.”
    “How come you’re so small?”
    “Because I am a frinkin’ Pygmy Owl, and this is how big we grow. What you see is what you get! I mean really !”
    “All right…all right. Calm down,” Hoole said.
    “Calm down! You calm down! Enough with the questions.”
    Hoole, of