Guardians of Ga'Hoole 11 - To Be a King

how subjects of an absolute ruler conducted themselves? He needed thinking owls, not owlipoppen, the little doll owls that parents gave their chicks to play with. Was the ember destroying their ability to think like individual owls, to question, to challenge? This was frightening. Perhaps, Hoole thought, I should tuck the ember away. He remembered the first night they had come to the island after the Battle in the Beyond and how the entireisland and the tree seemed enveloped in a luminous light. He had wondered then if it was the moon or the ember that had cast that light and had questioned the limits, the reach of the ember’s power. But there was no time for pondering right now—no time at all if they were to invade by Short Light.
    So it was settled. They would depart on their missions the following evening. Grank would stay behind to act as Hoole’s regent in his absence. He would inform the parliament of the plan and, while Hoole was gone, he would work on the secret chamber he was constructing with a Burrowing Owl in Grank’s hollow. For it was there that Hoole had decided to hide the ember. Not in his own hollow, but in Grank’s. Whom can I trust if not Grank — Grank my mentor, Grank my foster father, Grank my guardian.

CHAPTER EIGHT
A Mission for Half-hags
    T he katabats were just beginning to blow, and for Theo they were a robust, windy welcome to the kingdom that had once been his home. Some said that these tricky and tumultuous drafts from the north were the invisible wall that discouraged owls of the S’yrthghar Kingdoms from venturing to the N’yrthghar. Theo, however, found the winds bracing and enjoyed the sport they offered. Grank had provided him with the names of the polar bears to contact who might make good slipgizzles. Of special importance was one named Svenka who had been a close friend of the late Queen Siv. She was said at this time of year—autumn—to be making her way from her summer lodge on Dark Fowl Island to a remote firthkin not that far from Theo’s former home in the Firth of Grundenspyrr. His gizzard pinched at the thought of his family. It had not been a happy hollow. His father was so strict. His mum a meek little thing and not that bright. Until his little brother, Shadyk, came along, Theo hadborne the brunt of his father’s rages. His father was a retired H’rathian Guardsman. Although he had never risen to the rank of officer himself, he dreamed that Theo would join the Guard and accomplish what he had not.
    But Theo had had no taste for battle or a soldier’s life. Quiet and studious, he had learned to read by visiting a Glauxian Brother. When his father discovered this, he was furious.
    “They’re cowards, moon calves, the lot of them! Lazy, good-for-nothing owls. Don’t know an ice scimitar from a pile of yarped pellets.”
    “They’re good owls. They just don’t believe in violence,” Theo had argued. “Their nature is that of restraint. Their passion is peace. Their heroism comes from their mercy. Their honor is found in resistance, their dignity in their humility.”
    “Oh, shut up, for Glaux’s sake!” His father had raised a talon and swatted Theo across the hollow.
    There had not been a word of protest from his mum, just a mournful sigh.
    His older sister, Pye, had escaped the hollow as soon as she could and, much to her family’s horror, they discovered that she had joined a troop of gadfeathers. Pye could take care of herself. It was his little brother, Shadyk, that Theo worried about. Undersized, rather clumsy, and with all themeekness of his mum, he had become the favorite target of his da’s anger, who humiliated him in front of others, often beating him. Theo tried to protect the little fellow as best he could. But one night Theo and his da had a terrible row. Theo decided he could take it no longer and so he flew off.
    When Theo had come to the island in the Bitter Sea and met Grank, he had found the father he had always yearned for. Then a few short weeks after his arrival, the egg Grank had kept so carefully sequestered in his hollow hatched and Hoole came into the world. Theo simply could not believe his luck. For him, it was as if he had found a new little brother, indeed almost a whole new family.
    But for all this time, Theo had been haunted with guilt for abandoning his little brother to endure the cruelties of their father all by himself. Then he realized with a start that Shadyk would now be old enough to go off on his own.