Guardians of Ga'Hoole 11 - To Be a King

phase.
    Excitement coursed through the ice cave. Ygryk and Pleek pressed closer. One thought gripped them both. This could be ours! A chick at last! Kreeth heard a shuffling from a dim corner of the cave and swiveled her head quickly toward the puffowl. “Get away from those hearts. I’m marinating them. Get out of here.”
    “Yes, Mummy!” the puffowl said, and waddled away in dejection.
    “How many times do I have to tell you? Don’t call me Mummy! I’m not your frinkin’ mummy! You’re my experiment.”
    Then she turned to Pleek. “It should be hatching any second.”
    There was a big cracking sound, then a blob of a tiny bird flopped out. “What is it?” Pleek whispered.
    Kreeth cackled. “We’ll just have to wait and see. You ordered a Great Horned, didn’t you?
    “Yes, but is it?“
    “Could be this. Could be that,” Kreeth replied slyly.
    “It does look like an owl, Pleek,” Ygryk said. “Bulgy eyes.” She and Pleek were bending over the little creature.
    “Are you disappointed, dear? Did you want it to be more haggish?”
    “No, no, Pleek. All I want is a nice little chick.”
    What they got was indeed a chick. Whether she would be a nice little chick was doubtful. But the real question was: What species did she belong to? All chicks look very similar at the time of hatching. Nearly bald, their eye color murky, the newly hatched creatures are shapeless and fairly indistinguishable. But when they begin to fledge and their eye color becomes clearer, they bear all the features of their species.
    For several days after hatching, it did appear to Pleek that the chick had all the first signs of being a Great Horned like Pleek. Her eyes were becoming the bright yellow of a Great Horned. It did make Pleek nervous, though, how Kreeth seemed more interested in observing himself and Ygryk than the chick. There was a cunning about Kreeth that he found very unsettling and every time he would say something about how it looked as if the chick were indeed turning out to be a Great Horned Owl, he swore he could hear Kreeth snort under her breath. It was right after the chick had lost her downy fluff and fledged her first feathers, which looked so much like Great Horned plumage, that something odd occurred.
    Pleek and Ygryk were returning from a short hunting flight and had just flown into the ice cave to deposit their prey.
    “How’s our little one?” Pleek boomed. Then he heard a sharp cry from Ygryk.
    “What happened? My baby!”
    “Has she been hurt? Is she dead?” Pleek spun his head toward Kreeth. “What have you done, you crone?”
    “Nothing,” she cackled, “except to create a masterpiece.”
    “Pleek, look at her!” Ygryk gasped.
    He lofted himself over to where the chick was poking around for some ice worms. The little chick looked up at her da and blinked. Pleek felt his withered gizzard give a lurch. He was looking into the black eyes of a female Barn Owl, but her body had the coloration of a Great Horned. “Wh—wh—what happened? How could this be?” And then her face started to lose the tawny feathers of a Great Horned and to turn white. Even her shape seemed to lengthen a bit and widen slightly at the top so that it appeared more like that of a Barn Owl. “A Barn Owl! I never!” Pleek gasped in disbelief.
    “You never, is right!” Kreeth’s words bit the air. “I did this. And I shall name her Lutta. Lutta is my masterpiece. She is everything. And nothing.”
    “What do you mean?” Ygryk cried. “All we wanted was one little chick that looked like one of us, or maybe both. What have you done? She’ll belong to neither of us.”
    “That is your decision, my dear,” Kreeth replied. “But look at her. Look at what I have created.” Now the white face of the Barn Owl was turning the deep glistening black of a crow. The eyes were becoming beady crow’s eyes.
    Within a single day, Lutta went through a half dozen transformations. For a few hours she was a crow. Then she slid almost imperceptibly into being a Barred Owl. Next a Snowy. The most spectacular shift was when, within thespace of seconds, she would go from the total blackness of a crow to the pure whiteness of a Snowy. But perhaps her best transformation was when she changed into a Spotted Owl.
    Lutta seemed cheerful enough, and Pleek and Ygryk were pleased, they guessed, that she called them Mum and Da, but they had a difficult time relating to this chick that Kreeth called a changeling.
    “It’s