Guardians of Ga'Hoole 14 - Exile

first to detect as they approached the border between Silverveil and the Shadow Forest. Then another owl flew low over the fire. It was a Pygmy. She was young and in her beak was a strand of bright beads. She looked as if she were weeping and she hesitated as she held the beads. Another owl came up beside her and gave her a reassuring pat. Soren cocked his head to hear the words. “This is for the best. Those beads are a vanity. Give them up to the flames, dear, and when you do, they will burn and vanish with the smoke. Instead, in that space, a perfect simplicity will come and you shall be ready for glaumora on the night of the Great Scouring.”
    She’s just a kid , Twilight thought. This is obscene, skart!
    They saw the Pygmy finally drop the beads. Another owl presented her with a blue feather, and one to each of the four other owls, including the one who had dropped the book into the flames. The Band looked at one another in horror and felt a chill run through their gizzards. A cold wind seemed to blow through their hollow bones.

CHAPTER ELEVEN
Page by Page, Book by Book
    O n this same night, another pair of owls were winging across the Sea of Hoolemere. Desperation filled them, their gizzards quivered in disgust. Their progress was slow, as the load that Otulissa and Fritha carried was a heavy one. Suspended beneath them in their talons were botkins of scrolls and strapped to their backs were books, smaller books in Fritha’s case for she was a Pygmy Owl and too small to carry anything large on her back. Adding to their burden was an unfavorable wind. They would be lucky if they could make Cape Glaux by daybreak. Otulissa would have welcomed more help but it would have only aroused suspicion. She had planned this operation meticulously, ever since that dreadful night when they had discovered the missing books. The first thing she had done was to go to Octavia in Ezylryb’s hollow. Her mind replayed the scene that had transpired there.
    “We have a problem.” Otulissa had hardly begun to speak when Octavia interrupted her.
    “Don’t I know it!” the old snake hissed.
    “The Striga’s been here?” Otulissa was gripped with panic.
    “Yes, but he didn’t get anything.”
    “What did he ask for?”
    “The legends, the songs, The History of the Ice Claw Wars, Volumes One and Two .” Octavia was referring to the original manuscripts that Ezylryb had written under the name of Lyze of Kiel. These were locked in a secret compartment in the hollow that few knew about.
    Otulissa sighed. “He got the copies of the songs we have in the library and a few other books as well.”
    “What are you going to do, Otulissa? Confront him?”
    “Not yet.” Otulissa had thought about this briefly on her way to see Octavia. She feared that this owl, this blue thing, had more followers than she might imagine. Possibly some in the tree, for there were some new owls. But there were always new owls coming to the tree, few to stay, most to study for limited periods of time. But she worried that there might be more followers of the Striga on the mainland. She wasn’t sure exactly what he was offering them. But he was undoubtedly a curiosity,exotic, intriguing from his blue feathers to his silky voice with its Jouzhen accent. So Otulissa had bided her time, but she was not perching idly, twiddling her talons. More books were discovered to be missing. She had sneaked into the guest hollow where the Striga was staying one time when she knew he was in deep conversation with Coryn—this growing relationship between Coryn and the Striga worried her to no end—and, while in his hollow, discovered in his fire grate the singed fragments of parchment and paper. A couple of words were still decipherable—“splat,” “seagull,” “wet.” She immediately recognized the pages from the wet poop chapter in Slightly Filthy Riddles for Soiled Minds that she had read after the Striga had come into the library and blathered on, praising Otulissa for the practical nature of her work. She recalled his unctuous voice. “Flattery!” The word had exploded in her head as she stood over the scraps of singed paper. It hadn’t been praise at all, she realized, but shameless flattery.
    Things from that moment on began to fall into place for Otulissa. Had not the Striga himself said, when describing the Dragon Court, that the fuel that fired it was vanity. But that fuel had to be ignited by something, and the kindling of that vanity was