Guardians of Ga'Hoole 14 - Exile

was burdened with an indecent abundance of feathers. These feathers were the ultimate vanity. We dragon owls cultivated them with a disgusting mixture of pride and pleasure, preening all day. There were even special servants whose only job was to stroke and comb our feathers.” The Striga seemedto wilf just talking about it. “I can’t tell you how vile it was.”
    “But you did it. You preened your long blue feathers,” Otulissa said curtly.
    “I knew nothing better. I was deluded,” the Striga said.
    Otulissa blinked. There was so much that she did not understand about the Panqua Palace and the Dragon Court. She thought of Theo, that noble owl from ancient times they had all read about in the legends. When Otulissa had been in the Middle Kingdom, she had learned that it was Theo who had realized that the best way to distract owls with evil intentions, was to engulf them in luxury. The result was overweening vanity, so that their attention could focus only on one thing—themelves—to the point where they were reduced to powerlessness. It was an ingenious strategy for quelling the most dangerous kinds of owls, which had found their way into the Middle Kingdom long ago.
    “But I still don’t understand,” Otulissa said to the Striga. “You now have fewer feathers than any of us. Especially on your face.”
    “I strip them out. It is my personal penance. Thus I relinquish the unnecessary things, the distractions.”
    “I’ve never thought of feathers as a distraction, frankly. They are a most essential part of our bodies.” She paused. “Our true owlness, as it were.” She emphasized the word “owlness.”
    “But not your spirit! And how can the spirit rise, become everlasting, when burdened by the vanities of feather and bone?” The Striga blinked his pale yellow eyes.
    What did the Striga mean by “everlasting”? Life was the here and now. One must be able to rise into the air above this earth and fly. Was it not an abuse to pluck the very gifts Glaux had given owls to make a life for themselves? But Otulissa, for whom arguments were like a tonic, had no desire to engage in any further discussion with the Striga on the subject. Indeed, after this odd conversation, Otulissa was rendered speechless for one of the very few times in her life.

CHAPTER FOUR
Simplicity
    O tulissa was not the only one that early evening who had entered into a very odd conversation. When the Band left Coryn’s hollow, the young king felt as if something rather strange had occurred. It was almost as if it was not he himself speaking. But it was. He, of all of them, had spent the most time with the Striga since he had arrived at the great tree. Although their lives had been entirely different and Coryn had never lived in anything comparable to the Dragon Court of the Panqua Palace, he somehow sensed a resonance with what this owl had been saying. Coryn’s early life in the harsh, unforgiving landscape of canyonlands had been entirely different from the Dragon Court. He had never been pampered, and had been abused by his mother, who had subjected him to a merciless indoctrination in order to make him a leader of the Pure Ones. The two words, “Pure Ones,” almost carried a stench. For the Pure Ones believed that Barn Owls, Tyto albas , were the only true owls. The rest were impure,inferior, afflictions to owlkind. It was a base, venal notion. The violence that could be justified by such thinking was revealed to Coryn most brutally when, before his eyes, his mother killed his only friend.
    But then the Striga had come to the great tree, invited by Soren and the rest of the Band after the defeat of Nyra and the Pure Ones in the Middle Kingdom. He had fought bravely, if not strictly according to the fighting methods practiced by the owls of the Middle Kingdom. The Striga’s attack had been bloody and the Hoolian owls were in his debt.
    The Striga preached that within every owl there was a “perfect simplicity.” But to find it, one must cleanse—or “scour”—one’s self of vanities and fripperies and all such distractions, and then a level of perfect simplicity would be attained. And thus, the message was an uncomplicated one: Burn away vanity. Being truly cleansed, one would achieve the supreme state of perfect simplicity, ready to receive Glaux’s blessings forever and ever.
    Just as Coryn was thinking about this, the Striga entered.
    “How did it go?” the Striga asked.
    “I’m not really