Guardians of Ga'Hoole 15 - The War of the Ember

she said. “The Guardians of Ga’Hoole.”
    Dumpy’s head drooped. For a bird that possessed one of the most comical faces, with its bright orange beak and odd facial markings, Dumpy at this moment looked positively tragic. “I can’t,” he whispered into his breast feathers.
    “What do you mean ‘you can’t’?” Sveep said. She was beginning to feel that seasonal sleepiness that afflicted polar bears at this time of year, when they sensed the first signs of winter, when seconds, then minutes clipped off each day’s light. Nonetheless, she fought the lethargy that beckoned her insistently. This was important. “I repeat, why can’t you seek the owls?” Her words were becoming thick.
    “The Guardians are all so smart. I am so stupid.”
    This was like of jolt of summer sun through her body. “Nonsense! You’re the smartest puffin I’ve ever met!” she said emphatically.
    “Do you mean that?” Dumpy asked.
    “I mean it. You have to go.”
    “I’ll…I’ll think about it!”
    “Don’t think about it—do it!”

CHAPTER THREE
Chimes in the Mist
    D eep in the Shadow Forest, the darkest of all the forests of the Southern Kingdoms, there was a place where the thickly wooded land dipped suddenly into a cleft in the earth. The depression was hardly noticeable from above because the trees were dense, and mist from a waterfall obscured the land itself. Within this cleft, there was a stone palace left from the time of the Others, and in the palace dwelled a Boreal Owl named Bess. Less than a dozen owls in all the kingdoms knew of this palace or the Boreal Owl. To these owls, the Boreal Owl was not just Bess, but Bess of the Chimes—or the Knower, one of the most learned owls in the six owl kingdoms. To the few owls who knew of this place, it seemed odd that it was called a palace. It was more like a vast library, with books, and maps, and charts, and ancient scientific instruments. Bess herself never left the Palace of Mists. She had arrived yearsbefore with the bones of her father, determined to mourn him in the time-honored tradition of Boreal Owls.
    On this particular night, she was just finishing her evening ritual. The bones of her father, Grimble, had long since crumbled to dust and blown away, but the place they had lain in the bell tower, beneath the bell, had become a hallowed place for Bess, and every evening at tween time she flew within the confines of the enormous hood of the clapperless bell and sang her song in the chimelike tones unique to Boreal Owls. The last verse always gave her hope that someday she would join her beloved father, Grimble, in glaumora, so she always sang it with a robust spirit.
Glaux ring in this noble owl,
    Sound the clapper made of mist.
    Ting ting, I hear it now.
    How can a scroom resist
    This lovely tolling sound,
    Which calls you from on high?
    Fly on, dear Da, fly on.
    Owl angels wait and sigh.
    As she finished the last verse of the song, she sensed a presence near the tower. It would not be the Band.They knew better than to intrude during her prayers. She settled uneasily on the window ledge of the tower and swiveled her head around. She heard a gasp from a niche in the circular stone wall. A soft violet light suffused the tower, and she thought she saw a lump of feathers in the niche. They billowed, then settled, then billowed again in long intervals. A ragged breath escaped. “Great Glaux!” she whispered to herself and swooped down. She saw on the narrow floor of the niche a Boreal Owl in grave distress. He attempted to lift his head, but it flopped back down.
    Bess was stunned. This owl was a stranger. It had been years since a stranger had found its way to the Palace of Mists, let alone a sickly stranger. The intruder spoke.
    “I have come…to…die.” The words were delivered in breathy little puffs. “Die beneath the bell.”
    “But you are alone.” Bess said.
    “No matter…You shall sing me to glaumora, shall you not? I have been poisoned.”
    “But surely there are antidotes.”
    “No…The poison is in my gizzard. You shall sing me to glaumora,” the owl repeated, “shall you not?”
    Bess knew that she could not refuse. There were covenants, unwritten laws particular to each kind ofowl. In general, these concerned acts of owl kindness that were to be performed selflessly. They were blessings not to be bestowed by Glaux but any ordinary owl. For a Boreal Owl to refuse to help one of its kind to die under a bell and sing them to