Lost Tales of Ga'Hoole

any others he had ever known. When Nyroc looked into Uglamore’s eyes, Uglamore felt as if his gizzard were being scoured, but it was a gentle scouring, so unlike the caustic gaze of the little one’s mother, Nyra. He felt like his truest self—whatever that was—whenever he was near the hatchling. These were strange thoughts for a Pure One, that he knew.
    Maybe because that connection was clear to all those who saw them, or maybe just because his best fighting days were behind him, Nyra began to entrust little Nyroc to Uglamore’s care. Nyroc needed a father figure, anyone could see that, and Uglamore was happy to take on that role. She even told the chick to call him “Uncle Uglamore”—a title he outwardly objected to among the lieutenants, but inwardly held dear. Stryker had mocked him, calling him “Colonel Broody.” He shook that off like rain on his feathers.
    Since the original Tytonic Union of Pure Ones was reduced to remnants through their defeat in the battle known as The Burning, his job as “Uncle Uglamore” became more important to him than even achieving the rank of colonel—a goal that he had had since before he got the name Uglamore. Thankfully, when Nyra wasn’t hags-bent on training Nyroc to be the perfect Pure One, she entrusted him to Uglamore without question.
    As the hatchling grew, it became abundantly clear that Uglamore was more like a father to him than his real father, Kludd, could ever have been. Uglamore’s own father had died before little Bartholomew’s First-Meat-on-Bones ceremony, and Uglamore scarcely remembered the owl these days. His mother had kept him fed and safe, but she didn’t do much beyond that.
    Nyra was a different breed of mother entirely. She saw her son as a weapon that needed to be forged and honed rather than as a little owl who needed love and caring.
    On the occasion of Nyroc’s first flying lesson, Nyra berated him for being too slow and too loud. Unbelievable, thought Uglamore, the chick had flown better on his first try than most owlets do after half a moon cycle of lessons. He couldn’t help but feel sorry for the little one, and he couldn’t help but grow weary of Nyra and her ways. Her expectations for Nyroc and the way she treated him made Ulgamore’s gizzard shudder. He remembered clearly the little one’s sadness.
    “I’ll never be as good as Mum…I mean, as General Mam wants me to be. And all these owls my own age think I’m a Goody Two-claws,” Nyroc had complained to Uglamore before lighting down in his nest.
    “Don’t mind them, Nyroc. There are owls other than these, owls who know better.”
    Nyroc looked at him questioningly. “What do you mean, Uncle Ulgamore?”
    What did I mean? Uglamore realized right then that he had been thinking about the Guardians of Ga’Hoole when he was speaking. Sure, there were owls other than the Pure Ones, but had he gone yoicks to be telling the little one that those owls—of whom it was forbidden even to speak—were better? Those owls, who had out smarted and practically obliterated the Pure Ones during the Battle of the Burning? Those owls, who did not have the rigid social structure that the Pure Ones had? But maybe, if Nyroc were being raised by those owls, he’d be all the better for it.
    Uglamore brought himself up short: That kind of thinking was bound to get him into trouble. No , he thought at the time, I can’t let myself think that way.
    “Nothing, Nyroc. I just meant that I know you’ll do better next time.”
    That was the beginning of the end of Uglamore’s devotion to the Pure Ones. He didn’t realize it at the time, but now, as he bided his time in the Beyond, it was as clear to him as the night sky. His final betrayal of the Tytonic Union would come not much later.
    It was after Nyroc’s failed Special—the Tupsi, they called it, which was short for Tytonic Union Pure Special Initiation. That poor young Sooty, Dustytuft, was dead—murdered by Nyra. Uglamore had wanted to save Dustytuft, and to spare Nyroc the awful ritual, but he hadn’t the courage to oppose Nyra openly. And he’d said nothing when Nyra set the famed tracker, Doc Finebeak, on Nyroc’s trail.
    Uglamore had terrible memories of his own Tupsi. He had been instructed to kill his cousin—his da’s brother’s son—also named Bartholomew, who had been a mere hatchling at the time. Uglamore was brought back to the Shadow Forest to do the deed. His mum had told him that he must prove himself to