Lost Tales of Ga'Hoole

good owls at St. Aggie’s! Hortense! All those stories I’ve heard about how Hortense saved hundreds of eggs and owlets while pretending to be moon blinked. And Grimble. Soren has told me about the noble Grimble, who helped him and Gylfie to escape. If only I could have spoken to one of them…
    Hortense is Mist, said Ezylryb’s scroom.
    I know, thought Braithe sadly. Hortense is gone, into the mists of time, long gone…
    No. Hortense is Mist. Her name is Mist.
    Braithe’s mind was racing, as was his gizzard. What?! he thought.
    She is no longer known as Hortense, but she lives, here, in Ambala. You know her as Mist.
    Mist’. Braithe repeated. He could hardly believe it. He knew Mist well. But he never knew that she was once the celebrated Hortense. The answers to his questions might have been a night’s flight away all along. He just didn’t know to ask. As he pondered this, the mist surrounding him began to dissolve and Ezylryb faded away.
    When night fell, Braithe flew north to the place of eagles and flying snakes with the fragments of parchment clutched in his talons. There he found the scintillating and vaporous owl he had always known as Mist, and her two companions, the eagles Zan and Streak.
    What Braithe learned was that, as Hortense, Mist hadn’t known Braithe’s father, Bo. After she was thrown off the highest cliff at St. Aggie’s and caught by Streak, her career as an infiltrator ended, and she returned to Ambala. As she recuperated, she had gotten word that a Whiskered Screech had taken her place as a slipgizzle at St. Aggie’s. The owl worked tirelessly and rescued scores of eggs and chicks with the help of the eagles Streak and Zan, just as Hortense had done. But they never knew his real name. He was known only by his code name: 16-7. “I’m not doing this to be a hero,” he had told them. “I’m doing this for the future of Ambala.”
    When Zan saw the fragments of parchment that Braithe held, she immediately went to her nest and brought back a small botkin. She dug through the botkin and pulled out a few more fragments of parchment.
    “We saved all the letters we ever received from 16-7—from Bo, I mean,” Streak explained. “These fragments were brought to us by his mate…your mother, I presume. She did not want to keep anything in her nest that implicated her mate as a slipgizzle in case the nest was ever raided by St. Aggie’s.”
    “Why do you suppose she kept these fragments, then?” asked Braithe.
    “I don’t know,” answered Streak.
    Zan looked at Streak and opened her beak to signal something. Streak nodded, and said, “Zan thinks your mum must have wanted to hold on to something from your da, something to remember him by. But she couldn’t keep the whole letter because it implicated him. So, she tore away the parts that did and kept the rest.”
    Braithe look the fragments of the parchment from Zan. He laid them on the wide branch on which he perched, and pieced them together with the fragments he brought. Finally, he had the whole letter before him, and it told the whole story:

My Dearest,
My work at St. Aggie’s is going well. However, I fear that some owls here are beginning to question my devotion to Skench and Sporn. I must redouble my efforts to convince them that I am most loyal to St. Aggie’s. I’m afraid that means I’ll have to be more aggressive on raids.
We are preparing to raid nests in the Forest Kingdom of Tyto again. I’ve already told Streak and Zan that I’ll be ready to deliver the next egg to them on the new moon. In my last conversation with the eagles, I was told that the last egg I snatched from the eggorium never hatched. That is sad news indeed, for I would have been happy to raise it as my own. I suspect our son would have loved a little brother or sister.
I know my work has been hard on our family, especially on young Braithe, but I feel that it is vital to Ambala and to owlkind that I continue. The tyrants of St. Aggie’s must be stopped at all costs. Ambala must resist. I hope to return to you soon.
Yours always,
16-7

    Braithe sighed deeply. He needed no scroom to tell him now that his da was a good and noble owl. He had the proof before him. He felt his gizzard untwist and a weight lift from his broad breast. He packed all the fragments of the restored letter into a small botkin and thanked Zan and Streak for their revelations. He bid farewell to Mist. She seemed to shimmer with gladness as he took to the air. Banking,