The Capture

other."

    "I need you more than you need me," Soren said in a small voice.

    "Oh, racdrops!" Once more Soren could hardly believe his ears. Racdrops, short for raccoon droppings, was one of the most daring, dirtiest, worst words an owlet could say. Kludd had gotten thumped good and hard by his mother when Mrs. Plithiver had reported that he had said "racdrops" to her when she insisted he stop teasing Eglantine.

    "Soren, you were the one who realized that they were

    trying to moon blink us with our own names by having us repeat them. That was brilliant."

    "But you were the one who knew about moon blinking in the first place. I'd never heard of it."

    "I just knew something that you didn't. That's not thinking, just happening to know it. You would have known it if you had been hatched a little earlier or lived in the desert. But now I learned something new.

    You see, Soren," Gylfie continued, "after they took you away, I made a discovery That owlet 47-2, she sent me on an errand. It was outside the pelletorium and ..." Gylfie looked about, then continued her tale in a low voice. The first shine of the moon was just beginning to slither over the dark horizon.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

    Gylfies Discovery

    I was supposed to go and tell the pellet gatherers that new trays were needed in our area. So 47-2
    pointed me in the direction of what she called the Big Crack. It was, in fact, very near our area and ran straight up a rock side of the jpelletorium. I was told to go into the crack and I would find a line of other owlets also going to the storerooms and to follow them and not go off the trail. So I did just that."

    Gylfie was telling the story so well that Soren could imagine every little turn on the path through the rock crack. It was as if he were right there with Gylfie

    "There were many cracks leading off the main crack and sometimes voices could be heard. It was interesting that none of the other owlets who I followed seemed to even notice these cracks or hear the voices. Perhaps they had walked this trail so often it was meaningless to them. But I looked about and could see that at one point in the
    crack the sky cut through. Yes, it was quite beautiful, really, just a little piece of sky like a blue river flowing above, and then at one point the sky seemed very low. You know" -- Gylfie stopped and mused for a moment -- "ever since we have been here, Soren, I have had the feeling that St. Aegolius Academy is deep, deep in a stone canyon. That its very steepness and depth make it the perfect prison. But at this one point along the trail, I realized we were up higher and not so deep. Close to the sky."

    "Close to the sky," Soren repeated softly. Once he, too, had been close to the sky. Once he had lived in a hollow high up in a fir tree lined with the fluffy down from his parents breasts. Once he had lived close to that blueness. That blueness of the day sky and the blackness of the night had been so near. No wonder a little owlet could almost believe it could fly before it really could. The sky was a part of owls and owls were a part of the sky.

    Gylfie continued her story. "I thought that on the way back to the pelletorium I would try and look a little harder around this particular spot. Maybe slow down. Then I thought, maybe I could just pretend to be marching. You know, just like the Great Scheme idea. It would be a good test. Would anyone notice? Maybe not and better yet, there did not seem to be any monitors around." Gylfie's eyes brightened and she paused, hoping this idea would

    sink in with Soren and convince him that it could all work.

    "So, on the way back, that is exactly what I did. No one seemed to notice at all. They just moved around me as if I were a part of the stone wall that jutted out. And then something extraordinary happened. An owlet seemed to stumble near me. This owl, a young Snowy, just blinked at me and I thought, 'Great Glaux, I've been discovered standing here.' So I pointed up toward the sky -- as if I were admiring the view. "'Sky I said pleasantly. And the owl blinked, not a question blink, but a real moon blink. The same look that is in their eyes when they repeat their names on the sleep march." Gylfie took a deep breath, as if what she was about to say was terribly important. And it was. "I realized then that many words for these owlets, just like their names, have no meaning, no meaning at all. Can you imagine, Soren, an owl not knowing what the sky is?"

    Soren thought for a