The Capture

mighty swipe with her wings and send Auntie tumbling flat on her back. In that moment, the eagle reached the egg and rose into the sky with it clutched in her claws.

    Yet the voice of Hortense seemed to grow dimmer, as if it was fading away, dwindling as if... as if...
    Soren and Gylfie looked at each other. Two big tears leaked from Soren's dark eyes. "She's falling, isn't she, Gylfie?"

    "They pushed her." And there was Auntie, standing at the edge of the cliff with Spoorn, looking down into the thousand-foot-deep abyss. "Bye-bye," Auntie cooed, and waved a tattered wing. "Bye-bye, 12-8, you fool!" The coo curled into the ugliest snarl Soren could ever imagine.

    "But the eagle got the egg" Gylfie said weakly.

    "Yes, I suppose she did," Soren replied.

    And now there would be more stories, indeed, legends to tell in Ambala of brave Hortense.

    The eggorium was briefly shut down. All temporary eggorium and hatchery owls were to report to the moon- blaze chamber immediately for moon scalding, as indeed there was to be a full shine the following evening. Soren
    and Gylfie, still crammed in the slot, heard Auntie and Spoorn and Skench talking about how no word of this could get out. Auntie's old voice returned. She fretted in that Auntie way of hers about how she could not imagine that 12-8, the most beautifully moon-blinked owl ever, could have gone so wrong under her guidance.

    Once again, Gylfie and Soren survived the moon scalding in the moon-blaze chamber. They told the Tales of Yore, as Gylfie called the Ga Hoolian legends. And Soren, who had a remarkable gift for storytelling, began to compose a new one that first night that he told in bits through the glare of the moon's hot light.

    "She was an owl like none other..." Soren began, thinking of Hortense. "Her face both beautiful and kindly her deep brown eyes warm and with a glimmer like tiny suns. Her wings, however, for one reason or another were crippled, and it was from this, her weakness, that she drew her great strength. For this was an owl who wanted only to do good, who clung to dreams of freedom while giving up her own and, from a stony perch high in a lawless place, she did find a way to wage her own war."

    Soren finished the legend as the scalding moon began to slip down in the sky.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

    One Bloody Nightt

    It was the last night of the dwenking. The moon this night appeared like a fragile dim thread in the sky.
    The last full shine in which they had been moon scalded after their work in the eggorium had seemed the longest. But Soren and Gylfie had survived. Soren poked his beak into the feathers, the very feathers that Hortense had said were coming along so nicely. They seemed even thicker now.

    "Look at those primaries, Soren, and your plummels! How I do envy your plummels," Gylfie said.

    Soren ran his beak lightly through the plummels that hovered like a fine mist over his flight feathers. He remembered his mother saying how one must preen their plummels every day, for, indeed, plummels were unique to owls. Of all birds, only owls, and only certain owls at that, had plummels. Elf Owls did not have these fine, soft feathers that fringed the leading edges of wings. It was these feathers that allowed Barn Owls like Soren to fly in almost complete silence.

    "Plummels," his mother had said, "are every bit as important as a sharp beak or sharp talons." These words, of course, were directed mostly to Kludd. Kludd's plummels hid just begun to sprout shortly before Soren had been snatched, but all Kludd cared about was his beak and talons."

    "So, Gylfie, you think, then, by the time of the next dwenking we shall be able to leave?" "Yes."

    Soren looked at this little owl who had become his friend and felt a twinge. She could leave now, for Gylfie was a fully fledged owl. With her dappled plumage of reddish browns and grays and the striking white feathers that curved over her eyes in lovely sweeping arcs, Gylfie looked so grown up, so ready to fly. "Gylfie," Soren sighed, "you could leave now. Look at you."

    Gylfie had, indeed, turned into a very lovely Elf Owl. "We have had this talk before, Soren. I told you. I am waiting"

    "I know. I know. I just want you to be sure." Soren bobbed his head up and down twice and then cocked it to the side in a questioning manner.

    "We still haven't gotten into the library and I feel --" Soren began to interrupt. For the life of him, he couldn’t of figure out why Gylfie was so set on getting into