The Capture

can understand her even though she does not speak -- Zan says that you must quit that foolish walking about in the desert all day and night. Too dangerous. What are you looking for so hard, my dear?"

    "My family," Digger said. He then told Streak and Zan the story of what Jatt and Jutt had done to his brother Flick and how he had run off and was now lost.

    Streak and Zan exchanged a long look. In that instant, Digger sensed that the two eagles knew his parents' fate. Zan stepped up to Digger and began preening his feathers with her beak in a soothing gesture. Streak took a deep breath. "Well, my son, I am afraid that we know what happened to your parents. You see, the feathers of the little brother you described were still there by the burrow and we saw your mum and da weeping mightily. So we asked what happened, and they told us how this had been their son Flick and they didn't know where in the world their two other young ones might be. Zan thought that this surely was the worst thing she'd ever heard. And though she can speak nary a sliver of a sound, she came back each
    day to preen your mother -- to simply say in her own way 'I've been a mother, too, and though I have not lost a young one in this way I can feel how terrible it must be.'

    "Then one day we got there a mite too late. The same two owls that nearly killed you just now came back for another run at the burrows and this time they came with reinforcements. There must have been fifty of them and they were wearing the most ferocious battle claws we'd ever seen. Well, we can take em on if there are only two or three in a war party, even with the claws, but fifty -- no, no, that's no match."

    "D-d-d-did ..." Digger began to stutter. "Did they eat them?"

    "No, just killed them. Said they were too tough and gristly."

    There was a long silence now. No one knew what to say. Finally, Gylfie turned to Digger and spoke,
    "Come with us, Digger."

    "But where is it you're going?" he asked.

    "To the Great Ga'Hoole Tree."

    "What?" said Digger, but before Twilight could answer, Streak broke in. "I've heard of that place, but isn't it just a story, a legend?"

    "To some it might be," Twilight said, and blinked at the eagle.

    But not to owls, thought Soren. To owls, he thought, it is a real place.

    The dwenking moon had begun to slide down the bowl of the night. It hung like the curve of a talon low in the desert sky, spilling a river of silver across the land that seemed to flow directly to the four owls, lapping at the edges of their own talons. This light, flooding low and cool, seemed so different from the moon's scaldings and blinkings. It was a light that seemed to clear the mind and make bold the spirit.
    And something strange began to happen. Soren, with Mrs. Rhiann. on his shoulder, and Twilight and Gylfie stepped close to one another until their feathers were touching, and even Digger tucked in on the other side of Twilight. Where a short time before, Soren had wondered how he would explain his thoughts to the other owls, now he knew that no explanation was needed, that they had within the slivers of time and the silver of moonlight become a band. They were four owls who had lost their parents. But the time had come for them to become something else. They were not simply orphans.
    Together they were much more. Hadn't the Great Ga'Hoole Tree of the Ga'Hoollian Legends been the source of their greatest inspiration when they had been at St. Aggie's? Hadn't the Tales of Yore and the nobility of the knights of the Great Ga'Hoole Tree saved them from moon scalding? Could the legend become real? Could they, in fact, become part of the legend?

    Soren's dream of Grimble was the worst sleeping dream he had ever had, but there was another dream, a waking dream that haunted the borders of Soren's mind and made his gizzard quiver. It was a dream that filled him with despair. In it, Soren was flying and spotted his parents perched in a tree. They had found a new hollow, and there was a brand-new nest lined with the fluffiest down. In the nest, there were new little owlets. Soren alighted on a limb. "Mum? Da? It's me, Soren." And his parents blinked, not in amazement but in true disbelief. "You're not our son," said his da. "Oh, no," said his mum. "Our son wouldn't look like you even grown up and fully fledged." "No," said his da, and both owls turned and ducked into the hollow. This, Soren realized in the deepest part of his gizzard, was why they had to go to the