The Capture

sight the river Hoole, which sometimes narrowed and only appeared as the smallest glimmer of a thread of water. The trees thinned and Twilight said that he thought the region below was known as The Beaks. And for a while they seemed to lose the strand of the river, and there appeared to be many other smaller threadlike creeks or tributaries. They were, of course, worried they might have lost the Hoole, but if they had their doubts they dared not even think upon them for a sliver of a second. For doubts, they all feared in the deepest parts of their quivering gizzards,

    might be like an owl sickness -- like grayscale or beak rot -- contagious and able to spread from owl to owl.

    How many false creeks, streams, and even rivers had they followed so far, only to be disappointed? But now Digger called out, "I see something!" All of their gizzards quickened. "It's ... it's ... whitish ... well, grayish."

    "Ish? What in Glaux's name is ish?" Twilight hooted.

    "It means," Gylfie said in her clear voice, "that it's not exactly white and it's not exactly gray."

    "I'll have a look. Hold your flight pattern until I get back," said Twilight.

    The huge Great Gray Owl began a power dive. He was not gone long before he returned. "And you know why it's not exactly gray and not exactly white?" Twilight did not wait for an answer. "Because it's smoke."

    "Smoke?" The other three seemed dumbfounded.

    "You know what smoke is?" Twilight asked. He tried to remember to be patient with these owls who had seen and experienced so much less than he had.

    "Sort of," Soren replied. "You mean there's a forest fire down there? I've heard of those."

    "Oh, no. Nothing that big. Maybe once it had been. But really, the forests of The Beaks are minor ones.
    Second- rate. Few and far between and not much to catch fire."

    "Spontaneous combustion, no doubt," Gylfie said.

    Twilight gave the little Elf Owl a withering look. Always trying to steal his show with the big words. He had no idea what spontaneous combustion was and he doubted if Glyfie did, either. But he let it go for the moment. "Come on, let's go explore," Twilight said.

    They alighted on the forest floor at the edge of where the smoke was the thickest. It seemed to be coming out of a cave that was beneath a stone outcropping. There was a scattering of a few glowing coals on the ground and charred pieces of wood.

    "Digger," Twilight said, "can you dig as well as you can walk with those naked legs of yours?"

    "You bet. How do you think we fix up our burrows, make them bigger? We just don't settle for what we happen upon."

    "Well, start digging and show the rest of us how. We've got to bury these coals before a wind comes up and carries them off and really gets a fire going."

    It was hard work burying the coals, especially for Gylfie, who as the tiniest had the shortest legs of all.
    She and Mrs. Plithiver, who was not much more effective, worked as a team.

    "I wonder what happened here," Gylfie said as she paused to look around. Her eyes settled on what she thought was a charred piece of wood, but something glinted through the blackness of the moonless night. Gylfie blinked. The object glinted and curved into a familiar shape. Gylfie's gizzard gave a little twitch and, as if in a trance, she walked over toward it.

    "Battle claws!" she gasped.

    From inside the cave came a terrible moan. "Get out! Get out!"

    But they couldn't get out! They couldn't move. Between them and the mouth of the cave, glowing eyes -
    - redder than any of the live coals -- glowered, and there was a horrible rank smell. Two curved white fangs sliced the darkness.

    "Bobcat!" Twilight roared.

    About the Author

    Kathryn Lasky has long had a fascination with owls. Several years ago she began doing extensive research about these birds and their behaviors -- what they ate, how they flew, how they built or found their nests. She thought that she would someday write a nonfiction book about owls, illustrated with photographs by her husband, Christopher Knight. She realized, though, that this would indeed be difficult since owls are nocturnal creatures, shy and hard to find. So she decided to write a fantasy about a world of owls. But even though it was an imaginary world in which owls could speak, think, and dream, she wanted to include as much of their natural history as she could.

    Kathryn Lasky has written many books, both fiction and nonfiction. She has collaborated with her husband on nonfiction books