Capture (7 page)

"Oh, my goodness! Oh, my goodness. I don't know what you said, 12-1, but I've got to nurse Nursey now." The little Spotted Owl trotted off to find a remedy.

"I know what I said," Soren whispered to himself. "I said, 'the legends of Ga'Hoole.'"

Right Side Up in an Upside-down World

The next night, Gylfie ànd Soren met under the arch of the glaucidium. They were to begin the Great Scheme, but Soren suddenly had doubts.

"I'm really worried, Gylfie. It might not work."

"Soren," Gylfie pleaded, "who knows if it will work or not, but what have we got to lose if we don't try it?"

"Our minds, to start with," Soren replied. Gylfie gave the soft churn sound of a chuckle that is nearly universal for all owls.

There was a swoosh in the air and suddenly the little Elf Owl was flat on her back. "There is no laughing.

Laughter may only be practiced under the direction of Lieutenant Spoorn. Don't do it again. Next time you shall be reported immediately, and I shall anticipate eagerly your first lesson in correct laughter."

The monitor then moved away. Soren and Gylfie looked at each other wordlessly. This had to be the strangest place imaginable. They taught one how to sleep! Lessons in laughter! Laughter therapy! Soren wondered what possibly could be the purpose of a place like St. Aggie's. What were they really learning to do here and why? What were the flecks, more precious than gold? What were Skench and Spoorn trying to turn them into? Not owls, for sure! But there was not time to dwell on that. Soren had another matter that had been bothering him more and more since his own laughter therapy session.

"Gylfie, you can get out, maybe, but not me. But you can.

"What are you talking about, Soren?"

"Gylfie, you are just a short time from being fully fledged -- look at you. I think you've budged some more beginning primaries today. You'll be able to leave soon."

"And so will you."

"What are you talking about? I think you have been moon blinked. They just plucked my feathers, Gylfie."

"They plucked your down. Look, your primary shaft points are still there, and I see some secondary ones, too."

Soren lifted one wing and examined it. There were still budging points. Gylfie was right on this. But, Soren wondered, without down what...?

It was as if Gylfie had read his thoughts. "You don't

need down to fly, Soren. Down just keeps you warm. You can fly without it. It'll just be cold, and who knows? By the time your flight feathers really come in, you'll probably have some more down."

Soren blinked again. For the first time, there was hope in the dark eyes set like polished stones in his white heart- shaped face, and something quickened in Gylfie's own heart. She had to convince Soren that he could do this. She had to make him really believe in the Great Scheme.

Gylfie had watched as her older brothers and sisters had reached that point, when they seemed to mysteriously gather strength and lift into flight after days of endless hopping. She remembered asking her father how they did it. Now her fathers words came back to her:

"Gylf, you can practice forever and still never fly if you do not really believe you can. That is what gives you that feeling in the gizzard." Then her father had stopped and, in a musing tone of voice, said, "Funny isn't it, how all our strongest feelings come through our gizzards -- even a feeling that is about our wings." He had ruffled a few of his flight feathers as if to demonstrate. "It all comes through our gizzard," he had repeated.

"Listen to me, Soren," Gylfie said. "I found out a lot in the pelletorium after you fainted and they had to carry you out."

Soren blinked and shivered his shoulders in the way young owls do when they are embarrassed or ashamed. "Yes, Gylfie, while I was stupidly asking questions you were listening."

"Quit beating up on yourself," Gylfie said sharply. "They've already done that." Gylfie's directness shocked Soren. He stopped blinking and looked straight at the Elf Owl. "Look. What did I just tell you?

Everything here at St. Aggie's is upside down and inside out. It's our job not to get moon blinked and to stand right side up in an upside- down world. If we don't do that we'll never be able to escape. We'll never be able to think. And thinking is the only way we'll be able to plan an escape. So listen to me."

Soren nodded and Gylfie continued. "Now first, I have figured out that tonight is the third night of full shine. In fact, the moon has already started to dwenk. Remember, I told you about this. You'll see that in a few days it shall almost disappear and we won't have to worry about being moon blinked. Every night in the glaucidium, it will become darker and darker and easier and easier for us to find the shadows. But in the meantime, we must act as if we are moon blinked."

Soren resisted asking a question even though he knew there was no danger with Gylfie. But still, he simply did not want to break into Gylfie's thoughts. It was clear to Soren that this Elf Owl might be very small in every way but her ideas. And he could tell that Gylfie was thinking very hard now.

"After one more newing," Gylfie continued, "you shall be very close to having fledged all of your flight feathers, and certainly by the time of full shine, you shall be ready to fly."

"But what about you, Gylfie? You will be ready in a few days."

"I shall wait for you."

"Wait for me!" It was not a question. Soren was simply shocked. Too shocked to even speak. So finally it was Gylfie who asked the question.

"What's wrong, Soren?"

"Gylfie, I cannot believe what you just said. Why would you wait for me when you can get out of here?"

"That's just the point, Soren. I would never leave you behind. You are my friend, first of all. If I escaped without you, my life would not be worth two pellets to me. And second, we need each 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.

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 moment. It was indeed unimaginable. Or was it? He remembered what Auntie Finny had said about some birds not destined for flight. But Soren had another question. "Does this owlet just not know the word or does she really not know what the sky is?" Gylfie blinked. Soren truly was a deep thinker. He continued, "Mrs. Plithiver, our nest-maid snake, I told you about her, well, she is blind, but she knows about the sky. She says

that all snakes, whether they are blind or not, call the sky 'the Yonder' because it is so far away for snakes. It is about as far as anything can be for a snake and that is why she loved working for our family -

- because she felt close to the Yonder."

"No, Soren, I think this owlet truly has been completely and perfectly moon blinked. She does not know the word, nor does she have any idea of sky."

"That's so sad," Soren said softly.

"It is sad, but you know it makes our job of escaping easier. Maybe the monitors have been moon blinked about words. But I have to tell you the other thing I discovered when I stopped at this place."

"What's that?"

"Well, down a side crack I saw a place that was guarded by an owl who looked familiar. As a matter of fact, I don't know how I didn't recognize him instantly. It was Grimble, the owl who snatched me. I've thought a lot about him. Do you remember what he said when we were flying here, something about it hardly seeming worth the effort and how the owl who snatched you warned him that he might get a demerit if Spoorn heard him talking that way?"

"Yes," Soren said slowly. He was not sure where Gylfie was going with this.

"Well, I think Grimble has perhaps not been perfectly moon blinked and that could be really good, too."

"Wait! One time you say it will be helpful to us if someone is perfectly moon blinked and the next minute you say someone like Grimble, who might not be, can be helpful, too."

"Grimble might be one of us, don't you see, Soren? He might be pretending to be moon blinked the way we have. As a matter of fact, I am almost sure he is."

"Why?"

"Because I went down that side crack and I found out what he was guarding."

"You did?"

"Yes. And do you know how hard it is to find out information when it's against the rules to ask a question?"

"Oh, yes!" Soren said.

'A couple of times I almost did ask questions, and Grimble seemed to sense it."

"What did you find out?"

"Have you ever heard of books?"

"Of course I have," Soren said indignantly. "Books and Barn Owls go very far back." These were the exact words that his parents often said when they took out their few books to read aloud to the owlets.

"Especially since so

many of us once lived in churches. My parents had a book of psalms."

"Psalms?" Gylfie was truly impressed. "What are psalms?"

"Like songs, sort of, I think." Soren had not really heard that many. But when his mother read him the psalms it seemed that she sang the words more than spoke them. "But what about books? What did you find out from Grimble?"

"The place he guards is a book place. They call it a library. Have you ever heard of that -- a library?"

"Never. How did you find out all this? You certainly didn't ask questions."

"No, of course not. You see, it is off-limits. Only Skench and Spoorn are allowed in. That's how I sensed he might be one of us. He seemed to know the question before I ever had to think of a way of asking it. I want to get in."

"Why? I think we just need to get out of here."

"I want to know about the flecks," Gylfie said.

"Flecks? What flecks?"

"The flecks we're always singing about -- the bright flecks at the core, the ones the first-degree pickers pick for."

"Are you yoicks, Gylfie? You want to stay around this place long enough to become a first-degree picker?"

"Soren, something worse than just moon blinking