Guardians of Ga'Hoole: To Be A King (3 page)

D
eep in a cave of the Ice Narrows, that channel of water connecting the Southern and the Northern Waters, the hagsfiend Ygryk watched as an egg trembled. She was not alone. Another, a Great Horned Owl named Pleek, stood behind his mate. Some might call their union—hagsfiend and owl—unholy, but in their own peculiar way, they did love each other. And yet they could not have chicks, for unions such as theirs were barren. But Ygryk, despite her haggish ways, had an obsession to mother. She was desperate for a chick and so driven that she dared fly over open water, which could prove fatal to hagsfiends because their feathers lacked the natural oils of many birds. If their crowlike black feathers came in contact with salt water, they became sodden and their weight dragged them down into the sea. But despite this
hazard, she and Pleek had come to live in the Ice Narrows with Kreeth, an immensely powerful hagsfiend who dared to live above the open water of the Ice Narrows. Her reason for this, she stated simply: “Water is my enemy. Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.”

Kreeth had spent a lifetime in her cave above the churning waters of the Narrows, studying to divine a charm that would render her and all hagsfiends immune to the ravages of seawater. So far, she had not succeeded. Nonetheless, she had developed powerful charms and could claim a nachtmagen unequaled among hagsfiends. But she had always worked alone. A recluse, she had vowed never to mate, nor would she become a tool for the likes of Lord Arrin, to fight his stupid battles for a stupid throne and a crown of ice. Just as Ygryk had a peculiar and un-haggish urge to mother, Kreeth herself possessed an odd and un-haggish sense of honor. It was not that she was against war. Kreeth entertained no reservations about killing. She was opposed to war because she thought it was stupid, and dependent on brute force and coarse strategies rather than on charms and spells. And there were very few charms or spells, save for the fyngrot, that worked on a battlefield.

At this moment in her ice hollow, Kreeth tried not to
listen as Pleek went on about the defeat of Lord Arrin’s forces in the Beyond by young King Hoole. Once again, Ygryk sighed with regret. She had so desperately wanted Hoole for her own chick. She and Pleek had tried to capture him, and nearly had him with a special fyngrot spell that Kreeth had given her. But they had been attacked at the last minute, their one chance lost. Both she and Pleek had been gravely wounded.

“Stop sighing, Ygryk. What’s done is done. You keep this sighing up and you’re never going to get your half-hags back. They don’t incubate well if their host has her feathers in a twist over something,” Kreeth scolded. Half-hags were the minuscule, poisonous creatures who lived in the small gaps and narrow slotted spaces between the feathers of hagsfiends. In battle, they could dart out with their toxic load and attack. But perhaps the best service that half-hags could perform, with the proper nurturing and training, was that of tracking.

“Now pull yourself together, Ygryk,” Kreeth cautioned, “I have something coming here that, well—how should I put it—might fulfill your motherly desires. Although why anyone would want to mother anything is beyond me. Creating creatures in one’s own image is completely boring in my way of thinking. I only create new life to study it. To see the possibilities.”

Pleek looked around the cave nervously as Kreeth spoke. On the walls, suspended from ice hooks, were the heads of owls killed in battle. It was the practice of the warrior hagsfiends to cut off the heads of their victims, impale them on the tips of their ice swords, and then fly off with them triumphantly from the battlefield. Kreeth offered handsome rewards for several heads. She also collected the ashes of those burned in final ceremonies. But final ceremonies were a ritual of the S’yrthghar, where owls knew how to handle fire. In the north, these ashes were hard to come by. Kreeth craved them for their extremely powerful effect in her haggish recipes.

With her spells and foul ingredients, she had created some truly monstrous forms of birdlife. Some of their shriveled carcasses hung on the ice cave walls, like trophies of creations gone wrong, along with the neatly dried gizzards and strings of withered eyeballs of birds she had murdered. But one of her creations was alive. Looking at it caused alarm in Pleek’s own gizzard, or what was left of his gizzard after his union with Ygryk. As soon as an owl begins to consort with hagsfiends, a slow deterioration would set in on that once noble organ. So the sad remnants of Pleek’s gizzard quivered slightly at the sight of Kreeth’s puffowl, a cross between a puffin and a Snowy Owl. It was the vilest thing Pleek had ever seen. It waddled
around with the pure white face of a Snowy disfigured by the garish markings and the big, fat, blunt beak of a puffin.

Kreeth had originally felt that it was best to use transformational charms and spells on a hatchling or very young bird and not try to do anything with the egg itself. But she had recently changed her thoughts about this, or rather her “philosophy,” as she liked to say. For Kreeth preferred to think of herself not merely as a practitioner of nachtmagen, but a scientist and a philosopher, as well.

“Pleek, Ygryk!” Kreeth called. “Its egg tooth is pecking out!”

The egg that was now about to hatch was that of a Great Horned she had stolen, which she had then “touched” with a crow feather. Touched in this case did not literally mean touching, but involved an incantation during what she called the primary spell phase.

Excitement coursed through the ice cave. Ygryk and Pleek pressed closer. One thought gripped them both.
This could be ours! A chick at last!
Kreeth heard a shuffling from a dim corner of the cave and swiveled her head quickly toward the puffowl. “Get away from those hearts. I’m marinating them. Get out of here.”

“Yes, Mummy!” the puffowl said, and waddled away in dejection.

“How many times do I have to tell you? Don’t call me Mummy! I’m not your frinkin’ mummy! You’re my experiment.”

Then she turned to Pleek. “It should be hatching any second.”

There was a big cracking sound, then a blob of a tiny bird flopped out. “What is it?” Pleek whispered.

Kreeth cackled. “We’ll just have to wait and see. You ordered a Great Horned, didn’t you?

“Yes, but is it?“

“Could be this. Could be that,” Kreeth replied slyly.

“It does look like an owl, Pleek,” Ygryk said. “Bulgy eyes.” She and Pleek were bending over the little creature.

“Are you disappointed, dear? Did you want it to be more haggish?”

“No, no, Pleek. All I want is a nice little chick.”

What they got was indeed a chick. Whether she would be a nice little chick was doubtful. But the real question was: What species did she belong to? All chicks look very similar at the time of hatching. Nearly bald, their eye color murky, the newly hatched creatures are shapeless and fairly indistinguishable. But when they begin to fledge and their eye color becomes clearer, they bear all the features of their species.

For several days after hatching, it did appear to Pleek that the chick had all the first signs of being a Great Horned like Pleek. Her eyes were becoming the bright yellow of a Great Horned. It did make Pleek nervous, though, how Kreeth seemed more interested in observing himself and Ygryk than the chick. There was a cunning about Kreeth that he found very unsettling and every time he would say something about how it looked as if the chick were indeed turning out to be a Great Horned Owl, he swore he could hear Kreeth snort under her breath. It was right after the chick had lost her downy fluff and fledged her first feathers, which looked so much like Great Horned plumage, that something odd occurred.

Pleek and Ygryk were returning from a short hunting flight and had just flown into the ice cave to deposit their prey.

“How’s our little one?” Pleek boomed. Then he heard a sharp cry from Ygryk.

“What happened? My baby!”

“Has she been hurt? Is she dead?” Pleek spun his head toward Kreeth. “What have you done, you crone?”

“Nothing,” she cackled, “except to create a masterpiece.”

“Pleek, look at her!” Ygryk gasped.

He lofted himself over to where the chick was poking around for some ice worms. The little chick looked up at her da and blinked. Pleek felt his withered gizzard give a lurch. He was looking into the black eyes of a female Barn Owl, but her body had the coloration of a Great Horned. “Wh—wh—what happened? How could this be?” And then her face started to lose the tawny feathers of a Great Horned and to turn white. Even her shape seemed to lengthen a bit and widen slightly at the top so that it appeared more like that of a Barn Owl. “A Barn Owl! I never!” Pleek gasped in disbelief.

“You never, is right!” Kreeth’s words bit the air. “I did this. And I shall name her Lutta. Lutta is my masterpiece. She is everything. And nothing.”

“What do you mean?” Ygryk cried. “All we wanted was one little chick that looked like one of us, or maybe both. What have you done? She’ll belong to neither of us.”

“That is your decision, my dear,” Kreeth replied. “But look at her. Look at what I have created.” Now the white face of the Barn Owl was turning the deep glistening black of a crow. The eyes were becoming beady crow’s eyes.

Within a single day, Lutta went through a half dozen transformations. For a few hours she was a crow. Then she slid almost imperceptibly into being a Barred Owl. Next a Snowy. The most spectacular shift was when, within the
space of seconds, she would go from the total blackness of a crow to the pure whiteness of a Snowy. But perhaps her best transformation was when she changed into a Spotted Owl.

Lutta seemed cheerful enough, and Pleek and Ygryk were pleased, they guessed, that she called them Mum and Da, but they had a difficult time relating to this chick that Kreeth called a changeling.

“It’s genius what I have done!” Kreeth exclaimed several times a day and into the night. And despite all her protestations about not wanting to be a mother, she seemed genuinely fond of Lutta in an almost maternal sense.

“But all this changing—it’s not natural,” Pleek protested in the gentlest way.

Kreeth blinked her beady little eyes. “You think either one of you is natural? Who needs natural? Lutta is interesting. She’s a fascinating phenomenon.”

“Yes, yes, of course.” Pleek and Ygryk nodded. Silently, they reminded themselves that they had a unique and wonderful chick. But each one silently thought,
We didn’t want a phenomenon, we just wanted a chick! Something we can call our own.
Still, they tried to appreciate this wondrous chick. To learn her ways. To come to love her and delight in her.

And for a while, it worked. Pleek and Ygryk told themselves that underneath the plumy whiteness of a Snowy Owl or the speckled splendor of a Spotted Owl or the silvery mist featheration of a Great Gray, she was still their little Lutta. Although it was especially upsetting to Pleek when he had brought her a plump little ice mouse for her first Meat-on-Bones ceremony that Lutta changed species a half-dozen times during the ritual. She started off as a Great Horned, then slid into the dark sleekness of hags-fiend. Pleek and Ygryk both churred at this, for they took it as an homage to themselves. “So respectful!” Ygryk murmured. And it would have been if it had ended there. But it did not. A moment later, Lutta had become a Pygmy Owl, of all things, and dwindled to such a tiny size that she could hardly get the plump thigh of the ice mouse down her gullet.

“Great Glaux, why would she do a thing like that?” Pleek fumed. Lutta blinked at him. “Why are you calling me she, Da, and not Lutta?” Pleek didn’t answer.

“Mum, why’s he calling me she? I’m your chick. It’s like you don’t know me.”

“We find it…hard sometimes, dear,” Ygryk stammered as she watched the Pygmy swell into a Barn Owl, then peered into the shining dark eyes that gleamed black
as river stones in that stark white face. “It is you in there, isn’t it?” she asked in a tremulous voice.

From a corner in the ice hollow, Kreeth cast a sly glance.

Pleek and Ygryk were becoming less and less sure of Lutta. When out on their hunting flights, they would discuss their peculiar owlet.

“I just don’t know what to make of it, Pleek.”

“I know what you mean, my dear. I suppose we’ll have to teach her to fly,” Pleek said wearily. “As you say, it’s hard to know how to feel.”

Any child, bird or otherwise, can sense their parents’ doubt, and Lutta was no exception. At first it made her angry, but then she began to feel rather indifferent. What did she care what they thought? Kreeth was always good to her. Kreeth liked her the way she was—whatever that was. She began to dread when Pleek and Ygryk returned from their hunting trips. They always seemed to be whispering about her. She could sense it just before they entered the cave. And then they would either stare at her and not say anything or turn their heads as if it hurt them to look at her. But Kreeth was the opposite. She seemed to delight in all of Lutta’s transformations.

On this particular night, her parents had just returned
and she was perched on her ice ledge as a crow, which she thought Ygryk would like, but Ygryk just got this hard look in her eye.
By the demons of smee holes,
thought Lutta, using a favorite curse of Kreeth’s,
why is my haggish, so-called mother staring at me like this?
“Look!” She blurted out. “I can’t help what I am and what I am not.” Kreeth craftily observed all this from a corner in the cave.

“I suppose that is so,” was all that Ygryk said. And Pleek went silently to his ice perch without even greeting Lutta.

At noon the following day, as Kreeth and Lutta slept, Pleek and Ygryk left. They abandoned their longed-for chick to the hagsfiend who had divined her.

T
he inside of the ice cave danced with the light of the stars outside. They were called frost stars because their images were reflected perfectly on the ice walls as they rose in the night.

Lutta blinked. “I overslept.” She swiveled her head, which, at this time, had taken the form and featheration of a Barn Owl. Her eyes, like black mirrors, reflected the frost stars. Even Kreeth was struck by her beauty. “They’re gone, aren’t they?” She turned to the hagsfiend, who nodded. “And tonight was to be my First Flight. Here I am, fully fledged at last. Figures!” She spat out the word with contempt.

“Don’t you worry, dearie. I can teach you better than they ever could.” Kreeth watched her. The white face was beginning to turn tawny. Yellow suffused the black eyes. Another one of Lutta’s myriad transformations was beginning. It was in response to her rejection. On some level, she was trying to become what her foster parents had
wanted. It was triggered by the sickening feelings of shame and abandonment.

Kreeth knew that her own task was to raise this extraordinary young creature. And Kreeth had big plans for her. Let the others fight their wars in the Northern and the Southern Kingdoms. Let them fight over territory and ice thrones and ice crowns. A new dynasty was beginning right here in this cave in the Ice Narrows. A dynasty born of the darkest and most impenetrable of charms—and Lutta would be its beginning.

But first, Kreeth must instruct her how to control her changes. She probably had no inkling that she herself could influence the timing of the change or the species she changed into. “Lutta, I love you for what you are and what you are not.” Kreeth spoke very slowly. She fixed her dark eyes on the fading black orbs of Lutta. “What you are and are not is the sum of your whole.” Indeed, the transformation was slowing down. The yellow of the Great Horned’s eyes seemed to dim as the black of the Barn Owl’s flooded back and the face feathered white.

It might have seemed to Lutta that Kreeth spoke in riddles. But she did feel something happening. The transformation slowed. She felt a sense of peace within her for the first time. She looked down. Her breast was white with a few light speckles. Her wings were tan with dashes
of white. Kreeth was regarding her with great interest.
She is understanding for the first time these differences. This is good. This is very good.

“It stopped,” Lutta gasped in wonder.

“You stopped it.”

“How? How did I do it?”

“By learning who you are, by being keenly aware of the differences. What did you feel first in your face?”

“I felt it lengthening and narrowing toward the bottom. The top is wider than the bottom.”

“Exactly. And what else?”

“The whiteness of my face. I felt that. I don’t know how you can feel color, but I did.”

“You sensed the light-reflecting qualities of white. That is all.”

“And I could hear better, too!”

“Yes, of course. You see, my dear, if you concentrate on the key elements that make a particular owl, you can control these changes. You can summon them or dismiss them at will. You
shall
control them. They
shall not
control you. This makes you important.”

“It does?” she asked.

She is completely unsuspecting. This will make it even more fun for me!
Kreeth thought. “Lutta, you have power—great power. They talk of the Ember of Hoole, but you have a
power to match that of the ember and that of the king who possesses it.”

“What can I do with the power?”

“Rule, my dear. You can become the first monarch of a new dynasty.”

A poisonous look infused Lutta’s black Barn Owl eyes. She felt a minute stirring in her primary feathers.

Demons of smee!
Kreeth thought.
Her first hagsfiends are hatching! She is too good to be true! Hagsfiends roosting in the feathers of a Barn Owl! Delightful! And she hasn’t even learned how to fly yet!

“Can I punish my parents? Make Pleek and Ygryk suffer?”

Oh,
thought Kreeth,
I’ve made a good one here.
Some, Kreeth realized, might think it was a waste of energy to seek such petty revenge. Pleek and Ygryk hardly seemed worth it. Still, vengeance had its uses. Vengeance could feed the fire that burned within this creature. Vengeance was like a flint stone on which Lutta might sharpen her talons.

“Of course, dear. But believe me, there are greater prey than those two. Right now we must get to the business of flying. How would you like to learn to fly? As a Barn Owl? A Snowy? Northern Hawk Owl? Great Gray?”

“Great Gray,” Lutta replied.

“Nice choice. Lovely fliers, with all that fluffy plumage. Now begin to concentrate on what you have experienced so far during one of your transformations into a Great Gray.”

The transformations were sometimes so fleeting that it was difficult for Lutta to remember everything and she hesitated.

“Start with the head, Lutta. Always start with the head,” Kreeth counseled. Lutta snapped her beak shut and began to feel the bottom of her face expand. Her head was becoming larger and rounder. Her face expanded to nearly twice its size. Her plumage grew denser and silvery.

“Come with me, dearie. Our flight lessons begin!”