hang on tight. It was like a small hurricane in the hollow. Then, finally, his movements slowed and he pranced off into a corner.
“Got that out of your system, Twilight?” Gylfie asked.
“What do you mean ‘out of my system’?”
“Your aggression.”
Twilight made a slightly contemptuous sound that came from the back of his throat. “Big words, little owl.” This was something Twilight often said to Gylfie. Gylfie did have a tendency to use big words.
“Well now, young’uns,” Mrs P was speaking up. “Let’s not get into it. I think, Gylfie, that in the face of cannibalism, aggression or going stark raving yoicks and absolutely annihilating the cannibals is perfectly appropriate.”
“More big words but I like them. I like them, Mrs P,” Twilight hooted his delight.
Soren, however, remained quiet. He was thinking. He was still wondering what the Great Ga’Hoole Tree would be like. What would those noble owls think of an owl like Twilight – so unrefined, yet powerful. So cheeky, but loyal – so angry, but true?
They had left the hollow of the fir tree at First Black. The night was racing with ragged clouds. The forest covering was thick beneath them so they flew low to keep the River Hoole in sight, 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. For a while, they seemed to lose the strand of the river, and there appeared to be many other small 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 about them for a sliver of a second. For doubts, each one feared in the deepest parts of their quivering gizzards, might be like an owl sickness – like greyscale 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, greyish.”
“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 grey.”
“I’ll have a look. Hold your flight pattern until I get back.”
The huge Great Grey Owl began a power dive. He was not gone long before he returned. “And you know why it’s not exactly grey and not exactly white?” Twilight did not wait for an answer. “Because it’s smoke.”
“Smoke?” The other three seemed dumbfounded.
“You do 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 was. 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 Gylfie did, either. But he let it go for the moment. “Come on, let’s go explore.”
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 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 or make them bigger? We don’t just 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 was the tiniest and had the shortest legs of all. “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. Glinted and curved into a familiar shape. Gylfie blinked. Her gizzard gave a little twitch and as if in a trance she walked over towards the object.
“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, gleaming 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.
The four owls simultaneously lifted their eight wings in powerful upstrokes. The bobcat shrieked below, a terrible sky-shattering shriek. Soren had never heard anything like it. It had all happened so suddenly that Soren had even forgotten to drop the coal that he had in his beak.
“Good Glaux, Soren!” Gylfie said as she saw her dear friend’s face bathed in the red light of the radiant coal.
Soren dropped it immediately.
There was another shriek. A shadow blacker than the night seemed to leap into the air, then plummet to the ground, writhing and yowling in pain.
“Well, bust my gizzard!” Twilight shouted. “Soren, you dropped that coal right on the cat! What a shot!”
“I – what?”
“Come on, we’re going in for him – for the kill.”
“The kill?” Soren said blankly.
“Follow me. Aim for his eyes. Gylfie, stay clear of his tail. I’ll go for the throat. Digger, take a flank.”
The four owls flew down in a deadly wedge. Soren aimed for the eyes, but one was already useless, as the coal had done its work and a still-sizzling socket wept small embers. Digger sunk his talons into an exposed flank as the bobcat writhed on the ground, and Gylfie stuck one of her talons down the largest nostril that Soren had ever seen. Twilight made a quick slice at the throat and blood spattered the night. The cat was no longer howling. It lay in a heap on the forest floor, its face smouldering from the coal. The smell of singed fur filled the night as the bobcat’s pulse grew weaker and the blood poured out from the deep gash in its throat.
“Was he after the battle claws – a bobcat?” Soren turned to Gylfie.
When the two owls had been at St Aggie’s, Grimble, the old Boreal Owl who had died helping them escape, had told them how the warriors of St Aggie’s could not make their own battle claws so they scavenged them from battlefields. But a bobcat? Why would a bobcat need battle claws? They stared at the long sharp claws that extended from the paws of the cat and looked deadlier than any battle claws.
“No,” Twilight said quietly. He had flown over to the cave and now stood in its opening. “The cat was after what was in here.”
“What’s that?” the three other owls asked at once.
“A dying owl,” Mrs Plithiver said as she slithered out from the cave where she had taken refuge. “Come in. I think he wants to speak, if he has any more breath in him.”
The owls moved into the cave opening. There was a mass of brown feathers collapsed by a shallow pit that still glowed with embers. It was