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  “Oh, that would be lovely, Glynnis,” Otulissa said.

  “Working late?” Glynnis said as she poured the tea.

  “Yes, yes. I just have some things to attend to in the library.” Otulissa took a sip of tea and felt a twinge, possibly of defiance, she thought, well up in her gizzard. So much for the calming effects of the hanging garden. She set down her cup, thanked Glynnis, and flew down to the library. She made her way to the back shelves where the young owlets had been perching earlier. She had intended to pluck down the joke book they had been reading, and then she spotted another called Slightly Filthy Riddles for Soiled Minds. She had never read any such fare in her life. But she, after all, was an advocate of reading widely. She only wished that the owl who called himself “the Striga” would appear right this minute and see her. There was one entire chapter devoted to wet poop jokes. She read the first one and began to chuckle.

  There once was a seagull named Luke

  Who was hungry and craved some hot soup.

  He spied a swell fish, and exclaimed, “What a dish!”

  But spoiled it with a big splatty poop.

  Otulissa sighed. Such was the humor of very young owls, just the kind of jokes they loved to read and retell in the dining hollow, causing them to be dismissed immediately. But perhaps, Otulissa mused, this kind of foolishness is good for us older owls, too, once in a while. What is that blue owl so wrought up about? Why are his so very few feathers in such a twist?

  CHAPTER SIX

  Burnt Paper

  The Band was on the wing again. They had made excellent time, and there was yet another hour left in the night until dawn. It felt good. Almost too good, thought Soren. It was somehow a relief to get away from the great tree. Pelli, his dear mate, seemed to understand implicitly, and even though he had told her that this was a scientific expedition, she sensed that there were other reasons he needed to be off for a while. She knew he was concerned about Coryn. Soren worried about the young king as much as he did about his own owlets. He was, after all, Coryn’s uncle. Perhaps it was because Soren himself had been taken under wing by the revered Ezylryb that he felt he must do the same for Coryn. In Ezylryb, Soren had the finest role model one could have imagined. He attributed all the good things he had learned, all the qualities and virtues that made him the owl he now was, to the grizzled old ryb. And there was not a night that passed that he did not miss that old Whiskered Screech. If he could do as well by Coryn as Ezylryb had done for him, then all his worry would be worth it.

  Coryn was an owl endowed with mysterious and great gifts. Throughout his entire youth, he had exhibited unparalleled courage against the worst odds imaginable, and had retrieved the Ember of Hoole from the volcanoes in the Beyond. Coryn’s parents, Nyra and Kludd, were the vile, sadistic, crazed leaders of the Pure Ones. It was a terrible, daunting legacy to bear. One that Coryn, in his mind and heart and gizzard, battled with constantly. Secretly, Soren believed that Coryn had never sought a mate because he was terrified of passing on this bad blood.

  And now Soren was again worried about his nephew. There had been bad times before, especially the dreadful time of the Golden Tree. Even though the ember was now safely hidden in Bubo’s forge, ever since the Striga had arrived Coryn had been behaving strangely. Soren knew that Coryn was haunted by his mother, Nyra. It was unfortunate that her body had not been found in that last battle in the Middle Kingdom, but Soren felt that even if her death had been confirmed, it would not have made a difference in the way that Coryn was feeling.

  Soren scanned the deep blue sky around him and pushed troubling thoughts from his mind. This whole business about the Harvest Festival was baffling. Perhaps he should have stood up to his nephew more firmly. Ah, well, too late for that. And this was an interesting expedition.

  “Do you smell that?” Gylfie said as they approached the border between the Shadow Forest and Silverveil. It took them a minute, but then the others also picked up the odor of something burning.

  “Not a forest fire,” Soren noted. “Not the season for them.”

  “It doesn’t smell like trees,” Gylfie said.

  Soren, who had the best hearing of any of the owls, angled his head as he tried to pick up any sound clues. “No sap popping.” Evergreen trees and maples, which were becoming thicker in this region, were full of sap. As the sap in a burning tree heated up, a popping sound could be detected. In certain seasons when the sap was running, a burning tree could actually explode.

  “Do you hear anything?” Digger asked.

  “Not really. There were fires I think, but mostly small ones. And those are just smoldering now. It’s hard to describe.” The sounds of a dying fire were difficult to explain. To Soren, it sounded like a sighing, a slow stirring of ashes, almost expired embers losing their heat, the glow seeping from them. Of course, all it took for the fire to be roused and erupt into new life was a small maverick wind. But these fires, he felt, had been carefully wetted down. Peculiar. Very peculiar, he thought.

  “Funny smell, isn’t it?” Gylfie said.

  “Yeah, I know what you mean,” Digger said. “It’s not like smoke from fires in the wild.”

  “Smells like paper,” Soren said suddenly, then added, “burnt paper.”

  “Exactly!” said Gylfie.

  Dawn was breaking by the time the Band settled into a hollow in a blue spruce. They were familiar with the tree from past visits to this forest. Twilight and Digger went out and hunted down a few ground squirrels because they were all hungry. The ground squirrels of the Shadow Forest were particularly tasty and known for their rich nutty flavor.

  “Mmmm,” said Twilight as he bit off the head of one.

  “Yep, they’re good,” Gylfie said. But no one seemed particularly jovial despite the good food. In fact, there was little talk. They were tired. Just a few words and comments exchanged before they nestled down. This was not due to simple physical exhaustion. The flight had been an easy one. An anxiety seemed to hang in the air, an unspoken concern about what they had left behind at the great tree. It was almost midday before any of them fell asleep.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Blue Feather Club

  This is so boring,” Blythe muttered to her sister Bash. The three B’s and several other young owls were in the foul-weather hollow—a play hollow for young owls when the weather was too bad for them to play outside. But tonight, the first night of the Harvest Festival, the weather was beautiful, the moon full, the breezes light. A perfect night for flying. The Striga had been calling off their names for attendance.

  “Hush,” Bell scolded. Blythe glared at her. Her sister had changed so much since the Striga had come to the tree.

  It’s the Harvest Festival, and I was supposed to be singing. Now I am standing here with this dumb blue feather! Blythe thought. Neither she nor Bash had ever heard the great tree so silent during a festival. Punkie Night was only a short moon cycle away. Would it be cancelled, too?

  It better not be this way when Punkie Night comes along! Blythe thought. She and Bash and all their friends had been practicing their four-point rolls. One had to master flying upside down and backward to really do them right. And Punkie Night was the perfect time to show off such tricks.

  The three B’s had only experienced one other Punkie Night in their lives and it was the year before, after they had first fledged. Now it was their favorite holiday and they loved flying around with their uncle Twilight, who went completely yoicks playing pranks on Punkie Night.

  “I am very pleased to see you here,” said the Striga, putting aside the roll call. He spoke to them from the main perch in the hollow. It all seemed so wrong. Normally on this first eve of the Harvest Festival, the music from the grass harp would be streaming out from the Great Hollow higher up in the tree as the nest-maid snakes of the harp guild wove themselves through its strings. Owls, young and old, would be fly-dancing through the milkberry vines that had turned the copper-rose color that gave this time of year its name, the
season of the Copper-Rose. But an eerie stillness hung over the tree. And I would be singing for the first time, Blythe thought glumly.

  “Can we see some smiles?” the Striga asked, looking directly at Blythe.

  “Why?” Blythe replied sullenly.

  “Well, that is what I’m going to explain, dear. I think you will have something to be cheerful about after I describe the perils of the world I came from and the new joys I have found on my journey toward simplicity as I have cast off my vanities.”

  “There’s a little bit of blood above your eye,” said Justin, a tiny Northern Saw-whet. Justin was just a hatchling, the first nestling of Martin and his mate, Gemma.

  “That’s part of my story,” replied the Striga. “You see, once upon a time, I was an owl in the Dragon Court. We did nothing all day long except preen. In fact, we did not even do most of the preening ourselves but had special servants to do it.” Several owlets giggled at this. But not Blythe. Nor Bash.

  “That’s silly,” said a new hatchling, who still looked like a fuzz-ball with her owlet’s down.

  “But what about the blood?” Blythe persisted.

  “Don’t interrupt, Blythe,” Bell hissed. “You’re embarrassing me!”

  “I’m getting to that, dear.”

  Blythe felt an uncomfortable twinge in her gizzard. This Striga had no right to call her “dear.” Only her mum and da could call her “dear”—and Mrs. P.! “You see, because of this excessive preening, the deep luxury, the vanities…” The Striga sighed as if the very thought gave him indescribable pain.

  I knew that word “vanities” was coming, Blythe thought, and exchanged glances with Bash. They had gone to the library and looked up the word in the Strix Standard Hoolian Dictionary, and not the owlet version, either, the baby one for beginning readers.

  The Striga continued talking. “Because of that my feathers came in thickly and grew to extraordinary lengths.”

  “Didn’t you ever molt?” Justin asked.

  “Rarely, and only lightly. That is one of the best parts of my life here. Now I molt like a normal owl.”

  There is nothing “normal” about this owl, Blythe thought.

  “Even now, however, my molts continue to be light. So I just help them along by plucking out my feathers. Hence, this speck of blood.”

  “What does ‘hence’ mean?” a hatchling whispered.

  “It means ‘because,’” Bash whispered back.

  “Doesn’t it hurt?” asked Heggety, a Short-eared Owl. “The plucking?”

  The Striga cocked his head slightly and churred softly. “Not really, my dear. It is, how should I put it? A rewarding sort of pain, a cleansing sort of agony. Not nearly as horrid as the vanity that grew these feathers.”

  This is just plain weird! Blythe thought. She wished that she and Bash hadn’t come. But they had promised Bell that they would at least attend one meeting of the Blue Feather Club. And Bell had been so thrilled. She apparently got points for each new member she brought in. When Bash had asked what the points were for, Bell hemmed and hawed and really could not give her an answer. Both Bash and Blythe were simply confounded by the change in Bell. Why did she want points or anything else from this blue owl? Yes, he had saved her life, nursed her when she was wounded, but this all seemed a bit much. Nonetheless, they were here now and Blythe would try to make the best of it. But by Glaux, Blythe knew she wasn’t going to join the club, and she’d be surprised if Bash did.

  “And when we cast off the vanities,” the Striga went on, “we become favored by Glaux and upon our deaths will ascend straight to glaumora.”

  “But that’s a long time off,” Justin said. “I’ve hardly started to budge my primaries.”

  “Oh, but that is where you’re wrong, my dear. The night of the Great Scouring is coming, bringing death to all but a few.”

  “Only a few?” asked Heggety. “Who chooses the few? What happens to them? Who decides?”

  “Oh, that’s the good part, dear. The few who have renounced the vanities will be swept up directly to glaumora.” The Striga ignored Heggety’s last question.

  Blythe looked around. She saw that many of the little owlets and hatchlings were beginning to tear up. This is not good, she thought. Is this why Bell is trying to make us join this club? Has this stupid owl scared Bell with all his talk of death? It doesn’t amount to a pile of racdrops. I hate this owl! If only she were bigger, she would pop the blue owl a good one, smack in his beak.

  “Why? Why?” Blythe asked in a loud voice. “Why would this Great Scouring be happening? Why should we all die young or get swept up?”

  The Striga looked sternly at her. “The great tree has been suffering. You have heard your parents speak of the time of the Golden Tree, of ornamentation and excess and, indeed, shame. I think that Glaux has chosen this tree and its noble Guardians to lead the way. And you children must lead the grown-ups by taking this pledge to swear off these vanities, and each of you will get your blue feather and become a member of the club. Come, come!” He motioned with his threadbare wing.

  “I don’t know how he flies with that thing!” Blythe whispered. But he did. For one who could barely get off the ground when he was in the Dragon Court he had become a strong flier. She blinked when she saw how many little owls were hopping toward where the Striga perched with his bundle of feathers. But she and her sister Bash clutched firmly to their perches and did not move.

  “Now, repeat after me: ‘I do solemnly swear on my gizzard and all that I hold most dear, to give up the vanities, false treasures, and fripperies so I might attain perfect simplicity and escape the Great Scouring.…’”

  Blythe and Bash looked in astonishment as they saw owlets give up their precious acorn necklaces, their fragments of stained glass from old chapels of the Others, special pebbles they had found. Some of the older owlets who had earned merit badges in chawlet practices gave even them up. Forget about it! If this frinkin’ owl thinks I’m giving up my merit badge from flying that mini squall in weather interpretation, he’s got another thing coming! thought Blythe.

  “What is going on here? A Final ceremony?” Trader Mags gasped as she swooped in on the tree and alighted on the branch just outside of Ezylryb’s hollow, where Octavia, the rather fat, elderly nest-maid snake still lived. The magpie could not have chosen a worse time to appear, for it was precisely the moment when the young owlets were giving up their “vanities” in the foul-weather hollow and instead of music flowing from the tree on this night of the Harvest Festival, there was utter silence. Octavia poked her head out of the hollow. She waggled her head back and forth as if trying to find the right words to explain the situation to Mags. “Oh my! Oh my!” she sighed. “It’s…uh…difficult to explain but I hope—we all hope—it’s a passing thing.” Octavia also served Madame Plonk and had been a member of the grass harp guild for many years.

  “I don’t get it,” Trader Mags said.

  Her assistant, the rather dim-witted Bubbles, appeared with the bundles. “Where are we to put these out, madam?”

  “I don’t think there will be much of a call for your goods tonight.” Octavia sighed again.

  Trader Mags was known throughout the Hoolian kingdoms as the foremost dealer in quality merchandise scavenged from the very best ruins of the Others. Her beady eyes now contracted until they were just pinpricks, and her gaze drilled into Octavia. Octavia was blind but had highly developed sensibilities. She could feel Trader Mags’ piercing look.

  “Does this have something to do with that blue owl?”

  “Yes! You know about him?” Octavia replied, suddenly very alert. “He only got here maybe a moon cycle ago.”

  “He may have only gotten to the great tree a moon cycle ago, but he’s been around my neck of the woods longer than that, believe me.”

  Octavia coiled up in alarm. “You better talk to Otulissa immediately!” she whispered.

  Bubbles, no mental giant, squawked, “But we ain’t never sold nothin’ to Otu
lissa. She don’t like geegaws.”

  “Well, tonight you might have something of interest to her,” Octavia replied.

  Trader Mags cuffed Bubbles. “She’s not telling us to go to Otulissa to sell her anything, nincompoop.” She adjusted her red bandanna. “Where is she?”

  “In the library, I think, and if not there, try the hanging garden.” Octavia slithered onto the branch from which she had been suspended and swirled her head around to detect vibrations of anyone who might be listening in. “Tell her that the Striga has been here longer than we thought, much longer,” she whispered.

  “And where is Bubo?” Trader Mags asked.

  “In his cave, well into his cups, I imagine.”

  “You mean drunk?”

  “Precisely.” Octavia nodded.

  “And what about the harp guild snakes? What are they doing tonight?”

  “Not much!”

  “This is unbelievable!” Trader Mags muttered.

  “I wish,” Octavia replied mournfully.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Deep Gizzardly Twinges

  Trader Mags had quietly flown into the library and taken up a perch as Fritha was proofreading The Evening Hoot. “Oh, Mags, I didn’t hear you come in,” Otulissa said. “I’m afraid you won’t be doing much business here tonight.” Although Otulissa had always been one of the magpie’s most severe critics, she had gained a new respect for her in recent times. Mags had been most helpful just after Coryn had retrieved the ember and become king. It was a time sometimes referred to as the Great Flourishing. Mags had been invaluable in procuring many articles that were needed at the tree for new devices and tools they were building, which ranged from scientific instruments to parts for a printing press. The owls of the tree were now able to reproduce books and other literary matter. There would have been no Evening Hoot had the press not been assembled.

  “So I gather. But Octavia thought I should come speak to you.”