The Golden Tree Read online

  “I’ll never forget that first glimpse of her,” Soren shut his eyes. “She was the color of tree bark with lighter brown and creamy streaks. Her face was grayish-white with flares of small white feathers radiating out from her eyes. Her wings had five rows of white spots. And on top of her head there was a starry spray of small white feathered dots. The thought burst in my head and Gylfie s, too. She looked exactly like her father, Grimble!”

  “Grimble, the owl who helped you. escape St. Aggie’s?” Coryn whispered excitedly.

  “The very one!” Soren replied. “She was not young. I didn’t need to ask her her name. I knew immediately she was Bess, Grimble’s favorite daughter. She was astonished that we knew who she was. Then she looked down at the bones at her feet. ‘And those are the bones of Grimble,’ I said. I knew this in my gizzard as surely as I had ever known anything in my life.”

  Gylfie continued the story. “We told Bess how we had come to know her father at St. Aggie’s and how he had saved our lives by teaching us how to fly and how we also knew that Bess was his favorite daughter.” Gylfie paused before going on with the story. “Bess could hardly believe this, for she thought her father had abandoned them all. So we explained how he didn’t want to stay with the St. Aggie’s owls but they threatened to kill her and her mum and the rest of her brothers and sisters if he did not remain.”“Bess blinked,” Soren said. His own eyes misted with the memory. “And two big tears rolled from her bright yellow eyes. ‘That explains it,’ she said. ‘We thought he had vanished. That we were nothing to him.*”

  Soren shut his eyes tight now and began to speak forcefully, as if he were trying to remember something very exactly. “But we told her that her father had courage in a place that bred cowards. That he had a nobility as

  great as any Guardian of Ga’Hoole’s. And when we asked her how his bones had come to be in this place, she told us that the eagles Streak and Zan had brought them to the family. But that she had brought them to this place for she believed in the old tales her father had told.”Digger now spoke. “The rest of her family had warned her that she would have to go as far as Silverveil to find a bell tower. But she had found this place. And she liked it because it was so hidden in the valley, and the roar of the waterfalls was like a kind of music to her. She said that in many ways it made her think that this was what glaumora must be like and that is why she sang every day to her father. She said that she hoped he was in glaumora and that his business on Earth was finished so that he would not haunt the Earth and the lower air as a scroom.”

  “But,” Soren said, “even though her father had long gone to glaumora, it was almost as if Bess was a scroom, as if her business was not finished.”

  Coryn felt a chill pass through his gizzard. Was his own mother, Nyra, still alive, or was she a scroom? And if she was a scroom, what business had she left unfinished?

  CHAPTER SEVENThe Palace of Mists

  But what was this place where Bess mourned?” Coryn. asked. “A castle? Was there gold and silver and the kinds of things that Trader Mags looks for?”

  “There was certainly some of that but there was something much more valuable”Soren answered.

  “What?” Coryn. asked.

  “Books and maps.” Digger’s eyes began to sparkle. “Not just one library but many. Bess said these stone, hollows were a university, a place of learning. But she called it a palace. The Palace of Mists.”

  Digger, like many Burrowing Owls, was a great appreciator of built spaces. As his species name suggested, he was expert in excavating underground tunnels and hollows and creating nests where other birds might not dream of living. He admired the way the stones of the university had been hewn to fit together perfectly and how the entire structure was tucked neatly behind the scrim of mist from the waterfall.

  “The Palace of Mists,” Coryn repeated the words dreamily.

  “Yes, and just imagine, Coryn!” Excitement stirred Digger’s normally even, slow speech. “The face of the waterfall formed the rear wall of this palace. And there were four spires, each a bell tower but not one of the four bells had a clapper.”“I bet Bubo could have made one,” Coryn said.

  “Bess didn’t want one,” Soren replied, “We were the first owls who ever came there, and she said she liked her secret place and that she needed no clapper to sing her da to glaumora. I’ll never forget her words. She said, ‘I am the chimes. I am the clapper. And I do believe had there been no bell she would have become that as well. She is an extraordinary owl, one of vast intelligence.’

  “Is?” Coryn blurted out. “She still lives?”

  “Oh, most definitely.” Soren paused and lowered his voice. “You must understand, Coryn, Bess is the best-kept secret in the owl kingdom. When we left Bess that first time, we vowed to tell only three other owls: Otulissa, Ezylryb, and Strix Struma.”

  “And it was hard enough getting her to agree to that! Believe me!” Twilight said. “But tell Coryn about the stone Others.”

  Coryn was speechless, his eyes wide.

  “Ah, yes, the stone Others,” Soren replied. “Bess asked us if we would like a tour of the university. So we followed her in a spiraling flight down from the bell tower, winding in and out of the pillars of a garden where there were stone pictures.”

  “Stone pictures?” Coryn asked,“Yeah, you’ve seen some of those scraps of paintings of Others that Mags brings around, haven’t you?” Twilight asked.

  “Sure.”

  “Well, this was sort of the same thing but cut in stone,” Twilight replied. “Some were of animals, and there was even a strange-looking bird. And some of the stone figures were of the Others, but they might be missing a head, or a head might be missing a body.”

  “What in the world?” Coryn gasped. “Were they once alive?”

  “Oh, no. It was part of the Others’ art, like the paintings.” “But that wasn’t the most interesting thing at all,” Gylfie said.

  “Sounds pretty interesting to me,” Coryn replied.

  “There were these maps,’ Soren said. “Maps like we’d never seen before.”

  “What do you mean?” Coryn asked. A pale lavender light began to suffuse the hollow. Lavender was the prelude of twilight and soon it would be First Black. They had told and listened to stories of Bess through an entire day. Coryn almost wished to stay the sun and fend off the night - a most un-owlish response. Owls lived for darkness, for the black pierced, by a sliver of moon, or perhaps the silver disc of a full-shine floating eerily just above a horizon But now he wanted not the darkness, not the silver, not the joys of flight through a long night, but to remain in the hollow of this fir tree reliving this fantastic tale of discovery, grief, mystery, and riches that were neither jewels nor gold,

  ‘“These maps”Soren. continued, ‘were not ones of the owl kingdoms. There was no Sea of Hoolemere, no Ever-winter Sea. No Northern Kingdoms. No Southern Kingdoms. So I asked. Bess, ‘Where at” the kingdoms of owls?’”“And what did she say?” Coryn tipped forward.

  “She said they were maps of elsewhere and beyond,”

  Soren said, softly,

  “It was even beyond our Beyond! We called it The Elsewhere,” Digger whispered. The white feathers that streaked across the Burrowing Owl’s brow seemed to intensify Digger’s penetrating gaze. It was as if he were imagining this place.

  Coryn was astonished. Fie was trying to take it all in.

  “You mean there is a place that is not here? Not in this owl world? It’s like …” Coryn looked out of the fir tree hollow and tipped his head toward the sky.

  “Yes,” Gylfie said. “And even the stars look different there - the constellations are different. One rarely sees the Golden Talons or the Little or the Big Raccoon. It’s just a different world. It’s The Elsewhere.”“Have you ever been there?” He looked first at Soren and then to each of the other Band members. They all shook their beads.

  “But Bess knows the way there even though the stars are different,” Gylfie said. She shoo
k her head in wonder. “Bess is so very smart.”

  “That is why we call her ‘the Knower,’” Soren said.

  By the time Soren had finished the story of Bess and the Palace of Mists, it was night. The wind had shifted, so they set out on a course for Anibala, But they did not make much progress, for they were tired and shortly after midnight the wind shifted once again and became a fierce headwind with driving rain replacing the swirls of snow.

  “No use fighting this,” Twilight called out to the rest. If Twilight said it was too much

  - beating into this wind - the rest of the Band were quick to agree, for the Great Gray was the largest of them all and possessed the most wing power. They found an ancient cedar with a good-size hollow. The rain made the pungent scent of the tree even sharper.

  “I can’t say cedar is my fragrance of choice,” Gylfie sniffed, but within two seconds she had fallen asleep.All of the owls were soon asleep except for Coryn. For him sleep seemed beyond reason. “The Knower.” Coryn repeated softly. He began to think deeply about Bess, the Knower.

  His mind whirled with notions about Bess and this place dedicated entirely to learning, with many libraries. The Band had said they had never seen such maps and star charts. Coryn knew that the Others were thought to have been very7 advanced, but not so advanced as these stories of the Palace of Mists seemed to suggest. From the stonework to the star charts it seemed beyond belief, almost magical. Coryn’s eyes began to droop. His last thought was, Magic, or nachtmagen?

  Then Coryn began dreaming of stone gardens with the fragments of the Others and stone animals, and the strange-looking stone bird that Soren had described. In his sleep he saw a head. It was the head of the strange bird. But no, not just any strange bird - Kreeth!

  He woke up immediately. “Why would I ever dream of Kreeth?” he whispered to himself. Kreeth, the infamous hagsfÃŹend of the legends, was long dead. Surely if the strange stone bird looked like Kreeth, the Band would have said something. Although they had not known about the hagsfiends of the legends when they had first gone to the palace of Mists, they had first gone to the Palace of Mists, they would have remembered now. This is totally irrational! Coryn thought to himself.

  Kreeth was a hagsfiend through and through, but she called herself by all sorts of other names -a philosopher , an experiment, a scientist. It wasn’t, however, science she practiced. It was nacthmagen. Although he had begun to suspect that beneath the plumage of a Barn Owl his mother might be a hagsfiend herself, a grotesque thought occurred to him again -that Nyra might be even worse than haggish. She might be some descendant of a remnant of Kreeth’s experiments with natchtmagen. It was all too frightening to imagine. Coryn blinked. But imagine he must. He was a King leader. He must lead! And to lead was to imagine boldly.He looked at the Band sleeping soundly around him. Outside the sun was high in the sky. He must go. He must risk being mobbed by crows. He must find out the truth about his mother. Hagsfiends were thought to have become extinct sometime long after King Hoole had retrieved the ember. And yet shadows of hagfiends much less potent still lingered. And was that not what made the ember so puzzling? For with all its many blessings, there was always the lurking fear that, with the good magen, nachtmagen could return and real hagsfiends could slip back through what Otulissa called the ether sreil of the owl universe. The ether was a windless layer of air in the upper regions of the. sky that enveloped the entire universe of owls. The ancients believed that infinitesimally small tears in this layer could permit the intrusion of alien matter such as nachtmagen, the magic of hagsfiends. The ember could seal up these tears as well as open them, And if the ember came into the possession of a bad owl, or graymalkin as they were, sometimes called, the ether could be ripped to shreds.

  Coryn. was fairly sure that no such thing had happened to the ether veil - yet. According to the legends, Kreeth had died. But were all her kind extinct? Like the Others? Perhaps not, if Nyra lived. Coryn knew what he had to do. He had to go to the Shadow Forest. However he did not need to see Bess. The Knower would not know what he needed to know, There was, however, a rabbit who might. And he needed to find that rabbit. Fie quietly stepped to the rim of the hollow. He looked back at the Band. They’re just going to have to understand, he thought, and spreading his wings, he took off.

  CHAPTER EIGHTOtulissa Perplexed

  Can you feel it, Mrs. Plithiver?” Octavia asked. The elderly nest-maid snake was coiled on an upper limb of the Great Ga’Hoole Tree.

  “Yes, they’re flying in unison. I can feel the wing beats.”

  And indeed a surge of vibrations rolled up through the tree. The slender branch upon which they had arranged themselves was almost like a tuning fork, at least for nest-maid snakes. These snakes had extremely refined sensibilities and despite their blindness, they could pick up on the subtlest atmospheric pressure changes, sounds, wind shifts, even the feelings and moods of those around them. Octavia, a snake of ample girth with a very fat head, found it most comfortable to twine herself in a spiral around the branch. Lying flat on it was out of the question; she was simply too chubby to find it comfortable. Mrs. P., however, was suspended from the branch in an artistic configuration halfway between a question mark and an

  exclamation point. This peculiar geometry was perhaps a reflection of her mental state. What is happening here? These four words were spiraling through the length of Mrs. P.‘s cylindrical body, and she thought they should be likewise screaming in every mind, gizzard, or whatever of every owl in the tree. Unfortunately, such was not the case.“Why aren’t you down there weaving your way through the harp?” Octavia inquired of Mrs. P.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. You wouldn’t catch me jumping octaves or making music for this stupid ceremony. What do they call themselves - Guardians of the Guardians? AH this folderol about guarding the ember! Silly rituals and all.”

  Octavia gave a funny little pneumatic snort in response to Mrs. P.‘s outburst. This was her way of laughing. Mrs. Plithiver was a member of the harp guild directed by Madame Plonk. For centuries, the harp guild had been considered the most prestigious of all the nest-maid snake guilds of the great tree. Half the snakes played the lower strings and half played the upper ones. But there were a precious few, the most talented of the snakes, who were confined to neither. These snakes were called sliptweens, and their job was to jump octaves, which contained all eight tones of the scale. It was an energetic leap they had to make. It took skill, muscle, and timing. In her thinner days Octavia had been a sliptween. However, she had all but retired from the harp, Mrs. P. was now considered one of the finest sliptweens in the history of the tree.

  “So how did you get out of playing the harp for this whatever-they-call-it ceremony?”“I told them I sprung a tendon on that cantata the other night.”

  “I’m surprised that Otulissa didn’t think up some way to excuse herself,” Octavia said.

  “She should have. I can feel her rage all the way up here,”

  “I know,” Octavia replied.

  The two snakes became very still and shut their slitted eyes. From at least forty feet above the Great Hollow, they could feel the waves of anger, frustration, of sheer embarrassment that rose from the Spotted Owl’s plumage like thermal drafts on a hot summer day. Such were the sensibilities of a nest-maid snake.

  Rough air, to put it mildly, Mrs. P. thought.

  On the balcony of the Great Hollow, Otulissa perched, blinking in disbelief. Her gizzard was in a nauseating, dizzying turmoil. Fler heart was aggrieved as she watched the tawdry spectacle below. An “Honor Guard”- the term itself made her almost yarp - was flying around the ember, which had been removed from Coryn’s hollow and put in the center of the Great Hollow. The old box

  was encased now in a newer, larger, fancier one that had been designed by Gemma and reluctantly forged by Bubo.It was the Whiskered Screech, Gemma, and the Great Gray, Elyan, who were at the front of the procession of owls that flew in circles around the elaborately “en-hollowed” embe
r. “En-hollowed!’- yet another newly coined term that nearly made a pellet swim up Otulissa’s gullet. She swallowed hard and tried not to belch. But perhaps the most revolting word of ail right now was “elevation.” For this was the Elevation ceremony of Gemma, Elyan, and a Barn Owl called Yeena. They were to be elevated to the highest of the high honor guards, an order called the Guardians of Guardians, not of the great tree, but of the Ember of Hook. Madame Plonk’s voice soared in a newly composed celebratory song called “Chant of the Ember.”

  Oh, dearest Ember of fir eat Hook,

  guard our tree most great

  Warm our gizzards, make us wise,

  lead us in your holy ways.

  Give us comfort, let tumult cease,

  bless each owl so safe we’ll keep.

  We sing m you, your glowing splendor

  Radiant with magen’s grace

  So we ask that peace be with us,and in you our trust do place.

  Madame Plonk was in full voice. The song was quite beautiful, except for the words, Otulissa thought. And what a bunch of’ racdrops they were! Look at Madame Plonk, strutting about in the air. One would have, thought her a peacock. Yet it wasn’t even her own feathers she was showing off It was the frinking cloak she’d gotten from Trader Mags, It was purple - royal purple as she liked to remind everyone - and it was trimmed in ermine. ”Ermine is to eat, not to wear!’ Otulissa muttered. Another owl. a Barred, swung her head around and blinked furiously at her.

  “What did you say?” the owl called Quinta hissed.

  “I said” - Otulissa said furiously - “Strumina Von Fleet would stare.”

  “Huh? I thought you said, something about eating ermine.”

  “No, not at all,” Otulissa lied. “Strumina Von Fleet, you might not know her. An ancient sage from the Northern

  Kingdoms, known as much for her unparalleled elegance as for her brilliant mind. A relative of mine, actually. Thirteenth cousin once removed.”