The Great Scheme
Pretend to march, Soren. That is what we must do!" It was just after the first rising shriek had been sounded by the brutish Great Horned Owl, who perched on one of the outcroppings. Soren and Gylfie had met at the stone ledge for morning food rations.
"What do you mean, pretend to march?" Soren blinked. Between the horrible truth about his brother and missing his parents, Soren could hardly hear what Gylife was saying. His head was filled with the thoughts of his parents. It seemed as if every hour he found a new, more painful way to miss them. One, he decided, did not get used to missing parents. The thought of never seeing his mum or da again was the most unbearable thing he knew. And yet he could not stop thinking of them. He did not want to stop thinking of them. He would never stop thinking of them.
"Listen to me, Soren. It came to me first that the reason for the march is because of the shadows cast from the
high cliffs into the glaucidium, and the arch is always in the shadows. Right?"
"Right." Soren nodded.
"We are forced to march so that no one group of owls will spend too much time under these shadowy shields against the moon's light. I remembered what you said, how we must pretend to say our names but instead we actually repeat our numbers. And then it was easy. We have to pretend to march but never move, so we stay under the protection of the shadows. I suddenly remembered how my father, who was a great navigator, one of the best in the entire Desert of Kuneer, had tried to explain to me that stars and even the moon do not move in the way they seem to from our view on Earth. Some stars, my father said, even appear to stand still in the sky, but, in fact, they do move."
"Huh?" Soren grunted.
"Look, I know it's a little weird, but my da explained that this was because of the great distance that disguises in stillness a star's motion. Even the moon, my father said, which is closer than many stars, is so distant that we cannot see the wobbles in its path as it glides through the night. So, don't you see that if the motion of something as big as the moon could be disguised, well, couldn't the motion of something as small as us be disguised?"
A new light began to glimmer in Soren's eyes. Gylfie grew more excited. "We can be like the stars, only in reverse. In other words, what would happen if we just stayed still and pretended to march -- if we marched in place?"
"What about the monitors?" Soren asked.
"I've thought about that. The monitors always stand at the edges of the mass of marching owls. They don't really see what is going on in the middle. I saw a Grass Owl stumble last night. No one said, 'Oh, sorry' or 'Move it!' or 'You clumsy bird.' All the owls simply parted and went around the Grass Owl. So what if we pretend to march and stay under the shadow of the arch each time? Get it? We would march in place and give the appearance of motion."
"It's a great scheme, Gylfie!" Soren's voice was filled with awe.
"We'll try it tonight. I can't wait," Gylfie said. "But I'm hungry now."
"This is it?" Soren blinked as a large rusty-colored owl shoved one dead cricket toward him on the stone ledge. "I mean, this is it!" Soren quickly said, correcting what had been a question, as he stared down at what St. Aggie's called breakfast. No mouse meat, no fat worms -- oh, for a hummingbird! But one cricket! This was ridiculous. He would starve.
As the owlets stopped to eat, there was only the sound of their beaks crunching the crickets. Soren couldn't believe that no one talked. Owlets always talked when they ate. His little sister, Eglantine, jabbered so much sometimes that his mum had to remind her to eat. "Eat the feet on that bug, Eglantine. Eat the feet. You talk so much you're missing the very best part of the beetle."
So the silence began to bother him and there was indeed a terrible quiet to the stone canyons that made up St. Aggie's. Always, of course, there was the hollow whistle of the wind and the endless clicking of talons on the hard rock surfaces. Other than that, there was not much sound. Instead, there was an overwhelming sense of being cut off, separated from Earth, and even from sky. Soren began to realize that the entire lives of these owls, if one could call it living, were carried out in the deep stone boxes and slots, the canyons and ravines of St. Aggie's. There was very little water -- just a trickle here and there into which they could dip their beaks for a drink. There were no leaves, no mosses that he could see, no grasses -- none of the soft things that wrapped the world and made it tender and springy. It was a stone forest with its jagged outcroppings, rock needles, and spires and ledges.
They had almost finished eating, so there was not even the clicking, just the sound of crickets being crunched.
An owl next to him muttered, "I'd love a little piece of rat snake."
"Oooh." Soren sighed and thought of Mrs. Plithiver. His family avoided serving snake out of respect for Mrs. Plithiver. Mrs. Plithiver said it was nonsense. "Show me a rat snake or a bull snake that anyone really loved." She would say, "Don't worry about my feelings. I have no feeling toward such snakes." But still his parents avoided such foods. Soren's father called it "species sensitivity." Soren had no idea what that meant, except he didn't want to hurt Mrs. Plithiver's feelings and she had just said she had none.
Soren, of course, didn't really believe this. He thought Mrs. Plithiver had plenty of feelings. She was a most lovable creature, and his heart beat a little harder when he remembered her calling down to him from the hollow high in the fir tree. It almost made him cry to remember her voice. What had happened to her that night? Had Kludd done something to her as well? Or had she gotten away to get help? Did she miss him? Did his parents miss him? Once more, there was that sharp pain of missing and Soren nearly staggered with the very idea of never seeing his parents. Then he thought of Kludd and began to tremble all over again.
"You all right?" Gylfie asked. She was so small that she barely reached up to Soren's wing tips.
"No, I'm not all right," Soren gasped. "Nothing is right. Don't you miss your parents? Don't you wonder what they think happened to you?"
"Yes, yes. I just can't think about it," Gylfie replied. "Listen, pull yourself together. We have our Great Scheme, remember?"
"What do you mean pull yourself together? Do you know what I just figured out about my brother?"
"Look, we don't have much time," Gylfie said quickly. "Make sure you get assigned to the pelletorium."
"The pelletorium?" Soren said blankly.
