Save the Egg!
Number 32-9 reporting for broody duty." An extremely large Barn Owl stood at the edge of the nest.
Soren scrambled down and set off to find Gylfie. He met her on the rubbly path leading up to the outcropping where Hortense was.
"You realize, of course," Soren was saying as the winds began to buffet them on their ascent, "that when we learn to fly, the outcropping will make the ideal takeoff spot. Always a breeze to bounce you up.
Perfect."
By the time they arrived, Hortense already had the egg out of the nest and was pushing it toward the edge of the rock.
"Can we help?" Soren asked.
"Thank you both, but it is really better if I do it by myself. The fewer birds to touch this egg, the less confused the hatchling will be when it comes out."
"Ah, here she comes. No mate with her tonight again. Must be busy elsewhere," Hortense said. "Gives me such a
thrill every time I spot those wings. Magnificent, aren't they?"
Soren saw the white head, brighter than any star, melt from the dim pearly gray of the dawn. The immensity of the eagle wings was incredible. Soren was enraptured. So enraptured that he didn't hear Gylfie's desperate hiss. Finally, a sharp beak poked him in the knees.
"Soren, quick! I hear someone coming up the path." Then Soren heard it, too. Gylfie dived into a narrow slot. The slot was much too skinny for a fat Barn Owl like Soren.
"Come in. Come in. We'll squeeze up. It's wider inside." Gylfie was desperate and Soren was nearly frozen with fear to the rock beneath his talons. When owls are frightened, their feathers lie flat and they do become slimmer. So, with fear pumping through him, Soren indeed seemed to shrink. He pressed himself into the crack that, in fact, did widen as it deepened in the rock. He hoped he was not crushing Gylfie. They both were barely breathing as the horrifying scene began to unfold on the outcropping.
"12-8!" The screech seemed to crack the sky. Good Glaux, it was Skench and Spoorn and Jatt and Jutt.
And Auntie! Auntie puffed and angry, the yellow light from her eyes no longer soft but a hard metallic glare.
"I suspected her for some time!" Auntie squawked, and dragged Hortense off the nest that she had just moments before returned to.
The egg, limned by the rising sun, stood fragile and quivering at the edge of the rock. Soren's eyes were riveted on the egg. The egg loomed so large, so fragile against the dawn sky. It could have been Eglantine. It could have been Eglantine. The thought began to swell in Soren's brain and fill him with a profound terror. This was the future they were fighting for. This was the evilness of St. Aggie's. The egg teetered on the brink as did the entire world of owls. The eagle hovered above. Suddenly, there was a deep mournful howl. "Go for the eggDon't worry about me. Save the egg ... save the egg Hortense shrieked. Then a huge shadow slid across the outcropping and next there was an explosion of feathers. It seemed to Soren that there was nothing but feathers. Feathers and down everywhere swirling in the glimmering rosy light of the new day. The eagle was everyplace at once. And Hortense's voice kept crying, "Save the eggl Save the egg!" Auntie was the fiercest fighter of them all.
Her beak open and ready to tear, her yellow eyes flashing madly in her head, her talons extended and trying to rip at the eagle's eyes, she was a white squall of fury. Scalding curses tore from her mouth,
"Kill! Kill!" she screamed in a high-pitched deafening voice. Her feathered face hardened until it seemed like stone. Slashed by a dark beak and the savage yellow eyes, it was a blazing white mask of brutality.
Then Gylfie and Soren saw the eagle take a mighty swipe with her wings and send Auntie tumbling flat on her back. In that moment, the eagle reached the egg and rose into the sky with it clutched in her claws.
Yet the voice of Hortense seemed to grow dimmer, as if it was fading away, dwindling as if... as if...
Soren and Gylfie looked at each other. Two big tears leaked from Soren's dark eyes. "She's falling, isn't she, Gylfie?"
"They pushed her." And there was Auntie, standing at the edge of the cliff with Spoorn, looking down into the thousand-foot-deep abyss. "Bye-bye," Auntie cooed, and waved a tattered wing. "Bye-bye, 12-8, you fool!" The coo curled into the ugliest snarl Soren could ever imagine.
"But the eagle got the egg" Gylfie said weakly. "Yes, I suppose she did," Soren replied.
And now there would be more stories, indeed, legends to tell in Ambala of brave Hortense.
The eggorium was briefly shut down. All temporary eggorium and hatchery owls were to report to the moon- blaze chamber immediately for moon scalding, as indeed there was to be a full shine the following evening. Soren and Gylfie, still crammed in the slot, heard Auntie and Spoorn and Skench talking about how no word of this could get out. Auntie's old voice returned. She fretted in that Auntie way of hers about how she could not imagine that 12-8, the most beautifully moon-blinked owl ever, could have gone so wrong under her guidance.
Once again, Gylfie and Soren survived the moon scalding in the moon-blaze chamber. They told the Tales of Yore, as Gylfie called the Ga Hoolian legends. And Soren, who had a remarkable gift for storytelling, began to compose a new one that first night that he told in bits through the glare of the moon's hot light.
"She was an owl like none other..." Soren began, thinking of Hortense. "Her face both beautiful and kindly her deep brown eyes warm and with a glimmer like tiny suns. Her wings, however, for one reason or another were crippled, and it was from this, her weakness, that she drew her great strength. For this was an owl who wanted only to do good, who clung to dreams of freedom while giving up her own and, from a stony perch high in a lawless place, she did find a way to wage her own war."
Soren finished the legend as the scalding moon began to slip down in the sky.
