Empty Hollows
You two are going to have to learn how to hunt. Whatever did they feed you in that place?" Twilight asked. Soren's and Gylfie's beaks were bloody from tearing at the tender flesh of a vole that Twilight had brought. They had never tasted anything so good. There was an acorn fragrance to this vole, mixed with the withered berries that had dropped from the Ga'Hoole tree in which they still perched. Finally, Gylfie answered, "Mostly crickets, unless you worked in the hatchery." "That's all?"
"Crickets -- day in, day out, every meal." "Great Glaux, how can an owl live on that -- no meat?" Soren and Gylfie shook their heads, not wanting to miss a bite.
Twilight realized that it would be useless to talk to these two half-starved owls until they were well fed.
So when Soren and Gylfie had finished with the vole, he fixed them in the hard glare of his yellow eyes.
"So, I want to know -- are you two interested in finding the Great Ga'Hoole Tree?" Soren and Gylfie exchanged nervous glances.
"Well, yes ..." said Soren.
'And no," said Gylfie.
"Well, which is it? Yes or no?"
"Both," Gylfie said. "Soren and I talked about it when you were off hunting. We would like to go there, of course, but first..." Gylfie hesitated.
"But first you want to see if your families are still there."
"Yes," both owls answered meekly. They knew that for Twilight, who had been an orphan almost from the moment he had hatched, it must be hard to understand. He had no memories of nest or family. He had flitted from one place to another, one kingdom to another. He had even lived with creatures not of his own kind -- there was a family of woodpeckers in Ambala that had taken him in, an elderly eagle in Tyto, and, most extraordinary of all, a family of desert foxes in Kuneer, which was why Twilight never, ever hunted fox. To eat a fox was unthinkable to Twilight.
"All right. From what you tell me we would not have to go too far out of the way. Our main route follows the river and, Soren, you said your family lived within sight of the river and, well, Gylfie, I know Kuneer very well. I think from what you've told me that your family must have lived by the big gulch."
"Yes, yes.' We did."
"That gulch is a dry riverbed that was made by the River Hoole a long, long time ago. So we don't have to go that far off our route."
"Oh, and we promise we'll learn how to hunt. We really will," Soren said.
"Is hunting like flying and ..." Gylfie offered tentatively, "finding the Great Ga'Hoole Tree -- one must believe?"
"Oh, for Glaux's sake, it's only food!" Twilight said with mild disdain.
The three owls left at first black. It had turned quite cold. No thermals to ride, and both Soren and Gylfie realized how lucky they had been -- or rather how smart Grimble had been to insist on their leaving at the time of the unseasonable drafts of warm air. It was a lot easier flying on those rising thermals. There were none on this bright winter night but still it was lovely to be free, and the world below, keen with frost, sparkled fiercely. Oh, how Soren wished his parents could see him fly. He flapped his wings, increased his forward thrust, and sailed higher into
the sky. "The Yonder! The Yonder!" as Mrs. Plithiver called the sky. Dear Mrs. Rhiann. He missed her, too. Oh, he could tell her about the Yonder now. He could tell that dear old blind snake all about the Yonder himself.
By the next day, it had begun to snow very hard. At times, the snow was a blinding fury Soren's transparent eyelids swept back and forth almost constantly to clear off the snowy crystals. Sometimes the snow was so thick that the sky and the earth below seemed to blend into one mass of grayness.
There were no edges. The horizon had melted into nothingness and it was through this blurry world that Twilight navigated with unbelievable skill and grace. They followed him closely, Soren flying on his upwind or weather wing, with Gylfie on the other side in the lee of Twilight's downwind wing.
"You see, you two, the world is not always black and white -- what did I tell you?" Twilight spoke as he expertly guided them through the thickening snow flurries.
"How do you do it?" Soren asked.
"I learned the hard edges of things in the daylight and the night, but then I learned how this is not the only way of seeing. That, in fact, other things might be hidden when it seems the clearest. So I unlearned some things."
"How do you unlearn something?" Soren asked.
