The Journey Guardians of Ga'hoole Read Online

  The Journey (Guardians of Ga'hoole)

Book Jacket

Series: Guardians of Ga'hoole [two]

Rating:

Tags: Fantasy, Fiction, Full general, Action & Adventure - Full general, Children's Books, Activity & Adventure, Juvenile Fiction, Fantasy & Magic, Fantasy fiction, Animals, Ages 9-12 Fiction, Children: Grades four-6, Birds, Animals - Birds, Juvenile Science Fiction, Quests (Expeditions), Science Fiction; Fantasy; Magic, Science Fiction; Fantasy; & Magic, Legends; Myths; Fables, Owls, Digger (Fictitious graphic symbol), Tyto (Imaginary place), Gylfie (Fictitious character), Soren (Fictitious graphic symbol), Twilight (Fictitious character)

SUMMARY:

In the second book in the GUARDIANS OF GA'HOOLE serial, Soren, Gylfie, Twilight, and Digger travel to the Great Ga'Hoole Tree, a mythical identify where an social club of owls rises each night to perform noble deeds. Soren and his group are seeking help to fight the evil they discovered in the owl earth (in GUARDIANS #1). Later a harrowing journey, they arrive at the Not bad Ga'Hoole Tree and learn they will demand to stay to receive training from the Ga'Hoolian elders. During his time at the Great Ga'Hoole Tree, Soren finds (and then loses) a great mentor and he is reunited with his beloved sister.

Guardians of Ga'hoole

The Journey

Book 2

by

Kathryn Lasky

New York Toronto London Auckland

Sydney Mexico City New Delhi Hong Kong

To Max, who imagines universes

—K. L.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Maps

Illustration

CHAPTER ONE A Mobbing of Crows

CHAPTER Two In the Visitor of Sooty Owls

CHAPTER THREE Twilight Shows Off

Chapter Iv Get Out! Get Out!

CHAPTER 5 The Mirror Lakes

CHAPTER Half-dozen The Ice Narrows

CHAPTER SEVEN This Side of Yonder

CHAPTER Eight First Night to First Light

CHAPTER Nine A Parliament of Owls

CHAPTER 10 Twilight on the Brink

Affiliate ELEVEN The Golden Talons

CHAPTER TWELVE Hukla, Hukla and Promise

CHAPTER Thirteen Books of the Yonder

CHAPTER Fourteen Nighttime Flying

Affiliate Fifteen A Visit to Bubo

Chapter Xvi The Voices in the Roots

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN Atmospheric condition Chaw

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN Mrs. Plithiver's Dilemma

Affiliate NINETEEN A Visit to Madame Plonk

CHAPTER Xx Fire!

Chapter TWENTY-One "A Coal in My Neb!"

Chapter 20-Ii Owlets Downwardly!

CHAPTER TWENTY-3 At Last!

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR Trader Mags

CHAPTER TWENTY-5 In the Folds of the Night

THE OWLS and others from GUARDIANS of GA'HOOLE The Journey

A peek at THE GUARDIANS of GA'HOOLE Volume Three: The Rescue

The Guardians of Ga'Hoole

About the Author

Copyright

Maps

Illustration

…the iv owls looked below and saw the past body of water glinting with silver spangles from the moon's low-cal and so, directly ahead, spreading into the nighttime, were the twisting branches of the largest tree they had ever seen, the Smashing Ga'Hoole Tree.

Chapter ONE

A Mobbing of Crows

Soren felt the blind ophidian shift in the deep feathers between his shoulders as he and the three other owls flew through the buffeting winds. They had been flying for hours now and information technology seemed as if in the last minutes the darkness had begun to dissolve drop by drop, and they were at present passing from the full black of the night into the outset calorie-free of the morning. Beneath them a river slid similar a dark ribbon over the earth.

"Let's keep flying fifty-fifty though it's getting light," said Twilight, the immense Not bad Gray Owl that flew downwind of Soren. "We're getting nearer. I just feel it."

Information technology was to the Bounding main of Hoolemere they flew, and in the centre of that ocean was an island and on that island at that place was a tree called the Great Ga'Hoole Tree and in this tree there was an order of owls. It was said that these owls would rise each night into the black and perform noble deeds. The universe of owls was desperately in need of such deeds. For with its many kingdoms information technology was nearly to be destroyed by a terrible evil.

Subconscious abroad in a maze of stone canyons and ravines there was indeed a trigger-happy nation of mortiferous owls known as St. Aegolius. The evil of St. Aggie's, equally it was ofttimes called, had touched virtually every owl kingdom in some manner or another. Soren and his best friend, Gylfie, the tiny Elf Owl, had both been captured by St. Aggie's patrols when they were young nestlings unable to wing. Twilight, besides, had been snatched merely, dissimilar Soren and Gylfie, he had managed to escape before being imprisoned. Digger's youngest blood brother had been eaten by a St. Aggie's patrol and his parents later killed. Soren and Gylfie had met Twilight and Digger, a Burrowing Owl, shortly after their ain daring escape from the stone canyons of St. Aggie'due south.

Although the four owls had met as orphans, they had become so much more. In a desert still stained with the claret of two of the fiercest of St. Aggie'due south elite warrior owls, whom they had defeated, they had discovered a cognition, along with a feeling deep in their gizzards, where all owls felt their strongest emotions. And this noesis was that they were a band forevermore, one for all and all for ane, bound by the deepest loyalty and dedicated to the survival of the kingdoms of all owls. They had sworn an oath in that desert drenched with blood and tinged with the silver light of the moon. They would become to Hoolemere. Information technology was as a band that they knew they must get and notice its peachy tree, which loomed at present every bit the heart of wisdom and nobility in a globe that was becoming insane and ignoble. They must warn of the evil that threatened. They must go part of this ancient kingdom of guardian knights on silent wings.

They hoped they were drawing about fifty-fifty though the river they now followed was not the River Hoole, the one that led to Hoolemere. Nonetheless, Twilight said he was sure that this river would lead to the Hoole and on to Hoolemere, and the very thought of this legendary island in the ocean made the four owls stroke even harder against the confusing winds. But Soren felt Mrs. Plithiver stir again in his feathers. Mrs. P., as he called her, had been the erstwhile nest-maid in the hollow where Soren'southward parents had made their dwelling. These bullheaded snakes had been born without optics, and where their eyes should accept been there were only two slight indentations. The rosy-scaled reptiles were kept by many owls to tend the nests and make certain they were clean and free of maggots and diverse vermin that found their style into the hollows. Soren had thought that he would never see Mrs. P. over again, and yet they had found each other only days after his escape from St. Aggie'south. She had told him what Soren had long suspected—that it was his older brother, Kludd, who had pushed him from the nest when his parents were out hunting. Although he had survived the fall, yet being flightless he was prey to any ground animate being. Ground fauna! Who would have ever idea another owl would exist the greatest danger? Until that moment when he was snatched and felt himself existence carried into the night sky by a pair of talons, Soren had idea that the worst predator in the forest, from an owl'due south point of view, was a raccoon. And then Mrs. P. told him that she had suspected that Kludd had done the same thing to Eglantine, his baby sister. When Mrs. P. had protested, Kludd had threatened to swallow her. So the poor quondam snake had no choice but to get out—very rapidly.

Now Mrs. P. slithered toward Soren'south left ear, the higher ear and the easiest for her to reach. "Soren," she whispered, "I'm not certain if it is a expert idea to keep flight with all this light. We don't want to get mobbed."

"Mobbed?" Soren asked.

"You know, crows."

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nbsp; Soren felt a chill run through his gizzard.

Possibly if Mrs. Plithiver had not been whispering her alarm in his ear he might have heard the chuffing sound of wings, and not owl wings, overhead.

"Crow to windward!" Gylfie cried. And then suddenly the rosy dawn sky turned black.

"Nosotros're being mobbed!" shrieked Twilight.

Oh, Glaux! thought Soren. This was the worst thing that could befall any owl flying in the daytime. But information technology was still very early. Crows at night were fine. Owls were crows' worst enemies at nighttime. They could assault them every bit they slept, just crows during the day were something else. Crows in daylight were terrible. If a crow discovered an owl during the daytime, fifty-fifty if it was just one crow, that bird had a way of signaling others and soon an entire flock would make it and mob the owls, diving at their heads with their sharp beaks, trying to tear out their eyes.

"Besprinkle!" Gylfie cried out. "Besprinkle and loop."

Suddenly, Gylfie seemed to be everywhere at once. She was like a crazed insect, zipping through the air. Soren, Digger, and Twilight began to follow her lead. Soren quickly noticed that Gylfie would swoop up from her loops and spiraling dives to just beneath the crows, stabbing them on the underside of their wings. This made the crows drop their wings downward close to their bodies and lose altitude.

"I feel one coming upwardly behind," hissed Mrs. P. "Off your windward tail feathers."

Mrs. P. carefully began to clamber backward on Soren. He adjusted his wings. For fifty-fifty with her calorie-free weight, as she moved he could feel his balance shift. Mrs. P. could olfactory property the crow's stinky breath as it closed in. Soren began to swoop. Mrs. P. continued to make her way toward the tail feathers that were stiffer and coarser. A peachy whiff of crow stench engulfed her. Mrs. Plithiver raised her head in the direction of the foul odor and began screaming, "Scum of the sky, curse of the earth, riffraff of the Yonder. Scurrilous crowilous," she ranted.

The Yonder was what all blind snakes called the sky because information technology was so far away, about as far away as anything could be for a ophidian. But Mrs. P. saved her most poisonous insult for final—"Wet pooper!" Bullheaded snakes were especially impressed past owls' digestive systems, which immune them to shrink certain parts of waste into great pellets that they yarped up through their mouths, as opposed to other disgusting birds whom they referred to every bit "wet poopers." The crow seemed to brake mid-flying. His nib roughshod open, his wings folded.

Crows are elementary birds. And what this crow had just seen and heard—a ophidian hissing curses and rising from the back feathers of an owl—stunned him. He went "yeep," which meant that he merely froze in flight and began to plummet to earth.

The crows by this fourth dimension had begun to disappear. Twilight flew upwardly to Soren'southward windward side. "Digger'southward hurt."

Indeed, when Soren looked in the direction of Digger, he saw the Burrowing Owl tipping dangerously to one side. "We've got to find a place to country."

Gylfie flew up breathlessly. "I don't know how much longer Digger can last. He's not flight directly at all."

"Which fashion is he tipping?" Mrs. P. asked.

"Downwind," said Twilight.

"Quick!" she ordered. "Allow's become over there. I might be able to help."

"Yous?" Twilight asked somewhat incredulously.

"Recollect, love, how Digger had been request me to ride on his back in the desert? This might just be the fourth dimension."

A few seconds later they were coming in on Digger's upwind fly.

"Digger," Soren said, "we know you lot're hurt."

"I don't know if I can make it," the Burrowing Owl groaned. "Oh, if I could simply walk."

"At that place'south a stand up of trees really close," Soren said. "Mrs. P. has an idea that might assistance you lot."

"What's that?"

"She'south going to get on your good fly. That volition tip your injured wing upwards once more, lighten the drag on information technology. Gylfie meanwhile will fly nether your bad wing and create a petty updraft for information technology. Information technology might piece of work."

"I don't know," Digger moaned miserably.

"Faith, boy! Faith!" exhorted Mrs. Plithiver. "Now allow's get on with it."

"I really don't call up I can brand it," Digger gasped.

"You can, male child! You can!" said Mrs. P. Her phonation grew amazingly strong. "Yous shall get on to the end. You shall fly to the forests, to the trees, to Hoolemere. You lot have defended yourself confronting these crows. You have strode across deserts. You shall defend yourself now by flight. Y'all shall fly into the wind, into the light, into this new day. Whatever the cost, y'all shall fly on. You shall not fail or falter. Y'all shall non weaken. You shall cease the flight." Mrs. P.'s vocalization swelled in the growing light of the morning and somehow it filled them all with new courage.

Now Soren flew in so close to Digger that his fly was touching the tip of Digger'south skillful wing. They were ready for the transfer. "Now, Mrs. P.! Go!"

The sometime nest snake began to slither out onto Soren's wing. Soren felt the pressure of air around his body and the cushions of wind under his wings shift. The air surrounding him seemed to fray. He had to concentrate hard not to go into a curl. Just if he was frightened, he could not imagine what Mrs. P. was feeling equally she blindly slithered out to the tip of his wing and began the precarious transfer to Digger.

"Well-nigh at that place, dear, near there. Steady now. Steady."

Suddenly, she was gone. His wing felt low-cal. Soren turned his head. She had made information technology. She was now crawling upwards toward the base of Digger's wing. It was working. Digger'due south flying grew even.

"We're bringin' him in! We're bringing him in!" Twilight shouted triumphantly. Creating direct updrafts that supported Digger's flight, Twilight flew below, along with Gylfie who, under the injured wing, was doing the same.

Finally, they landed in a large bandbox tree. There was a perfect hollow for them to spend the mean solar day in, and Mrs. Plithiver immediately launched into a frenzy of action. "I demand worms! Big fat ones, and leeches. Quick—all of you! Go out and get me what I need. I'll stay hither with Digger."

Mrs. Plithiver crawled onto Digger'due south dorsum. "Now, this won't hurt, dear, but I just desire to feel what those atrocious crows did to you lot." Gently, she began flicking her forked tongue over his wound. "It's not deep. The all-time thing I can do is to curl up right on the wound until they come up back. A snake's pare can be very healing in many cases. Nosotros're a little too dry for the long run, all the same. That's why I want the worms."

Soon the owls were back with the worms and leeches that Mrs. P. had ordered. She directed Soren to place two leeches on the wound. "That will cleanse information technology. I can't tell yous how filthy crows are!"

After the leeches had done their work, Mrs. Plithiver pulled them off and gently replaced them with two fat worms.

Digger sighed. "That feels so good."

"Yes, there's nothing like a fat slimy worm for relief of a wound. You'll be fit to fly by tomorrow night."

"Thank you, Mrs. P. Thank you so much." Digger blinked at Mrs. P., and at that place was a look in his large yellow eyes of seeming disbelief that he could have ever considered such a serpent a meal, which, as a desert owl, Digger often did.

Inside the bandbox tree where they perched, there was another hollow that housed a family of Masked Owls.

"They look nearly exactly like you lot, Soren," Gylfie said. "And they're coming to visit."

"Masked Owls look nil like me," Soren replied. Everyone was always proverb this. He had heard his parents complain nearly it. Yep, they had white faces and buff-colored wings, but they had many more spots on their breasts and head.

"They're coming hither to visit?" Mrs. P. said. "Oh, dearest, the place is a mess. We can't receive visitor now. I'm nursing this poor owl."

"They heard about the mobbing," Gylfie said. "We're even a little bit famous."

"Why's that?" asked Soren.

"I guess that gang of crows is really bad. They couldn't

believe we battled back and survived," Gylfie replied.

Soon, they heard the Masked Owls arriving. One poked her caput in. "Mind if we visit?" It was the female owl. And although Masked Owls belonged to the same species of owls as Soren'due south family, which were Barn Owls, and they were all known as Tytos, they were hardly identical.

"See what I mean?" Soren whispered to Gylfie. "They are completely different. Await at how much bigger and darker they are." The point was lost on Gylfie.

"Nosotros wanted to encounter the brave owls who battled the crows," said the owl's mate.

"Aye, how'd you ever do that?" a very immature owlet who had barely fledged peeped up.

"Oh, it wasn't all that hard," Twilight said and dipped his head almost modestly.

"Not that hard!" Mrs. Plithiver piped up. "Hardest thing I've ever done!"

"You!" the male person Masked Owl exclaimed.

"She certainly had naught to do with the defeat of the crows. She's a nest-maid," his mate said in a haughty vocalism.

Mrs. Plithiver seemed to fade a bit. She nudged one of the worms that had begun to clamber off Digger'southward fly.

"She had everything to do with it!" Soren bristled up and suddenly seemed almost as big as the Masked Owls. "If it hadn't been for Mrs. P., I would accept been swoop-bombed from the rear and poor Digger would take never made information technology dorsum."

The Masked Owls blinked. "Well, well." The big female chuffed and stepped nervously from 1 talon to another. "We just aren't used to such aggressive behavior from our nest-maids. Ours are rather meek, I guess, compared to this…What practice you call her?"

"Her name is Mrs. Plithiver," Soren said slowly and distinctly with the contempt in his voice poorly curtained.

"Yes, yes," the female replied nervously. "Well, we discourage our nest-maids from socially mingling with us at any fourth dimension, really."

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