Book 12 - The Golden Tree (4 page)

"We snuck out at least a hundred times," Gylfie
said. "Which time?"
"You snuck out?" Coryn blinked. "Of course we did," Digger replied. "Did you get into trouble?" Coryn asked. Sometimes, Soren said.
"Was it worth it?"
48 "Always!" the Band roared in unison. "Wel , what time was this one?" Coryn turned to Soren.
Soren wiped the blood from his beak. "Wel . it was right after a visit from Trader Mags and we had this idea - we were always fascinated about the Others -"
"'Who isn't?" Coryn asked.
"Anyhow," Soren continued. "We had this idea that we would go find a new castle. or church, or - I don't know - one of those stone hol ows that the

Others built, but one that Trader Mags hadn't
scavenged yet for al the goodies. We were going to get rich. I guess that was the main idea. Going to start our own business. I mean, we were young. We thought it would be fun going around sel ing things or swapping them."
"Otulissa said that the idea was stupid and that noble owls weren't meant for business," Gylfie said. "Remember? That was why she wouldn't come with us. She said it was vulgar."
"That is soooo Otulissa!" Digger said. "It probably was common, but it would have been fun," Gylfie said.
"Wel , did you go?" Coryn asked. "Oh, we did!" Soren said. "We flew first to Tyto thinking that if there were any undiscovered Others' ruins they
37 49 might be there. But we didn't find any. Then ... I don't know whose idea it was to head to the Shadow Forest..."

"Mine!" Twilight chimed in. "I had dimly
remembered something from my very youngest days. You realize, Coryn, that I was orphaned very young. Never knew my parents."
I should have been so lucky, Coryn thought. "Had to teach myself everything. Orphan School of Tough Learning is what I cal it. For me, the great tree was more of a finishing school than anything else."
"If that's not a pile of racdrops, I don't know what is!" Digger blinked.
"Give it a blow. Twilight. Finishing school my talon." Gylfie stomped her tiny talons on the floor of the hol ow.
"Anyway," Soren continued, "we decided to go to the Shadow Forest. And we did find a ruin. There were no jewels, no great tapestries like the ones Trader Mags salvages scraps from, no paintings. There was something much more precious." "What was that?"

"Bess," Gylfie said quietly.
"Bess?" Coryn asked.
"Yes, Bess - the daughter of Grimble!" There were tears now in both Soren's and Gyfie's eyes. 38 50 "And who is Grimble?" Coryn asked. "Was," Gylfie corrected, and wiped away a tear with her wing tip. "You see, Coryn, Grimble taught us to fly. It was because of Grimble that Soren and I were able to escape St. Aggie's."
Soren continued. "Grimble was kil ed when the Ablah General discovered him helping us to escape. There was a terrific fight. Grimble kept yel ing, 'Fly! Fly! Now's your chance!' I looked back and saw him bleeding on the ground, a wing half torn off."
"And did he die?" Coryn asked. "Oh, he died al right. But his bones brought Bess and us together."
"His bones!" Coryn blinked. "Is this a scroom

story?"
"In a way," Gylfie said softly. "But it was because we had snuck out to look for precious things that we found Bess in that ruin. It was several moon cycles after her father had final y died. She would have rescued him if she could have. But she couldn't, so she did the next best thing and brought his bones to this secret place."
"Secret place!" Coryn was nearly jumping out of his feathers, "Tel me the story, please.".A child desperate to rescue a parent! How different from me. Would I ever dare rescue my mum, or...? Would I dare seek out my da's bones?
39 51 A shadow seemed to steal across Soren's gizzard, sending a deep chil through his hol ow bones. "I can remember her words almost exactly." Soren sighed.
"Tel it! Tel it!"
"Yes, you tel it, Soren," Gyhie said. Soren was the best storytel er of al . It was Soren's tel ing of the legends when he and Gylfie had been thrown into

the moon-blaze chamber in St. Aggie's that had
saved them from being moon blinked. There was a passion in his tel ing of stories that made the words take on new and deeper meanings. But it wasn't simply a story he would be tel ing Coryn. Soren would be tel ing him of a secret place that only a very few owls in the great tree knew about, only the Band, Otulissa, Ezylryh, and Strix Struma, and, yes, two nest-maid snakes - Octavia and Mrs. Plithiver. They cal ed it the Palace of Mists.
40 CHAPTER SIX
Bess of the Chimes
We had taken off during the milkberry harvest festival - always a good time to sneak out," Soren began. "You know how al those older owls get tipsy on the milkberry wine and berry mead. And then there is al the dancing and singing that can go on for three days or more. We knew that we wouldn't be missed. No one paid much attention to young owls at these times, especial y back then. We had hardly been at the tree a year, maybe thirteen moon

cycles at the most, when we got this notion of
getting rich. Beating old Trader Mags at her own game, as Gylfle said. Otulissa would have nothing to do with it. It was raining that night as wel she argued. So, why be out when there was so much frolic going on in the great hol ow of the tree?" "Yes, but the winds were terrific," Twilight said. "Rain or no rain, the winds were with us from behind. So we flew fast."
41 53 "As I recal ," Digger offered, "we made Cape Glaux by daybreak."
"But where would you even start looking for a ruin - an undiscovered one?" Coryn asked. Soren blinked and began to speak in his
thoughtful way. "Good question. We were smart enough not to go to Silverveil. We knew Trader Mags had discovered al the ruins there. But the one place that had never real y been explored was part of the Shadow Forest. It's so dense with trees that there was not much space for the Others to build their stone hol ows. We were young and impulsive, and although we had once been attacked by crows,

we promised ourselves that we would be more
vigilant this time. So we decided to go out and hunt during the morning hours but always together and then at night to go off separately to cover as much of the forest as possible in search of a ruin." Coryn listened with rapt attention. What an adventure! A treasure hunt instead of a battle. Jewels instead of blood. And most of al , friendship. Daring young owls sneaking off from the great tree together on a quest.
"By the end of the second day, we had found nothing and we knew time was getting short. We would have to get back to the tree. But that night we went out once more separately and Gylfie ..." Soren paused. "Weil, Gylfie, you should tel this part." 42 54 Gylfie ran her beak through her primaries before she began her part of the story. "There is a place in the Shadow Forest where, if you fly high enough and are observant, you wil notice the forest seems to dip down into a bowl. If you look closer, you wil see the silvery ropes of a waterfal cascading from a great height into the bowl. I saw

the fal s sending up great plumes of swirling mist. I
spiraled down and flew closer. Veils of mist were suspended in the air. The entire val ey seemed to be neither quite of land or sky but hanging between the two. I began to see shapes in the mist as one sees shapes in the clouds. But then I slowly realized that these were not mere il usions or figments of my imagination. What I was seeing was real and made of stone. I flew back to the place we were to meet up if we found anything.
"When we al flew there together, the mist was so thick you couldn't see a thing. It was like a curtain hanging across the val ey," Gylfie continued. "The rest of the Band thought I had experienced some sort of gizzard dream. There wasn't a stone visible. But suddenly, a sharp rogue wind tore through the curtain of mist like a knife. Four beautiful stone spires pierced the night. And that's when Soren heard the chimes."
"Chimes!" Coryn exclaimed. It al sounded so mysterious, so beautiful. "What was it?" 43 55 "I thought it was battle gear clanking in the right ,"Twilight said.

"Only you,Twilight, would think that!"Digger
sighed.
"But was it chimes? A bel tol ing?"Coryn asked "In a sense ,"Soren spoke softly. Coryn felt a shiver pass through him. This was going to be a scroom story, he thought.
"We had fetched up just beneath one of the stone towers in a silverdrop pine. It took me about three seconds to identity the sound. It was Boreal Owl! You know how the cal of those owls often sound like chimes in the night? Wel , Boreals believe that if a Boreal dies in a bel tower beneath the clapper of a bel , then its scroom wil go straight to glaumora. Or at least that was the tale that our friend Grimbie told us."
"You mean," said Coryn, now aghast, "that it was a dying owl making this beautiful chiming noise?" "It was not a dying owl but the sound was very mournful,'"' Gylfie sighed. Her wings seemed to quiver at the memory of it. al

"And desperate," added Soren. "We decided we
should go to her."
"Her? It was a female?" Coryn asked. "We were prettv sure it was a. female. So," Soren 56 continued, "we took off and flew toward the spire from which the sound were coming.As we drew nearer, the sounds because louder-as Gylfie said the most mournful yet beautiful sounds any of us had ever heard.
"A strange sight greeted us a we lighted down on the windowsil of the bel tower,"Soren continued. "There was a large bel that hung in the tower and from within it came the chimelike sounds mixed with the wing beats of an owl.On the stone floor were the bleached bones of another owl,one long dead." Coryn felt as if the line between past and present were blurring, k was as if he were actual y living within the story; it was as real to him as it was to the Band. Sorens storytel ing voice slid through the dim light of the hol ow as smoothly as the liquid ribbon, of a river flows toward the sea. Coryn felt its current.

"We were perched on the window ledge of the
bel tower,' Soren said, "'Now, we had al experienced, scroomish, peculiar things in our days. Things that stil ed our gizzards and sent quivers through our bones, but this was one of the strangest situations ever. From the bel we heard a beautiful song, a song that seemed to be made of silver. I cannot sing it but the. words were so lovelv." "What were the words'" Coryn pressed. 57 "I hope I can remember. Say them with me." Soren looked at Gylfie, Twilight, and Digger. The four owls began to recite the song.
I am the chimes in the night,
the sound within the wind.
I an: the tol ing of glaumora
for the souls of long-lost kin.
I shal sing you to the stars,
where your scroom shal final y rest
'neath the great hel of the sky

in a tower of cloudy crests....
"When the song in the bel finished," Gylfie said, "a beautiful owl flew from the bel and lighted down." "I'l 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 smal 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 smal 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. 46 58 "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 al . So we explained how he didn't want to stay with the St. Aggie's owls but they threatened to kil 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 rol ed from her bright yel ow 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 forceful y, 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

47 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 bel tower. But she had found this place. And she liked it because it was so hidden in the val ey, and the roar of the waterfal s 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 chil pass through his gizzard. Was his
own mother, Nyra, stil alive, or was she a scroom? And if she was a scroom, what business had she left unfinished?
48 CHAPTER SEVEN
The 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, hol ows were a university, a place of learning. But she cal ed 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 hol ows 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 waterfal .
49 61 "The Palace of Mists," Coryn repeated the words dreamily.
"Yes, and just imagine, Coryn!" Excitement stirred Digger's normal y even, slow speech. "The face of the waterfal formed the rear wal of this palace. And there were four spires, each a bel tower but not one of the four bel s 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'l never forget her words. She said, 'I am the chimes. I am the clapper. And I do believe had there been no bel she