Guardians of Ga'Hoole 03 - The Rescue

Kill me. The forest, the world around him, seemed to dissolve. Soren felt as if he were alone in some weird space that was neither earth nor sky.
    “Soren,” Gylfie flew up and perched on the branch beside him. “Soren, you’re going to be all right. Soren, he’s crazy. It’s what your mum’s and da’s scrooms were warning you about.” Soren turned to the little Elf Owl. His eyes welled up with tears.
    “But, Gylfie, there is still unfinished business on earth. He still lives. My parents’ scrooms must still be far from glaumora.”
    “They’re a little closer, Soren. They must be. They must be so proud of you. Look at what you have done.”
    Soren looked to a nearby branch on the same tree. All of his owls were safe, and there was Ezylryb perched on a lower branch with tears in his eyes as he looked at the young owls who had saved his life. But Soren was still seized by the terrible and overwhelming thoughts of Kludd. What Kludd had done to him and Eglantine, and what he, Soren, had done to Kludd. It was all simply too horrific to dwell on. So he turned his thoughts to something else—his best friend in the world, Gylfie. And shehad just said that perhaps the scrooms of his parents were a little closer to glaumora. Maybe, maybe, he thought.
    Soren looked down at Gylfie. How did she always know the right thing to say at the right time? But what about her own parents? Did she ever wonder if they were alive or dead? If they were scrooms between earth and glaumora?
    “Gylfie,” Soren said hesitantly. “Do you ever wonder about your parents?”
    “Of course, Soren. But I think they’re dead.”
    “But what if they aren’t?”
    “What do you mean?”
    Soren was silent for a minute. He couldn’t say what he really meant, for it was simply too selfish. If they were alive, it would mean that Gylfie would return to the Desert of Kuneer to live with them, and Soren didn’t know if he could stand to lose the little Elf Owl.
    “Oh, nothing,” Soren answered and tried to make his voice sound light.
    “Maybe someday we’ll go to Kuneer and see. There’s a spirit desert there, you know. If their scrooms are still around for unfinished business, that’s where they would be.”
    “Yes, yes, I suppose so,” Soren said quietly.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Good Light
    O ctavia slithered out on a limb of the great tree and scanned the sky. The night had grown thin, the black threadbare like a worn garment through which the first dim streaks of the morning would soon begin to glimmer. She had sensed that Soren and his little band would do something after she had discovered them in the secret chamber. Although she had not been born blind, she had grown to possess those extraordinary instincts and sensations of the other blind snakes. And now as Octavia slithered farther out onto the branch, she did sense something flying toward the tree. She coiled up and swung her head about. Something from far away was coming! Something was stirring the air. The vibrations seemed to ripple across her scales. Then she heard the lookout cry. “Owls two points north of east! Great Glaux! It’s Ezylryb flying point! He’s back! He’s back!”
    Tears began to stream from Octavia’s sightless eyes. “He’s coming back! He’s coming back!” she whispered.
    The Great Ga’Hoole tree began to shake with the sound of cheering owls. From every hollow, owls flew out—Snowies and Spotted Owls, Horned Owls and Great Grays, Elf and Pygmy Owls—to perch on the thousands of branches and cheer the return of the best of the best of the chaws and the greatest ryb of the great tree—Ezylryb.
    As night faded into day, as Soren, Gylfie, Twilight, Eglantine, and Digger nestled into the down of their hollow, the clear music of the harp’s strings began to slip through the branches of the great old tree. The voice of Madame Plonk so lovely, so eerily beautiful, as beautiful as the most distant stars, rose in the pale light. Soren heard the soft breathing of Eglantine beside him. He knew in a hollow high above theirs, Ezylryb was probably munching a caterpillar and perhaps, by the light of the fire in his grate, reading an old book. From the opening in their hollow, Soren could see the constellation of the Little Raccoon, its hind paw scratching the late autumn sky before it slipped off into another night in another world on another side of the earth. Madame Plonk’s voice shimmered through the tree. Then he heard the loveliest liquid sound