Guardians of Ga'Hoole 04 - The Siege

replied.
    “Well, I don’t like it,” Soren said firmly. “I’m completely against things being declared spronk.”
    “Me, too,” Twilight said.
    Digger blinked and then in that slow way he had of speaking when he was considering a problem, he said, “Yes, I think it’s awful when they keep knowledge from young owls. Just suppose that Otulissa had not been permitted to read that book about the Devil’s Triangle. We might never have been able to free Ezylryb.”
    “I think we should go tell them that this is all wrong,” Eglantine spoke up for the first time.
    “Before we do anything,” Soren said now in a firm voice, “I think that we have to find out for sure.”
    “To the roots, Soren?” Gylfie asked.
    “That’s how you found out, isn’t it, Gylfie?” Soren asked.
    Gylfie nodded. She was a bit embarrassed, for this was an acknowledgment that she had been engaged in the less-than-admirable activity of eavesdropping on the parliament.
    Thousands of inner passages wound their way through the Great Ga’Hoole Tree and, some months before, Gylfie, who often had trouble sleeping and would rise for a wander through the tree, had discovered a place deep in theroots where there was a strange phenomenon. Something happened to the timber at a certain point so that the sounds coming from the owl’s parliament chamber resonated within the roots. Entering the root structure itself was a challenge, for the roots were huge and tangled, but Soren and his friends had found an ideal place where they could listen.
    “Oh, I’m so excited!” Eglantine was nearly hopping up and down. “I’ve heard you talk about going to the roots but I’ve never been there. I’ve been dying to go.”
    There was a sudden silence as the other four owls exchanged glances. “You’re not thinking of leaving me out. You better not leave me out. No fair!” Eglantine said in a desperate voice.
    “I’m just not sure, Eglantine,” Soren said. “I mean, first of all you would have to promise not to tell Primrose.” Primrose, a Pygmy Owl, was Eglantine’s best friend, and she told her everything.
    “I won’t, I won’t, I promise. Listen, if it hadn’t been for me, none of this stuff with higher magnetics would have started,” Eglantine said.
    This was true. If it hadn’t been for Eglantine, who had been captured by the Pure Ones, imprisoned in the stone crypt of a ruined castle, and exposed to the destructivepowers of the flecks, none of this would have ever happened.
    “Well, all right,” Soren finally said. “But not a word of this to anyone. Promise?”
    “Promise.” The young Barn Owl nodded her lovely heart-shaped face solemnly.

CHAPTER FOUR
Sprink on Your Spronk!
    I cannot believe that teaching young and impressionable owls about such matters can really be helpful in the long run. Higher magnetics is a strange business. We ourselves have only begun to understand it all.” Dewlap, the Ga’Hoolology ryb, was speaking.
    The five young owls were perched among the roots, listening to the parliament’s debate. Soren was ready to explode. Of course, higher magnetics was a strange business, especially compared to Ga’Hoolology, which was one of the most boring studies and chaws of the Great Ga’Hoole Tree. Ga’Hoolology was important, for it taught the processes of the tree itself and how to best keep the environment healthy and thriving, but it was also dull.
    In this debate, Dewlap and Elvan, another ryb, were on the spronk side while Ezylryb and Bubo, the blacksmith at the Great Ga’Hoole Tree, were on the antispronk side. Strix Struma was undecided. Suddenly, the five young owls were aware of another presence. They felt a shadowslide over them in this darkest of places within the tree, and they froze. Then all of them together flipped their heads around. It was Otulissa!
    What was she doing here? Soren was furious. Racdrops! he thought. Then Twilight beaked silently the words they were all thinking. “This really frinks me off!” “Racdrops” and “frinks” were two of the worst curse words an owl could say. There was only one worse— sprink, but no one ever said that. Not even Twilight. Say these words in the dining hollow and you were out in a flash. But Otulissa seemed unrattled. She merely lifted a talon to her beak to warn Twilight not to make any noise. Soren settled back down. There was absolutely nothing he could do about this now. They might as well just listen as the debate