Guardians of Ga'Hoole 08 - The Outcast

journey about which the good scroom had spoken so vaguely would be to the Great Ga’Hoole Tree on the Island of Hoole in the middle of the Sea of Hoolemere. What could be farther away or more different from the great tree where the noblest owls on Earth lived than Beyond the Beyond? That barren landscape with fiery mountains and enormous four-legged animals running in packs, that place of desperate creatures, the outcasts of a civilized world?
    Nyroc felt as if he had been chasing his own tail feathers around in an endless argument. He finally rushed out of the hollow and swooped down by the lake’s edge. He tipped his face toward its shining surface just as the sunwas beginning to rise, turning the dark waters a pale rose color. He stared at his reflection. He did look like his mother! Am I not so much more than feathers and bones, talons and wings? But what? An answer began to come to him: I am of the same blood as my parents but not of the same gizzard, brain, or heart. The egg that held me came from the body of my mother, but I am not my mother’s son, nor my father’s. I am more. I know that with all my heart and with all my gizzard. I reject all that they were. I have no parents. I have no home. I am what I am but I shall never call myself Nyroc again. I have no name.

CHAPTER TWO
Venomous Visitors
    N yroc had the eerie sensation of someone watching him, following him perhaps. He now realized he had felt this since first arriving at the sycamore tree. And when he had been by the lakeside, almost swallowed by despair, in the back of his tattered gizzard he had sensed this presence watching. But he had been too distraught to care.
    Now, as Nyroc approached the sycamore, he noticed a curious green glow emanating from the hollow. Cautiously, he poked his head in, then gasped in disbelief. Two luminous, bright green snakes were suspended by their tails from a ridge in the hollow. Nest-maids? No, these are not the nest-maid snakes he’d heard civilized owls often had. They can’t be.
    The snakes’ eyes glittered turquoise. Their fangs were long. Nest-maids would never have such fangs! Nyroc thought. Their tongues flicked about as if tasting the air, and they were the strangest tongues imaginable. They were forked like most snakes’ tongues, but one side was pale ivory andthe other was crimson. It suddenly dawned on Nyroc! He knew what kind of snakes these were. His mother had spoken of them. He had heard her talking about them to her top lieutenant, Stryker. She had wanted to recruit these snakes for a special elite unit in the Pure Ones. These were the flying snakes of Ambala. The most venomous snakes in the world!
    “She sent you, didn’t she?” Nyroc asked.
    “Yesssssss,” one hissed.
    “I knew she would find me one way or the other,” Nyroc whispered. “Here.” He stepped into the hollow and thrust his chest out. “Just do it now. Do it quickly.”
    “Do what now?” the other one said. The words seemed to slither off the snake’s tongue.
    “Just kill me, quickly. Here, right to the heart.” He nodded his head and with his beak poked the feathers on his chest.
    “What issssss he talking about?” said the first snake to his companion.
    “We didn’t come here to kill you,” said the other snake.
    “But I’m not going back with you. I will never go back to her, to the Pure Ones.”
    There was a flash as both snakes, in one quick green fluid motion, slipped from their perches to the floor of the hollow where they arranged themselves into neatcoils. With their heads waving hypnotically they spoke in unison:
    “We are not emisssssssssaries from the Pure Ones. We detesssst the Pure Ones.”
    “You do?” Nyroc blinked in amazement.
    “We do,” answered the first snake. “My name is Slynella and this is my mate, Stingyll.”
    “But you said that she sent for me?”
    Both snakes nodded, looping their heads into figure eights and then resting them in a knot on top of their coiled bodies. It was rather dizzying to watch.
    “So who is ‘she’?” Nyroc asked.
    “She is Misssssst,” Slynella replied.
    “She is the watcher in the woods,” said Stingyll. “She has been watching you ssssince you arrived in Ambala.”
    “She has?”
    Both snakes once more went through the elaborate nodding procedure, unknotting their heads from the figure eights and then knotting them again.
    “But who is she? Why does she care about me?” Nyroc asked.
    “She is a very ssssssspecial owl.”
    “Oh,