LEGEND OF THE GUARDIANS: THE OWLS OF GA’HOOLE
Now a major motion picture!Enter the world of the owls and meet the heroes who keep it safe…Born in the forest of the barn owls, Soren loves life’s little pleasures, like the feel of a centipede pattering down his throat. But evil lurks in the owl world, and threatens to change the course of Soren’s life forever.One terrifying night the strangers come. They capture Soren and fly him to a deep canyon, where the destruction of all owls is being planned. Now Soren will have to do something he has never done before: he will have to fly…
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HarperCollins Children’s Books An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
First published in the USA by Scholastic Inc 2003
First published in Great Britain as The Capture by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2006
Text copyright © Kathryn Lasky 2003
Kathryn Lasky asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks
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Source ISBN: 9780007418923
Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2016 ISBN: 9780008226848 Version: 2016-12-05
To Ann Reit, Wise Owl, Great Flight Instructor
… and then the forest of the Kingdom of Tyto seemed to grow smaller and smaller and dimmer and dimmer in the night …
CONTENTS
Chapter One: A Nest Remembered
Chapter Two: A Life Worth Two Pellets
Chapter Four: St Aegolius Academy for Orphaned Owls
Chapter Six: Separate Pits, One Mind
Chapter Seven: The Great Scheme
Chapter Eight: The Pelletorium
Chapter Nine: Good Nurse Finny
Chapter Ten: Right Side Up in an Upside-down World
Chapter Eleven: Gylfie’s Discovery
Chapter Fourteen: The Eggorium
Chapter Sixteen: Hortense’s Story
Chapter Seventeen: Save the Egg!
Chapter Eighteen: One Bloody Night
Chapter Twenty: Grimble’s Story
Chapter Twenty-Two: The Shape of the Wind
Chapter Twenty-Three: Flying Free
Chapter Twenty-Four: Empty Hollows
Chapter Twenty-Six: Desert Battle
“Noctus, can you spare a bit more down, darling? I think our third little one is about to arrive. That egg is beginning to crack.”
“Not again!” sighed Kludd.
“What do you mean, Kludd, not again? Don’t you want another little brother?” his father said. There was an edge to his voice.
“Or sister?” His mother sighed the low soft whistle Barn Owls sometimes used.
“I’d like a sister,” Soren peeped up.
“You just hatched out two weeks ago.” Kludd turned to Soren, his younger brother. “What do you know about sisters?”
Maybe, Soren thought to himself, they would be better than brothers. Kludd seemed to have resented him since the moment he had first hatched.
“You really wouldn’t want them arriving just when you’re about to begin branching,” Kludd said dully. Branching was the first step, literally, towards flight. The young owlets would begin by hopping from branch to branch and flapping their wings.
“Now, now, Kludd!” his father admonished. “Don’t be impatient. There’ll be time for branching. Remember, you won’t have your flight feathers for at least another month or more.”
Soren was just about to ask what a month was when he heard a crack. The owl family all seemed to freeze. To any other forest creature the sound would have been imperceptible. But Barn Owls were blessed with extraordinary hearing.
“It’s coming!” Soren’s mother gasped. “I’m so excited.” She sighed again and looked rapturously at the pure white egg as it rocked back and forth. A tiny hole appeared and from it protruded a small spur.
“The egg tooth, by Glaux!” Soren’s father exclaimed.
“Mine was bigger wasn’t it, Da?” Kludd shoved Soren aside for a better look, but Soren crept back up under his father’s wing.
“Oh, I don’t know, son. But isn’t it a pretty, glistening little point? Always gives me a thrill. Such a tiny little thing pecking its way into the big wide world. Ah! Bless my gizzard, the wonder of it all.”
It did indeed seem a wonder. Soren stared at the hole that now began to split into two or three cracks. The egg shuddered slightly and the cracks grew longer and wider. He had done this himself just two weeks ago. This was exciting.
“What happened to my egg tooth, Mum?”
“It dropped off, stupid,” Kludd said.
“Oh,” Soren said quietly. His parents were so absorbed in the hatching that they didn’t reprimand Kludd for his rudeness.
“Where’s Mrs P? Mrs P?” his mother said urgently.
“Right here, ma’am.” Mrs Plithiver, the old blind snake who had been with the owl family for years and years, slithered into the hollow. Blind snakes, born without eyes, served as nest-maids and were kept by many owls to make sure the nests were clean and free of maggots and various insects that found their way into the hollows.
