Free (GoG Book 02) The Journey by Kathryn Lasky Page A

deformed foot.
    “Yes, Ezylryb?” Boron nodded to the owl.
    “Question for Bubo.” the Whiskered Screech’s voice was a low growl. “You think this fire was natural or more trouble with the rogue raids?”
    “No telling, sir. The rogues make good targets, and it wouldn’t be the first time raiding one caused a fire.”
    “Hmmm,” the Whiskered Screech replied, and then scratched his head with the second of the three remaining talons of one foot.
    “Next order of business,” Boron said. “Something about starvation in Ambala?”
    Ambala! Soren and Gylfie looked at each other. Ambala was where their friend the great Hortense came from. When they first had met Hortense at St. Aggie’s, they thought she was the most perfectly moon-blinked creature ever. Moon blinking was perhaps the cruelest thing that St. Aggie’s did to young owls. By forcing them to sleep during the full shines of the moon, directly exposing their heads to the moon’s light, they destroyed the will, the verypersonalities of individual owls and made them perfectly obedient with no thoughts of their own. Soren and Gylfie had devised a plan for fooling the sleep monitors and escaping the full shine. It turned out so had Hortense. She, in fact, was an infiltrator and had been sneaking out the eggs that St. Aggie’s patrols had been snatching. Unfortunately, however, she was caught and killed. Still, they had heard that Hortense had become a legend in Ambala because of her heroic deeds.
    “Yes,” another owl was speaking now. “The egg production is down, and it is thought to be caused by a blight on the rodent population. Simply not enough food.” Soren and Gylfie exchanged looks. It was not just the rodent population. It was the St. Aggie’s egg snatchers. This was information they could offer. This might convince Boron and Barran that they really knew something.
    “We’ll look into it,” Boron said. “And now, I believe some of our new arrivals have requested to speak with us.” He turned and blinked at the four young owls.
    Speak with us! What was he talking about? Soren was not prepared to talk in front of all these owls.
    “Now who wants to go first?”
    Twilight, Digger, and Gylfie all looked at Soren.
    “Up here, young’un.” There was a perch in the middle of the half circle to which Boron nodded.
    Oh, my Glaux. I have to fly up and stand there all by myself. Soren was so much more comfortable sharing this lower perch with his friends. Great Glaux, he would be close enough to that weird owl Ezylryb to reach out and touch his three-taloned foot. Soren got a terrible queasy feeling, not in his gizzard but in his first stomach, the one before the gizzard. How embarrassing if something just came up out of his gullet and went splat.
    “Uh…my name is Soren. I am from the Forest of Tyto. I er…” He and Gylfie had discussed how he should explain the events leading up to his snatching by St. Aggie’s. Gylfie felt it was not good to go into too much detail about Kludd actually shoving him from the nest. “Tales of attempted fratricide might not be the right way to start,” Gylfie had said.
    Of course, Soren hadn’t known what fratricide was until Gylfie explained it meant killing your brother. Then he agreed with her. He certainly didn’t want the owls of the Great Ga’Hoole Tree to think he came from such a murderous family. Kludd was the only one, after all. “I was snatched by a St. Aggie’s patrol. It was at St. Aggie’s that I met Gylfie.”
    It was difficult at first to speak and not look at Ezylryb’s mangled foot, but as he spoke, Soren became more relaxed.The owls seemed attentive but not particularly impressed, not even when he told them about Hortense and that it was not simply starvation that was accounting for the low egg counts in Ambala.
    “And so?” Barran said when Soren appeared to have concluded.
    “And so what?” Soren asked.
    “What is it you want, dear?”
    “The four of us are a band. We have