Free Capture by Kathryn Lasky Page A

never survive it. "March, you two, march to the moon blaze!"

    "Don't say anything," Gylfie whispered. "We're together, that should count for something." For what?
    Soren wondered. We'll get plucked together? We'll die together?

    The two youngs owls were marched into a stone chamber off to one side of one of the glaucidiums. The walls of this chamber were made of pure white stone and slanted outward at peculiar angles. Indeed, the moonlight seemed to pour into the white stone cell and blaze off the walls in a fierce brightness.
    "You shall remain here and be scalded by the moon's light until the moon goes. See how you like that!"
    Spoorn blasted them with a screech to
    punctuate her remarks, and the screech, as powerful as a wind, nearly toppled the little Elf Owl.

    "And no head ducking. We'll be watching," added

    Skench.

    Gylfie managed to recover her balance and planted

    her tiny talons firmly on the stone. "Well," she said, "at least we're not plucked." "Gylfie, are you yoicks?"

    "In these situations, Soren, you have to look on the bright side -- no pun intended," Gylfie said as she looked around and saw moonlight bouncing off every surface.

    "Gylfie, I don't think there is a bright side, pun or not. Plucked or moon scalded? You consider that a choice?"

    "We're not going to be either!" A new fierceness had crept into Gylfie's voice.

    "Well how do you think we can avoid it? You can stand in my shadow but it's not exactly as if I can stand in yours -- you're a midget."

    "That is not fair, Soren, and you know it. Stature jokes are not appropriate. They are considered very bad form where I come from. Indeed, there is a society, the Small Owl Society -- SOS -- and its charter is to prevent cruel and tasteless remarks concerning size. My grandmother and a Pygmy Owl founded it."
    Gylfie brimmed with indignation. She seemed far more upset about Soren's use of the word "midget" than being stuck in the white stone chamber for moon scalding.

    "I'm sorry. But I still don't see how we're going to avoid the moonlight in here."

    "We have to think."

    "But that is just what it is impossible to do when one is moon blinked, Gylfie. I think this is it for us."
    Soren looked down at Gylfie and, even as he said it, he felt a strange numbness stealing over him. And Gylfie's eyes began to blink in an odd manner.

    In the blaze of the moon's light, the two young owls felt their essence departing. Soren's brain swam with confusion. His gizzard seemed to grow still. He looked at the moon-blasted walls of the stone cell and they appeared slippery, slippery as ice, and on this ice of the moon's light he felt his memories slip, slip, slipping away. He wanted to grab on to them with his talons, hold them, but he was simply too tired. He was about to fall asleep and when he awoke he knew he would be a changed owl. He would be unrecognizable to himself. He would truly have become 12-1 and Gylfie, too, would no longer be Gylfie but a number, 25-2 -- rhymes with Ga'Hoole!

    There was a click inside Soren's head. The moment he had thought of the word Ga'Hoole something seemed to clear in his brain. His gizzard stirred. Ga'Hoole. The mere mention of the Ga'Hoole legends had made Auntie Finny faint, but the mere thought of the word crashed like thunder and seemed to wake Soren up.

    "Gylfie! Gylfie!" He nudged the tiny owl with one of his talons. "Gylfie, have you ever heard of the legends of Ga'Hoole?" Gylfie, whose movements seemed thick and slow, suddenly twitched. Soren could almost see a pulse course through the little owl, jerking her into alertness.

    "Ga'Hoole -- why, yes. My mother and father would often tell us tales. Tales of Yore we called them."

    "We called them legends -- the Ga'Hoolian legends." With each mention of the word, the young owls seemed to grow slightly more alert, something within them quickening.

    "I think," said Soren, "that we should tell those Tales of Yore until the moon goes down, and maybe these words will thin