The Siege. Kathryn Lasky
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Gylfie nearly fell from her perch. It was Ezylryb speaking. “First, with all due respect, Dewlap, I must take issue with the term ‘dark magic’. You use it in a derisive manner, as if something that is dark is negative. How can darkness in our world of owls ever be thought of as negative, something less than good? For is it not in darkness that we come alive, that we rise in the night to fly, to hunt, to find, to explore, to defend and to challenge? It is in darkness that our true nobility begins to bloom. Like the flowers that open to the sunshine, we open to the dark. So let us hear no more of such expressions as ‘dark magic’. It is neither dark, nor is it magic. It is science. A science that we do not fully understand.”
“All right, we need an explanation, Otulissa!” Soren demanded when they were back in the hollow. “You followed us. Who gave you permission?” But Otulissa cut him off.
“Who gave you permission to eavesdrop?” she shot back.
“Well, no matter,” said Soren. “How come you’re following us around?”
“I have as much right to as anyone. I don’t want to be left out. I flew with you to rescue Ezylryb. You know that’s true. And who was it who figured out the Devil’s Triangle? Tell me that. And who knew about mu metal? Tell me that. Not to mention the fact that it was I who knew that fire destroyed magnetic properties. So who has more right to know about higher magnetics?”
Now it was Digger who stepped forwards. “You,” he said simply. Otulissa breathed a sigh of relief. “And,” he paused, “I honestly don’t believe that one owl has more of a right than anyone else to know something. Isn’t that what our objection to this whole spronk thing is about – our right to know? We should all be able to know.” A stillness had fallen on the group. “Now, tell us, what do you think is spronk about higher magnetics, and why don’t they want us to know about it? What are they scared of?”
“I don’t know really. I think it probably has something to do with …” she hesitated. “Well, with what happened to Eglantine after the Great Downing – to her mind, to her gizzard.”
“Was that different from what happened to Ezylryb?” Soren asked.
“Yes, I think so. Ezylryb just lost his sense of direction. He couldn’t navigate, but Eglantine …” Otulissa turned to Eglantine.
“I couldn’t feel. I was like stone – like the stone crypts they kept us in,” Eglantine said.
“So why don’t they want us to know about this?” Soren asked.
“I’m not sure. Maybe because they don’t know that much about it themselves,” said Otulissa.
“So,” said Soren, “what do we do about all this?”
“We need to confront them,” Twilight said. “I’m not much for book learning, but I don’t like the idea that someone can tell me I can’t learn something. Makes me want to learn it all the more.”
“But if we confront them,” Gylfie said, “we’re back to that same old problem again.”
“What’s that?” asked Otulissa.
“The last time we listened in at the roots and found something out and wanted to say something about it, way back last summer, well, we couldn’t because then we would have had to admit that we had been eavesdropping and we would get into really big trouble,” said Gylfie.
“Hmmm,” Otulissa blinked her eyes shut and kept them that way while she thought a moment. “I see the problem.” Then suddenly she opened her eyes. The amber light in them flickered with a new brightness. “I have an idea. Remember that book they were talking about, the book that had to be removed from the shelves – Fleckasia and Other Disorders of the Gizzard?”
“Yes,” Soren replied.
“Well, what if I go to the library and ask the book matron to fetch it for me? Then we’ll see what happens. This will be a test case, so to speak,” said Otulissa.
The other owls looked at one another. Otulissa was smart. And this was a very good idea.
So it was planned that as tween time neared, when the last drop of the day’s sun began to vanish and the first shadows of twilight gathered, they would all go to the library and Otulissa would request the forbidden book. Of course, they would not go in all at once. Soren and Gylfie would already be there, and Otulissa would arrive with Eglantine and Digger. It was decided that Twilight would not be there at all because he was seldom in the library. Now Soren wondered if Ezylryb would be there, for he often was. What would he say when Otulissa requested the book?
The whole idea of forbidden books sickened Soren. At St Aggie’s, all books were forbidden. Entry into the library was not permitted for any owl except Skench and Spoorn, the brutal leaders of the academy. Academy! What a name. No one had learned anything there except how to become a slave and stop thinking.
Soren and Gylfie could hardly concentrate on the weather charts they were studying in the Ga’Hoolian weather atlas. Ezylryb was in the library, his usual uncommunicative self, sitting at his special desk. The only sound that came from that desk was the crunching of the dried caterpillars that he munched while he read.
He was the most inscrutable of owls and only rarely revealed anything that could be called emotion. Yet Soren was drawn to him. He loved the old Whiskered Screech because it was Ezylryb who had first looked upon him and seen him as more than a young orphaned Barn Owl, more than just an owl scarred by the horrors of St Aggie’s. Ezylryb had seen Soren as a real, thinking owl who knew things not only through books and the information that the rybs taught, but through his gizzard. Gizzuition was, according to Ezylryb, a kind of mysterious thinking beyond normal reasoning, by which an owl immediately perceived the truth.
Gylfie gave Soren a nudge. Soren looked up. Otulissa had just entered the library with Eglantine. And suddenly Dewlap had appeared behind the circulation desk with the book matron. Soren felt his gizzard turn squishy. He saw Otulissa’s feathers droop as an owl’s feathers do when he or she feels fear. She seemed to shrink. But then Soren watched and saw a fierce glint in the amber of her eyes. Otulissa’s feathers seemed to puff up slightly and she flew the short distance between where she had stood and the desk. “Book Matron, would you be so kind as to look for a book that I can’t seem to find on the shelves?”
“Certainly, dear. What is the title?”
“Fleckasia and Other Disorders of the Gizzard.”
Complete silence fell upon the library. It loomed up as thick as fog on a humid summer night. Soren lifted his eyes towards Ezylryb, who was staring directly at Dewlap. His gaze bore into her like two fierce points of golden light. The book matron stammered, “Let me go see if I can find it.”
“Oh no, Book Matron,” Dewlap said. “That is one of the books that has been temporarily removed from the shelves until certain decisions are made by the parliament.”
“Removing books? Decisions? Since when are there decisions about books I want to read?” Otulissa drew herself up taller. Her feathers were now fully fluffed up. Otulissa’s plumage was puffed to a degree that was most often associated with a posture of attack. She looked huge.
“There are plenty of other good books for you to read, my dear,” Dewlap said in a soft voice.
“But I want to read that book,” Otulissa replied. She paused a second. “Strix Emerilla, one of my distinguished ancestors, the renowned weathertrix, who has written several books on atmospheric pressure and weather turbulations, mentioned it.”
Dewlap interrupted her. “The book you have requested has nothing whatsoever to do with weather.”
“That’s possible. But you see, Strix Emerilla had a wide-ranging mind, and I think that she mentioned this book as referring to a possible connection between gizzard disorders and atmospheric pressure variations.”
“So?” Dewlap said.
“So, I have a