The Capture Read Free Page B

Soren had asked.

    "Hmm," said his mother as she thought a moment. "Just imagine a mouth full of beaks -- yes, very sharp beaks."

    "That sounds very scary."

    "Yes, it can be," his mother replied. "That is why you do not want to fall out of the hollow or try to fly before you're ready, because raccoons have very sharp teeth."

    "You see," his father broke in, "we have no need for such things as teeth. Our gizzards take care of all that chewing business. I find it rather revolting, the notion of actually chewing something in one's mouth."

    "They say it adds flavor, darling," his mother added.

    "I get flavor, plenty of flavor, in my gizzard. Where do you think that old expression 'I know it in my gizzard' comes from? Or i have a feeling in my gizzard,' Marella?"

    "Noctus, I'm not sure if that is the same thing as flavor."

    "That mouse we had for dinner last night -- I can tell
    you from my gizzard exactly where he had been of late. He had been feasting on the sweet grass of the meadow mixed with the nooties from that little Ga'Hoole tree that grows down by the stream. Great Glaux! I don't need teeth to taste."

    Oh, dear, thought Soren, he might never hear this gentle bickering between his parents again. A centipede pittered by and Soren did not even care. Darkness gathered. The black of the night grew deeper and from down on the ground he could barely see the stars. This perhaps was the worst. He could not see sky through the thickness of the trees. How much he missed the hollow. From their nest, there was always a little piece of the sky to watch. At night, it sparkled with stars or raced with clouds. In the daytime, there was often a lovely patch of blue, and sometimes toward evening, before twilight, the clouds turned bright orange or pink. There was an odd smell down here on the ground -- damp and moldy The wind sighed through the branches above, through the leaves and the needles of the forest trees, but down on the ground ... well, the wind didn't seem to even touch the ground. There was a terrible stillness. It was the stillness of a windless place. This was no place for an owl to be. Everything was different.

    If his feathers had been even half-fledged, he could
    have plumped them up and the downy fluff beneath the flight feathers would have kept him warm. He supposed he could try calling for Eglantine. But what use would she be? She was so young. Besides, if he called out, wouldn't that alert other creatures in the forest that he was here? Creatures with teeth!

    He guessed his life wasn't worth two pellets. But even worthless, he still missed his parents. He missed them so much that the missing felt sharp. Yes, he did feel something in his gizzard as sharp as a tooth.

CHAPTER THREE

    Snatched!

    Soren was dreaming of teeth and of the heartbeats of mice when he heard the first soft rustlings overhead. "Mum! Da!" he cried out in his half sleep. He would forever regret calling out those two words, for suddenly, the night was ripped with a shrill screech, and Soren felt talons wrap around him.
    Now he was being lifted. And they were flying fast, faster than he could think, faster than he could ever imagine. His parents never flew this fast. He had watched them when they took off or came back from the hollow. They glided slowly and rose in beautiful lazy spirals into the night. But now, underneath, the earth raced by. Slivers of air blistered his skin. The moon rolled out from behind thick clouds and bleached the world with an eerie whiteness. He scoured the landscape below for the tree that had been his home. But the trees blurred into clumps, and then the forest of the Kingdom of Tyto seemed, to grow smaller and smaller and dimer
    and dimmer in the night, until Soren could not stand to look down anymore. So he dared to look up.

    There was a great bushiness of feathers on the owl's legs. His eyes continued upward. This was a huge owl -- or was it even an owl? Atop this creature's head, over each eye, were two