Read Online (GoG Book 08) The Outcast by Kathryn Lasky - Free Book Online

nose, and twowent for its belly. The sixth began barking and nipping. The bear spun and swung its immense paws. One wolf went flying from the blows, and the others scattered.
    The bear went back to eating alone at the carcass. By this time, Coryn was starving. Dare he approach? He had an advantage, of course. He could fly off. He was just too hungry to wait another moment. He took off and hovered over the carcass. The bear took note of him but went back to eating. Coryn flew lower. This time the bear didn’t even raise its head. The bear was working on the ribs of the moose, so Coryn settled on the hindquarters. He began to peck at the flesh. The bear continued eating without even giving him a glance. This went on for several minutes. He felt the wolves slowly creeping closer now, obviously emboldened by his success.
    Coryn continued eating and, without turning around, spoke: “Listen to me, MacDuncans. Send Hamish in first and then the rest of you may come and join us,” Coryn said in a tone he almost did not recognize. There was a strange calmness in his voice, like the stillness at the eye of a hurricane. He could sense the wolves laying back their ears and lowering their bodies in the signs of appeasement.
    So the wolves stood back as Hamish came forwardand tucked in next to Coryn on the hindquarter. “I’m not used to this much meat. I mostly gnaw bones.”
    “So I’ve heard,” Coryn replied.
    Soon the other wolves joined them. They were careful to avoid the ribs where the grizzly was still eating and confined their own eating to the hindquarters, taking care to keep Coryn between them and the bear.
    Occasionally, the wolves looked up, their muzzles bloody from their feasting, and wondered about the young owl. This had never happened before—bear, wolf, and owl feeding together—never in their lifetimes or in all the thousands of years that their kind had lived in Beyond the Beyond. And it all seemed the owl’s doing. It made them nervous. It made them think of the old stories they had heard. It made them think of the Sacred Volcanoes to the west, still guarded by their clansmen. For that was where the Ember of Hoole, placed there so long ago by another strange owl, lay buried.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
From a Distant Land
    F ar away from Beyond the Beyond, across the Sea of Hoolemere, a Spotted Owl made her plans in utmost secrecy. None of her closest friends, not one of the Chaw of Chaws, could know that this Guardian of Ga’Hoole, Otulissa, would make a journey alone—alone and somewhat uninformed. Otulissa did not mind the alone part, but she vehemently objected to her own unavoidable ignorance. It was no one’s fault, really. No one knew of her mission except possibly the ancient Ezylryb. But Ezylryb was tight-beaked. One might more easily get a song from a stone as any information out of Ezylryb when he did not want to give it. And the same went for his ancient nestmaid snake, Octavia.
    It had all begun in summer, and here it was now almost autumn. It had been midsummer when Otulissa had first begun sensing the scroom of Strix Struma. Strix Struma was her beloved leader and mentor, who had been killed by Nyra of the Pure Ones in a battle. And it was Otulissain turn who had marked Nyra for life when she raked her battle claws across her face in sorrow and fury at her mentor’s death.
    Since the haunting by Strix Struma, Otulissa, who had not believed in scrooms before this, was driven by her inimitable scholarly curiosity to make a study of ghostly manifestations. She took from the library shelves a book she had never previously deigned to even look at: Paranormal Activity in the World of Owls Since the Time of Hoole: Explorations, Case Studies, and Interpretations. It was written by a certain Stronknorton Feevels, a Great Horned Owl. Otulissa had previously thought this was a pretentious title for a book that dealt in what she considered to be fake scientific phenomena. But as she read it, things began to