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crying for her mum or da or her two sisters. The blue owl had become quite fond of the little one. He would be sad to see her leave. He assumed that some owl would come looking for her. He liked to hear her talk of the great tree, but often it caused her to cry. He believed it was the very same tree he had heard of in whispers back home about what were called the Theo Papers.
    He now heard a fluttering outside the tree hollow as the little owlet ate the skinny mouse he had brought her. He went to the rim of the hollow and peered out. He had had a feeling for a night or more that there was something out there, someone watching this hollow. But all was still. It must be my imagination. Besides, I’m tired. So very tired. He had arrived only a few nights before from the terminus ofthe Zong Phong. It was amazing that he had found his way out of it at this end, for there were no qui guides, but the windkins did not seem as fierce here. He simply had been dumped out of it unceremoniously, onto the shores of the Guanjho-Noh. He then had to fly what seemed like a much longer flight than the one he had just completed to get to this forest. And face it, owls of his background were not much good at flying. Riding the Zong Phong was one thing, but flying without a current to carry one along was quite another. He had only just arrived in the midst of a gale when Bell had fallen from the sky. His recollections were interrupted again by a sound close by. He was right. Someone was watching them.
    “I don’t believe it!” An owl with a huge face that gave the appearance of a ragged moon whispered to another Barn Owl with a large nick out of his beak. “A blue owl, I’ve never seen the likes.”
    “Nor I, General Mam.”
    “Nor I,” three other owls replied in turn. Two of these owls were Barn Owls, the other was a Burrowing Owl.
    “What’s he got in there?”
    “I think it’s a wounded young owl who got tossed about in that gale,” said the Burrowing Owl.
    “You don’t think it’s one from those chawlet practicesyou were monitoring, do you?” The owl with the huge face turned to the other three accompanying her.
    The larger of the two Barn Owls replied, “Well, it’s a far piece from Silverveil to here in Ambala. But that gale was part of the westers, and its winds could have blown the young one this far. You never can tell.”
    The moonfaced owl’s eyes gleamed darkly. “Stryker, are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Stryker was the only one of the three other owls who would know what she was suggesting. Of the three owls accompanying the moonfaced Barn Owl, only he had been in battle—not once but three times—against the Guardians of Ga’Hoole.
    “Well, yes, ma’—I mean, General Mam. It’s almost too good to hope for.”
    “This isn’t about hope, Stryker. This is about practical imagination. It’s about making things happen. Any fool can hope. But it takes brains to imagine. And if you can’t imagine, nothing will ever happen. I can make things happen. But I must admit, if it is indeed a Guardian owlet,” she let her voice dwindle to a lower whisper, “well, what sweet justice would be served.”
    Nyra had not always felt the way she did about the role of imagination in her life. She had, in fact, thought it ridiculous and had often reprimanded her son, Nyroc(now called Coryn), for wandering off into all sorts of imaginative channels. But that was before she had discovered The Book of Kreeth —the ancient hagsfiend from the primeval world of owls. In this book she had learned of things that were unimaginable to ordinary owls. But Kreeth had been no ordinary owl: She had been a hagsfiend.
    “Huh? I mean, huh, General Mam?” Nyra had lost Stryker on the sweet justice part.
    She shook her head and with great sneering disdain said, “Don’t you get it? They took my son. My chick. Now I will take theirs. And I do think it is theirs. I feel it in my gizzard. My gizzard’s been feeling a lot better