Read Online The Rescue (Guardians of Ga'hoole) by Kathryn Lasky - Free Book Online

here?”
    The Pygmy Owl shyly looked down at her talons. “I wanted to come, Soren. You helped me when I came to the great tree. You stayed with me all that first night, the night I lost my parents, my hollow, my tree, and the eggs.” Primrose’s parents had gone off to help out in some borderland skirmishes. They thought that she and the eggs would be safe, but a forest fire had broken out in their absence. Primrose had been rescued by owls from Ga’Hoole. But she had never seen her parents again. The truth, however, was that Primrose was from Silverveil, and Soren sensed that she wanted to go back to see if perhaps she could find her parents. This could be a distraction from their mission.
    “Primrose.” Soren fixed the little owl in the shine of his dark eyes.
    “I know what you’re going to say, Soren.”
    Everyone seemed to know what he was going to say, Soren thought, so why did he bother even saying it?
    “I am not going to look for my parents. They are dead. I know it.”
    “How do you know it?” Gylfie asked.
    “Do you remember the night after Trader Mags camelast summer?” Soren would never forget that night, for it was the first night that Eglantine had really been back to her old self after being rescued. It had been a beautiful summer night and then, as if in celebration of his sister’s return, the sky had blossomed with colors—colors like he had never seen before. It was the night of the Aurora Glaucora, and all of the owls had flown in and out of the colors that throbbed and billowed in the sky.
    “Of course, I remember that night.” It was a night to remember for several reasons, one of the least happy was because on that night it had been confirmed that Ezylryb had disappeared. But in the ecstasy of the shifting colors of the sky, Soren had actually willed himself not to think about his favorite teacher.
    “Well, I remember it, too, because that was the night that I saw the scrooms of my parents,” Primrose said.
    “What?” They all gasped.
    “You saw your parents’ scrooms?” Gylfie asked and there seemed to be an ache embedded deep in her voice. For although she knew that Soren had returned much saddened by his encounter with his parents’ scrooms, there was something in Gylfie, just as there had been in Eglantine, that longed for one last glimpse.
    “Yes,” replied Primrose. “I saw them that night as we were flying through the colors of the Aurora Glaucora.”
    “Did they have unfinished business here on earth?” Soren asked, wondering to himself just how much unfinished scroom business they could manage on one mission.
    “Not really.” She paused. “Well, I suppose you could say that I was their last piece of unfinished business. They wanted me to know that during the forest fire, they knew that I had tried my best to save the eggs. They just said that there was nothing to forgive. They were proud of me. That was their unfinished business—to let me know that they were proud of me.” There was a deep silence in the night as Primrose started to explain. “You see, Soren, my encounter was not at all like yours. I didn’t really get to talk with my parents in that strange wordless way that you described to Eglantine.”
    Soren looked sharply at his sister. Why had she gone and told Primrose all this?
    “It was much different.”
    “How?” Soren said, genuinely perplexed.
    “You see, my parents were in glaumora.”
    “What?” Soren said in disbelief. “How do you know that?”
    “I saw them there. They saw me. They were happy. They knew I had done my best for the eggs that never hatched. They weren’t angry. They knew that I was in agood place. A place they had never quite believed in, but they now know is real. And I suddenly became so happy. It was like a river of happiness and peace flowing between us out there, in the Aurora Glaucora.” Primrose’s voice was barely a whisper now.
    “A river of happiness,” Soren said softly. No words about Metal