Guardians of Ga'Hoole 09 - The First Collier by authors_sort

queen from the time before she was queen. I was her nursemaid, then her governess.”
    “And the king, I understand, has been killed.”
    “Yes.” Myrrthe did not mention anything about the egg. The less said about that, the better. “Have you heard anything of the wars?”
    “Very little. King H’rath is dead. Lord Arrin has gained new territory on the Hrath’ghar glacier. They say that his scouts go out and press young owls into his army. But as I said, I hear very little. I spend most of my time alone and away from all that.” Svenka waved a paw dismissively as if to say that the owls’ world was no concern of hers.
    “But why are you here alone?” Myrrthe asked.
    “That is the nature of polar bears. We are solitary creatures. We come together during mating season. And then we part. If we are lucky and have cubs, they stay with us until they can go out on their own.”
    “Do you have cubs?”
    “Not yet, but soon.” Svenka pushed off from the iceberg and rolled onto her back. She patted her stomach. “Two, possibly three.”
    “In there?” Myrrthe said.
    “We’re not birds, my dear. We don’t lay eggs. Our young don’t hatch. They get born. We give birth.”
    Myrrthe blinked and cocked her head thoughtfully. “It’s a good system. Convenient. No nest building. No guarding the nest. They’re just with you all the time. Better than our way, I think. One might almost wish…”
    “Don’t even think of it, Myrrthe. You’re a bird. Birds are birds, bears are bears. Glaux, as you call the great spirit, knows what is best for each creature.”
    “But what do you call your Glaux?”
    “Great Ursa, but it is all the same spirit. No matter what you call it.”
    “But how can that be?”
    “Are you sure you want to get into this now? Shouldn’t you take these bluescales to your lady?”
    “Oh, you’re right, of course.”
    And so Myrrthe did take the fish to Siv, but the conversation would soon continue. It became the first of several philosophical discussions between the polar bear and the Snowy Owl—until the night that Myrrthe vanished.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Vanished!
    S iv couldn’t tell me about that horrible night without breaking down. “Everything had been going so well, Grank, so well. I was healing. Myrrthe had learned to fish and then one night…” She began to sob. “I begged her not to go. Hunting lemmings on a moon-bleached night in the middle of winter when their coats had turned white. How would she ever see them? But she argued that I needed the meat now to heal completely.”
    Myrrthe, you see, Dear Owl, had an expert’s knowledge of lemmings and kept track of their cycles and movements. She knew their range, and where they built their nests and tunnels in the shallow spaces between the everfrost and the surface of the tundra. Unlike many of the other non-bird creatures who hibernated during the winter, lemmings did not. They were busy foraging, eating constantly, and doing what they really did best—making babies. No animal can reproduce faster than a lemming. Myrrthe often thought how stupid this was, for, in truth,it was their undoing. About once every four years, the nests became overcrowded and, like idiots, the rodents raced to find new homes. No planning whatsoever. They would just up and leave, the entire mob, often hundreds of thousands of them. Not heeding where they were going, many fell off cliffs into the sea. And they seemed to never learn!
    Myrrthe was counting on the lemmings’ stupidity and her knowledge of the range. She knew that not far in from the firthkin, on the edges of the Hrath’ghar glacier, there was a colony that had started four years earlier and was about to burst from overcrowding. “With seven litters a year and eleven babies a litter, there must be squillions of them, milady,” Myrrthe had told Siv. So off she flew one moonlit windless night when the water in the firthkin was so still that nary a ripple wrinkled its surface. Myrrthe knew