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ailing librarian, had just come in, flying rather lopsided due to her arthritic wing. “Couldn’t find it for the life of me the other day.”
    “What’s that?” Otulissa asked. She could feel her gizzard throbbing.
    “Madame Plonk’s book, My Fabulous Life and Times: An Anecdotal History of a Life Devoted to Love and Song . Cheers me up. You know I’ve been feeling so poorly. And I noticed a few of the other songbooks in that section were missing, too.”
    “Really?” Otulissa felt the throbbing stop and instead a terrible dread began to grow in her gizzard. “Excuse me,” she said suddenly. “I have to go see Octavia immediately.”

CHAPTER NINE
Visions of Hagsmire
    C oryn had settled down in his hollow. It did feel odd not to be out celebrating on this night of full shine, the start of the Harvest Festival, but in another way there was a lovely peacefulness. He was perched studying the map of the Hoolian Kingdoms and the air currents above the Sea of Vastness. The Striga was perched solemnly across from him, studying the young king with his pale yellow eyes as Coryn studied the map and charts.
    “Tell me, Coryn,” the blue owl asked, “do you believe that glaumora is real?”
    “Of course I do.”
    “And hagsmire?”
    That was a hard question. Coryn was not really sure. Certainly, if there was one, he knew Kludd, his father, was there and would be condemned to it forever and ever. And if his mother, Nyra, was dead she would be there as well. But he preferred not to think of either of his parents in any kind of afterlife, glaumora or hagsmire. He justwanted them gone, their souls to evaporate into a complete and irrevocable nothingness. “I don’t know,” Coryn finally replied.
    “But glaumora?” the Striga pressed.
    “Oh, yes, yes. There must be a place for the good souls to go, the scrooms of decent owls.”
    “Decent owls?” the Striga said. “And what makes a decent owl?”
    “Well, Hoole, the first king of this tree, was a great and decent owl. But one does not have to be great to be decent. One does not even have to be an owl.”
    Striga blinked in surprise at this. “What do you mean?”
    “Well, for example, Mrs. Plithiver.”
    “The nest-maid snake?” the Striga replied, an edge of disgust in his voice.
    “Yes.”
    “But she’s a servant. She makes our life easier, more luxurious.”
    “Oh, but she’s much more than that. She is a gifted musician and holds the highest rank in the harp guild as a sliptween.”
    “Yes,” the Striga said coldly, and decided not to say more.
    “And aside from that, she is a very good creature. She is sensitive and loving and wise. All those things.”
    A vain slithering thing , the Striga thought, her music as useless as the baubles the awful tree singer, Madame Plonk, collects . But he said none of this. Instead, he affected a very mournful gaze and looked down at his talons.
    “You seem distressed, Striga,” Coryn said anxiously.
    “Does that matter to you?” the blue owl answered.
    “Of course it matters. We owe you so much.”
    “You owe me nothing, but I owe it to you to share what I have learned; to share my vision of a world that might end—will end—on the night of the Great Scouring. I have seen it, Coryn.”
    Coryn suddenly wilfed, growing as slender as the branch he perched on.
    “Let me tell you this, Coryn—you are your own worst enemy.”
    “How do you mean?” Coryn felt a sickening swirl in his gizzard. He thought he might yarp a very squishy half-digested pellet.
    “Don’t you see?” the Striga said.
    “See what?”
    “Hagsmire is real. You and I have both lived it. We both endured, survived, two very different kinds of hagsmire. I, in the Dragon Court, and you in the canyonlands as the hatchling of Nyra. You remember those times.”
    “How can I ever forget them?” Coryn had tried as ayoung innocent owl to be everything that his mother had ever wanted. But he had not realized her lies, the true depth of her