Book 12 - The Golden Tree Read Online Free PDF Page A

tracking a large gray rabbit when Coryn suddenly picked up soft mewling noises. "Grosnik!" he hissed.
"Oh, for the love of Glaux! Are you sure, Coryn?" "I heard the babies," Coryn whispered. Barn Owls were known for their extraordinary hearing abilities, which al owed them to detect the subtlest of sounds. "And no parent?" Twilight asked. "No. Look - there's the den down there under that tree stump. I would have definitely picked up the parent's heartbeat if there was one in there."
    Among owls it was strictly forbidden to eat baby
animals or to kil a parent if there was only one parent, thus leaving the babies orphaned. Of course, this was not always known to the hunter and many smal animals had been orphaned when owls had unwittingly preyed upon their parents. But the circumstances here were clear. These babies, at least four, Coryn thought, would have been orphaned.
33 45 Twilight sighed, "It's funny, once you get your gizzard set on something, you can almost taste it before your first bite and you want nothing else. Vole seems so boring to me right now.'
"Wel , as you said, there are lots of rabbits around here."
"Yeah, they can't al have babies, or white marks on their forehead ... I hope!"
"No, believe me." Coryn said, "there was only one rabbit like that."
"What was its name?"
    "He had no name,"
"No name? What made that rabbit so special?" "He just was. Don't worn about it. It al happened long ago, in the Shadow Forest. Not here. I'm just always real y careful when I go out rabbit hunting to check to see if my prey has that mark. He cal ed himself a mystic. You know, he could see things that other creatures couldn't - sort of like Soren has starsight and I can read the flames of a fire. Wel , this rabbit could read things in spiderwebs." "You gotta be kidding!" Twilight exclaimed. "No, not at al ." Coryn paused. "My visions are mostly about the present but the rabbit had bits and pieces of the past, the present, and the future. You see ..." Coryn was
34 about to explain what the rabbit actual y saw. "There's one now"
"Him? The one with the mark?"
    "No!"
A large fluffy white rabbit darted under the bank of a creek. Amid the swirling snow, he appeared like a solid sphere hurtling across the frozen bed of the creek. Twilight was on him in a flash. Coryn admired the speed with which the Great Gray kil ed. No matter what the wind direction was, it never offset his kil angle and he always managed to plunge his talons directly into the brain of the animal so that it was an instant, nearly painless death.
"That is one beautiful rabbit!" Digger exclaimed as Twilight and Coryn returned to the hol ow. It was customary among owls that whoever made the kil got the first choice of meat, or "firsts" as it was often cal ed. Undoubtedly, Twilight would go for a haunch, for that was usual y the meatiest on a rabbit. Soren, however, looked at the rabbit and said, "Hold on a second, Twilight. Before you get your firsts, don't you think we should skin this rabbit properly? This is a beautiful pelt. Trader Mags came by last moon cycle with a pelt like this torn from a robe." 35 47 "One of the Others' robes?" Digger asked.
    "Yes, of course. And she sold it to Madame Plonk
for Glaux knows what. The piece was moth-eaten and not
nearly as glistening white as this pelt," Soren said.
"Are yon suggesting that we try to best Trader Mags at her own game?" Gylfie asked. "I'm just saying that the new sewing guild the nest- maid snakes formed might be happy to get something like this. Or maybe we should just keep it for ourselves. Divide it up. Everyone could have a piece for their hol ow.'
"Oh, for Glaux's sake, if you're going to skin it, skin it. I'm famished," Twilight roared. "Let's skin it," Coryn said.
And so they did. As they sat enjoying the rabbit, which was unusual y plump for this time of year, Soren suddenly said, "Do any of you remember that time - oh, we were much younger than young Coryn here - when we snuck out of the tree?
    "We snuck