The River of Wind (4 page)

Coryn rarely issued absolute commands. The owls were silent for several seconds. Even Twilight did not raise a protest but appeared impressed by the force of Coryn’s argument. The construction of a barred hollow and the imprisonment of owls had been, of all the bad things that happened during those awful days of the Golden Tree, the most shocking violation to the code and the honor of the Guardians of Ga’Hoole. There was no one who could look back without shame on those terrible moon cycles when the great tree had appeared to flourish, but the gizzards of some of its owls had hardened and withered.

“Now,” Coryn continued, “there are other practical matters to think about. If we do successfully negotiate these windkins and find the current of streaming air, how long will it take us? And if not weapons, what should we take—food? Can we eat on the wing?”

Otulissa had been looking hard at Bess, but now turned to address Coryn. “There are two sun symbols on the key and only two newing moon symbols, one slightly more shaded. I would think that means that the flight is a
day, a night, another day, and part of another night, for the shading of the moon has barely increased on the second night.”

“That’s so short!” Gylfie gasped in astonishment.

“About the same time as flying from the great tree to the northernmost reaches of the Northern Kingdoms,” Otulissa said.

“But still, there’s no place to stop in between. No islands. No Ice Narrows with cliffs,” Martin whispered.

“Yes, but if this stream is what I think it is, we’ll barely burn any energy getting there.”

“It seems amazing that no one has discovered this before now,” Ruby wondered aloud.

“Well, as I said, it’s high-altitude flying, and you have to negotiate these wind ladders and the dangers of the tumblebones,” Otulissa replied.

“So, are you saying we don’t need to take much?” Soren asked. “What about this key? Should we bring it? We will probably need it.”

“I don’t think we need that much. Except perhaps time, right now. Time to study more. This key is not hard to memorize. I think we should all try to commit at least a piece of it to memory. I will try to memorize all of it.”

“What about gifts?” Gylfie said. “If we brought something, you know, a present, it might show that we come in good faith and good gizzard.”

“That’s a lovely idea, Gylfie,” Mrs. P. said. “But whatever could we bring?”

“Maybe something simple,” Soren said. “There is a lot of rabbit’s ear moss that grows in the Shadow Forest. It’s the best moss in the whole world for lining a young’un’s bed. I always bring some back for Pelli and the chicks. Maybe it doesn’t grow in the sixth kingdom.”

“Brilliant!” Bess exclaimed. “Yes, I think that would be just the thing. Much better than those geegaws you tell me Trader Mags is always dragging around.”

“Absolutely!” Otulissa nodded firmly in approval. She then swiveled her head toward Bess. She blinked her eyes shut for several long seconds. “Bess, your revelations this evening…”

“Oh, do not call them revelations, Otulissa,” Bess protested. “That sounds so…so emotional. I prefer to think of them as evidence. These are documents, dare I say primary source documents, that you can hold in your talons. You can see that these are the writings of owls.”

“Yes, yes, of course.” Otulissa nodded in great deference. She had understood for a long time that Bess was a
scholar equal to herself. “I just mean to say, if I may put it plainly…”

“Oh, please do.”

“Bess, this is simple. It would be helpful, since you understand this language, or at least many of the words beyond the one that we share in common—Glaux—that you would come with us.”

They all looked at Bess expectantly. The slender Boreal Owl wilfed, suddenly growing much slimmer. “No…no. I don’t leave the Palace of Mists. Ever!”

“Never?” Martin asked in wonder.

“Never,” Bess repeated.

It was decided that the Chaw of Chaws would stay on for several more days at the Palace of Mists. They would study the charts of the windkins, memorize the key, and Otulissa and Bess would embark on an intense study of the random fragments of the peculiar language they had found on the documents.

Soren reminded them that he had charged Primrose and Eglantine with the duty of informing the Parliament of their mission.

“And if we do not return? If Eglantine and Primrose go to search for us and they do not return?” Digger asked.

All of the owls turned their heads slowly toward Coryn. “The search will be given up. They cannot risk the entire great tree and its Guardians for this…this venture.”

“But can we risk our king?” Gylfie asked quietly.

“Kings are replaceable—but all of the Guardians of the great tree?” He paused. “Never!”

T
he dozen young owls and their rybs were huddled in the large many-chambered hollow of an immense beech tree. Pelli perched on the edge of the hollow looking out into the buffeting winds. All the owls were back except for the navigation chawlet led by Fritha. Pelli hoped it hadn’t been a mistake to send them out with such a young owl. Fritha was clever, though still young in her judgment. But who would have expected these squall lines that had come bashing through! There had been only one to begin with—no sign of an entire line of them one after the other. Pelli hoped against hope they were not a prelude to westers. But that was a definite possibility.

“I see them!” Eglantine cried out from a branch she was perched on outside the tree.

“They’re coming, Mum,” Bash said.

“Don’t worry, Mum. Bell is fine, I’m sure.” Blythe tucked in beneath her mum’s wing and gave her a snuggle.

“Yes, Bell will be here soon,” Bash said, and squeezed between the feather trousers of her mum’s legs. Both owlets were trying to be very brave, but they had never seen their mum this worried. They could feel her heart pumping and a terrible grinding in her gizzard even though they had not eaten for a while, so there were no bones in there.

Pelli blinked, then wiped her eyes clear twice with the third eyelid that owls use often in foul weather. The figures melted out of the darkness. There should be five, including Fritha. She spotted Fritha flying the point position, and there was Max to port and Matty to starboard as well as Heggety.
Surely she is not having anyone fly double tail in this weather
, Pelli thought, and felt her gizzard seize, then give an anguishing wrench. “Bell! Where’s Bell?” she shreed in the high-pitched cry of a Barn Owl, as Fritha landed on a wildly tossing branch of the beech tree. The young Pygmy Owl gasped and gave an anguished cry.

“She was right behind Heggety! And Heggety was right behind me, and then suddenly she was gone!” Fritha could barely speak coherently through the sobs that wracked her body. “I don’t know what happened. It was
before
the weather turned so bad. She just vanished.” The young Pygmy Owl was hiccuping and sobbing so much her words were hardly understandable.

“Calm down!” Eglantine ordered. Blythe and Bash were wailing and clutching their mum, burying themselves in her belly feathers.

“When did you notice she was gone?” Primrose demanded.

“Uh…uh…” Fritha hesitated.

“What were your bearings?” Silence.

Eglantine stepped up to the quivering Pygmy Owl who had wilfed to half her normal size. “Fritha, you are the best of Gylfie’s navigation students. You must know your bearings.”

“I think we were about three points east of Declan.” Declan was the third star in the third rear toe on the starboard side of the Golden Talons.

“And what was your position north or south?” Eglantine pressed.

“Maybe four points south of Triga.” Triga was a star in a front toe on the same side of the Golden Talons.

“I’m going out to search,” Pelli announced.

“You will do no such thing.” Eglantine planted herself in front of Pelli. “Primrose and I know how to conduct a search in this kind of weather. Your place is here with your chicks.”

“Stay, Mum, stay! Don’t leave us!” Blythe and Bash cried.

“Yes,” said Pelli quietly. “Yes, you are right.”

“Now, don’t worry,” Primrose said. “We’ll find her. Remember, Eglantine and I wound up being double chawed, in search-and-rescue and tracking. That was Ezylryb’s idea, shortly before he died. So we both know the crucial wind patterns when the squalls come in from this direction. We’re well trained for this situation, Pelli.”

Pelli closed her eyes.
Situation! How has my darling Bell become a situation? How do I tell Soren?
She cut off the thought almost immediately.

There had been scuppers and baggywrinkles in this gale. One minute, Bell had been dancing—doing the hurly-burly, in fact, the very dance that she had always heard the weather-interpretation chaw owls gabbling about—and then something happened. It was as if the central trough of the gale collapsed. The scuppers fell through and she with them. Her gizzard turned to stone, and she felt like it was dropping out of her, but then suddenly there was a warm draft and she had been sucked straight up. She bounced mercilessly at the top of this strange warm air. It was useless to try to fly, but Bell felt herself blown relentlessly in one direction. Was this a hurricane? Shouldn’t be, at this time of year. But maybe it was. All the horrible stories of owls caught in the rim of a
hurricane’s eye, never escaping, sent agonizing surges through Bell’s gizzard. Suddenly, from nowhere, she felt a powerful whack on the back of her head. That was almost the last thing she remembered. Then she was spinning, and then there was nothing.

T
he Chaw of Chaws had never been this far west in the Beyond as they headed to the remote inlet of the Unnamed Sea, where they believed they would find the source of a windkin. They hoped this windkin, if they could negotiate it, would ultimately lead to the high stream of wind that would carry them to the sixth kingdom. An undeniable tension now seized the eight owls. They chatted nervously of everything but that which they feared most—the unknown that lay ahead, and the loss of the familiar world they were leaving behind, perhaps never to see again.

“Say that word once more, Otulissa,” Martin asked.

“Jouzho.”

“And it means ‘Middle Kingdom’?” Twilight, who had never had any interest in any foreign language, suddenly seemed fascinated by Jouzhen, the language of the sixth kingdom.

“Not exactly. ‘Jouzho’ means ‘middle,’ and then when
you add the suffix ‘kyn,’ it means Middle Kingdom. Together, Jouzhenkyn.” Otulissa, of course, had gotten her talons on every scrap that had anything to do with the language of the Middle Kingdom. She had kept Bess up often until well past midday with her questions, and together they had compiled a dictionary of sorts. If anyone could learn a language fast, it was Otulissa. Years before, she had almost mastered Krakish by the time of their first journey to the Northern Kingdoms. “It’s not a phonetic language exactly,” she said.

“How can you tell, if you’ve never heard it spoken?” Digger asked.

“Well, I just sense it. You know, when you’ve done as much language study as I have you get a feel for these things.” The sound of Otulissa’s voice dwindled off in the increasingly turbulent air, and silence now fell upon the owls. There were thick swirls of fog obscuring the moon, the stars, and even the land below.
We might never see what we are leaving,
Soren thought, and felt a small twist in his gizzard.

Ruby broke the silence. “What’s that way ahead?” A sudden wind had cleared off the blanketing fog and, beneath the starlight and the shine of the moon glinting in the distance, there was a silken expanse of darkness.

“That which lies between us and Jouzhenkyn: that is, the Unnamed Sea,” Otulissa spoke softly.

All the owls felt tremors pass through their gizzards. As the sea drew closer, they felt they had to keep their gaze even steadier on the land. Just offshore, not more than a quarter of a league from the breaking waves, was a rock that spiked from the water like a wolf’s fang.

Finally, Digger, who as a Burrowing Owl probably had the closest association with things of earth and of soil, spoke up. “I think we should light down on that rock before we start flying over this ocean. You know, a sort of…” His voice faded.

But they all knew what he meant. A last good-bye. A farewell to the known—to rocks, to trees, although there were precious few of those in the Beyond. Yes, good-bye to all that they had known and held dear. What would these owls of the Middle Kingdom be like? Were there species they had never seen? What would they eat? Were there voles in the Middle Kingdom? These were all questions they had discussed at one time or another since they had found out about the sixth kingdom. But there were other questions and thoughts left unspoken. Soren in particular was racked with doubts and—yes—fears. Was it reckless of him to go off, to leave Pelli and the three B’s? Soren swiveled his head to watch a cloud that had been stretched by the wind into a shape that looked like a leaping fish.
Sky fish!
It had been a game when they
were younger to chase such clouds. They had called it sky fishing. He noticed that the rest of the owls were swiveling their heads this way and that. They were not looking just at the sky fish but, like himself, they were all scanning the air they flew through, drinking in with their eyes the things they loved, the things that defined their world. The clouds, the wind, the way the moonlight fell through the night haze—all these elements of the sky.

As they roosted on the off-lying rock, they took from their botkins the strengthening mixture that Bess had made for them. She had told them it would ensure that they could fly “forever.” She had then churred softly and added, “Well, maybe not forever, but long enough for you to find your way through the windkins and into the stream.”

Otulissa turned, putting her tail toward the sea. “There’s the inlet over there,” she said, nodding toward land. “You can’t tell from here, but it looks so much like the one in the Firth of Grundenspyrr.”

“How high do we have to fly,” Martin asked, “until we meet up with these windkins?”

“Not just how high, but how far out,” Otulissa said. “So far, there have been no remnant downdrafts to give us any clues, as there were in the Northern Kingdoms.
Flying at that high an altitude for a long time is going to tire us out too quickly.”

“So, in other words,” Soren said, “we’ll have to keep alert for even the slightest downdrafts, and then we go up?”

“Exactly. And that is when the key will really help us. It will be like a guide to climb our way through it. In the meantime, I think we should make the most of the light air right now.” Otulissa paused and turned to Gylfie. “Gylfie, the windkin will be oriented in the same direction as the mouth of the inlet. So what should our course be?”

Gylfie swiveled her head toward the inlet and began to take a bearing on the angle, then flipped her head back and up until it appeared to be completely turned around on her small shoulders and pointed straight up. “Well, we should be following a course two points off the western paw of the Big Raccoon,” Gylfie said somewhat tentatively.

And rightfully so,
Mrs. Plithiver thought as she considered the hesitancy in Gylfie’s voice. She had settled herself in a neat coil just behind Soren’s neck and between his shoulders, in what she thought of as her transport coil, which was tighter and more compact than her sleeping coil. Where they were heading might constitute a maze of crosscurrents, and Mrs. P. sensed that the old navigation strategies were not going to work at all. She had a
feeling that it was going to be more luck and intuition than anything else.

Nonetheless, they set off on the course that Gylfie, known for her extraordinary navigational abilities, had set. As they flew, the smooth night air seemed an eerie prelude, a deceptive lead-in to what lay ahead.

“First downdraft! I think I felt it! Subtle, but there,” Otulissa’s voice swelled with confidence.

“Can we go up yet?” Martin asked.

“Not quite. We need to find more turbulence before we start up.”

Mrs. Plithiver knew, in the peculiar way that she knew many things, that the owls’ gizzards had been emboldened with this announcement. She felt Soren thrust forward in flight with a renewed energy.

But as the minutes elapsed and the moon began its descent and another downdraft had yet to be detected, Mrs. Plithiver felt that confidence ebbing away. In relay teams of two, Otulissa and the others had flown out in radiating circles to locate another downdraft, but there was none to be found. They were in the darkest part of the night, normally a comforting time for owls, but now they knew that in a few more hours the night sky would become threadbare, the black leaking from it. At a time when they usually would be returning to their
hollows, here there was only the vast sea—no land, no trees, nothing. And worse than that, the sun would be rising behind them—a scalding sun, for the reflections would unroll ahead of them on the sea—and their eyes would blister in its uncompromising light.

Mrs. Plithiver suddenly coiled tighter. “What is it, Mrs. P.?” Soren asked.

“There’s something below, Soren.” The clouds were so thick at that moment it was hard to see what she was talking about. “It feels familiar. I think…I think…” She didn’t want to say it, but she knew that below them the wolf’s fang rock broke through the water. They were back to the exact same place they had been the previous night!

A few seconds later, the clouds cleared off. A collective groan reverberated through the small company of owls and, exhausted, they began to circle in steep banking turns.

Twilight landed first on the rock. “We’re back…back where we started from,” he said with great disgust.

They were all silent. This rock had been the scene of their last good-byes to all the things they had treasured and now that they were back, it made those farewells seem false and those things that they treasured a bit tarnished.

“What happened to that windkin?” Ruby moaned.

“I say we just fly straight up and grab it,” Twilight boomed. “Flying straight out and looking for the odd downdraft didn’t get us anywhere, and look at all the energy we burned doing that.”

“At high altitudes you burn energy much faster. It’s a fact, Twilight, and I don’t care how strong a flier you are,” Otulissa snapped.

“Well, a fat lot of good your way is doing us. We’re just flying around in circles,” Twilight sneered.

“I agree with Twilight,” Ruby said.

“Stop bickering, the lot of you!” Mrs. P. reprimanded. “You’d think you were a bunch of chicks out on your first chaw practice.”

“But what about the key?” Gylfie said in a whiny voice. “It’s supposed to work. Did you use it to gauge the temperature changes, Otulissa?”

“There were no temperature changes.” Otulissa looked almost mournfully at the temperascope, a clever device that Ezylryb himself had invented for measuring changes in temperature. “The gauge never changed. Never went up, never went down. So the key was useless.” She sighed.

“A key only works if you put it in the right slot,” Mrs. Plithiver said.

“It’s not that kind of key, really, Mrs. P.,” Soren said. “And if it were, we obviously haven’t found the right slot.” Soren felt Mrs. P. give a slight shiver. It was a shiver of disapproval at his tone. She would not scold him out loud when they were with others, but she had ways of communicating her disapproval silently.

“Well, how do we find the right slot?” Otulissa asked.

“You’re overthinking the problem,” Mrs. P. said. “Use the key as a key.”

“Now, what does that mean?” Twilight asked.

She did not reply to the Great Gray, but swung her head and skewered Gylfie, the navigator, with her blind eyes. “Gylfie, you are navigating as you normally would, by flying four points off the western paw of the whatever raccoon, this way or that way off the Golden Talons, taking into consideration the wind strength and direction and so on and so on. I don’t think that will work. These constellations are slipping away. I can feel it as we approach the curve. I even feel something is happening to time as we approach the…” Mrs. P. waggled her head high into the air as if searching for the right word. “The tomorrow line!” she said suddenly.

“The tomorrow line?” they all echoed.

“You see, this is not like when you go on a night flight
and fly from midnight into the next morning. For you owls, that time is continuous—at least in the world that you know. The new night—the tomorrow—begins the next evening at First Black. But I think we have to think differently about where we are flying. In a funny way, I feel that as we continue to fly across this sea, somehow time is behaving differently. Maybe it is the influence of this central stream of fast-moving air. I’m not sure, but look: We know the Earth is round. If it is night here, it must be day someplace else. We know this from the movement of the stars, from our movement around the sun. We cannot always live in a world capped by the night. So we know that tomorrow must start somewhere. That place is out there. How many leagues? I don’t know. But that’s where tomorrow begins.”

“I think we’ll know it when we get there. It will be like a hole in the wind—no wind,” Mrs. P. said.

Gylfie blinked. She had a logical mind, the mind of a navigator. She was used to plotting courses using the angle of the stars and the most favorable wind directions. It was mathematical, and although time was involved it was not the kind of time Mrs. P. was talking about. Of this she was sure. But at this point there were few other options.

Coryn had been silent throughout this entire discussion. He now turned to Gylfie. “Gylfie, you have served admirably as navigator, but what if what Mrs. P. is saying is true?”

“You are absolutely right,” Gylfie said. “This is not my kind of navigation. Soren should fly with Mrs. P. in my usual spot.”

“Good.” Coryn nodded. “I say, after we have rested a bit, we should fly to tomorrow.”

“Pardon me, sir.” Mrs. P. could not bring herself to address the king simply as “Coryn.” “But I think if we are not too tired, we should go as quickly as possible. The point is to fly as fast as we can away from the dawn toward this new world.”

The eight owls blinked rapidly in confusion. They looked at the horizon.

Digger spoke first in his ponderous voice. “What Mrs. P. suggests is that we are right now trapped between the here and now and tomorrow. To break out of this trap, we must fly fast toward the tomorrow line.”

“And you say we’ll know it when we get there?” Soren flipped his head straight up and twisted it around so he could speak directly to Mrs. P.

“Oh, you’ll know it, Soren, don’t worry. You’ll know it when you get there.”

So as the dawn broke, casting a soft pink sheen across the unusually calm waters of the sea, the eight owls lifted from the wolf’s fang rock. On the distant horizon, low clouds were strung like pearls on a strand.
The strand of tomorrow?
Soren wondered.