The River of Wind (7 page)

“Oh, yes.” The sage nodded. “And he wrote a very long document that we call the Theo Papers. It was from reading the papers that I first learned of the Great Ga’Hoole Tree and the brilliant King Hoole.”

Otulissa and Soren exchanged quick glances. “Did you read the legends?” Soren asked.

“Legends?” Tengshu seemed slightly confused. “Oh, no. These were real stories.”

“Legends can be real,” Coryn added in a low voice. “Did he write of the ember?”

“Oh, perhaps a bit,” the sage said almost dismissively. “He mostly wrote of the ways of war and his determination never to make another weapon. He sought another way. He called it ‘the way without claws.’ It has come to be known as ‘the way of noble gentleness’ or ‘Danyar.’ By and large, the Theo Papers are really philosophical documents.”

“Did he ever return to the Five Kingdoms?” Digger asked.

“Not that anyone knew of,” Tengshu replied. “He remained at the owlery. There was much to do there.”

“The owlery?”

“It is a place high, high up in the tallest mountains of Jouzhenkyn where owls who desire a simpler way of living and deep contemplation retreat. Unlike myself, they do not enjoy pursuing this life in solitude. But before Theo came, it was a place of no real discipline, and one of shallow thought at best. But at least it was different from court
life. When Theo came he changed this. He began to teach the way of noble gentleness.”

“But how did you know we were coming here?” Coryn asked.

“It was predicted by the eighth astrologer, the astrologer of the old court.”

“The old court? Astrology?” Otulissa was perplexed. She considered astrology to be a slightly yoicks discipline that should not even be considered a science. It was seldom practiced in the Hoolian world. “What is this court? Do you have a king, a royal family?”

“Not really. Or, I should say, not real ones, not any longer.”

The owls looked confused.

Tengshu continued. “Once we did have a court but it became useless and, in its uselessness, even dangerous. The owls who started the owlery did so to escape the court. So now we have a mock court. Well, it is a bit more than that.”

“A mock court? What are you talking about?” Gylfie asked. This new world, this Middle Kingdom, was proving more bewildering than any of them could have ever imagined.

“You’ll see…you’ll see,” Tengshu churred softly. “I
know it is all very confusing. But you have entered a new world. It is very different from yours, so I am told.”

Told.
The word rang in Mrs. Plithiver’s head. She had begun experiencing odd sensations about this owl as soon as they had entered the hollow. She sensed that there was a kind of sad mist hovering in this owl’s gizzard, a sense of loss, perhaps of grief.

“Tell me, sir…,” Mrs. Plithiver asked, “and I hope it is not too intrusive of me to ask such a question…”

“If it is, I shall not answer,” the sage replied simply.

“Does all of your knowledge of our world come from your study of the Theo Papers, or did you ever visit it?”

“Oh, no. I never visited it.” His voice began to quake a bit. He paused. “But someone very close to me did—my mother.”

“Your mother?” Coryn asked.

“Yes, but that was long, long ago. Let’s see, I think it was not that long after the time of King Hoole.”

“King Hoole!” they all exclaimed.

“B-b-b-but…sir,” Gylfie stammered, “that is impossible. That would have been hundreds of years ago. Surely your mother was not alive back then?”

“Oh, but you don’t understand. We live a very long time here. I am—let’s see—about three hundred and
twenty-five years old. At the owlery, they live close to four hundred years. I believe there is a pikyu who is four hundred and twenty. The dragon owls of the mock court in the Panqua Palace don’t usually live as long. It depends.”

“Dragon owls?” They gasped.

“Pikyu?” Coryn asked.

“Yes, pikyu is what we call our spiritual teachers. It really means ‘guide.’ Pikyus have, through long study and meditation, achieved deep wisdom. The word means just that—deep wisdom. You will see that within the pale yellow light of the pikyus’ eyes, there are glints of green. Such is the sign of deep wisdom.”

Four-hundred-year-old owls…? Panqua Palace…dragon owls…?
Soren wondered.
Where in the world are we?

N
ow, there you go, dear! Back with Mum and Da!” Eglantine said as she dropped the little Barn Owl into her family’s hollow in the spruce tree in the forest of Ambala. The owlet shreed with delight. The mother was hysterical, and the father gruff but obviously relieved. For several nights, Eglantine and Primrose had scoured every wind track left by the westers that had marched across a great swath of the kingdoms. The main track appeared to run straight out of Silverveil, sweeping through The Barrens and into Ambala. But so far they had found not a trace of Bell. Nothing really, except this little Barn Owl who had fallen to the ground because she had tried to fly too soon, before even a single one of her flight feathers had budged.

“Now, you ain’t going to try that again are you, Eva? No more flying until you’re ready. You’re a Barn Owl. Not an Elf Owl, after all. Takes us sixty-six nights to fledge our flight feathers,” the father stated a bit sternly.

“Oh, we were so worried.” The mother was still sobbing. She lowered her voice and blinked. “What with the rumors and all.”

“Rumors? What kind of rumors?” Primrose asked.

“Nyra is back,” she whispered, “and several snatchings and even egg-nappings have been reported.”

Primrose and Eglantine exchanged nervous glances. No, it simply could not be true. There had been no sign of the Pure Ones in a long while. But this news made finding Bell even more urgent than before.

Eglantine and Primrose had been so excited when they had first spotted the distinctive yarped pellet of a young Barn Owl. They were sure it was Bell, and although they were happy to rescue this little owlet, Eva, they had to admit their disappointment that she was not Bell. Just another owl chick who had disobeyed the single most important rule for nestlings: Never fly before you are ready and never fly when your parents are out hunting. They bid the parents and the little chick good-bye.

“And where will you go from here?” the father asked.

“Well,” Primrose said, “we’re looking for a little owl who could fly, but perhaps not strongly enough. She got lost or blown down when those westers came through.”

“Oh, those westers came through Ambala, all right.
Although they weakened some, I’m sure, as they approached the Desert of Kuneer.”

“Yes, well,” Eglantine said, “I think we have to go at least that far.”

“Good luck to you both and thanks ever so much,” the father said. Then the mother added, “Ever so much.”

“Thank you,” Eva said in a tiny voice. “I’m…I’m very sorry.”

As Eglantine and Primrose flew on, their search became increasingly frustrating. Most of the fresh wind tracks had vanished by now. But they kept at it. While Eglantine flew the upper levels, Primrose flew quite low, perhaps only two feet above the ground, to look for talon prints or the telltale tufts of down that might have fetched up in low-growing scrub plants. Primrose was flying even closer when she caught sight of something odd in the bushes.
A feather? No,
she thought.
Couldn’t be. Well, maybe a jay feather…but…

“Eglantine!” She flipped her head straight up. “Come down here this instant! Wait’ll you see this!”

Eglantine alighted near the bush where a blue feather was impaled on a thorny branch quivering in the ground breeze.

“It’s owl!” Primrose said.

“It can’t be! It’s blue!”

“I know an owl feather when I see one and so do you.” The tiny Pygmy Owl stomped her talons on the ground. “If this isn’t an owl feather, I’ll eat my trousers.” Eglantine stepped closer and peered at the bright blue feather. “It certainly does look like an owl feather. But blue!”

“It’s a median port wing covert,” Primrose said. “But how do you explain this color?”

“A kraal?” Eglantine looked up and blinked.

“Kraals this far south? Besides, this isn’t paint. This is real—a real, natural color.” Kraals were the pirate owls of the Northern Kingdoms who painted their plumage gaudy colors. Primrose delicately extricated the feather from the thorn.

“It’s a molted feather. I mean, it doesn’t look as if it was torn off in a skirmish or anything,” Eglantine said, as Primrose dropped the feather on the ground so they could better examine it.

“Yes, but it’s really weathered—right down to its barbs,” Primrose said. The barbs and barbules were the minuscule interlocking hooks that ran diagonally down a feather to make its surface smooth and functional. These had been worn away, leaving a fuzzy surface to the feather.

“This feather has had a long flight.” Eglantine was bent
over, examining it closely. There was a queasy squirm deep in Eglantine’s gizzard. She sighed. “Well, standing here on the ground isn’t going to get us any closer to Bell. But maybe we should try and follow any signs of this blue owl and see if the track might lead to Bell…,” she paused, “…in some way.”
Poor Bell,
she thought.
Where could that little owl be?
Eglantine herself had once been a lost owlet. A victim of the Great Downing. Twice owl-napped, first by the Pure Ones, and the second time by St. Aggie’s. However, she managed to survive. She knew all too well the frightening feelings that a wounded, flightless owlet could experience when it was “ground bound,” the countless hours looking up and wondering if she would ever be part of that sky world.

Eglantine and Primrose were still in the middle of Ambala and had to fight an increasing headwind as they flew east. They had promised themselves that they would fly at least as far as the desert. But the two owls were growing very tired. This was their fifth night of searching. What few wind tracks were left had begun to feel the same. With each wing stroke forward it seemed that the easterly wind pushed them back half a stroke. But how could they stop? This was Bell, precious Bell. Eglantine’s niece. Soren’s dear little daughter.

In the easternmost region of Ambala, Bell waited for the blue owl. Striga had been gone for the better part of the night on his hunting expedition. Bell had to admit that this blue owl was not the most proficient hunter. The bodies of mice and voles and squirrels that he brought back were badly mangled, as if he had very little experience. At one time, he had said something about how he had led a rather vain life. “One of luxury and impracticality” was how he described it. “Until you were a Glauxian Brother, that is?” Bell offered, and he merely nodded, replying, “I missed those early years when one learns the basics.”

Striga cautioned Bell about what he called false Glauxes of luxury and refinement, and the pitfall of vanity. He even scolded her once when, bored with her days of confinement, she had strung some red berries onto one of his molted feathers. The berries were from a stash a squirrel had left behind in the hollow. Bell had thought the bright red against the blue of his feathers looked quite pretty, but Striga was completely scornful of what he called such “stupid and outrageous vanity.” He threw the thing out of the hollow.

Nonetheless, he felt a great affection for the little Barn Owl. When she slept, he often watched her. For Striga,
she represented the vigorous, wholesome life he had yearned for but never had. In the days and nights of caring for her, putting her needs before his own, and suffering the privations of life in the rustic hollow, a hope dawned in his gizzard: Maybe this little owl could be his redemption. Maybe he could do more than just wait for the completion of the cycle of his fate. They said there were no shortcuts. But there were—there had to be. He was a good owl now, no matter what he had been before. He could change his fate. This was his chance.

Other owls had mourned their existence at Panqua Palace, Striga reasoned further. But that was all they did: mourn. They had not become sickened, literally sickened, by the excess as he had: the jewels, the rubies, the sapphires, the constant preening of their glorious feathers, feathers as brilliant as the jewels that imprisoned them. While those owls had grown fat and ungainly, had he not lost weight? While their feathers grew long, had he not cut his? It was a sign that he was different. That his spirit was more refined. He knew that some force had chosen him, some force even greater than that of fate had dared him to change his destiny. So he had defied them. He had escaped, borne by the Zong Phong, into a new world. And now this little owlet, whom he had saved,
confirmed to him that he was chosen for something else, something grander than the antiquated notions that governed the owls of Panqua, notions that they merely subscribed to and had no power to change. Well, he had power. And his mission must now be to warn others of the deadliness of excess, luxury, and the vanities. This was his duty, his sacred duty, and by fulfilling it, he would free himself.

But he was no fool. He still had much to learn. And why not, given the life he had led? It was embarrassing that this little owlet who called herself Bell knew so much more about hunting than he did. Earlier today when he had brought back an especially mangled mouse, she had asked if he had lost altitude too fast at the beginning of his kill spiral. The kill spiral is the plunging dive that an owl makes as it closes in on prey. Striga was completely ignorant of such a maneuver. “Kill spiral?” He had blinked. Bell explained in more detail.

“Yes, it’s important to keep it very tight. You do it by using your wing tip as a pivot. You drill the air. That’s the expression.” Bell had nodded authoritatively.

“Sounds complicated.”

“No, not really. Takes some practice. But I learned it really fast, faster than my two sisters, and I’m the smallest of the lot.”

Bell, too, remembered the hunting tips she’d given Striga earlier. Her eyes had brimmed with tears when she mentioned her sisters. Now, as he was off hunting again, she felt herself getting all weepy just thinking about them. She sniffed and tried to think of something else to pass the time until Striga returned from the hunt.
Imagine,
she thought,
me teaching a grown-up owl about the kill spiral. Blythe and Bash won’t believe it!
A sob welled in her gizzard. She swallowed. Would she ever see them again? And Mum and Da? Her wing felt a lot better. Maybe she could try just a short flight. A teeny-weeny one. She stepped tentatively out of the hollow.
I’ll start with branching. Just the way I did when I was little in the days leading up to my first flight ceremony.

She hopped to the nearest branch. Then hopped again and again.

Only two trees over from where Bell was testing her strength, in the thick, gnarled branches of an oak, an owl with weathered, ragged wings and a huge moon face watched the little owl’s progress. “Will you look at that!” Nyra whispered to herself.
Amazing,
she thought.
Same speckled pattern around the fringes of her facial disk. Same tilt to her eyes. That’s Soren’s chick—I’ll stake my gizzard on that.

There was no time to think. One minute Bell was hopping from branch to branch. She paused to waggle her
port wing a bit and was thinking that it was still a bit sore when a horrendous glaring disk appeared in front of her from out of nowhere. It looked as if the moon had fallen from the sky. The thought flashed through her mind,
It’s the hagbogey!
Her gizzard cringed and twisted painfully. She yelped, then felt talons wrap around her.