One minute the owls might be buoyed up several hundred feet and the next they might fly into a dead fall, a kind of hole in the wind, and drop. And, of course, there was the ice and rain. Constantly, Soren was having to use the transparent eyelid, the third eyelid that all owls have, to clear out the debris. Great Glaux, he hoped his third lid didn’t simply wear out under these conditions. No wonder Ezylryb squinted. A lifetime of flying into this stuff would be enough to shred any owl’s eyelid.
“Oh, for Glaux’s sake,” Otulissa hissed.
“What now?” Soren said, trying to anticipate the next dead fall, almost hoping for it, to get away from Otulissa.
“He is speaking with seagulls!”
“So?”
“So? How can you say ‘so,’ Soren? I know you come from a very fine family. I can see that you have been well brought up. You must know that seagulls are the absolute worst kind of bird. They are, pardon the coarseness of my language, the scum of the avian world. Trashy, loud. You want nothing to do with them. And look, there he is talking—laughing with them.”
“Maybe he’s getting weather information from them,” Soren said.
“Oh, now that’s a thought,” Otulissa said and was quiet for several seconds, an amazing occurrence in and of itself. “I think I’ll fly up and ask him.”
“Don’t bother him, Otulissa.”
“No, you heard him say if we had any questions we should ask.” So off she flew.
“Pardon me, Ezylryb. I am most curious to know why you were—how shall I put it—consorting with seagulls? I thought perhaps it was to gain weather information.”
“Seagulls? Oh, no, darlin’. They are the dumbest birds on earth and the laziest.”
“Well, then why would you even consort with them?”
“I wasn’t consorting. I was telling dirty jokes.”
“What?” Otulissa gasped.
“Yes, they love wet poop jokes even though they are the wettest of all poopers. ‘Oh, tell us another one Ezyl,’ they always say! And, I must admit, I get a few from them. But the blasted birds are so dumb, half the time they can’t remember the punch lines. Very frustrating.”
“Well, I never!”
“The jokes were really funny, Otulissa,” Martin, the Northern Saw-whet, piped up.
“Now, don’t go getting your feathers in a twist, darlin’. You just mind your own business. Get back into position. We’re getting near the gutter now. And this is when the fun begins.”
“Hoooh-hah!” Poot let out an enormous, raucous hoot. “Here we go, mates. Climbing the baggywrinkles and then straight into the gutter. Follow us!” The baggywrinkles were the shredded air currents that lay between the scuppers and the gutter. A power thrust was required to get over them. Soren banked and followed the veteran owl, Poot. Martin was in between the two. The tiny owl would get a boost from Poot’s speed, as a vacuum would be created, through which he could be sucked up and over the baggywrinkles right into the gutter. Ruby was just ahead of him. She let escape a small joyous hoot. And then, suddenly, Soren knew why. Here, at the center of the gale, in the gutter, the winds all seemed to flow like one great turbulent river. And if one let one’s wings sweep slightly forward, just as Ruby was doing, and angled the tail—well, it was a wonderful sensation, a cross between soaring and gliding—no effort at all. And in the gutter, the ice shards seemed to melt away.
“Oh, tickle me hollow bones. Ain’t this the life!” It was Ezylryb, who had dropped back from the point position and now flew between Soren and Otulissa. He yarped a pellet into the river of wind that flowed about them. “Now follow me to the edge of the scuppers, maties, and I’ll show you the hurly-burly. And then we’ll climb the baggywrinkles and dump right into the scuppers for the ride of your life.”
“What is he talking about?” huffed Otulissa. “He should have given us a vocabulary list. He’s very disorganized as a teacher.”
Why would a vocabulary list matter? Soren thought. What was the use of a word if one could not feel the action in his gizzard? And right now Soren’s gizzard was in a fantastic quiver of excitement. This was flying as he had never known it.
“Here we go!” cried Ezylryb. “Now I want to see you punch the wind and then we pop the scuppers and it’s tail over talons.”
“Oh, my heavens!” Otulissa shrieked and Soren gasped as he saw the distinctive three-taloned foot of Ezylryb scratch the moon-smudged sky. He was flying on his back! Then right side up and in the scuppers.
Suddenly, Soren saw a red blur as Ruby did a talons-over-tail somersault and popped the scuppers to join him. “Oh, come on!” she cried. “There’s nothing to it.”
“Nothing to it. Who’s ever heard of an owl flying upside down? I think there’s something most unsavory about it!” Otulissa gasped. “It’s reckless, unsafe—yes, unsavory, unsafe, un-owl.”
Oh, shut up! Soren thought and punched the wind just as Ezylryb said, and in a flash he was arcing up toward the sky that spun with dark clouds and was splattered with sheets of icy rain, and then he was right side up in the scuppers next to Ruby.
“Push forward a bit with your talons and keep angling your tail. It gives you a lot of control and you can ride the waves,” Ezylryb called back.
Finally, Otulissa arrived, sputtering with rage and talking about a report that she was going to make about “this outrageous activity.”
“Oh, shut your beak!” Poot screeched at her. And then they skidded and spun, doing what was called the hurly-burly. In the scuppers, Ezylryb began to squawk a raucous ditty into the teeth of the gale.
We are the owls of the weather chaw.
We take it blistering,
We take it all.
Roiling boiling gusts,
We’re the owls with the guts.
For blizzards our gizzards
Do tremble with joy.
An ice storm, a gale, how we love blinding hail.
We fly forward and backward,
Upside down and flat.
Do we flinch? Do we wail?
Do we skitter or scutter?
No, we yarp one more pellet
And fly straight for the gutter!
Do we screech? Do we scream?
Do we gurgle? Take pause?
Not on your life!
For we are the best
Of the best of the chaws!
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Mrs. Plithiver’s Dilemma
Flying upside down!” Primrose gasped. “How do you do that? It’s impossible.”
“It’s not as hard as you think,” Soren said excitedly. “It really doesn’t take that much skill. It’s kind of like when you first start to fly. You have to just sort of believe you can do it.”
“But upside down?” Gylfie said.
“Do you think a big burly Gray like me could do it?” Twilight said.
“Sure, if the conditions are right. See, that’s the problem—you can’t try it until you’re in the gutter of a gale.”
“Gutter of a gale?” Twilight said. “You telling me a gale has a gutter? Now, I’ve seen a lot but…” It was hard for Twilight to admit that anyone had seen or experienced something he had not.
Gylfie and Soren looked at each other and blinked in amazement. Twilight did brag, but he did not have that obnoxious sense of superiority that Otulissa had. Still, he was constantly getting reprimanded in his chaw practices for challenging the rybs. Sometimes he could be annoying but, in spite of this, he was a “good soul,” as Mrs. P. would put it. There was never an owl more fiercely loyal than Twilight. As Digger often said, “He makes the best friend and the worst enemy.”
“You might not have seen the gutter of a gale,” Gylfie said, trying to restrain the peevish note in her voice. “I know you’ve seen a lot, Twilight, but it is possible that you have not penetrated a gale in the same manner Soren did, under the instruction of Ezylryb.”
“Oh, I’ve flown into the teeth of many a gale, Gylf. I might have been in the gutter and not known I wa
s there. That I admit. Soren here, talking about all this structure of a gale business—just words, you know. No offense, mind you, Soren. But you can fly through something and not know what it’s called.”
“Yes, I think you’re right. Otulissa was making a big fuss about how Ezylryb should have given us a vocabulary list before we took off last night.”
“Oh, honestly,” Primrose muttered, “was there ever a duller owl?”
“Well, I am going to the library because that’s part of our assignment now—to read up on the structure of gales and blizzards and hurricanes. But I’m glad we flew it first. I think it will have more meaning. We’re supposed to have a test soon.”
“A flying test or a book test?” Gylfie asked.
“Book test. I promised to help Ruby. She’s a fantastic flier but she has a hard time with book things—reading and writing.”
“Believe me, as long as she can fly that’s what counts.” Twilight nodded.
“The grand old sage of the Orphan School of Tough Learning!” Gylfie muttered.
Mrs. Plithiver gave a slight flinch as she often did when she heard an unkind remark at her tea table. It was then that Soren realized that Mrs. Plithiver had barely said a word during the entire teatime. This was most unusual, especially since he had come back so excited from weather chaw. Normally, she would have been thrilled over Soren’s enthusiasm. He hoped nothing was the matter. If there was time before good light, after he went to the library, he would go visit her.
Soren flew up to the library humming happily the last verse of the weather chaw song. How quickly life changes, he thought. It was only yesterday that he had returned from walking around with a live coal in his beak, thinking that life could not be much worse—unless, of course, he was in St. Aggie’s picking pellets in the pelletorium. And now he was a member of the best of the best of the chaws.
When he entered the library he saw Ezylryb in his usual spot with a pile of dried caterpillars. He trotted up to him. “Hello, Ezylryb. It was a wonderful chaw. Do you think there’s any chance of another gale coming through soon—or maybe a tornado? Poot says tornadoes are fantastic to fly.”
But Ezylryb barely looked up from his book and growled in that unfriendly way he had. Soren took a step back. He was confused. How could Ezylryb be so different now than he had been when they were flying? During weather chaw, Ezylryb had been loud and boisterous and cracking wet poop jokes and singing raucously, and now he was just Ezylryb, a distant, gruff old scholar with his beak buried in a book. “Better study for your test. And Ruby over there needs some help. Flies like a dream but can’t spell worth a pellet.”
Soren backed away and then turned to Ruby, who was hunched over the book Weather Systems and Their Structure: How to Fly Them, Analyze Them, and Survive Them, by Ezekiel Ezylryb.
“This is sooo hard, Soren! I’ll never pass the test.”
“Oh, come on, Ruby. You’ll do fine. Anyone who flies like you can’t flunk a test.”
“But it’s all these words. I feel flight in my gizzard, but, you know, I can’t feel words in my gizzard, except maybe when Madame Plonk sings.”
Soren blinked. What Ruby said he thought was probably quite true. “Look, Ruby, I don’t think you should try and feel words in your gizzard. You just have to learn a little bit of what they mean in your head—just for the test. Come on, I’ll help you. Let’s see the book.”
Soren took a look. There were a lot of pictures, drawings of storms and hurricanes and blizzards. Soren flipped through the pages with his talon. “Let’s start right here with a gale, because that is what we know.”
“But what in Glaux’s name is a pyte?” Ruby said.
From the corner of the room came a voice. “A pyte is a unit of measurement roughly the wingspan of a Whiskered Screech like meself. It is used for measuring the different structures of a weather system such as gutters, scuppers, et cetera.”
“What’s et cetera?” whispered Ruby.
“I don’t think that’s an important word,” Soren said. “Now we know what a pyte is, and that’s what counts.”
Ruby wasn’t what Soren would call dumb, but she certainly had terrible handwriting and difficulty with large words. “Finning in the sw—” She read the heading at the top of one page.
“Finning in the swillages,” Soren said.
“What is that?” Ruby asked.
“Ruby, you did it. You were the only one who could do it. Don’t you remember? You climbed the baggywrinkles out of the scuppers and flew right on the upper edge, twitching your tail. It was very advanced.”
“Oh, you mean like this?” And Ruby did a perfect recreation of what she had done that night.
“Yes, that’s it. And it says here that the swillages are measured in tailspans of the individual owl. So if you feel the breeze on either side of your tail at one time you know that it is one tailspan wide.”
“Oh, I’ll never remember all this! The words, the numbers, it’s too much.”
“Yes, you will, Ruby.”
Otulissa had just come into the library and was pulling out another book on weather interpretation.
“Did you get your chaw changed, Otulissa?” Soren whispered, for he knew she had applied directly to Barran.
Otulissa blinked. Large tears were forming in her eyes. “No! I’m stuck and I can’t fly nearly as well as either of you. I’ll probably get killed.”
For the first time, Soren felt really sorry for Otulissa. Just then a dried caterpillar dropped into the book she had opened.
“You’ll do fine, child. Spotted Owls have an amazing talent for sensing pressure changes. Of course, it does make them fussy and hard to live with. I suggest you read that book over there—Atmospheric Pressures and Turbulations: An Interpreter’s Guide. It was written by Strix Emerilla, a renowned weathertrix of the last century. But I always want a Spotted Owl in my chaw, even if they continually beak off.” Ezylryb, with his odd three-taloned walk, hobbled out of the library.
Confound that owl, Soren thought. He is as impenetrable as any weather system. Here, he had hardly spoken to Soren and now seemed to go out of his way to chat it up with Otulissa.
“A Strix wrote this?” Otulissa said as she opened the book. “Oh, my goodness, it could be a relative. And, of course, you know, to become a weathertrix requires the most highly refined sensitivities of all. No wonder a Strix would become one. With our ancient lineage, I would imagine these skills have been honed to perfection through the ages.”
Oh, Glaux, did this owl ever shut up? Soren decided to go visit Mrs. P. before good light.
“Well, I don’t know. I just don’t know. I don’t think I’m sure about anything, really.” Soren stopped just outside the small hollow that Mrs. P. shared with the two other nest snakes. It was the sadness in Mrs. P.’s voice that really stopped him. Mrs. P. never sounded this way. She was always so positive and full of hope. He listened for a few moments.
“The harp guild is the most prestigious and I think it is my destiny to become a member,” the other snake was saying. “You know, the way the owls feel things in their gizzards. Now I know that we don’t have gizzards, but even so.”
“Mercy! The very idea.” Mrs. P. sounded genuinely shocked by the suggestion. She spoke sharply now. “I think it is very presumptuous of us to ever think of ourselves as anything like these noble owls. We are not of their station.” Now she was sounding like herself again. Mrs. P. did not have feelings of inferiority. She felt she was the best nest-maid snake ever, but she would never presume, as she said, to think she shared anything with the members of the finest class of birds. Her duty in life was to serve them, and to serve them well was a noble task.
“But Mrs. P.,” the snake continued, “you must have some preference for a guild.”
“Oh, it is more than a preference. When we went for our tour of the guilds, I knew immediately that the harp was for me. As I slipped through the strings from one note to another, climbing the scales, leaping octaves, the v
ibrations never left me. And the very best part was to try to—oh, how shall I explain—weave the music into Madame Plonk’s voice. So that together the sound of the harp and the sound of Madame Plonk’s voice made something so large and splendid.”
Soren blinked. Mrs. P., he thought, had something much better than a gizzard.
“Must be off myself,” the other nest snake said cheerily. “I’m just going around to drop in on Octavia, bring her a few well-seasoned milkberries. She does love them so and, as you know, she does keep the nest for Madame Plonk. Never can hurt, can it? Ta-ta!” And she slithered out of the hollow.
Soren wedged himself into a corner where he wouldn’t be seen. But he heard Mrs. P. muttering after the other snake was out of earshot. “To presume to have a gizzard and then go slithering off to Octavia, humming tunes and besieging her with milkberries. Well, I never!”
Soren decided to skip visiting Mrs. P. He knew what he must do. He must “drop by” Madame Plonk’s, and he must tell her that here was a very special snake, a snake that had something even finer than a gizzard, a snake of the highest—what was that word Mrs. P. was always using?—“Sensibilities, artistic sensibilities.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
A Visit to Madame Plonk
You see, Madame Plonk, I know that perhaps this is not proper—me coming to you this way.” Soren could hardly keep his mind on what he was saying, as he had never in his life seen a hollow like this one. The air spun with colored light from the whirlyglasses that hung from the ceiling and sometimes jutted out from the walls, suspended on twigs jammed into cracks. There were several openings through which light poured. There were pieces of cloth embroidered with beautiful designs and one little niche spilled over with strands of luminous beads. Indeed, the hollow seemed to swirl with color. And in the middle of all this color there was a dazzling whiteness—Madame Plonk.
Soren gulped and tried to keep his eyes from straying from that whiteness. “But I just know that Mrs. P. is rather shy and would never dare.”
“Mrs. P.?” Madame Plonk broke in. “I don’t believe I know this snake.”