“No talking now!” Fritha said. “Concentrate. I might give you a pop quiz when we get back to the tree and have you draw the constellations.” There was a groan from the four young owls.
“Gylfie never gives pop quizzes!” Bell piped up.
“Gylfie is not here tonight. I am here. I’m the substitute and what I say goes.”
“I can’t stand substitute rybs,” whispered Matty.
The owlets took their positions.
This is so borrrrring! thought Bell. She was a quick learner and knew all the constellations. She could already draw them in her sleep. She wished she had been sent with the weather-interpretation chaw. Maybe this squall would have scuppers with real baggywrinkles. The scuppers were the side trenches of a gale or squall where the edges of the wind spilled over. The baggywrinkles were the shredded air currents that lay just outside the scuppers. Oh, Bell knew all about the structure of a gale or squall, although neither she nor any of these young owls had flown in a true storm yet. Just her luck to miss out on climbing the baggywrinkles, and dancing in the scuppers! Blythe was so lucky!! Tonight would be the night and here she was, stuck with a substitute, missing all the fun.
There was a rowdy old song that the weather-interpretation chaw used to sing when Ezylryb was the ryb. Soren had sung it to them once but Pelli, their mum, got very angry and said it had too many naughty words and wouldn’t permit it. But Bell could remember the melody and many of the words, which began to stream through her head now as she followed Heggety.
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!
There was another verse that she couldn’t remember because it was just at that point that her mum had cut her da off. It was something about stinky nights. Bell gave a small start, for at that moment she felt the curling edge of a dampish wind. Maverick swillage? she thought. Spun off from a nearby gale? The night had suddenly become cloudy. What’s the point of tracing the Golden Talons if you can’t even see it? she wondered. Maybe she’d just fly off for a short look, because if there was a gale with real scuppers…Oh, it was just grit in her gizzard that Blythe might dance the hurly-burly in the scuppers, and she’d come back all braggy about it. Bell just had to try it. No one from the navigation chaw would miss her when she was flying double tail so far back. And she’d only be gone a minute…or two…or three…certainly no more than five.
CHAPTER FIVE
The Palace of Mists
It was strange, Mrs. P. thought. From a great distance, she could hear an enormous sound of the crush of water plummeting, but through that roar she could make out so many other sounds—voices of the Guardians and Bess. She listened beyond these, however, and perceived not echoes but vibrations or perhaps other ripples. Then, within the ripples she sensed—what should she call them?—lumps? Seeds? Yes, seeds from a time long ago when other voices might have stirred the mists of these palace chambers. It was a peculiar place, which seemed composed as much of mist as stone. The palace with its turrets, spires, and towers was tucked behind the great curtain of cascading water, and its back wall was the soaring stone cliff.
“You brought a nest-maid snake? Mrs. Plithiver, you call her?” Bess was whispering, thinking that she could not be heard. But, of course, Mrs. P. could hear every word and so much more. But she didn’t feel that it was time for her to say anything—not yet, at least.
“Yes,” Soren was saying. “But don’t worry.” Mrs. P. could feel Bess shrug. “She is very discreet. Nest-maids are, you know.”
Not all, Mrs. P. thought. Not Audrey. Biggest gossip in the tree.
Bess now turned to Otulissa. “So you explained to them?”
“Well, as best I could,” Otulissa replied.
“I have found more document fragments. It’s all quite amazing. I’ll go fetch them.” She flew to the stone stacks toward the rear of the library, a series of deep niches in which scrolls and books were placed. While she was gone, a draft of cold mist swirled down, fogging the table where they perched.
“It’s that storm that came up,” Twilight said. “A real wester. Odd this time of year. Imagine what a waggle Ezylryb would have gotten out of this one.” Like a fleeting shadow, the worrisome thought of the three B’s caught in something like this crossed Soren’s mind. But they were safe. Pelli and Eglantine and Primrose would have made sure they got to one of the numerous hollows near the training grounds where the chawlets were practicing.
When Bess returned, she carried a botkin stuffed with fragments of old scrolls. She carefully took them out of their oiled mouse-skin covers.
“For all this time,” Soren said, “we have known that there was this place that we called The Elsewhere. But never before had we imagined that there was a kingdom of owls there. We thought perhaps it was a place the Others had been, but never owls. Whatever led you to think that there were owls there, Bess?”
She drew out a fragment from one of the botkins. “This was my first clue.” She put down the piece of parchment. At first glance, it looked like a small bit that had been torn from one of the star charts because there were constellations sketched on it. Bess took out a magnifying glass from a pouch made of vole skin. This instrument always fascinated the Band. It was a tool of the Others, and Bess used it to read the dim handwriting on the most ancient of manuscripts. She set the glass down on the torn piece of parchment. “Now look. Tell me, what do you see?”
The owls peered over the glass and then all gasped.
“An owl’s eye!” Twilight said.
“B-b-b-but…but…” Otulissa stammered. “That proves nothing. I mean, an Other could have drawn that.”
“Yes, possibly,” Bess agreed. “Although I feel the pressure used with the writing tool is not that of an Other. It’s a fragile line. But if you are not convinced, look at this.” She slid the magnifying glass down a bit. It revealed talon writing. There was no doubt about it. And although the foreign words seemed slightly familiar, there was one word that sailed out: Glaux!
“It’s the same in any language, isn’t it?” Gylie said. “Krakish, Hoolian…and…and…”
Bess whispered now. “I have been studying and have just started to understand a few words of the sixth kingdom’s language. And this much I know. They are not words of any other creatures but owls.” The owls nodded. They believed her. Still, it was staggering. What would these owls be like? What would they think of Hoolian owls? Were they hugely intelligent, far more intelligent than the owls of their own Five Kingdoms? There was a vast sea between the known world of the owls and this Middle Kingdom. So inaccessible was the Middle Kingdom that it might as well be a star in the Golden Talons. And now they were being told that owls were there.
“I think the part that perplexes us all the most,” Digger began slowly, contemplating every word, “is that you say we can fly there. That it is within wingreach. It’s hard to imagine flying over an ocean as vast as the Unnamed Sea. Did you find islands on the charts? Places we can rest?” he asked.
“No, none at all.” Once more she dipped into the botkin with her talon, and took out a fatter scroll. With great care, she unrolled the parchment. It had no writing but just a series of wavy lines. “No islands, just air currents.”
“Air currents?” Otulissa said.
“I found this chart quite a while ago. But I had no idea what it meant. Well, that is not quite true. I sensed it could have something to do with wind—airflow and the like—but it was incomprehensible. Not just a puzzle, but a maz
e. A labyrinth of wind. But some of these might be windkins.”
“Windkins! You don’t say!” Otulissa said. A windkin was a companion air current for another wind from an opposite quadrant. The two winds worked together in strange but complementary ways. Otulissa peered closer. Her beak was tracing the wavy lines. “Yes, definitely a windkin, and I can tell you exactly where this windkin is.”
“You can?” said Soren.
“Yes.” Otulissa hopped over to a perch by an immense map of the five known kingdoms of the owl world. “I believe it is a companion to this one.” She pointed with a long talon to a remote firth in the Northern Kingdoms. “You see, they fit together like interlocking teeth—if they were together, that is. But they’re not. They’ve split apart. This is the companion windkin to the one on the fragment.”
“That’s near the Firth of Grundenspyrr!” Soren said. “The home of Theo, the first blacksmith.”
“Exactly.”
“And if we draw a line to the opposite quadrant we will find that the windkin that Bess has shown us on this fragment is right here.” She traced a line across and then her talon stopped at a point on the far northwest coast of Beyond the Beyond. “Look. There is even an inlet here similar in shape to the Firth of Grundenyspyrr right on the edge of the Unnamed Sea.”
“But we all have at one time or another flown in that region of the Northern Kingdoms. Why have we missed that windkin all these years?” Gylfie asked.
“It’s at a very high altitude,” Otulissa explained. “And perhaps when we were there, we experienced some remnant downdrafts, but they would not have seemed all that different from any other downdrafts. I knew about windkins because once, years ago, I decided to do some extra-credit work for Ezylryb in the weather-interpretation chaw and learned about them that way.”
The members of the Band exchanged quick glances. Typical! they all thought. As a young student in the weather-interpretation chaw, Otulissa was always doing extra-credit work.
“But what does this all mean?” Ruby asked.
“It means that there is a way across the Unnamed Sea,” Otulissa said.
“But it’s huge! It’s so vast, it would take days of flying,” Martin said.
“Not with a windkin stream. We’ll hardly have to flap a wing, once we find the central stream. You see, the shortest distance between two points, even two very far points, is not always the fastest route. And that is the beauty of a windkin trough. But before you actually find that trough, or center stream, it is sort of like being tossed around in a maze, flying these windkins. It can be very rough. I mean, if there were just a…a…” Otulissa was searching for a word.
“A key?” Bess said with great excitement.
“Yes, a key,” Otulissa replied.
“Then, that is what this must be! I felt it had something to do with these air currents.” Bess reached with her talon into the bottom of the botkin. She held up a small fragment of parchment. “This,” she said, “unlocks the maze—a maze of wind far above the vast sea that must be crossed.”
“You mean, if we use this we can find our way through the windkin to the trough or the central stream, or whatever you call it?” Gylfie asked. The tiny Elf Owl had hopped onto Twilight’s shoulder to get a better look at the fragment of paper Bess had just set down.
“It will help you. You see, there is an equal sign by these symbols and then a little section of wavy lines. And here, when you look at the larger fragment, you can see that some of these symbols have been dropped into the pattern of wavy lines every once in a while. I think they are a sort of key to the direction of the wind currents, but I’m not sure I quite understand the symbols.”
“Great Glaux!” Soren and Otulissa both blurted out.
“What is it?” Bess asked. “Do you understand the key?”
“These are standard…well, almost standard weather, wind, and temperature symbols that we all use in weather interpretation,” Soren replied.
“Almost standard?” Twilight said, and took a perch above Soren and Otulissa.
“Yes,” Otulissa answered. “Almost. These look like a very ancient form of the symbols we know. That triangle with the little tail on top—well, the tail is different, but it means rising temperature in this part of the air currents.”
“And those sort of mountainy-looking things,” Martin said, “that means thermal upswing, which is different from a regular updraft—more gradual, not so sudden.”
“Look at that!” Ruby gasped. “It’s a bird skull. A tumblebones!” Ruby was also a member of the weather-interpretation chaw, and this symbol had remained the same for years. The rim of a hurricane’s eye was sometimes called a tumblebones. If a bird was caught in a tumblebones, it spun around and around until it died. It was said that even its bones could never escape.
“But this isn’t a hurricane we’re looking at here,” Twilight said.
“Not cyclical winds.” Otulissa had become quite thoughtful as she peered down, studying the wavy lines and then glancing between them and the key. “These are basically high, fast, thermal drafts. They flow contrary to the weather vectors that we are familiar with. But you see this key really applies to the edges. The windkins, including the tumblebones, are the crisscrossing drafts that one has to climb through to get to the central trough. Imagine a ladder of wind—or even a very violent baggywrinkle—that we would climb at the edges of a gale, but much more dangerous. The windkins brace the central stream, more or less. Think of them as eddies that swirl off the central current of a river. They can be very confused, tumultuous, rotating in opposite directions. To cross them in order to enter the stream and to get out at the end—that is the hard part. But the key will help.” Otulissa hesitated. “I see only one problem.”
Bess blinked and wilfed a bit. Mrs. P. sensed that Bess saw the problem, too, and Mrs. P. had a glimmer of what that problem might be.
“Yes?” Soren said.
“What’s the problem?” Gylfie asked.
“How do we get back? Does the current go in reverse? And the key, does it apply to just going one way or can we somehow return using the same key? Perhaps there are differences coming back and it won’t work,” Otulissa said. “Can we reverse it?”
They could all see Bess hesitate. “Not exactly reverse it. And I have tried to do some inverse mathematics relating to standard air currents…”
“Yes, I can see that might be helpful, but what if we tried a quadratic differential to the fifth power?” Otulissa said.
“I’m lost,” Soren muttered.
“Oh, I understand completely,” Twilight snorted.
“Perhaps,” Digger said in his slow, thoughtful way, “we need not resort to mathematics at all.”
“And why not?” Gylfie exclaimed.
“Well,” Digger continued, “what I am thinking is that we are just now learning about this sixth kingdom. But they apparently have known about us for a long time. How these fragments got here is anyone’s guess. But they got here, and this means some owl, some emissary from the sixth kingdom, came here at some time in history. Therefore, can we not conclude that if they came here there is a way back, a way from there to here?”
The owls looked at Digger, stunned by the lovely simplicity of his notion.
Soren turned to Coryn. “All right. So we’ll go?” Coryn nodded.
Mrs. Plithiver now coughed delicately. “There is one thing I would like to suggest, Coryn.”
“What is that, Mrs. P.?” Coryn had a profound respect for Mrs. P. He had secretly been thrilled when Soren had raised the question of her coming with them.
“I think we should leave the battle claws behind.”
“What?” Twilight yelped. “You can’t be serious!”
“I am perfectly serious,” Mrs. P. said. She had coiled up taller and swiveled her head toward Twilight. “I just have a feeling that we should not bring them. I have a sense about these owls. We shall look very poor to them if we arrive rattling battle claws. As Digger said
, we can conclude that they came here sometime in the past. They flew among us, observed us. No one, apparently, knew they were here. If they had arrived armed to the beak, someone would have noticed. And I, for one, would have thought it very bad form.”
“I think Mrs. P. is right,” Soren said. “I can remember one of Ezylryb’s finest speeches, in which he said that although boldness of action is always called for, it must be tempered by wisdom and restraint, and too often it is not. And that we had nothing to fear except fear itself.”
Coryn blinked and his eyes blazed. “Fear itself! It is a terrible thing. You are absolutely right.” He nodded at Soren and then Mrs. Plithiver. “During that horrid time of the Golden Tree when the milkberries never changed their color and those owls became fixated on the ember, they were seized with superstition about the ember’s powers. Superstition is closely linked to fear. It was that, I feel, not respect for the ember that led them to build a prison. Owls were systematically deprived of their rights, their dignity. Otulissa was locked up, and then Madame Plonk, and then Primrose! What could have been more contrary to the entire meaning of the great tree?” Never had the owls seen Coryn as passionate. “Mrs. Plithiver is absolutely right. We must leave our weapons behind. We must come in peace. This is my command as monarch of the tree.”
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?”