Guardians of Ga'Hoole 02 - The Journey

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 thesmall 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 noteto another, climbing the scales, leaping octaves, the vibrations 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