Guardians of Ga'Hoole 02 - The Journey

mean that the temperature might change, but again, and most annoyingly, Otulissa’s talon shot up. “Shut your beak, Otulissa,” Ezylryb snapped. “I feel that Soren might have the answer despite not being as deeply familiar as you are with Strix Emerilla.”
    How does he feel that I have the answer? Is this like being marked—Ezylryb seeing things in me that others can’t ? But Soren did feel that he knew the answer. So he proceeded tentatively. “I think that it means that when the smoke rises there could be a change in the air.” Ezylryb looked straight at him. The light from his yellow eyes did not burn now but seemed to illuminate Soren’s entire brain. Soren felt surer, more confident, but mostlyhe could easily envision the invisible air. “The air would rise and turn and circulate upward and when this happens, I think the fire will burn harder, more fiercely.”
    “Exactly!” boomed Ezylryb. “And how do you know this, lad?”
    “I see it in my mind. I can imagine it. I feel something, I think in my gizzard, about the movement of air and heat and…”
    “Yes, thank you, lad.” Ezylryb turned to the other owls of the chaw. “There are many ways to learn—throughbooks, through practice, and through gizzuition. They are all good ways, but few of us have gizzuition.”
    “But what is gizzuition?” Otulissa asked warily.
    Ezylryb began to speak but kept his gaze on Soren. “It is a kind of thinking beyond the normal reasoning processes by which one immediately apprehends the truth, perceives and understands reality. It cannot really be taught, but it can be developed by being extremely attentive and sensitive to the natural world.”
    Soren blinked. I AM something in this old owl’s eyes. I am almost as smart as Otulissa, and Ezylryb believes in me!
    It was now time to move to a ridge closer to the fire. The chaw lifted into the air, each owl flying close to its buddy. They were not halfway to the next ridge when they saw the thick smoke, almost white in the night, rolling up, and then the tongues of flame dancing against the night. Ezylryb began a steeply banking turn. The others followed. Bubo and Poot arrived shortly with fresh voles and mice in their talons, some still squirming.
    “Eat light, eat all the hair!” Ezylryb barked.
    “I wonder why he always calls it hair?” Martin said quietly.
    “They say he comes from a distant place called theland of the Great North Waters and they have odd ways of speaking,” Ruby said.
    “But hair? What’s hair?” Martin persisted.
    “Well, there’s fur and there’s feathers—I think it’s something in between,” Ruby said. “Do you want me to ask Otulissa?”
    “No!” Soren and Martin both groaned.
    Less than an hour had passed when Bubo flew down from his higher perch. “Prepare to fly.”
    The owls stood on the thin granite lip of the ridge, their talons hooked over the edge. They spread their wings, and Bubo gave the command. “FIRE!” They lifted off—first Bubo and Elvan, then Ruby and Poot, next Otulissa, Soren, and Martin, and last, as a rear guard, Ezyl-ryb.
    They had not flown very far before they felt the heat on their faces. They had anticipated the heat but not the noise. A monster roar raged in their ears. Soren had never heard anything like it. Bubo and Elvan had prepared them for everything but this noise. They knew about the heat. They knew about the violent updrafts, the so-called cool spots, and the dead falls. They even knew about the most dreaded trick fire could pull—fire blinking. This happenedwhen the fire, raging with all its deadly beauty, actually transfixed an owl so that it could not fly. It went yeep and, with its wings locking, the owl lost its instincts to fly and suddenly plummeted to the ground. Or if the owl was already on the ground and the fire began to spread rapidly toward it, the owl simply could not lift off, for its wings hung still and motionless like dead things by its side. But no one had told him about the noise.
    “You’ll get used to it.” Elvan had flown up just over Soren and Martin. “It’s always a shock at first. There is no way to describe it.” He had to shout over the roar of the fire. Below, a sheet of flame lay flat against a hillside. The thermal drafts came up like slabs of rock. Martin and Soren were sucked up at least twenty feet but as they passed the hill they felt a terrific coolness and they dropped another thirty feet. Soren realized that it was only cool