Guardians of Ga'Hoole 03 - The Rescue

through.
    “Of course,” Soren replied.
    So it was set. They would go the next day just after tween time and their flint mop for Dewlap, during harp practice. Octavia, as a member of the harp guild, would be attending.
    “Gylfie! My dear, that hole is simply not deep enough.” Dewlap came up to the Elf Owl. “Here, let me demonstrate. And don’t use that excuse of being an Elf Owl and your beak being too tiny. One of my best chaw members ever was an Elf Owl. She dug exquisite holes.”
    “Doesn’t she ever sleep?” Digger said under his breath at tween time as the four owls poked holes with their beaks in the soil to bury the pellets.
    When the first chords of the harp rang out, they all breathed a sigh of relief. Their flint mop was done for now. And the investigation of Ezylryb’s hollow could begin. The other owls were still sleeping, for during these first days following the harvest festival, the owls tended to rouse themselves later. Soren, Gylfie, and Digger made their wayto Ezylryb’s hollow. Located in one of the highest parts of the tree, the hollow was the only one facing the northwest, the direction of the cold prevailing wind that most owls did not fancy. But, of course, Ezylryb was not most owls. And perhaps he liked facing the direction of the Northern Kingdoms from which he had come.
    As soon as they entered the hollow, Digger took up his lookout position at the trunk port. He tried to take in as much as he could of the old teacher’s quarters, which appeared to have hundreds of books and maps, but Soren and Gylfie hurried him along to his watch post.
    “Where do we begin?” Soren asked, looking at all the piles of papers, charts, maps, and infinite numbers of gizmos that Ezylryb had to help him interpret weather patterns. There was a vial of sand that he often hung outside his hollow, which registered the moisture in the air. There was another vial of quicksilver to gauge atmospheric pressure changes. There were at least twenty wind indicators. Ezylryb was always experimenting with new wind indicators that used feathers sometimes plucked from his own body, but it was usually a molted one from some very young owl who had just shed its baby down.
    “It would be easier to know where to begin if we knew exactly what we were looking for,” Gylfie replied, lighting down on a dangerously tilting stack of books.
    Soren just sighed. There was something so sad about the hollow. In the month or so before the Great Downing, Ezylryb had taken to inviting members of the weather chaw to his hollow to share tea. The old ryb would talk about his latest weather theories or inventions for interpreting weather. But now the coals in his grate were cold. The plates of his favorite snack food, dried caterpillars, went untouched and a fine layer of dust had settled on all the books.
    Soren knew that off of this main parlor of Ezylryb’s hollow there was a smaller one where he slept. Gylfie had already flown into it. So Soren followed her. “Anything here?”
    “Practically nothing,” Gylfie replied.
    In definite contrast to the parlor, the sleeping hollow was sparsely furnished to the point of austerity. There was a bed, a mixture of down with generous portions of Ga’Hoolian moss known for its fleecy quality. By the bed stood a small table with a slender volume of poems atop another large leather-bound volume. Soren peered at the book.
    “What’s the book?” Gylfie asked.
    “Something called Sonnets of the Northern Kingdoms, by Lyze of Kiel.”
    “Whoop-de-doo,” Gylfie said. “Sounds exciting, doesn’t it?”
    “Well, you know Ezylryb. Everyone says he is the best scholar here. He likes all this weird obscure stuff. It’s not all just weather science with him.”
    “What’s the other book?” Gylfie asked.
    Soren moved the poetry volume. “I can hardly read the title, this book is so ancient.” The leather had crackled into fine lines and the gold leaf in which the title had been written had nearly flaked away. But underneath was the faint impression of an outline of the embossed letters. Soren, looking hard at the letters, spoke slowly. “Sagas of the North Kingdoms: The History of the War of the Ice Claws by Lyze of Kiel.”
    “Talented fellow, I guess,” Gylfie said. “I mean, sonnets and war history.” Gylfie was talking as she flitted here and there in the almost bare chamber. “What’s this?” she said suddenly.
    “What’s what?” Soren asked. “Oh, it looks like a