Guardians of Ga'Hoole 06 - The Burning

suddenly an agonizing screech and one bright blue owl plummeted into the raging waters. Twilight flew in. “Hey, Martin, gimme four!” And struck out his talons toward Martin in a joyous hoot of victory. But victory was to be short-lived.
    “Watch it, Twilight, on your tail!” Soren shrieked. Twilight dove in a masterful twist through a gust of wind and escaped the tail-feather attack. He then whirled upand, dancing on the ragged edges of the cutting winds, the Great Gray began to squawk.

Gimme four, gimme five
I’ll take you live.
    I’m a bad bad owl
I’ll make you dive.
    Make you howl
For your momma and pop
Chase you around
Till you drop.
    Now you goin’ to hear my thunder
Next you goin’ to start to wonder
He’s here
He’s there
He’s everywhere
This big bad owl
He don’t scare.

    A glittering arc of ice flashed in the moonlight and Soren gasped as he saw four brightly colored wings separate from two different owls. Agonizing screeches cut through the roar of the wind and blood splattered the night.
    “Ruby, Great Glaux in glaumora!” Soren heard Otulissa’s stunned voice. Ruby looked equally stunned. As she flew,she stared in disbelief at her ice scimitar, with which she had so deftly de-winged two of the larger owls in a single stroke.
    Suddenly, the population of pirates had decreased dramatically. The owl that Soren had been sparring with vanished.
    “I think they are in retreat,” Otulissa said.
    Soren blinked. Yes, he could just barely make out their tail feathers as they flew back in the direction from which they had come. What is that one carrying in its talons? It didn’t look like an ice dagger. Not big enough. Soren blinked again. Did it have a vaguely familiar shape? And just as Soren was wondering, a hoarse cry split the night.
    “Gylfie! They got Gylfie!” Otulissa yelled.
    Soren spread his wings ready to lift off in pursuit, but just at that moment a thick fog rolled in. It was the thickest and the quickest-moving fog Soren had ever seen. It was as if lichen or gray moss had suddenly crept over the blackness of the night. It was absolutely impenetrable. When it rolled back and the night had turned black once more, they knew that by now Gylfie was too far away for them to find in these vast frozen lands.
    The stars stuttered in the sky. Soren knew if he had been flying he would have gone yeep as the horror creptthrough him. For the first time since he had been a tiny orphaned owlet, he was separated from his dearest friend. It was as if an irreplaceable part of him had been removed. Might as well cut out my gizzard, he thought. He turned his head completely backward so the others would not see him weeping.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The Pirates’ Lair
    M ost peculiar, Gylfie thought. The pirate who had snatched her now released her from his talons, and Gylfie was flying, although it seemed to require very little effort. And yet escape, she soon realized, was impossible. She regarded the formation of the owls that surrounded her. The band had once done something similar to this for her when they were flying in very rough winds. They had created a still place amid them to block the heaviest winds. But this was something much more advanced. She began to realize that through this configuration of owls and the rhythmic beat of their wings, they had created a kind of vacuum that literally sucked Gylfie along, leaving no possibility for escape.
    Truly an airtight prison. Clever. Very clever. Gylfie felt a very deep tremor shake her gizzard. This did not bode well. She had hoped that these owls would not be so clever; that she would have a chance to outwit them. But any owl who could invent this flying vacuum was not dumb. Well, shewould just have to quietly observe them. Listen and watch. Even though they spoke a very rough kind of Krakish, Gylfie was surprised how much she understood. Her Krakish must have improved quite a bit from the time she had spent in the retreat of the Glauxian Brothers.
    They had been flying now for a while, and the night had begun to fade. Gylfie took a fix on the last of the stars and the position of the rising sun and knew that they were flying in a northeasterly direction. She figured that they were somewhere between the Bitter Sea and the Bay of Fangs. Beneath them, the ice fields spread out. They had definitely left the Everwinter Sea behind them. As she looked down in the growing light of the dawn, she could tell that the cracks in the ice fields were a