Guardians of Ga'Hoole 06 - The Burning

tall trees he had hatched, in a glimmering time when the seconds slow between the last minute of the old year and the first of the new, and the forest on this night was sheathed in ice.”
    “Otulissa,” Gylfie said slowly. “Are you thinking what I am thinking?”
    “That this is the very place where Hoole was hatched?”
    “These are the only trees we’ve seen since before the Ice Narrows.”
    “Gylfie, you must be right! And, of course, it makes perfect sense that the Glauxian Brothers would have their retreat here…Why…why…Gylfie, they must have theoriginal manuscripts. Oh! Oh, I can’t wait! Oh, my brain might burst in anticipation!”
    I doubt it, Gylfie thought to herself.
    It was considered summer in the Northern Kingdoms. So the forest was not sheathed in ice as it was when Hoole had hatched. But still there were patches of snow on the ground. The first pink streaks of dawn were just washing across the sky. The trees were the straightest trees Gylfie had ever seen. They were fir trees and their needles and bark looked inky black against the pale dawn. They appeared to grow so thickly that, at first, the two owls wondered how they would ever pass through them. But they realized as they descended that the trees were not as close together as they had thought. Shafts of light pierced the forest and everything seemed to sparkle and glisten. The droplets of water on the needles refracted the light, splitting it up into countless little beams. It felt as though they were flying through a jeweled web of light and dew.
    “How will we ever find the retreat?” Otulissa asked.
    “Beats me,” Gylfie replied.
    “Well, you’re the navigator.”
    “Flight navigator. The sky. The stars. Not land navigation.” Gylfie swiveled her head, looking for any sign that might indicate where the Glauxian Brothers might dwell.They flew on, lacing their way through the magical forest web. After nearly an hour, they came to a place where the trees thinned out and Gylfie spotted something ahead that intrigued her. “Let’s land in that next tree,” she whispered to Otulissa.
    The two young owls perched on a slender branch. “Look over there,” Gylfie whispered. Otulissa blinked. Through the fir trees were the whitest birch trees either one of them had ever seen. The trees grew in a circle, a perfect circle. And then, if one peered really hard, as Gylfie was now doing, there was something else.
    “That’s an owl,” Gylfie whispered to Otulissa.
    “Where? I don’t see an owl.”
    “Over there, a few inches in front of that trunk.” Gylfie pointed with one talon to indicate the tree she was looking at.
    “I don’t see—” Otulissa started to say, but then interrupted herself. “Wait. Great Glaux, it’s a Snowy Owl.”
    And there was not just one Snowy but a half dozen standing sentry, their white plumage with the occasional dark spots blending in perfectly with the white-barked trees behind them. Gylfie and Otulissa had arrived at the retreat of the Glauxian Brothers.

CHAPTER FIVE
Firth of Fangs
    T he name disturbs me,” Digger said, looking down at the narrow finger of water they were following.
    “What name?” Soren asked.
    “This place where we are—the Firth of Fangs. Fangs…well, you know—none of us has the fondest memories of them.”
    “Oh, that bobcat,” Twilight replied dismissively. When the band of four had been on their long journey to the Great Ga’Hoole Tree, they had a most unfortunate encounter with a fiendishly ravenous bobcat. Digger, Soren, and Gylfie had never seen such long and horrible fangs. Twilight, however, claimed to have seen many in his day. Having been orphaned almost immediately after hatching, Twilight had brought himself up, taught himself how to fly, and lived a lifetime full of awesome danger and adventure almost before he had even molted his first set of feathers.
    “ That bobcat, you say? I seem to remember, Twilight,that you didn’t exactly find it a soothing experience,” Soren spoke up now. Sometimes Soren found Twilight’s complete denial of fear more irritating than his boasting.
    “Not soothing, exactly,” Twilight replied, “but I can’t think of the word right now.”
    “Bracing, perhaps? Stimulating?” Digger said. “As in ‘gets your blood going, sends a refreshing quiver through the old gizzard’?”
    “Exactly. That’s it!” Twilight replied, and Soren thought that Digger was sometimes just too nice.
    “Well, let me tell