Guardians of Ga'Hoole 06 - The Burning

you,” Digger continued. “There is scant difference between a bracing feeling and a terrifying one. Fangs more than six inches long scare the be-Glaux out of me. And I cannot help but think that this Firth of Fangs place must have been named that for a reason. I only hope that the trip to seek out Moss, this old warrior friend of Ezylryb’s, will be worth it.”
    “Well, Digger,” Eglantine, who had been flying in between Twilight and the Burrowing Owl, began to speak quietly, “technically a firth is a long narrow body of water, an indentation in the seacoast.”
    “Good grief! If I didn’t know better I would have thought it was Otulissa speaking. No, Eglantine, it’s not the ‘firth’ part that bothers me. It’s definitely the ‘fang’ part.”
    “But have you ever considered, Digger, that the firthmight be called a fang because it is long and curved like a fang?” Eglantine flew closer to him as she posed the question.
    “Oh, that’s a thought. Its shape…”
    But before the Burrowing Owl could look to confirm this, Soren let loose with a gizzard-piercing shriek as only a Barn Owl can.
    “What is it?” Digger said. But then they all saw where Soren was looking—straight down. Several late-summer ice floes that had broken off the winter pack ice bobbed peacefully in the waters of the firth. But from one ice floe, clearly visible in the moonlight, gushed a stream of blood. An immense white beast like none they had ever seen was tearing something apart. It tipped its head back. Its immense fangs were bright with blood, and in its claws it held the squirming body of a seal.
    “Want to say hello to those fangs, Twilight?” Digger asked. “And with those claws it might provide a truly bracing experience!” The fangs were clearly longer than six inches.
    Eglantine cried. “Look, I think that seal’s baby is crying on the next floe! We’ve got to help that poor thing!”
    “Mammish! Mammish!” wailed the small gray seal.
    “We’ve gotta help!” Eglantine cried again. Soren’s sister, Eglantine, the youngest and least experienced of all theowls, began a spiraling descent toward the floe where the baby seal wailed. The others followed. But by the time they arrived, she was already standing on the floe trying to calm the baby.
    “It doesn’t speak Hoolian, and I can’t remember any Krakish,” Eglantine said rather desperately.
    “Umm, umm…” Soren was grasping for the proper Krakish words. How he wished Otulissa were here. She was the only one who was fluent. The rest of them could manage only a few choppy phrases and random words. But Soren began. “Baby be all right! Baby be all right!” He looked around anxiously. The flow of blood from the seal’s mother had dyed the water around them red. Twilight was transfixed. “I think it’s a bear—a white bear.”
    “A polar bear?” Digger asked.
    “Yes, that’s it, I think,” Twilight said.
    “Oh, Great Glaux,” Digger sighed. “Now we know why this place is called the Firth of Fangs. I’ve read that polar bears are the biggest carnivores on Earth.”
    “And we are a floating meat market here,” Soren said tensely as the floe with the bear drifted closer and closer.
    “They are swimmers, too—powerful swimmers,” Digger said with a tremor in his voice.
    “But can they fly?” Twilight said. “I suggest we get out of here quickly.”
    “But what about the baby?” Eglantine said in a pleading voice. The baby was now making quite a racket. “We can’t leave the baby.” Eglantine was crying almost as hard as the baby seal.
    Suddenly, there was a tremendous bump and the owls and the seal skidded to the other edge of the ice floe. The polar bear’s floe had crashed into them. The bear stopped gorging for the moment and lifted its face. In the moonlight it was an awesome sight. Its pure white muzzle was now stained with blood. It tipped its head back. “Arrrrraggggh!” It was a roar that shook the ice, the sea, not to mention the owls’ gizzards.
    No translation needed, Soren thought. They had to get out of here. They had to save themselves. The baby seal was a lost cause. He raised his wings and began to flap them. The others did as well. All except for Eglantine, who staunchly stood her ground—or rather her ice—on her freezing-cold talons.
    “Eglantine, fly up here this minute. That’s an order,” Soren shreed down at her.
    “I’m not going to leave her, Soren. I’m not.”
    “Eglantine, I am the