Guardians of Ga'Hoole 09 - The First Collier

of the sea-washed caves of an upper firth where a warm current helped keep the water fairly free of ice. Myrrthe had been scouring the coast for just this sort of refuge as they flew well up into the Firth of Fangs.
    “Anything yet?” Siv gasped.
    “Nothing so far, milady.” Myrrthe angled her wings and turned into a narrow inlet, which she believed was called the Firthkin of N’or, and which pierced far into the Hrath’ghar glacier. It was a narrow, deep channel. It rarelyfroze except in the very coldest weather, and yet, because of the odd currents, icebergs occasionally floated through it.
    “Milady!” Myrrthe suddenly said. “Would you consider sheltering on an iceberg?”
    “My dear Myrrthe.” Siv’s voice had become low and guttural. The words tore from her beak, jagged and nearly incomprehensible. But despite her pain, she managed to maintain a sense of humor. “At this moment, I would consider anything, even a seagull’s nest!”
    Myrrthe blinked in astonishment. The notion of this regal queen occupying the same quarters as a wet pooper was beyond the bizarre.
    “That shan’t be necessary, milady.”
    Myrrthe peered down and briefly studied the iceberg they were flying over. There were overhanging beaks of ice undercut with shelves that might offer up caves. At this point, however, there was little choice. Myrrthe knew that she had to get Siv to a roosting spot quickly. And her own wings ached. Her refined feather adjustments were becoming sloppier by the second. It was imperative that they find something now.
    “All right,” she announced. “We’re going down. Stay in position, milady. Don’t move.”
    “I doubt that I’m going anywhere, Myrrthe.”
    The berg was an amazing creation. It was, as Siv wouldlater say, “the berg of all bergs,” so intricately carved by sea and wind and currents, it was a veritable labyrinth of ice and water. A perfect refuge.
    “This is it!” Siv gasped as they landed. “I know it in my gizzard. I know it in my plummels, or what’s left of them!”
    It did not take Myrrthe long to find the perfect cavern. Washed by the jade-green waters of the firthkin, it offered an ideal defense against the hagsfiends. Here, Siv knew she could wait and heal. But wait for what? she wondered. The hatching of a chick she might never see, in a distant place she knew not where, in a schneddenfyrr that she had not made? She told herself that she must not dwell on such matters. Healing was her first task. If she could not heal, she was useless to her chick—if, indeed, she should ever meet the hatchling—and useless to her kingdom.
    Her port wing was a wreckage of fractured shafts and feathers. The flight feathers on it were gone, the secondaries almost demolished.
    Myrrthe immediately sprang into action. She had to stop that bleeding. So taking talonsful of snow and ice, she packed Siv’s wound.
    “That feels good,” Siv said. “But do you think I’ll ever fly again?”
    “Of course, milady. Just think of this as a violent molt.”
    If Siv hadn’t been in such excruciating pain, she might have laughed. “More snow, Myrrthe. It numbs the pain.”
    “Yes, dear, I know. And ice will even be better.”
    The ice did begin to relieve the agony. The bleeding stopped. “Do you remember your first molt, Myrrthe?” Siv asked.
    “My first molt. Oh, my goodness, milady. I am so old. How could I ever remember back that far?”
    “But it must be interesting for a Snowy because you might not even notice it, what with all your white feathers and all the snow and ice of the N’yrthghar.” Siv’s voice was growing thick.
    “You forget, madam, that when we are hatchlings, we are not yet pure white. We’re rather sooty in appearance, if anything.”
    “I remember my first real molt.” Siv’s speech was slow and dreamy. “I don’t count the ones when my down fell off. I was barely old enough to remember. But the first real one—Great Glaux, I was so shocked. Here, I had just fledged and really mastered flight. I felt so grown up after months of being a hatchling with all that patchy fluff. I had just begun to enjoy my plummels, primaries,secondaries, and my lovely lulus, when all of a sudden, there was a gorgeous tawny brown feather on the ground.” Siv’s speech slurred a bit.
    “Time to rest, dear. You must rest.”
    “Yes…I must rest.”
    “Remember your great-aunt Agatha. She got better, didn’t she?”
    “Yes, Aunt Agatha, of course.”
    Siv hadn’t