Guardians of Ga'Hoole 13 - The River of Wind

kingdom’s language. And this much I know. They are not words of any other creatures but owls.” The owls nodded. They believed her. Still, it was staggering. What would these owls be like? What would they think of Hoolian owls? Were they hugely intelligent, far more intelligent than the owls of their own Five Kingdoms? There was a vast sea between the known world of the owls and this Middle Kingdom. So inaccessible was the Middle Kingdom that it might as well be a star in the Golden Talons. And now they were being told that owls were there.
    “I think the part that perplexes us all the most,” Digger began slowly, contemplating every word, “is that you say we can fly there. That it is within wingreach. It’s hard toimagine flying over an ocean as vast as the Unnamed Sea. Did you find islands on the charts? Places we can rest?” he asked.
    “No, none at all.” Once more she dipped into the botkin with her talon, and took out a fatter scroll. With great care, she unrolled the parchment. It had no writing but just a series of wavy lines. “No islands, just air currents.”
    “Air currents?” Otulissa said.
    “I found this chart quite a while ago. But I had no idea what it meant. Well, that is not quite true. I sensed it could have something to do with wind—airflow and the like—but it was incomprehensible. Not just a puzzle, but a maze. A labyrinth of wind. But some of these might be windkins.”
    “Windkins! You don’t say!” Otulissa said. A windkin was a companion air current for another wind from an opposite quadrant. The two winds worked together in strange but complementary ways. Otulissa peered closer. Her beak was tracing the wavy lines. “Yes, definitely a windkin, and I can tell you exactly where this windkin is.”
    “You can?” said Soren.
    “Yes.” Otulissa hopped over to a perch by an immense map of the five known kingdoms of the owl world. “I believe it is a companion to this one.” She pointed with along talon to a remote firth in the Northern Kingdoms. “You see, they fit together like interlocking teeth—if they were together, that is. But they’re not. They’ve split apart. This is the companion windkin to the one on the fragment.”
    “That’s near the Firth of Grundenspyrr!” Soren said. “The home of Theo, the first blacksmith.”
    “Exactly.”
    “And if we draw a line to the opposite quadrant we will find that the windkin that Bess has shown us on this fragment is right here.” She traced a line across and then her talon stopped at a point on the far northwest coast of Beyond the Beyond. “Look. There is even an inlet here similar in shape to the Firth of Grundenyspyrr right on the edge of the Unnamed Sea.”
    “But we all have at one time or another flown in that region of the Northern Kingdoms. Why have we missed that windkin all these years?” Gylfie asked.
    “It’s at a very high altitude,” Otulissa explained. “And perhaps when we were there, we experienced some remnant downdrafts, but they would not have seemed all that different from any other downdrafts. I knew about windkins because once, years ago, I decided to do some extra-credit work for Ezylryb in the weather-interpretation chaw and learned about them that way.”
    The members of the Band exchanged quick glances. Typical! they all thought. As a young student in the weather-interpretation chaw, Otulissa was always doing extra-credit work.
    “But what does this all mean?” Ruby asked.
    “It means that there is a way across the Unnamed Sea,” Otulissa said.
    “But it’s huge! It’s so vast, it would take days of flying,” Martin said.
    “Not with a windkin stream. We’ll hardly have to flap a wing, once we find the central stream. You see, the shortest distance between two points, even two very far points, is not always the fastest route. And that is the beauty of a windkin trough. But before you actually find that trough, or center stream, it is sort of like being tossed around in a maze, flying these windkins. It can be very rough. I mean, if there were just a…a…” Otulissa was searching for a word.
    “A key?” Bess said with great excitement.
    “Yes, a key,” Otulissa replied.
    “Then, that is what this must be! I felt it had something to do with these air currents.” Bess reached with her talon into the bottom of the botkin. She held up a small fragment of parchment. “This,” she said, “unlocks themaze—a maze of wind far above the vast sea that must be