Guardians of Ga'Hoole 13 - The River of Wind

her body. “I don’t know what happened. It was before the weather turned so bad. She just vanished.” The young Pygmy Owl was hiccuping and sobbing so much her words were hardly understandable.
    “Calm down!” Eglantine ordered. Blythe and Bash were wailing and clutching their mum, burying themselves in her belly feathers.
    “When did you notice she was gone?” Primrose demanded.
    “Uh…uh…” Fritha hesitated.
    “What were your bearings?” Silence.
    Eglantine stepped up to the quivering Pygmy Owl who had wilfed to half her normal size. “Fritha, you are the best of Gylfie’s navigation students. You must know your bearings.”
    “I think we were about three points east of Declan.” Declan was the third star in the third rear toe on the starboard side of the Golden Talons.
    “And what was your position north or south?” Eglantine pressed.
    “Maybe four points south of Triga.” Triga was a star in a front toe on the same side of the Golden Talons.
    “I’m going out to search,” Pelli announced.
    “You will do no such thing.” Eglantine planted herself in front of Pelli. “Primrose and I know how to conduct a search in this kind of weather. Your place is here with your chicks.”
    “Stay, Mum, stay! Don’t leave us!” Blythe and Bash cried.
    “Yes,” said Pelli quietly. “Yes, you are right.”
    “Now, don’t worry,” Primrose said. “We’ll find her. Remember, Eglantine and I wound up being double chawed, in search-and-rescue and tracking. That was Ezylryb’s idea, shortly before he died. So we both know the crucial wind patterns when the squalls come in from this direction. We’re well trained for this situation, Pelli.”
    Pelli closed her eyes. Situation! How has my darling Bell become a situation? How do I tell Soren? She cut off the thought almost immediately.
    There had been scuppers and baggywrinkles in this gale. One minute, Bell had been dancing—doing the hurly-burly, in fact, the very dance that she had always heard the weather-interpretation chaw owls gabbling about—and then something happened. It was as if the central trough of the gale collapsed. The scuppers fell through and she with them. Her gizzard turned to stone, and she felt like it was dropping out of her, but then suddenly there was a warm draft and she had been sucked straight up. She bounced mercilessly at the top of this strange warm air. It was useless to try to fly, but Bell felt herself blown relentlessly in one direction. Was this a hurricane? Shouldn’t be, at this time of year. But maybe it was. All the horrible stories of owls caught in the rim of ahurricane’s eye, never escaping, sent agonizing surges through Bell’s gizzard. Suddenly, from nowhere, she felt a powerful whack on the back of her head. That was almost the last thing she remembered. Then she was spinning, and then there was nothing.

CHAPTER SEVEN
The Tomorrow Line
    T he Chaw of Chaws had never been this far west in the Beyond as they headed to the remote inlet of the Unnamed Sea, where they believed they would find the source of a windkin. They hoped this windkin, if they could negotiate it, would ultimately lead to the high stream of wind that would carry them to the sixth kingdom. An undeniable tension now seized the eight owls. They chatted nervously of everything but that which they feared most—the unknown that lay ahead, and the loss of the familiar world they were leaving behind, perhaps never to see again.
    “Say that word once more, Otulissa,” Martin asked.
    “Jouzho.”
    “And it means ‘Middle Kingdom’?” Twilight, who had never had any interest in any foreign language, suddenly seemed fascinated by Jouzhen, the language of the sixth kingdom.
    “Not exactly. ‘Jouzho’ means ‘middle,’ and then whenyou add the suffix ‘kyn,’ it means Middle Kingdom. Together, Jouzhenkyn.” Otulissa, of course, had gotten her talons on every scrap that had anything to do with the language of the Middle Kingdom. She had kept Bess up often until well past midday with her questions, and together they had compiled a dictionary of sorts. If anyone could learn a language fast, it was Otulissa. Years before, she had almost mastered Krakish by the time of their first journey to the Northern Kingdoms. “It’s not a phonetic language exactly,” she said.
    “How can you tell, if you’ve never heard it spoken?” Digger asked.
    “Well, I just sense it. You know, when you’ve done as much language study as I have you