Guardians of Ga'Hoole 13 - The River of Wind

“You know I’ve never thought I would enjoy tea in this cup again after…after…” She hesitated. “After all the trouble during the time of the Golden Tree. But honestly, I have never enjoyed tea in this cup so much.”
    “Why’s that, my dear?”
    “It’s simple, Docky. Sharing it with you makes all the difference.”
    Just at that moment something hurled into the hollow.
    “Help! I need your help, Doc, right now!”
    Doc Finebeak, Madame Plonk, and blind Octaviagaped at the mass of heaving feathers that was Pelli, the mate of Soren. “My chick,” Pelli sobbed. “She’s gone!”
    Perhaps Octavia was the most stunned of all as, through wrenching sobs, Pelli told the story of what had happened to dear Bell, the spirited little daughter of Soren. I should have felt it coming, Octavia thought to herself. What’s happening to me? I should have known that an agitated mother owl was flying directly into this hollow—headwinds or not. My sense for vibrations isn’t worth two pellets these days.
    “Now, calm yourself, my dear,” Doc Finebeak was saying as Madame Plonk ran her beak through Pelli’s flight feathers. They were littered with debris from flying through dirty weather at reckless speeds. “Are the other B’s all right?”
    “Oh, yes, thank Glaux. They are fine. They flew home beautifully. But little Bell. She’s so tiny.” Pelli gulped and tried to swallow her sobs. “You will go look for her, won’t you, Doc?”
    “How could you ever doubt that I would do anything but go? I shall leave immediately. This headwind that you encountered will be a tailwind for me and get me there in no time.”
    He turned to Octavia. “Octavia, my feather, please.” He paused. “Ah, you already have it!”
    Yes, she thought. At least she had anticipated this, beenright in her instincts that Doc Finebeak would, as he said, leave immediately. The black feather was that of a crow. Doc Finebeak was both loved and feared by crows, and many years before had brokered a bargain with these bullies of the sky who delighted in mobbing owls during lightday. The black crow feather that topped his white plumage gave him a pass to fly anywhere, any hour of the day or night, free from the threat of crows.
    So handsome, Madame Plonk thought as she watched him fly off into the darkening night.

CHAPTER NINE
The River of Wind
    O h, you’ll know it, Soren, don’t worry. You’ll know it when you get there. He certainly did know it. Mrs. Plithiver’s words ran through his head now. One moment the world had been suffused with the light of day, and the next it was the pitch of night. The blackness had slammed down upon them like one of Bubo’s hammers on the anvil. The stars were like sparks from hot iron being struck. They had arrived at the tomorrow line. No gaudy sunset dissolving slowly into First Lavender. No creeping gray before First Black. They were just there—into tomorrow.
    “Uh…” Martin said. “We’re at the tomorrow line, right, Mrs. P.?”
    “Yes, dear. Quite dramatic, isn’t it?”
    “I would say that’s an understatement,” Otulissa replied. Did Soren detect in her voice a whiff of disdain?
    Mrs. P. leaned over and whispered in Soren’s ear slit. “You know Otulissa. She prefers logic to intuition. She isvery distrustful of these leaps over reasoning. She has such an orderly mind.”
    “Yes,” Soren agreed. “So what do we do now?”
    Mrs. Plithiver made her coil tighter and rose slightly higher on Soren’s back so she could address the owls. “Well, my dears…”
    “I wish she wouldn’t call us that,” Otulissa muttered to Twilight. “I find it demeaning.”
    “Oh, put a mouse in it, Otulissa,” Twilight huffed. “She’s always called us ‘dear’ and ‘dearie.’ It’s her way.”
    Mrs. Plithiver continued. “I think that key of yours might work now, Otulissa. I think it just might,” Mrs. Plithiver said encouragingly.
    “Terrific. Let me read the temperascope gauge and then…” She had not even finished the sentence when a slashing wind out of nowhere nearly whipped the device from her talons. This was followed by an onslaught of buffeting winds from all directions.
    “Great Glaux!” Soren cried out. “We’re in the windkins. Climb!”
    These were winds like none they had ever experienced, not even the Shredders, those winds that savaged the border between the canyonlands and the Shadow Forest, which few owls except for the Guardians dared to fly.
    “The