Guardians of Ga'Hoole 13 - The River of Wind

temperature is falling!” Otulissa shouted out. “We must fly up. The symbol on the key says ‘up’ when air cools.”
    “Key! Key!” screeched Ruby. “Racdrops! Only flying is going to get us out of this.” But Ruby herself, the greatest flier in the five known kingdoms, was struggling hard.
    “There’s a thermal upswing. I’m feeling it,” Otulissa cried out. “Banking turn to starboard.”
    Crosscurrents, downdrafts, updrafts, wind pits, and thermal upswings whirled together violently to form a deadly vortex of winds.
    “Stick close to us, Gylfie and Martin!” Soren called out. Together, Twilight and Soren had made a kind of storm kronkenbot, which they had used in the past to help protect tiny owls like Gylfie and Martin in violent weather. Mrs. P. herself tightened up her coil, but it was all she could do to keep from flopping around. Never had she experienced anything like this! Oh, maybe snakes really do belong on the ground, she thought. Why do we blind snakes always long for the yonder, the sky? Would that I were a simpler reptile!
    “Oh, Great Glaux!” Ruby gave a terrifying shriek. “It’s the tumblebones!” Flying out ahead of the others, she had just spotted a bird skull. With a bit of flesh and feather still attached, it appeared half mummified.
    “Down! Down! Down!” Otulissa shouted. “Down, or we’re dead!” The eight owls plunged at terrifying speeds, faster, even, than a kill spiral.
    Do I have a gizzard? Mrs. Plithiver thought. I swear it feels as if a gizzard’s bouncing up to my head.
    “Catch her!” Soren screamed.
    “Oh, Great Glaux in glaumora! I’m flying and I have no wings!” Mrs. P.’s hiss seared the air as she felt her oncetight coil unfurl. The soft feathers of Soren’s ruff were gone. She was tumbling through the lacerating winds. “Oh, Glaux,” she called out. “Another tumblebones!” A great blue heron, belly up, wings down, its face a death mask of unending agony, sailed by. Then she felt something clamp down on her.
    “Great catch, Digger!” Twilight shouted.
    “Brilliant,” Ruby called out.
    But Digger nearly went yeep. He began to plunge farther as he spied a piece of Mrs. P. go spinning off in the wind.
    Mrs. Plithiver instantly knew what had happened as she hung from Digger’s mouth. “Don’t worry, Digger. Just a piece of my tail. Don’t need it. I’m not a rattler.”
    “We’re almost through the windkin,” Otulissa gasped. “Just one more thermal layer to go through.”
    “Count off!” Coryn ordered. It had been decided before they left that immediately following a dangerous situation, they would count off to make sure all members of the expedition were accounted for by calling out their own names in alphabetical order.
    “Coryn—here!”
    “Digger—here!”
    “Gylfie—here!”
    “Martin—here!”
    “Otulissa—here!”
    “Mrs. P.—mostly here!”
    “Ruby—here!”
    “Soren—here!”
    “Twilight—here!”
    “Alter course!” Otulissa shouted. “Wings about! Hard alee!” This was the command for making a 180-degree turn. “Now, up and over the last ridge of the windkins!” Otulissa shouted triumphantly as she confirmed the last temperature change with the key now emblazoned forever in her brain. The owls, their plummels stripped from their wings’ edges, staggered over this last rung of the violent windkin ladder and now tumbled gently into a soft, swift current of air untroubled by crosswinds.
    It was perhaps ironic that it was Mrs. Plithiver, anon-flying reptile, who named this tantalizing current the River of Wind. But the name stuck. Each one of the eight owls would describe differently that fabulous moment when they first encountered the River of Wind. In the beginning, it was just rills, tiny streamlets that ran off the river that brushed their wing tips and ruffled their remaining plummels like mere whispers. But then the owls were pulled into the flow, into the very center of the main current. At times it was boisterous, but more often than not, calm and gentle, and always swift.
    The feeling of traveling in this current reminded Gylfie of a pale gray satin ribbon that Trader Mags had once brought for bartering. She had wanted it, but Madame Plonk had outbid her. The Snowy would fly with it on special occasions, and it would unfurl behind her, smooth and languid in the wind. But its texture was what had intrigued Gylfie. It was like touching the softest cool breeze. And for her that was