Guardians of Ga'Hoole 13 - The River of Wind

domestic servants in the hollows of owls—had superb sensibilities. It was as if with the loss of their sight, the other senses of these snakes had been honed like the edge of a blade to an extraordinary keenness. Mrs. Plithiver, the nest-maid snake who had served Soren since his hatching, was no exception. Of all the nest-maid snakes in the tree, she perhaps had the most finely tuned sensibilities.
    A pale lavender light began to suffuse the dining hall, and as the nest-maid snakes slithered in with the tweener food on their backs—the nut cups of milkberry tea and boneless roasted late-winter mice stuffed with dried caterpillars—Mrs. Plithiver immediately sensed anagitation among the Band, indeed the entire Chaw of Chaws, as they had gathered around her. She served at the table for the Chaw of Chaws, and she knew that something was up. She tensed the muscles behind the slight depressions where her eyes would have been and she began to get glimmerings. The muscles that sheathed the stem glands of nest-maid snakes were the source of the snakes’ delicate perceptions, according to Otulissa, who had studied the physiology of blind snakes. She had even written a treatise objecting to the lumping together of blind snakes with other reptiles, who were so often characterized as being animals with “primitive systems.”
    Even before the owls gathered around her, Mrs. P. had a very clear sense that they had once again received a message of some sort from that place , as she thought of it. She could almost smell it. She remembered the first time the Band had come back from it, when they were youngsters: the damp mossy smell, and the mineral tang of stone—stone that never dried or felt the heat of the sun. Over the years, the Band had made many furtive visits and when they returned there was always this wet-moss scent mixed with ever-wet stone. Then, just the day before, when she had gone into Otulissa’s hollow, she detected the same smell despite the rather robust fire in Otulissa’sgrate. Something had come from that place —a letter perhaps. Or maybe a visitor had just been there. No matter, the scent lingered on.
    There were, of course, many strange places within the kingdoms of owls, ranging from the volcanic lands of Beyond the Beyond to the glaciers of the Northern Kingdoms. But this place was of neither ice nor of fire. It seemed to Mrs. P. that there was something more telling than a mere scent. There was a feeling, like relic vibrations of a deep thrumming, which still reverberated when she had entered Otulissa’s hollow that day with some milkberry tea. And that place seemed to have a tinge about it, a tincture of something she didn’t know or quite understand. Could it be something to do with the Others? Was it somehow akin to the vague Other-ish tingle she felt around the oddments that Trader Mags brought to the tree? Mrs. Plithiver, completely absorbed in her own thoughts, was paying very little attention to the silly blather at the table, which she had decided early on was a cover for what these owls really wanted to talk about. It was this unspoken conversation that was the source of a new agitation, an intense excitement that she sensed among the owls. It was so obvious they had something else on their minds.
    “Fancy. Cook’s getting too fancy,” Twilight was saying.“Stuffed mouse? Why does a mouse have to be stuffed, and the bones served on the side with this honey dipping sauce?”
    “Yeah, I agree,” said Digger. “Imagine what Ezylryb would say about this fancy fare.”
    “Oh, he wouldn’t permit it,” Otulissa replied. “We always had to eat our meat raw on the night of weather-interpretation or colliering flights.”
    “What do you mean, ‘had to’?” Soren protested. “ I still insist on it.” Soren was now the leader of both the colliering chaw and the weather-interpretation chaw.
    “Well, we better get back to raw mice if we’re going to go to this—” Twilight started and stopped suddenly.
    Otulissa delivered a swift kick to the Great Gray’s foot. “You are so indiscreet,” she hissed.
    “Indiscreet is my middle name,” Twilight replied blithely.
    It was the vibrations from the kick that set off sparks that burst like a supernova throughout Mrs. P.’s so-called primitive reptilian system. I’ve got it!
    “I want to go, Soren,” Mrs. P. said in her direct manner.
    Soren was simply stupefied. Mrs. P. was suspended from the empty perch usually occupied by