The River of Wind (6 page)

B
ut your feathers—why are they blue?” Bell asked as she finished a winter-skinny mouse. Normally, she would have scoffed at such fare. But this was the first food she had eaten since she had been spun out of the scuppers of the gale. Until now she had been too weak to eat anything of substance at all.

“And why are
your
feathers brown and the ones on your face white?” the blue owl replied. Striga’s Hoolian had become more fluent as Bell, despite her condition, asked endless questions.

“Because my mum’s and da’s are,” she answered.

The blue owl churred softly.

“Oh, I get it!” Bell said, her dark eyes sparkling. “Your mum and da were blue. So that’s why you’re blue.” She seemed momentarily satisfied with this answer. But then the tiny delicate feathers on her brow began to pucker up.
Oh, dear. Here comes another question,
the blue owl thought.

“But I’ve never seen a blue owl before.”

“I think there must be a lot you haven’t seen,” the blue owl replied.

Bell nodded thoughtfully. “I guess so.” There was another pause. “Is there a lot you haven’t seen?”

“Well, I am older, of course. So I have seen more.”
But,
he thought,
I have never seen a black-eyed owl.
He resisted saying this, however. In this part of the world it would open up too many questions.

“Tell me, what have you seen?” Bell asked.

The blue owl sighed. He had seen so much but yet so little. There was no way he could explain. He believed she was what they called in this world a Barn Owl. He had found that with this inquisitive little owl it was best to answer her questions with as few words as possible. It was better to just let her fill in with her own notions and ideas. It had actually worked quite well. First, the little owl whose name was Bell had quite by accident given him a name. When she had asked what he was he had merely answered with the generic name “Striga,” which he knew his kind was called. She had assumed it was his personal name, and the blue owl loved it immediately that Bell had thus named him. He much preferred the name Striga to his real name, Orlando, which had always irked him. It
was one of those fussy, overly fancy, typical court names. Through such conversations, the blue owl was never really forced to lie outright.

Bell began to make assumptions derived from the short answers he gave her. He had artfully led her into believing that he was from a very remote part of the Northern Kingdoms and was a Glauxian Brother. Talking passed the time, and she was a pleasant little owl. Her port wing was badly damaged, and he knew it would be quite a while before Bell could fly home. And she did miss her home. She often woke up in the middle of the day crying for her mum or da or her two sisters. The blue owl had become quite fond of the little one. He would be sad to see her leave. He assumed that some owl would come looking for her. He liked to hear her talk of the great tree, but often it caused her to cry. He believed it was the very same tree he had heard of in whispers back home about what were called the Theo Papers.

He now heard a fluttering outside the tree hollow as the little owlet ate the skinny mouse he had brought her. He went to the rim of the hollow and peered out. He had had a feeling for a night or more that there was something out there, someone watching this hollow. But all was still.
It must be my imagination. Besides, I’m tired. So very tired.
He had arrived only a few nights before from the terminus of
the Zong Phong. It was amazing that he had found his way out of it at this end, for there were no qui guides, but the windkins did not seem as fierce here. He simply had been dumped out of it unceremoniously, onto the shores of the Guanjho-Noh. He then had to fly what seemed like a much longer flight than the one he had just completed to get to this forest. And face it, owls of his background were not much good at flying. Riding the Zong Phong was one thing, but flying without a current to carry one along was quite another. He had only just arrived in the midst of a gale when Bell had fallen from the sky. His recollections were interrupted again by a sound close by. He was right. Someone was watching them.

“I don’t believe it!” An owl with a huge face that gave the appearance of a ragged moon whispered to another Barn Owl with a large nick out of his beak. “A blue owl, I’ve never seen the likes.”

“Nor I, General Mam.”

“Nor I,” three other owls replied in turn. Two of these owls were Barn Owls, the other was a Burrowing Owl.

“What’s he got in there?”

“I think it’s a wounded young owl who got tossed about in that gale,” said the Burrowing Owl.

“You don’t think it’s one from those chawlet practices
you were monitoring, do you?” The owl with the huge face turned to the other three accompanying her.

The larger of the two Barn Owls replied, “Well, it’s a far piece from Silverveil to here in Ambala. But that gale was part of the westers, and its winds could have blown the young one this far. You never can tell.”

The moonfaced owl’s eyes gleamed darkly. “Stryker, are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Stryker was the only one of the three other owls who would know what she was suggesting. Of the three owls accompanying the moonfaced Barn Owl, only he had been in battle—not once but three times—against the Guardians of Ga’Hoole.

“Well, yes, ma’—I mean, General Mam. It’s almost too good to hope for.”

“This isn’t about hope, Stryker. This is about practical imagination. It’s about making things happen. Any fool can hope. But it takes brains to imagine. And if you can’t imagine, nothing will ever happen. I can make things happen. But I must admit, if it is indeed a Guardian owlet,” she let her voice dwindle to a lower whisper, “well, what sweet justice would be served.”

Nyra had not always felt the way she did about the role of imagination in her life. She had, in fact, thought it ridiculous and had often reprimanded her son, Nyroc
(now called Coryn), for wandering off into all sorts of imaginative channels. But that was before she had discovered
The Book of Kreeth
—the ancient hagsfiend from the primeval world of owls. In this book she had learned of things that were unimaginable to ordinary owls. But Kreeth had been no ordinary owl: She had been a hagsfiend.

“Huh? I mean, huh, General Mam?” Nyra had lost Stryker on the sweet justice part.

She shook her head and with great sneering disdain said, “Don’t you get it? They took my son. My chick. Now I will take theirs. And I do think it is theirs. I feel it in my gizzard. My gizzard’s been feeling a lot better lately. It must be that herb mixture that you’ve been getting for me.”

Stryker wilfed a bit. He didn’t want to tell her that the last time he had gone to the herbalist in Kuneer, an Elf Owl, he had had to rough the fellow up a bit to get the medicine.

The moonfaced owl, Nyra, was the supreme commander of the Pure Ones. Stryker was her top lieutenant, although she had recently been thinking about replacing him. After too long a time, things were again looking up for the Pure Ones. The alliance with the wolves had proved to be a mistake, but one learns from mistakes.
Stick to owls—down-and-out owls. A series of forest fires had also proved a boon for Nyra. Owl families had been split apart; orphans were available for the snatching. And what could be snatched at an early enough age could be trained, indoctrinated, gizzard-washed until they were pliant, docile, and perfect for her growing army of Pure Ones. Those who were not orphans but adults, hollowless adults who had been burned out of their homes and had lost their mates and families, could also be lured into the cadres of the Pure Ones, which offered support, the promise of leadership roles, and new responsibilities other than just the daily grind of providing fresh meat for one’s family. Many found this, if not a welcome change, at least a way to forget that once upon a time they’d even had families. Most were so grief-stricken that any memory of their former life was searingly painful.

So Nyra had offered an alternative: the Desert of Kuneer. No trees, no forest fires. When displaced owls asked where they would live, Nyra explained the joys of burrows, although cactus dwelling was available. It was the Burrowing Owl Tarn, a sergeant, whom she was thinking of to replace Stryker. Tarn had been the architect of the extensive burrow system in Kuneer. It was now inhabited by the largest force of Pure Ones Nyra had managed to muster in a long time. It would be tricky, though,
promoting Tarn, a non–Barn Owl, to such a high position. Technically, he was not a Pure One, but it was Tarn who had dug out their first encampment in a remote region in the Desert of Kuneer, supervised its continued expansion, and introduced them to the herbalist and healer Cuffyn, an Elf Owl. The odd but useful little owl lived in an immense cactus with several good-sized hollows, where he practiced medicinal arts.

So successful had Nyra’s recruitment campaign been that she had even set a few fires herself in service to her cause—the rebuilding of the Pure Ones’ empire. She liked to think of it as an “empire” although it had never been associated with any particular part of the owl kingdoms or geography for any length of time.
But things are going to be different now,
she thought as she watched the hollow where the peculiar blue owl tended some creature.
Yes, different!
And if her hunch was right, whatever was in that tree would be just what she needed to shift the winds completely in her favor. Nyra would wait and watch. According to Stryker, the blue owl was going out more often to hunt. Nyra would just wait and continue to watch patiently. Over time, she had learned patience, which had given her cunning an edge, tempered it to a fineness as deadly as the sharpest battle claws. And when the time was right, Nyra would strike.

F
ollowing the strings, the owls descended through layers of clouds that had streaked through the River of Wind. Soon they spied high, jagged mountains, range upon range of icy peaks that appeared to march across this new continent that had appeared where the sea ended. Their eyes were fixed on the mountains directly ahead, and they neglected to see that just beneath them another landscape began to appear through a scrim of mist that was tossed up by the sea. Cliffs of pink-and-gray-swirled stone cascaded into the clouds of vapor. Occasionally, a notch in the cliffs revealed pine forests and boughs of trees laden with snow.

“Look! Look!” Twilight said excitedly. “Look down there!” The eight owls looked in the direction that Twilight was indicating with his starboard wing tip. Perched on a high rock outcropping was a large bird. The strings they were following down all seemed to stream from this one bird. Occasionally he would lift up
into the air as if tugged by the contraptions at the sky end of the strings. As they descended, the owls could see that some of the strings were anchored to various rocks and the gnarled trunks of trees, many of which grew at odd angles from the rock outcropping. The bird was swooping back and forth, manipulating the various strings, when suddenly he grabbed what appeared to be a large hammer in his talons and flew up to a bronze disc that dangled from a vine. He hammered the disc and a resounding
gong
rang out, reverberating across the landscape to the distant mountains and causing clumps of snow to fall from the pine boughs.

“Welcome! Welcome! Hee naow, hee naow!”

“Oh, Glaux! He’s speaking Jouzhen…” Otulissa muttered. “Hee naow, zan li,” she answered.

“What’s she saying?” Gylfie hissed.

“This is so exciting!” Soren swiveled his head around, trying to take in everything all at once. There was so much to see. “Have you ever seen trees like these? I mean, they look like pine trees, but their trunks are as gnarled as an old owl’s talons.”

“But beautiful,” Gylfie said.

“Everything is so different,” Coryn said, his voice soft with wonder.

“Yes,” Digger replied. “Including that owl. He’s blue!”

Perhaps it was because everything did seem so different that at first they did not notice the strange hue of the owl flying before them, who was shouting with apparent great glee, “Hee naow! Welcome!” every few seconds.

“I mean, he is an owl, isn’t he?” Gylfie asked as she and the others alighted onto the rock ledge.

“Oh, yes, I am an owl. Welcome. I have been expecting you.”

They all blinked. “You have?” Otulissa said. The owl nodded. Otulissa then stepped forward and began to introduce herself and the rest with her rudimentary Middle Kingdom language skills. “Shing zao strezhing Ga’Hoole.”

“Oh, no need to speak Jouzhen. I have been studying Hoolian for many years in anticipation of this evening.” He spoke with a delightful musical cadence. Mrs. Plithiver found herself swaying to its rhythm as if she were entwined in the strings of the grass harp, awaiting her cue to jump an octave or two.

“So you are the owls of Ga’Hoole, and I am Tengshu, the qui dong of the cliffs of the luminous pearl gates to our kingdom. Here the Zong Phong ends and the Jouzhenkyn begins.”

“Qui dong?” Otulissa asked. “What is a ‘qui dong’?” The words sounded so basic, yet so important. She wondered
why she and Bess had not found them for the dictionary they had composed.

“Your interest in our language impresses me, pheng gwuil.”

Otulissa knew that “pheng” was the word for “honored,” and “gwuil” was the word for “guest.” “The word ‘dong,’” the owl continued, “is the word for ‘knower’ or ‘sage.’ But ‘qui’ is harder to explain in Hoolian, for I do not think you have such a contrivance,” he said, nodding toward the triangle and the string, which he was now winding in on a spool. As the colorful qui came closer, they saw that it was made of very thin parchment that had been decorated with beautiful designs.

“Contrivance?” Coryn asked.

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

Now they were all stunned. How did Tengshu know that Coryn was their king? Coryn made a point of never wearing any royal trappings, and he had even discarded the ceremonial cloaks that the old King Boron and Queen Baran had sometimes worn.

“But this contrivance,” Coryn persisted, “it might have an associated name that we may know.”

“But how could it have a name if it does not exist for you?” Tengshu asked.

Digger cocked his head. This was a most interesting
philosophical question. There could be no name if there was no object to be named, and the eight owls plus one nest-maid snake had never in all their days seen anything like this contrivance, this “qui,” as Tengshu called it.

“This one is called the qui of the dancing frog.”

What in the world were these qui contrivances for? Why was Tengshu blue? And how had he known they were coming? Questions swirled in the minds of the owls like the flurries of snow that had begun to blow.

“Come…come to my hollow.” Tengshu motioned to them and took the qui of the dancing frog in his talon with its string and tail neatly bound up. They followed him, flying through a narrow fissure between two sheer cliffs of stone. Beneath them as they flew, a valley opened out and the floor of this valley rose as they flew on, until it ended just beneath a series of ledges on which a small grove of trees grew.

“Trees growing out of rock,” Soren said. “I’ve never seen such a thing.”

“Oh, our trees are tough here. They can grow from anything,” Tengshu said.

It was in one of these tall, twisted, old trees that Tengshu the knower, the sage, lived. The owls of Ga’Hoole, however, were in for yet another surprise.
They could clearly see that the tree had hollows, but from its branches several platforms were suspended with vines.

Tengshu alighted on one of the platforms. The eight owls followed, stepping tentatively toward a small table already set with cups made from an odd material that they did not recognize. Mrs. Plithiver slithered off Soren’s back. She began to coil herself up and then slipped a bit awkwardly to one side. She was not accustomed to dealing with the shortened length of her body.

“Oh, pardon me,” she said softly. “Lost a bit of my tail. You know. Rough flight.”

Tengshu cocked his head. “I am sorry, but perhaps I can help you with that. I have some herbs that are quite good for healing breaks and ruptures of all sorts. The windkins can be hard, I know.”

“You can say that again,” Martin muttered under his breath.

“But the ones at this end of the stream are not so bad, are they?”

“Not bad at all,” Otulissa replied.

“You see, when you fly out of the main current, the Zong Phong, as we call it, it’s just an easy descent at this end. And my qui strings make for a good path. Now, excuse me for one moment, please.”

A few minutes later, Tengshu returned with a steaming bowl. “Mountain tea. And I beg your indulgence for just one more moment,” he said, setting down the bowl. He then returned with a second bowl and placed it next to Mrs. Plithiver. “Just put the end of your tail in that, madam, and I think you will find it quite soothing.” He then turned and said, “Welcome to my hollow.”

The owls nodded politely, but this wasn’t exactly a hollow.

Coryn stepped forward. He blinked. “First, we would like to present you with a gift from our side of the world, that of the Five Kingdoms. In one region, a special kind of moss is plentiful and is highly valued. We call it rabbit’s ear moss because it is as soft as the fur that grows inside the ears of rabbits. We hope you will enjoy it.” Coryn placed a botkin of the moss on the table.

“That is most kind of you, honorable owl of the Five Kingdoms.” The sage bowed deeply. “A bit of softness is always a welcome thing.”

Coryn continued, “We have seen many new things in the short time we have been here. Everything seems so new and different to us, and we have many questions. Can you tell us why you call this your hollow? We are not inside a tree but…but…” Coryn looked around. “This, I believe, is another object for which we might not
have the correct name. We would call this a platform. We have one for taking tea in the branches of the great tree.”

“It is a platform, you are right, and as you see, we are taking tea. But it is really my moon-viewing platform, and on the other side of the tree, from which I can see the Guanjho-Noh, is my wave-viewing platform.”

“Guanjho-Noh?” Otulissa asked. “‘Noh’ means ‘sea,’ doesn’t it?”

“Yes, indeed it does. It is the sea that lies between the Middle Kingdom and where you come from—the Fifth World of owls. ‘Guanjho’ means ‘vastness.’ We call it the Sea of Vastness. You are good with languages, I see,” he said, nodding at Otulissa.

“Yes. I am considered somewhat of a linguist.”

The seven other owls exchanged surreptitious glances.
Don’t get her going,
Soren thought.

“Now perch and have some tea.”

“If a simple nest-maid snake might ask a question, sir.” Mrs. Plithiver had suspended herself from one of the platform’s vines.

“Of course.”

“Well, being in the domestic arts, I notice that you serve your own tea. It’s really quite a nice spread you’ve laid out for us.” Indeed, there were tiny savory buns, and frogs that appeared to have been wrapped in little nets of
woven pine needles and then smoked. “I say, you do this all by yourself? No nest-maids?”

“I am self-sufficient, madam. I choose not to have any servants. I am what you might call, in your language, a hermit.” This term the owls did know. “I find that I can think better if I live a solitary life and one of simplicity.”

Gylfie looked down at the tightly bound smoked frogs in their beautifully woven pine-needle jackets.
You call this simple?
she thought.

“And you are,” Digger continued, “a knower of these qui contraptions?”

“Yes, and you must wonder what they are used for.” Once again the owls nodded. “They have a purpose and they have not,” Tengshu said cryptically. “You see, it is often for sheer joy that one flies a qui, and joy is not considered a practical thing in most societies—although I disagree. However, when I fly my qui I am most often seeking information.”

“Information?” Soren asked. “What kind of information?”

“Oh, there is so much to be learned from flying qui. After all, I cannot be everywhere at once. With the qui I can detect all manner of wind currents, speed, moisture in clouds”—he hesitated as if searching for the right
word—“and jing jangs—I think you might call them hail cusps.”

“Hail cusps!” Otulissa and Soren both burst out at once. These were furrows in the air where hailstones formed. “You mean,” Soren said excitedly, “you get weather information from these qui?”

“Yes, and more.”

“More?” Gylfie said.

“Of course. For what we take, we must give back.”

The eight owls blinked.

“What do you give back?” Coryn asked.

“Our thanks to Glaux. We send our prayers up. I write a poem or send one of my paintings.”

“You paint?”

“Oh, yes. Come inside now and I shall show you some of my paintings.”

The owls followed Tengshu.

“What is this?” Gylfie gasped as she flipped her head so she was looking straight up. From the ceiling of the hollow hung scrolls painted with beautiful scenes of mountains and waterfalls, birds and flowers. There was one of crashing waves and another of a still pond with a heron standing at its edge.

“Is this parchment paper?” Soren asked.

“No. I paint on silk. There is a mulberry tree with a silk league not far from here.”

“A silk league?” Mrs. Plithiver asked, suddenly alert. There was, of course, no way she could see the pictures, but the notion of using silk was very interesting to her.

“Yes, indeed. Blind snakes, like yourself, collect the cocoons made by the silkworms of the tree. They then unravel them into long threads and weave them together. Of course, before the cloth is ready to be painted they must beat it until its finish is smooth. It is a long and complicated process. But the silk league from whom I get my pieces is one of the finest.”

“Rather like the weavers guild back at our tree,” Mrs. Plithiver offered.

“Yes, I have heard of that guild,” Tengshu replied.

The owls were stunned. This was yet another indication that Tengshu knew more about them than they knew about him.

“How do you know all this?” Otulissa blurted out. “You knew we were coming. You know far more of our Hoolian language than any of us knows of yours, and now you tell us that you know about the weavers guild.”

The sage blinked calmly. In the dim light of the hollow, his plumage did not seem quite so blue. He took a few short hops to a bowl made from the same material as
the cups from which they had just drunk. A wick floated in the bowl, and from a small flask he drew out a piece of raw ore and struck it against a flintstone. A small flame started in a pile of kindling. He then took a burning twig and lit the wick. A slightly acrid smell began to suffuse the air. “Yak butter—I don’t think you are familiar with that animal—but it is of vital importance to the owls of the Middle Kingdom.” He paused. “Now, I know you are brimming with questions. So find yourselves a perch and I will try to explain as much as I can.”

The eight birds set down on various perches. Mrs. Plithiver settled herself into a relaxed coil near the yak-butter lamp, which cast a soft glow.

“I shall address your last two points first. How do we know about the great tree’s weavers guild, and how do I know Hoolian? It was all written in the Theo Papers.”

“Theo!” Otulissa exclaimed, and lofted slightly into the air. It was as if a bolt of lightning had shot through her.

“Theo, the first blacksmith?” Coryn gasped.

“Theo, the inventor of battle claws?” Twilight said excitedly.

“Theo, the gizzard-resister?” Digger asked.

The sage nodded.

Otulissa could hardly recover her wits to sort out all of her questions.
But of course,
she thought.
It’s beginning to
make perfect sense that Theo came here!
Otulissa had done further research inspired by reading the legends. It had seemed to her with a little reading between the lines that Theo had flown far away to some unknown place, but she had discounted this as idle speculation. Nonetheless, he seemed to have vanished. Now, however, there was much evidence pointing to where he might have gone. They had quickly recognized the weather symbols of the key to be a more ancient form of their own weather symbols. And who had been the first real weather interpreter? None other than Joss, a contemporary of Theo’s and renowned scout and messenger for the H’rathian Kingdom in the time of the legends. There were other similarities as well. Certain Jouzhen words seemed to come from Krakish root words, but with a slight twist. The word “strezhing,” which she had used in her introductory greeting, meant “originating from or hailing from.” In Krakish, one said “Stresschen,” which basically meant the same thing. “So did Theo really come here?” Otulissa said with awe.