"But," Mrs. Plithiver said with a hiss that sizzled, "you ain't, as you say, *rolling off clouds'!" Because, as Mrs. Plithiver could sense, the clouds were too high that day, and Twilight was flying too low to reach them as he admired himself in the Mirror Lakes. In actuality, Twilight was flying off the reflections of clouds that quivered on the gla.s.slike surface of the lake. And that, Mrs. Plithiver concluded, was the heart of the problem with all the owls. They were mistaking the world of image and reflection for the real world. The Mirror Lakes had transfixed them. And in their transfixed state they had forgotten all they had fought for and fought against. Had they once spoken of the Great Ga'Hoole Tree or its n.o.ble owls since they had arrived at this cursed place? Had they ever mentioned St. Aggie's and its terrors? Had Soren even once thought of his dear family except the first time he caught his reflection in the lake? And what about Eglantine? Did he ever think of her and what might have happened to his poor sister?

This was a very strange place. It was not just the Mirror Lakes and the thick soft moss and the perfect tree hollows and the plentiful game. Suddenly, Mrs. Plithiver realized that in the rest of the kingdoms they had flown through it was becoming early winter, but here it was still summer, full summer. She could smell it. The leaves were still green, the gra.s.ses supple, the earth warm. But it was poisonous! They had to get out of here. This place was as dangerous as St. Aggie's.

"Come here this instant! All of you!" It was the closest a hissing snake ever got to a snarl.

Soren jerked his head up from admiring his beak in the surface of the pond. He rather liked the smudge on it. He thought it added "character" to his face, as Gylfie said.

"Mrs. P., what in Glaux's name?"

"I'll Glaux you!" she hissed.

Soren nearly fainted. He never had heard Mrs. P. swear, and at him, no less. It was like venom curling out into the air. The other owls alighted next to Soren.

"Hey," Twilight said, "did you catch that curled wingie I just did?"

"Racdrops on your curled wingie."

Now a deep hush fell upon the owls. Had Mrs. Plithiver lost her mind? Racdrops. She had actually said racdrops!

"What's wrong, Mrs. P.?" Soren asked in a trembling voice.

"What's wrong? Look at me. Stop looking at yourselves in the lake this instant. I'll tell you what's wrong. You are a disgrace to your families."

"I have no family if you'll recall, Mrs. P." Twilight yawned.

"Worse then! You are a disgrace to your species. The Great Gray Owls."

This really took Twilight aback. "My species?"

"Yes, indeed. All of you are, for that matter. You have all grown fat, lazy, and vain, the lot of you. Whyawhy," Mrs. Plithiver stammered.

Soren felt something really bad was coming.

"You're no better than a bunch of wet p.o.o.pers!" With that, there was a raucous outburst from a branch overhanging where they stood at the lake's edge, on which a dozen or more seagulls had alighted. The harsh gull laughter ricocheted off the lake and the reflections of the owls on its surface quivered and then seemed to shatter.

"We're getting out of here NOW!" Mrs. Plithiver said in a near roar for a snake.

"What about crows? It's not dark yet."

"Tough!" she spat.

"Are you going to sacrifice us to crows?" Gylfie said in a very small voice.

"You're sacrificing yourself right here on the sh.o.r.es of this lake." And something sharper than the fiercest gaze of eyes bore into Gylfie's gizzard. Indeed, all the owls felt their gizzards twist and lurch.

"Get ready to fly! And Twilighta""

"Yes, ma'am."

"I'll fly point with you."

"Yes, ma'am." The Great Gray stooped down so that Mrs. Plithiver could slither onto his broad shoulders.

Of all the owls, Twilight had been the most transfixed by Mrs. P.'s outburst. And if Twilight was to fly point, as he usually did, Mrs. P. felt she was going to have to be there to keep him on course. He was a "special needs" case if there ever was one. What, indeed, had the world come to if an old blind nest-maid snake had to navigate for a Great Gray Owl? Some sky tiger!

But she had to navigate as Twilight began to circle the lake a second time and dip his downwind wing, no doubt for a better look at himself, and, yes, singing under his breath his next favorite tunea"

Oh, wings of silver spread on high, Fierce eyes of golden light, Across the clouds of purple hue In sheer majestic flighta"

Oh, Twilight!

Oh, Twilight, most beautiful of owls, Who sculpts the air Beyond compare.

With feathers so sublime, An owl for nowa"

An owl for thena"

An owl for all of time.

Mrs. Plithiver had coiled up and was waving her head as a signal to a gull she sensed overhead. Suddenly, there was a big white splat that landed on the silver wings sublime.

"What in Glaux's name?" Twilight said.

"They like you, Twilight. Blessed, I dare say!"

Twilight flew straight out across the lake and never looked back.

CHAPTER SIX.

The Ice Narrows

It seemed as if winter had been waiting for them as soon as the Mirror Lakes dropped behind them. Blasts of frigid air, swirling with ice, sleet, and often hail, smacked into them. The rolling ridges of The Beaks had become sharper and steeper, sending up confusing currents. Ice began to form on their own beaks and, in a few minutes, Soren saw Gylfie spin out of control. Luckily, Twilight accelerated and managed to help her.

"Fly in my wake, Gylfie," he shouted over the roar of the wind. And then he swiveled his head back to the others. "Her wings have started to ice. Ours will, tooa"soon. It's too dangerous to continue. We have to look for a place to land."

Almost as soon as Twilight had spoken of iced wings, Soren felt his own suddenly grow heavy. He turned his head and nearly gasped when he saw his plummels, the silkiest of all his feathers, that fringed the outer edges of his primaries. They were stiff with frost and the wind was whistling through them. Great Glaux, I'm flying like a gull!

It was not long before they found a tree. The hollow was a rather miserable little one. They could barely cram into it, and it was crawling with vermin.

"This is appalling!" Mrs. Plithiver said. "I've never seen such an infestation."

"Isn't there some moss someplace?" Twilight asked, remembering the extraordinarily soft, thick moss of the Mirror Lakes.

"Well, if someone wants to go out and look, they can," Mrs. P. said. "In the meantime, I'll try and eat as many of these maggotty little critters as possible."

Soren peeked out the hollow. "The wind's picked up. You can't even see out there. Snow's so thick on the ground, I doubt if we could find any moss if we did look."

"We can always pulp some of the pine needles," Gylfie said. "First, you beak them hard enough, then let them slide down to your first stomacha"the one before the gizzard. Hold it there for just a while, and then yarp it all back up. The pine needles come out all mushy and when they dry they're almost as soft as moss. Actually, technically speaking, it is not called yarping. It's burping when its wet and not a pellet."

"Who caresa"as long as it's soft?" Twilight muttered.

"I suppose it's worth a try," Digger said. "The thought of going out there into that blizzard is not appealing in the least."

So the owls leaned out from the protection of the hollow only far enough to s.n.a.t.c.h a beakful of pine needles. They all began beaking, then swallowing the wads down to their first stomachs and then burping. All the while, Mrs. Plithiver busied herself with sucking up maggots and pinch beetles, and one or two small worms known as feather raidersa"all of which were most unhygienic to the health of owls.

"I don't think I could eat another pinch beetle if my life depended on it," Mrs. P. groaned after more than an hour.

There was a huge watery gurgle that rippled through the hollow.

"What was that?" Digger said.

"Yours truly, burping here," Twilight said and opened his beak and let go with another hollow-shaking burp.

"Oh, I've got to try that!" Digger said. In no time the four owls were having a burping contest. They were laughing and hooting and having a grand old time as the blizzard outside raged. They had figured out prizes as well. There was a prize, of course, for the loudest, but then one for the most watery sound, and the one for the most disgusting, and one for the prettiest and most refined. Although everyone expected Gylfie to win with the prettiest, Soren did, and Gylfie won for the most disgusting.

"Absolutely vulgar," muttered Mrs. P.

But soon they became bored with that and they began to wonder when the blizzard would let up. And although not one of them would admit it, secretly their thoughts turned to the Mirror Lakes and they grew quieter and quieter as they tried to remember their lazy beautiful days, flying in spectacular arcs over the lakes' gleaming surface. And the food, the food was so good!

"Oh, what I wouldn't give for a nice vole." Soren sighed.

"You know, young'un, I think the wind is lessening. I think maybe we should take off." Mrs. Plithiver sensed the four owls' thoughts turning to the Mirror Lakes. She simply couldn't allow that. So even though she truly did not believe that the wind was lessening, it was essential to get them flying again.

"You call this less?" Digger hooted from his downwind position.

"A bit, and believe me, dear, sitting there burping pine needles isn't going to get you any closer to the Great Ga'Hoole Tree."

But what would? thought Soren. They could barely see ahead, behind was thick with swirling snow, below was dense fog that not even a treetop could poke through, and, off to windward, sheets of frigid air seemed to tumble from somewhere.

"There are cliffs to windward." Twilight drifted back from his point position. "I think that if we could get under the lee of them we might be protected and able to fly better."

"Sounds like it's worth a try. We'd better get Gylfie between us," Soren said.

The owls had become adept at creating a still place for Gylfie in the center of their flying wedge formation when the winds became too tumultuous for the Elf Owl. Gylfie moved into that spot now. "All right, let's crab upwind," Twilight hooted over the fury of the blizzard.

Crabbing was a flight maneuver in which the owls flew slightly sideways into the wind at an oblique angle so as not to hit it head-on. The owls scuttled across the wind in much the same way a crab movesa"not directly forward but in this case taking the best advantage of a wind that was determined to smack them back. But now, by stealing a bit off the wind's edges, the owls could move forward, although slowly. They had been doing a lot of crabbing since they had left the last hollow and something they thought never could happen had. Their windward wings had actually grown tired and even sore. But at least their wings weren't icing up.

Suddenly, there was a terrible roar. The owls felt themselves sucked sideways as if an icy claw had reached out to drag them. There was another roar and they felt themselves smash into a wall of ice. Soren began sliding down a cold, slick surface. "Hang on, Mrs. Plithiver," he called, but he had no sense of her nestling in her usual place. It was impossible to grab anything with his talons. His wings simply would not work. He felt himself going faster than he had ever flown. But something huge and gray and faster whizzed by him. Was it Twilight? No time to think. No time to feel. It was as if his gizzard had been sucked right out of him along with every hollow bone. But then he finally stopped. He was dazed, breathless, but mercifully not moving, on the slightly curved glistening white ledge on which he had landed.

"Lucky for you and you and you and what?" came a low gurgling sound from above.

"Who? Who's that talking?" Soren asked.

"Oh, great Glaux!" Gylfie whispered as she slid next to Soren. "What in thea"

Then Soren saw what she was looking at. The four owls and, luckily, Mrs. Plithiver had survived. They were all flat on their backs looking up a sheer white wall of ice and, poking their noses out of a hole in the ice above, were the faces of three of the most preposterous creatures any of them had ever seen.

Gylfie whispered, "What are they? Not birds."

"No, never," Twilight said.

"Do you think they're part of the animal kingdom?" Gylfie asked.

"What other kingdoms are there?" Twilight said.

"Plant kingdoma"I heard my father speak of the plant kingdom," Gylfie said.

"They do look kind of planty. Don't they?" said Digger.

"What do you mean? Planty?" asked Soren.

"I know what Digger's talking about. That bright orange thing growing from the middle of its, I guess, face?"

"What do you meana"you guess, face?" the creature hollered. "I mean, we're pretty dumb, but you must be dumber if you can't tell a face from a plant."

"Well, you look a bit like a cactus in blooma"the kind we have in the desert," Digger said.

"That's my beak, idiot. I can a.s.sure you that neither I nor anyone in my family is a cactus in blooma"whatever a cactus is and whatever a desert is."

"Well, what are you?" Mrs. Plithiver finally spoke up.

"Well, what in the name of ice are you?" the creature retorted.

"I'm a snakeaa nest-maid snake. I serve these most n.o.ble of birds, owls."

"Well," said the creature who was not a cactus, "we're just a bunch of puffins."

"Puffins!" Twilight hooted. "Puffins are northern birds, far northern birds."

"Duh!" said one of the little ones. "Gee, Pop, I'm feeling smarter all the time."

"But if you're puffins," Gylfie continued, "we must be in the North."

"Ta-da!" said one of the puffins. "Gee, you owls are getting smarter every minute!"

"Does she get a prize, Mummy, for answering the question right?" Another little chick, with an immense beak almost as long as it was tall, poked its head out of the hole.