Read Guardians of Ga'Hoole 02 - The Journey for Free Online Page B

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 moves—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 theythought 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 the…”
    Then Soren saw what she was looking at. The fourowls 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 kingdom—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 mean—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 bloom—the kind we have in the desert,” Digger said.
    “That’s my beak, idiot. I can assure you that neither I nor anyone in my family is a cactus in bloom—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 snake…a nest-maid snake. I serve these most noble 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