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to search for us and they do not return?” Digger asked.
    All of the owls turned their heads slowly toward Coryn. “The search will be given up. They cannot risk the entire great tree and its Guardians for this…this venture.”
    “But can we risk our king?” Gylfie asked quietly.
    “Kings are replaceable—but all of the Guardians of the great tree?” He paused. “Never!”

CHAPTER SIX
Where’s Bell?
    T he dozen young owls and their rybs were huddled in the large many-chambered hollow of an immense beech tree. Pelli perched on the edge of the hollow looking out into the buffeting winds. All the owls were back except for the navigation chawlet led by Fritha. Pelli hoped it hadn’t been a mistake to send them out with such a young owl. Fritha was clever, though still young in her judgment. But who would have expected these squall lines that had come bashing through! There had been only one to begin with—no sign of an entire line of them one after the other. Pelli hoped against hope they were not a prelude to westers. But that was a definite possibility.
    “I see them!” Eglantine cried out from a branch she was perched on outside the tree.
    “They’re coming, Mum,” Bash said.
    “Don’t worry, Mum. Bell is fine, I’m sure.” Blythe tucked in beneath her mum’s wing and gave her a snuggle.
    “Yes, Bell will be here soon,” Bash said, and squeezed between the feather trousers of her mum’s legs. Both owlets were trying to be very brave, but they had never seen their mum this worried. They could feel her heart pumping and a terrible grinding in her gizzard even though they had not eaten for a while, so there were no bones in there.
    Pelli blinked, then wiped her eyes clear twice with the third eyelid that owls use often in foul weather. The figures melted out of the darkness. There should be five, including Fritha. She spotted Fritha flying the point position, and there was Max to port and Matty to starboard as well as Heggety. Surely she is not having anyone fly double tail in this weather , Pelli thought, and felt her gizzard seize, then give an anguishing wrench. “Bell! Where’s Bell?” she shreed in the high-pitched cry of a Barn Owl, as Fritha landed on a wildly tossing branch of the beech tree. The young Pygmy Owl gasped and gave an anguished cry.
    “She was right behind Heggety! And Heggety was right behind me, and then suddenly she was gone!” Fritha could barely speak coherently through the sobs that wracked her body. “I don’t know what happened. It was before the weather turned so bad. She just vanished.” The young Pygmy Owl was hiccuping and sobbing so much her words were hardly understandable.
    “Calm down!” Eglantine ordered. Blythe and Bash were wailing and clutching their mum, burying themselves in her belly feathers.
    “When did you notice she was gone?” Primrose demanded.
    “Uh…uh…” Fritha hesitated.
    “What were your bearings?” Silence.
    Eglantine stepped up to the quivering Pygmy Owl who had wilfed to half her normal size. “Fritha, you are the best of Gylfie’s navigation students. You must know your bearings.”
    “I think we were about three points east of Declan.” Declan was the third star in the third rear toe on the starboard side of the Golden Talons.
    “And what was your position north or south?” Eglantine pressed.
    “Maybe four points south of Triga.” Triga was a star in a front toe on the same side of the Golden Talons.
    “I’m going out to search,” Pelli announced.
    “You will do no such thing.” Eglantine planted herself in front of Pelli. “Primrose and I know how to conduct a search in this kind of weather. Your place is here with your chicks.”
    “Stay, Mum, stay! Don’t leave us!” Blythe and Bash cried.
    “Yes,” said Pelli quietly. “Yes, you are right.”
    “Now, don’t worry,” Primrose said. “We’ll find her. Remember, Eglantine and I wound up being double chawed, in search-and-rescue and tracking. That was