– and these young owlets! What ever would happen to them?
“It’s still far off,” Ruby continued. “But it’s moving faster than you think and building stronger. And we’re very near a rain band. And then it’s the eye wall!”
“Eye wall! We’ve got to alter course,” Poot exclaimed. “Which way, Ruby?”
“Port, I mean starboard!”
“The eye wall!” Soren and Martin both gasped. The eye wall of a hurricane was worse than the eye. It was a wall of thunderstorms, preceded by rain bands delivering violent swirling updrafts that could extend hundreds of leagues from the wall.
“You can’t see the band from here because of the clouds.”
Oh, Glaux, thought Soren. Don’t let these young owlets go off on their stories of grandparents being named for clouds.
“I think that right now we might actually be between two rain bands,” Ruby continued.
And then it was as if they all were sucked up into a swirling shaft. This IS a hurricane! Soren thought. He saw Martin go spinning by in a tawny blur. “Martin!” he screamed. He heard a sickening gasp and in the blur saw the little beak of the Saw-whet open in a wheeze as Martin tried to gulp air. He must have been in one of the terrible airless vacuums that Soren had heard about. Then Martin vanished and Soren had to fight with all of his might to stay back up, belly down, and flying. He could not believe how difficult this was. He had flown through blazing forests harvesting live coals, battling the enormous fire winds and strange contortions of air that the heat made, but this was terrible!
“Strike off to port, south by southeast. We’re going to run down. Rudder starboard with tail feathers! Extend lulus.” The lulus were small feathers just at the bend of an owl’s wing, which could help smooth the airflow. Poot was now calling out a string of instructions. “Downwind rudder, hold two points to skyward with port wing. Come on chaw! You can do it! Primary feathers screw down. Level off now. Forwards thrust!” Poot was flying magnificently, especially considering that under the lee of his wings he had tucked the two young owlets Nut Beam and Silver for protection.
But where was Martin? Martin was the smallest owl in the chaw. Concentrate! Concentrate! Soren told himself. You’re a dead bird if you think about anything but flying. Dead bird! Dead bird! Wings torn off! All the horrible stories he had heard about hurricanes came back to Soren. And although owls talked about the deadly eye of the hurricane, he knew there was something worse, really – the rim of that eye. And if the eye was fifty leagues away – well, the rim could be much closer. Soren’s own two eyes opened wide in terror and his third eyelid, the transparent one that swept across this eyeball, had to work hard to clear the debris, the slop, being flung in it from all directions. But he paid no heed to the slop. In his eye was the image of little Martin vanishing in a split second and being sucked directly into that rim. The eye of a hurricane was calm, but caught in the rim, a bird could spin around and around, its wings torn off by the second spin and most likely gasping for air until it died.
The air started to smooth out and the clammy warmth that had welled up from below subsided as a cooler layer of air floated up from the turbulent waters. But it had begun to pour hard. A driving rain pushed by the winds slanted in at a steep angle. The sea below seemed to smoke from the force of the rain.
“Form up, chaw! SOFP,” Poot commanded. They all assumed the positions of their Standard Operational Flight Pattern. Soren swivelled his head to look for Martin off his starboard wing. There was a little blank space where the Northern Saw-whet usually flew. He tipped his head up to where Ruby flew and saw the rusty fluff of her underbelly. She looked down and shook her head sadly. Soren thought he saw a tear well up in her eye, but it could have been some juice from a leftover meatball.
“Roll call!” Poot now barked. “Beak off, chaw!”
“Ruby here!” snapped the rust-coloured Shorteared Owl.
“Otulissa here!”
“Soren here!”
Then there was nothing – silence, or perhaps it was more like a small gulp from the position that Martin had always flown.
“Absence noted. Continue,” Poot said.
Absence noted? Continue? Was that it? Soren gasped. But before he could protest there was that piercing little voice, “Silver here.”
“Nut Beam here! But I’m feeling nauseous.”
“WHERE IS MARTIN, FOR GLAUX’S SAKE!” Soren shrieked in rage.
“Owl down,” Poot said, “Search-and-rescue commence.”
Then there was a muffled, slightly gagging sound and a terrific stench. At first, Soren thought Nut Beam had thrown up. But then out of the smoking Sea of Hoolemere, a seagull rose and in its beak was a wet little form.
“Martin here!” gasped the little owl. He hung limply in the beak of the seagull.
“I’m not sure if it was the impact on the water or the stench that got me, but I’m still feeling a bit dizzy. I have to say, however, that seagull stench is now my favourite fragrance.” Martin turned and nodded at Smatt, the seagull who had rescued him.
“Aw, it warn’t nothin’.” The seagull ducked his head modestly.
When he had first vanished, Martin had been sucked straight up, but it was a narrow funnel of warm air and almost immediately it had swirled into a bank of cold air that created a downdraft, and Martin had plunged into the sea. Smatt, who had been navigating between these funnels of warm and cold air, plunged in after him and grabbed him in his beak as he might have grabbed a fish – although Martin was considerably smaller than any fish that seagulls normally ate.
They had lighted down now on the mainland, in a wooded area on a peninsula that fingered out into the sea. It seemed, for the moment, calm. Although Soren, as he glanced around, found the forest quite strange. All the trees were white-barked and not one had a single leaf. Indeed, although it was night, this forest had a kind of luminance that made the moon pale by comparison.
“I would guess,” said Otulissa as she studied the sky, “that we are between rain bands here.” For some reason this rankled Soren. It sounded to him as if Otulissa was trying to sum up the weather situation the way Ezylryb would have, being the most knowledgeable owl of all about weather. Poot, who had succeeded him as chaw captain, really had very little knowledge in comparison, but he was a great flier. Now it seemed as if Otulissa had become the self-appointed weather expert.
Poot looked around uneasily. “That, or a spirit woods.”
A chill ran through them all. “A spirit woods?” Martin said softly. “I’ve heard of them.”
“Yeah, you’ve heard of them. You don’t necessarily want to spend the night in them,” Poot replied.
“I don’t know, Poot,” Ruby spoke in a nervous low voice, “whether we’ve got much choice. I mean that hurricane’s still going.
