Free The Coming of Hoole by Kathryn Lasky

hear you favor us with a song. And your traveling companion?” Brother Fritzel gave a small bow to Siv.
    “Elka,” the Snow Rose offered.
    “Elka, pleased that you have come here.”
    Oh, Glaux, thought Siv. Why couldn’t it be a time of silence? She didn’t want to answer questions. But she did know that the brothers were familiar enough with the ways of gadfeathers that they knew better to ask questions aboutwhere they had come from or where they were going. So asking her name might be their only question. Still, she was uneasy. She, of course had dozens of questions she wanted to ask them. What did they know of the fire at the end of the island? Had they seen a Spotted Owl, older than herself, near it? Was he accompanied by a young owlet, also a Spotted Owl?
    How could her son possibly be so near but yet so far?
    Beyond these immediate questions, there was the library that they were in the process of making. The brothers spent countless hours in what they called the cold hollow copying their old inscriptions from ice slabs onto scrolls of birch bark for their books. She would have given anything to poke around in both the cold hollow and the library where they took them once the slabs had been copied. But a gadfeather who could read? A gadfeather even interested in literature? Never. She would betray herself instantly if she showed the least bit of interest in reading.
    A second spring storm had begun to lash the Bitter Sea shortly after Siv and the Snow Rose arrived on the island. The retreat of the Glauxian Brothers offered them a safe and cozy refuge. If only Siv could have gone to the library to read, it would have been almost perfect. Then again she was anxious to fly to the other end of the islandwhere she had spotted what she was certain was Grank’s fire. Even though she had arrived at a time when vows were relaxed, the brothers were not by any stretch of the imagination a talkative bunch. Still, the first two days she had spent with them had been fruitful. She had picked up a few scant references to three owls at the other end of the island with whom a Brother Berwyck had made contact. A Great Horned Owl, an older Spotted Owl, and a very young Spotted Owl. Her gizzard leaped when she first heard those words “a very young Spotted Owl.” But they were known as loners and only Brother Berwyck had been welcomed as a visitor.
    “Is Brother Berwyck here now?” Siv tried to sound casual as she asked the question of an elderly Great Gray.
    Brother Cedric answered, “He went on his pilgrimage.” Most likely, Brother Cedric suggested, through the Ice Narrows to the Southern Kingdoms. At this time, the Southern Kingdoms were hardly kingdoms at all but rather disorganized regions of clanless pioneer owls who, for one reason or another, decided to seek a life in the unknown forests, barren lands, deserts, and prairies to the south. There was no ice there, hardly any snow, unpredictable winds, and a vast and tumultuous sea laced by storms called hurricanes. To go there took courage, but for some to stay on in the Northern Kingdoms with theirconstant wars and throngs of hagsfiends also took courage. The immense sea of the south never froze and was therefore safe from hagsfiends. But there were no ice weapons, either. Ice was the element on which the lives and culture of the N’yrthghar was based. Life without ice was almost unimaginable. The owls of the N’yrthghar had hundreds of words for ice because there were as many varieties of ice as there were flowers in the Southern Kingdoms. Each type of ice had special qualities. There was issen blaue, blue ice from which special lenses could be ground to protect the eyes even better than the third eyelid when flying through ice storms; there was deep ice, or ice vintygg, for making reflective surfaces; there was a special kind of hard ice that was used for certain weapons; and then the ice from the middle part of the H’rathghar glacier on which the Glauxian Brothers