Free The River of Wind by Kathryn Lasky Page A

laden with snow.
    “Look! Look!” Twilight said excitedly. “Look down there!” The eight owls looked in the direction that Twilight was indicating with his starboard wing tip. Perched on a high rock outcropping was a large bird. The strings they were following down all seemed to stream from this one bird. Occasionally he would lift upinto the air as if tugged by the contraptions at the sky end of the strings. As they descended, the owls could see that some of the strings were anchored to various rocks and the gnarled trunks of trees, many of which grew at odd angles from the rock outcropping. The bird was swooping back and forth, manipulating the various strings, when suddenly he grabbed what appeared to be a large hammer in his talons and flew up to a bronze disc that dangled from a vine. He hammered the disc and a resounding gong rang out, reverberating across the landscape to the distant mountains and causing clumps of snow to fall from the pine boughs.
    “Welcome! Welcome! Hee naow, hee naow!”
    “Oh, Glaux! He’s speaking Jouzhen…” Otulissa muttered. “Hee naow, zan li,” she answered.
    “What’s she saying?” Gylfie hissed.
    “This is so exciting!” Soren swiveled his head around, trying to take in everything all at once. There was so much to see. “Have you ever seen trees like these? I mean, they look like pine trees, but their trunks are as gnarled as an old owl’s talons.”
    “But beautiful,” Gylfie said.
    “Everything is so different,” Coryn said, his voice soft with wonder.
    “Yes,” Digger replied. “Including that owl. He’s blue!”
    Perhaps it was because everything did seem so different that at first they did not notice the strange hue of the owl flying before them, who was shouting with apparent great glee, “Hee naow! Welcome!” every few seconds.
    “I mean, he is an owl, isn’t he?” Gylfie asked as she and the others alighted onto the rock ledge.
    “Oh, yes, I am an owl. Welcome. I have been expecting you.”
    They all blinked. “You have?” Otulissa said. The owl nodded. Otulissa then stepped forward and began to introduce herself and the rest with her rudimentary Middle Kingdom language skills. “Shing zao strezhing Ga’Hoole.”
    “Oh, no need to speak Jouzhen. I have been studying Hoolian for many years in anticipation of this evening.” He spoke with a delightful musical cadence. Mrs. Plithiver found herself swaying to its rhythm as if she were entwined in the strings of the grass harp, awaiting her cue to jump an octave or two.
    “So you are the owls of Ga’Hoole, and I am Tengshu, the qui dong of the cliffs of the luminous pearl gates to our kingdom. Here the Zong Phong ends and the Jouzhenkyn begins.”
    “Qui dong?” Otulissa asked. “What is a ‘qui dong’?” The words sounded so basic, yet so important. She wonderedwhy she and Bess had not found them for the dictionary they had composed.
    “Your interest in our language impresses me, pheng gwuil.”
    Otulissa knew that “pheng” was the word for “honored,” and “gwuil” was the word for “guest.” “The word ‘dong,’” the owl continued, “is the word for ‘knower’ or ‘sage.’ But ‘qui’ is harder to explain in Hoolian, for I do not think you have such a contrivance,” he said, nodding toward the triangle and the string, which he was now winding in on a spool. As the colorful qui came closer, they saw that it was made of very thin parchment that had been decorated with beautiful designs.
    “Contrivance?” Coryn asked.
    “Yes, Your Majesty.”
    Now they were all stunned. How did Tengshu know that Coryn was their king? Coryn made a point of never wearing any royal trappings, and he had even discarded the ceremonial cloaks that the old King Boron and Queen Baran had sometimes worn.
    “But this contrivance,” Coryn persisted, “it might have an associated name that we may know.”
    “But how could it have a name if it does not exist for you?” Tengshu