The War of the Ember by Kathryn Lasky Read Free Book Online

Glaux! There goes my Cymbidium strumella!” Otulissa shrieked as the lovely yellow-speckled blossoms of the orchid swirled around them.
    There was a soft plop as Dumpy belly flopped on a hummock of moss. “Am I here? Am I actually here?”he gasped, looking up into the faces peering down at him.
    “That depends. What was your intended destination?” Otulissa asked.
    “Destination?” Dumpy repeated.
    “Oh, Glaux,” Otulissa murmured. She’d forgotten how dumb puffins were. Why was this one here? They rarely left the Ice Narrows. “Where did you want to go?” She spoke slowly and distinctly as one might to a very young child.
    “Uh…the great tree. The great tree. Big news. Big, big news!”
    “Well, then you have arrived at your destination,” Cleve said.
    “And what is the big news?” Otulissa asked.
    Dumpy staggered to his feet. “Uh…I was afraid you were going to ask me that.”
    “Why were you afraid?” Tengshu tipped his head forward.
    Dumpy stared so hard at Tengshu his eyes nearly popped out of his head. “Oh, Great Ice! Another one!”
    “Another what?” the three owls asked at once.
    “He looks just like the other blue owl I saw.” Dumpy nodded at Tengshu. “Except this one’s prettier. More feathers.”
    Otulissa gasped. “It can’t be!” she whispered.
    Cleve took a step forward and put a protective wing around Dumpy’s plump shoulders. “Now, son.”
    “I’m not your son,” Dumpy said with sudden alarm. “I’m not nearly smart enough to be an owl. And I can tell you that if I were your son, I’d be a great disappointment to you.”
    “It’s just an expression,” Otulissa interjected.
    Dumpy suddenly looked up at Cleve. “Oh, Good Ice, I know…who you are.” Dumpy began to sputter. “You’re the owl who took the sea tick from my foot.” He lifted up one of his webbed feet and began waving it about until he fell over. “Good as new!” he said as he picked himself up and flopped against Cleve’s chest, embracing him.
    “Let’s get to the bottom of this,” Otulissa continued.
    “Oh, yes, I have a bottom!” Dumpy said, and immediately turned around and tipped his butt into the air.
    Otulissa leaned toward Tengshu and whispered, “You must understand that puffins can be very literal. So we must just stick to the basics. Now, Dumpy, you did say your name was Dumpy, didn’t you?”
    “Yes,” Dumpy said with some uncertainty.
    “Concentrate, dear,” Otulissa went on. “You say you saw a blue owl.”
    Dumpy shut his eyes very tightly and appeared to be concentrating with every bit of brain he possessed. He began to speak very slowly.
    “You see, there is this ice cave and I know a back way in, and I saw these two owls go in there, so I sneaked in the back way and listened…”
    “Two owls, not just one?”
    “Yes, two. But only one was blue. Blue? I just learned the name for that color. I used to call it ‘sky,’ but from the polar bear I learned it’s blue.”
    “Polar bear—how does a polar bear fit into this?” Cleve asked.
    “Oh, the polar bear didn’t fit into the ice cave. No, I had to fly to the polar bear and tell her about what they said because I didn’t know half their words, words like ‘hagsfiend.’”
    “HAGSFIEND!” the three owls gasped.
    Meanwhile, on the far side of the great tree, unbeknownst to Otulissa, Cleve, and Tengshu, another unlikely visitor had arrived and gone directly to Soren.

CHAPTER EIGHT
Astonishing Visitors
    Y oicks!” blurted Twilight. “It’s absolutely yoicks.” The Great Gray had taken the words out of all their beaks. Soren swiveled his head, first one way and then the other. He blinked at this motley crew: Dumpy the puffin, Gwyndor, and the most astonishing visitor of all—Bess—Bess who had never in their experience dared leave the Palace of Mists.
    Yoicks, indeed, thought Soren. Bess had arrived on the branch outside his hollow as he and Pelli and their children were about to take tea. Completely