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members perched in a half circle. “May I say something? I am of course fl—” She a felt an alarming jerk in her gizzard and paused, mid-speech. “Flattered,” she continued softly. A bilious sensation rose in her gorge as she said the word. “…first of all, that you find my work interesting and important. As much as I would love tolead this expedition, I do not think at this time it is possible.”
    The Striga blinked. He had not expected this.
    “My duties here at the tree,” Otulissa went on, “especially since Winifred has been perched up with her arthritis, are great.” The Striga tried not to wilf. “My real job is to interpret the data, work it into my theoretical framework, and then derive applicable…” Otulissa was off and flying on how responsible science was performed. The upshot was that the Band would go, but Otulissa would not.
    “So,” Otulissa said when the Band had reconvened in the library. “A brief explanation here about my work.” She hauled out the Strix Emerilla book and several other scientific books, along with a variety of charts and some old scrolls written by Ezylryb when he had lived in the Northern Kingdoms and wrote as Lyze of Kiel.
    “ History of the Ice Claw Wars ?” Digger said. “Why? And the Sonnets of the Northern Kingdoms ?”
    “Would you believe that the first time I ever heard of the word ‘windkin’ was in a sonnet Lyze had written to his mate, Lil? He spoke of them like a pair of windkins, interlocking, harmonious despite any distance. You see, as a scientist and a scholar, I cannot afford to discardanything. I must read everything—science, poetry, history—if it will help.” She paused and said suddenly, “Even joke books!”
    “Joke books?” They all chuckled.
    “Whatever do you mean?” Gylfie asked.
    Otulissa looked down at her talons and shook her shoulders. “I’m not really sure what I meant by that. But you get the point. One has to read and think outside the usual, predictable ways.”
    “And just what are your hunches about these wind-kins?” Soren asked.
    “And where is it you want us to explore?” Gylfie asked.
    “I want you to try to pinpoint their locations and do some drift analysis. My coordinates show that there is a possibility of windlets in the Shadow Forest. So, I would like you to go there. You’ll need the usual tools—feather buoys, air floaters, tethers, and, of course, the thermo-scope.” The thermoscope was a clever device that Ezylryb had invented for measuring changes in temperature. She paused and then looked out the hollow of the library. A nearly full moon was rising. “Well,” she sighed, “I suppose you should be on your way soon. Look at that moon! It’s so beautiful. But I don’t think you’ll be missing much of a Harvest Festival here.”
    “And we shall certainly be back in time for Punkie Night.” Twilight thumped his talon for emphasis.
    Otulissa saw them off from the main branch of the library, watching the four owls lift into flight, their silhouettes printed against the rising moon. Normally, she would have been bubbling with excitement that she was sending off someone to carry out her experiments. But tonight, she did not feel that familiar fever of anticipation. She decided she needed to get out of the library for a while and go to her favorite place for reflection, her hanging garden. If she had not started the garden, another owl would have. High in the great tree, leaves and other bits of organic matter had collected in crevices called “trunk pockets,” which, over the ages, had decayed into soil. And into these little patches of earth, seedlings had found their way. Huckleberry mostly. In the lower canopy of the tree, there was a tree-pocket garden that Otulissa thought of as her own, and she tended it lovingly.
    Otulissa discovered that many plants that grew on the ground could grow in the trunk pockets of the great tree. She had brought flowering plants, moss, lichens, even