A moment after Sirocco arrived in the horribly noisy forest, Kona, Brisa, and Sumatra joined him.
“Wow!” Sumatra yelled excitedly. “What is all this racket?”
Sirocco spun around in the air, feeling dizzy and confused.
But not scared, he insisted to himself. It’s just a little noise, that’s all. Just some whirring.
And buzzing.
And chirping!
And HOOTING!
And there, off in the distance, did Sirocco detect a mean growl? He clenched his teeth to keep from whinnying in fright. Meanwhile, Kona spoke loudly over the noise.
“Listen to that!” she said with wonder. “In the daytime, the forest just sounds like rustling leaves.”
“And a babbling creek,” Sumatra agreed.
“And the chirping of cute little birds,” Brisa added, looking around. “I wonder where all these neat noises are coming from.”
“Yeah,” Sirocco said nervously. “Neat noises! That’s just what I was thinking.”
Hoo-hoo-HOOT!
“Ooh,” Sumatra cried. “I think I know where that sound came from! Look!”
She pointed with her nose up into the dark shadows of the treetops. At first, Sirocco didn’t see anything. Then, he spotted a flutter of gray-brown feathers that were swoop, swoop, swooping through the air.
It was an owl! An owl with a sharp, curved beak! And giant, yellow, unblinking eyes! And that loud, horrible—
HOOT!
“Aaaah!” Sirocco cried.
“I know!” Sumatra said, looking at Sirocco with gleaming eyes. “It is an amazing sound, isn’t it?”
Sirocco blinked at her.
“Amazing?!” Sirocco sputtered. “More like terrify—”
But before he could finish his sentence, he noticed that Kona and Brisa were looking at him with the same bright eyes as Sumatra. They weren’t terrified by the horrible hooting.
So, Sirocco decided, neither was he.
“Terrific,” he corrected himself quickly. “That’s what I’d call that hoot! In fact, I bet I can hoot, too!”
Sirocco threw back his head.
“Hoo-hoo-hooooooot!” he brayed.
The three fillies burst out laughing.
“That hoot sounds like a horse with a head cold to me,” Sumatra said.
Trembling, Sirocco glanced back up into the treetops. Clearly, the owl didn’t think any more of the colt’s hoot than Sumatra did. The bird gave Sirocco a disdainful glare before turning feathery tail and flying deeper into the woods.
“Ha,” Sirocco laughed weakly. But it was hard to pretend he was enjoying himself. He was too busy looking around for the next scary sound to come the Wind Dancers’ way.
“Hey,” he finally suggested to his friends, trying to sound chipper. “Why don’t we go rest on a tree branch for a minute?”
Still giggling, the fillies agreed, and they followed Sirocco to a nearby branch. As soon as they rested, though, yet another new sound grew close.
But for once, it wasn’t scary!
In fact, it was a pretty, lilting chirp.
And the horses only had to look around the tree where they were resting to see where the sound was coming from. Perched all over the tree’s branches were lots of tiny crickets! The insects were rubbing their scratchy little wings together. With each scrape, the crickets made a sweet chirp.
“Now there’s a sound I can really get behind!” Sirocco said to the fillies.
“Oh, please,” Sumatra scoffed. “There’s no way that your horsey voice can imitate a cricket’s chirp.”
“Who said I was going to use my voice?” Sirocco said, fluttering off of the tree branch with a laugh. Perhaps because the crickets’ song was so pretty (or maybe because the crickets were so harmlessly small), Sirocco was feeling happy—and brave—for the first time since arriving in the woods.
He flew a few feet away from the tree branch, then turned to face the fillies.
“Chirping looks simple enough,” he said, glancing again at the tree crickets sawing away with their wings. “You just rub your wings together, like so!”
Sirocco pressed his yellow-gold wings together and rubbed them up and down.
But instead of beautiful, chirpy music, his wings just made a soft, rustling sound. Sirocco was barely able to hear it over the din of the forest. He cocked his ears and listened harder.
He listened so hard, in fact, that he didn’t realize something.
When he began vigorously rubbing his wings together, he stopped flapping them. And that meant—
“Sirocco!” Sumatra neighed. “You’re falling!”
But Sirocco couldn’t see the ground through the pitch-black darkness. He had no idea how far away—or how close—he was to crashing to the forest floor!
