What, Primrose wondered, could Eglantine and Ginger have to say that was so private? Primrose suddenly realized that Ginger was often trying to get Eglantine alone, not just away from her but from the group. Was Ginger jealous of all of Eglantine’s friends? True, they were all in training to be Guardians, and she knew how much Ginger hoped to be approved for training, too. Did Ginger think that Eglantine would have some special influence over that approval?
There was an awkward silence, and then Eglantine and Ginger erupted into convulsive laughter as if sharing a very private joke. The other owls looked on grimly, but Primrose wilfed in the biggest way and became so slender that there was hardly any need for anyone to squash in. She just knew they were laughing about her, or thinking how she wouldn’t understand their little joke, anyway. To think that just last evening she had looked for a joke book. Well, the joke’s on me, she thought sourly.
To change the subject, Soren began talking about the weather experiments that Ezylryb wanted him to do. “Martin can’t go and neither can Ruby because they are doing other experiments for him. That’s why he said I could ask friends from other chaws for help. So Twilight and Gylfie and Digger are going. You want to go, Otulissa?”
“No, I can’t,” she replied. “I have to run that experiment on the far beach for him.”
“Ginger and I will go,” Eglantine piped up.
“You have to be full-fledged chaw members, and you’re still in training, Eglantine. I don’t think he’d agree. What about you, Primrose? You’re full-fledged. Want to go?”
“No, not tonight,” she answered quietly. She knew that if she got to go and Eglantine didn’t, it would drive an even deeper wedge in their friendship.
“Come on, Soren. Go ask Ezylryb,” Eglantine urged her brother.
“No, I’m not going to bother him when I know what the answer will be.”
“That frinks me off,” Eglantine said sourly.
“Well, too bad.” Soren saw Ginger give Eglantine a nudge and whisper something in her ear.
“Young’uns!” Mrs. P. interrupted. “No bad language, not at the table, please. And need I remind you, I am the table!”
Tweener, usually a cheerful meal, was not going well. Now Gylfie, in another attempt to change the subject, reminded everyone that on the next evening Trader Mags would be arriving. “Trader Mags always comes on the first day of full shine in the summer,” she said.
“Why’s that?” Primrose asked, relieved to be talking about something other than Eglantine’s rude behavior.
“She thinks the full moon shows off her wares best,” Soren said.
“As if the tawdriness of all that frippery needs any more sparkle,” Otulissa said acidly. Otulissa did not approve of Trader Mags.
“Who’s Trader Mags?” Ginger asked.
“You don’t know about Trader Mags?” Eglantine blinked. “Ooh, she brings the most wonderful stuff. We’ll have so much fun looking at it together. Shopping!”
Primrose sensed a wilfing in her gizzard.
“Trader Mags,” Otulissa said in a very haughty, superior voice, “is an ostentatious magpie who—true to her nature—is quite skillful at ‘collecting’ a variety of items. ‘Collecting’ is, of course, a euphemism for what some might call stealing.”
“Ooh!” Ginger exclaimed again, her eyes blinking darkly in anticipation. “Where does she get the stuff?”
“The Others—their old ruins, their churches, or castles, what have you,” Otulissa continued. “Bits of stained glass, broken crockery, beads, and baubles—all the colorful, garish doodads that the Others seem to have loved. Tawdry, awful stuff, in my opinion.”
“Madame Plonk likes it,” Eglantine said, cheerfully undeterred by Otulissa’s sneering tone.
“She would,” Otulissa said. “Madame Plonk is hardly known for her restraint in matters of style. There’s a touch of the tawdry in that Snowy Owl, to say the least.” Otulissa sniffed. “One might even say she’s an exhibitionist.”
“Come off it, Otulissa,” Twilight, the huge Great Gray, scoffed. “Look, we all can’t be as pure as you.”
Silence fell on the table like a blade slashing through the chatter. Since the siege and their fierce battle with the Pure Ones, something had happened to the word “pure,” as if it had become a bad word, a curse word overnight. Soren felt Mrs. P. squirm and the owls’ Ga’Hoole nut cups of milkberry tea trembled slightly. Ezylryb’s words from the Last Ceremony for Strix Struma following her death in battle came back to him:
We have been fighting a war that has been instigated by this vile notion that declares that some breeds of owls are better than others, more pure. Not one of us shall, I suppose, ever again say the word “pure” or “purity” without thinking of the bloodshed these words have caused. How unfortunate that a good word has been ruined by the evilness of one group.
Twilight, realizing too late what he had just said, clamped his beak shut.
Knowing how mortified Twilight must feel, Otulissa tried to set things to rights again. “Oh, I have never been all that comfortable with fancy stuff. Madam Plonk’s voice is so beautiful when she sings, and she herself is so lovely to look at, I feel she needs no further adornment. And such ornamentation would be completely wasted on me.”
It had been a gracious speech until this point, but then for some reason that eluded even Otulissa, she swiveled her head toward Ginger. “Just give me my helm, my nickel-alloy battle claws, and a burning branch, and I feel adorned.” The glare in the young Spotted Owl’s yellow eyes was harsh. It had been in just such battle gear that Otulissa had served with great bravery in one of the fiercest encounters with the Pure Ones.
Once more silence settled on the table, thickly this time, like fog that wouldn’t burn off.
A wet poop joke, that’s what we need, Soren thought desperately.
“Did you hear the one about the seagull that got hit by the wet poop of a bat?” Often, wet poop jokes began with a mention of seagulls, for they were considered the worst and messiest of the wet poopers.
“No, what’s that?” said Gylfie, equally desperate to lift the mood.
“Well, this seagull got hit right in the eyes by an off-loading bat and could hardly see to fly. And the bat turned around and said, ‘Now you’re as blind as a splat!’”
The table roared with the churring sound of owl laughter. A little too hard, Soren thought, for the joke was not that funny. He nervously looked down at Mrs. P. because they had just violated one of the few rules of the dining hollow—no wet poop jokes at meals. Nest-maids were under strict orders to writhe at the first words of a wet poop joke and throw everything off the table and send the owls scattering. But Mrs. P. was as still as could be. She must have been as desperate as the rest of them to change the subject once the dreadful word had been mentioned. Everyone continued to churr and guffaw. Soren noticed that other tables began to look at them as loose feathers from the laughing owls drifted down. But then he swiveled his head toward Primrose and caught his breath when he saw her. Glaux! Is she laughing or crying? The little Pygmy was shaking hard and making unintelligible sounds, but there were tears streaming from her eyes.
CHAPTER FOUR
A Missing Piece
You see, Eglantine,” Ginger was saying back in the hollow, “just one more way you’re being left out.”
“I know. It’s getting bad. And did I tell you how Soren missed my first Fur-on-Bones ceremony?”
“No, you don’t say! I am shocked. Your own brother didn’t come to your Fur-on-Bones ceremony? That’s unforgivable.”
“He had some excuse, but he was really out larking about with the band.”
“The band?”
“That’s what everyone calls the four of them—Soren, Gylfie, Twilight, and Digger—because they all came here together, and they stick together.”
“And leave you out!”
“Right! I’ve never felt more left out in my life.”
You feel left out?! What about me?
Primrose almost screamed from the branch she was perched on just outside the hollow. She was eavesdropping. She knew it wasn’t very nice, but it was her hollow, too, after all, and they wouldn’t talk this freely if they knew she were around.
“Do you know what I think you should do about it?” Ginger asked.
“What?”
Primrose inclined her head a bit more so she could hear better.
“Well,” Ginger said in a cozy, chatty voice. “If I were you, I’d make a list.”
“A list?” Eglantine said.
“Yes, a list of all the things that your brother and his friends have left you out of. I think it always makes one feel better to make a list.”
Racdrops! Complete racdrops! That idiot owl doesn’t even know how to write! Primrose raged silently.
“Hmmm,” Eglantine said.
“Making that list will be a relief. Trust me.”
Don’t trust her! Primrose thought and rushed into the hollow.
“Come on, Eglantine. It’s a great night for flying.”
“Oh, I don’t think we’ll be coming, Primrose. We have things to do,” Ginger said.
Primrose blinked. All right. I’m finished being polite. “I actually didn’t ask you, Ginger. I thought with you still healing from your wing injury you wouldn’t be up for it, but certainly you are, Eglantine.”
Eglantine looked nervously toward Ginger, almost as if to ask permission to go. “Well…well, maybe just for a little while,” Eglantine replied. “But I’ll come back early and make that list, don’t worry, Ginger. Yes, we have important things to do.”
“It will be a relief, Eglantine. I promise.” Then as Primrose and Eglantine were leaving the hollow to join the others for a few flight frolics under the rising moon, Ginger called out, “A real relief, like sleeping.”
Primrose brimmed with joy to be flying with her best friend through the satiny black night. The air was so smooth and soft, soft as an owl chick’s down. Ruby, a Short-eared Owl and probably the best flier in the tree, was inscribing figure eights just under the paws of the constellation of the Big Raccoon, which was rising in the eastern sky. Primrose, however, was cautious. She didn’t want to get too happy. Things might change. And she certainly didn’t want to think about Eglantine making that stupid list. She was wondering if she should say something, not specifically about the list, but about Eglantine feeling left out. She was sure Soren didn’t mean to leave her out. He didn’t have a choice with this weather experiment thing. And just as she was wondering whether to say something, Eglantine said, “Well, time to get back to the hollow.”
“What? Are you yoicks? The night is just beginning. The Big Raccoon is hardly up. I can only see two of his paws.”
“Well, look. Soren and the band are taking off to do their weather experiments already.”
“That’s different. They have things to do. They can’t mess around out here like we can. You don’t see anyone else taking off for their hollows.”
“Well, I have things to do, too.”
“Like what?” Primrose was flying just beneath Eglantine and flipped her head backward and up as only owls can.
“Just things,” Eglantine answered vaguely. “And sleep. I want to catch a few winks.”
A few winks? That must be an expression she had picked up from Ginger. “What do you need to sleep for? Owls don’t sleep at night—especially not a night like this.”
“Well, I’ve been feeling kind of tired lately.” Eglantine tossed this last comment over her shoulder as she flew off in the direction of the great tree.
Primrose blinked. Maybe there really was something wrong with Eglantine. Maybe she was getting summer flux, or gray scale. They said that owls with gray scale slept a lot. Oh, dear, I hope she isn’t really sick.
CHAPTER FIVE
A Fragment from the Sea
Meanwhile, as the Big Raccoon climbed higher and higher in the sky, the band of four—Soren, Twilight, Gylfie, and Digger—headed north to a small speck of an island that dripped like the tiniest leak from the peninsula of the Broken Talon; they were flying there to perform their weather experiment for Ezylryb.
The conditions were perfect for setting out the small floats made from bundles of downy feathers and hollowed-out Ga’Hoole nuts.
“Now, what’s this all about?” Twilight asked.
“The idea is to measure the wind drift and current variations in this part of the Sea of Hoolemere,” Soren replied. “So we set out these little floats, then fly back in a few days and see where they are. Make sure the streamers are well attached because that’s how we’re going to find them again.”
It was fun work, and for a snack when they finished, Soren had brought along some barbecued bat wings left over from tweener.
“Glaux, this island is so tiny even I feel big on it,” Gylfie said. “Where are we going to light down for a snack?”
“Look over there.” Digger flipped his head toward the northern tip of the island. There were three rocks that dribbled off the island, not more than a foot or two away from the shore. “That looks nice enough.”
The four owls lighted down on the rocks, by a small tide pool. As they ate their bat wings in the moonlight they peered into its shallow water.
“Are starfish good to eat?” Digger asked, spotting one on the bottom.
“They’re fish, aren’t they?” growled Twilight.
“They don’t look like fish,” Digger said.
“I wouldn’t risk it,” said Soren. “Remember how that Brown Fish Owl’s hollow smelled last fall in Ambala?”
“Hmmm.” Digger looked at the starfish and seemed to think twice about eating it.
“I don’t think it would be good for your gizzard,” Gylfie said. “I mean bones and fur, that’s one thing, but Glaux knows what these creatures are made from. I’d steer clear of it.”
“Pretty though, aren’t they?” Digger said.
Twilight now bent closer to look at the starfish. “S’pose you could take it back for decoration. They dry out, you know. Might be able to trade it for something with Mags.”
“TWILIGHT!” they all shrieked.
“It’s alive,” Soren said. “You kill things to eat, not for decoration.”
“Barely alive, I’d say. Doesn’t have a brain, doesn’t have a gizzard.”
“Still,” Gylfie said, “it’s alive in its own way.”
“S’pose you’re right,” Twilight said and looked up from his examination of the starfish. “Hey! What’s that over there caught in the rocks?”
Something was fluttering between two rocks in the next tide pool. Soren lofted into the air to fly-hop the short distance. “It’s a piece of paper.” He poked at the piece with his talon. “Or a piece of a piece of paper.” And then more slowly, “Or a piece of a page of maybe what had been a book.” He blinked at the smeared letters. “Great Glaux…Fleckasia! It’s part of that book that Dewlap confiscated from Otulissa.”
“No!” Gylfie said in a stunned voice.
Soon they were all crowded around Soren and peering at the fragment of the page. Then Digger spoke: “Otulissa will flip her gizzard when she sees this. Can you make out any of the writing? She was just talking about this thing called shattering, which fleckasia can cause. It’s worse than moon blinking. But she never got to finish the chapter because Dewlap came in and took the book.”
“Then Dewlap must have thrown it away,” Soren said. “What a complete creep that owl is. Imagine destroying a book like this.”
“How did this piece of it ever get this far without completely dissolving?” Gylfie wondered.
“Maybe a seagull picked it up, then dropped it here. You know they’ll try to eat anything. And it was caught in this little crack where it kept pretty dry,” Soren said. “In any case, we have to take this back to Otulissa. Maybe she can make something of it.”
When they returned to the great tree, the first pink streaks of dawn were just showing. After a quick breaklight, Soren,
Digger, and Gylfie went to their hollow. Otulissa had completed her experiment for Ezylryb on the far beach but had not yet returned from a special errand for Barran and Boron. She was flying to a slipgizzle who it was thought might have information about the Northern Kingdoms. Soren felt that Boron and Barran were trying to placate Otulissa, who had been plotting a very complex attack on the Pure Ones in which she envisioned enlisting recruits from the Kielian League. Soren and Gylfie had discussed this plan, and both thought it was probably never going to happen. But Boron and Barran seemed to have decided to let Otulissa explore where things stood in the Northern Kingdoms. Ever since Strix Struma had been killed in battle, Otulissa had been obsessed with her plan. In any case, the owls of the band would wait until the next night to show Otulissa the fragment of the page they had found.
In the coolness of the breaking day, the owls nestled into their hollow and, after a few sleepy words, were sound asleep—except for Soren. His mind continued to speculate almost playfully on how that fragment of paper got to where it was between those rocks. He supposed it could have gotten caught in the sub-Lobelian current. He tried to recall what those current charts looked like and imagine the course that little piece of paper had traveled. He wondered if there were possibly more pieces of paper caught in rocks. Naw, not a chance, this was a one-in-a-million thing. He yawned again and was asleep.
The sea seemed to float with pieces of paper, and oddly enough, the writing on the bits of paper was perfectly legible. But every time Soren swooped down to pick one up, the fog rolled in and he couldn’t see. He wished that Twilight were here. Twilight was the master of seeing in conditions like these.
Aaah, finally the fog is lifting. But suddenly, Soren realized that he was no longer over the sea. Racdrops! He looked down and saw the regularly undulating hills. The Beaks! His gizzard twitched with dread. Mrs. Plithiver’s raspy voice scratched in his ear: “No owl, especially a young impressionable one, has any business in The Beaks. It’s a bad, bad place.”