Kathryn Lasky - The Shattering

“Not so far and believe me, I have scoured this library.”

Books being declared spronk had been the beginning of Otulissa’s problems with Dewlap, indeed the beginning of all of their problems with the strange old Burrowing Owl who was the Ga’Hoolology ryb. Spronk meant forbidden and nothing, especially books, had ever been forbidden at the Great Ga’Hoole Tree. Then for some reason Dewlap had forbidden the young owls access to certain books. No one had really agreed with her, and Ezylryb had personally delivered the fleckasia book to Otulissa. But then Dewlap had confiscated and lost it.

At that moment a matron, a rather chubby Short-eared Owl, stuck her head in the library. “Almost time for tweener,” she hooted cheerfully. Tweener was their evening meal, just as breaklight was their morning meal and the last food they consumed before going to sleep for the day.

So the three owls made their way to the dining hollow.

CHAPTER THREE

A Grim Tweener

Primrose stopped in her own hollow to check if Eglantine had got up. She’d become a late sleeper lately, which was strange because it was summertime and the nights were so short that every owl wanted to be flying about having larks in the dark. With no heavy study or chaw schedule, flying on the smooth air of warm nights under the great summer constellations was so much fun that no owl wanted to miss a minute of the blackness. Primrose was pleased to see that the hollow was empty and that Eglantine and Ginger would not be late to the dining hollow as they so often were. She smelled good things as she approached. Could it be barbecued bat wings? Bats were common summer food. Fruit bats in particular were thick around the Great Ga’Hoole Tree in the early part of the summer evenings. It could hardly be called hunting as an owl only had to stick its head out of a hollow opening to catch one on the wing.

Primrose made her way to her usual spot at Mrs Plithiver’s table. The nest-maid snakes of the Great Ga’Hoole Tree also served as dining tables for the owls. They stretched their supple, rosy-scaled bodies to accommodate at least half a dozen owls for dining. But now as Primrose approached, she saw that Mrs P’s table was overcrowded and the place where she usually sat next to Eglantine was taken by Ginger. Soren waved a wing for her to come over, anyway.

“There’s always room dearie,” Mrs P said. She stretched herself a bit more and all the owls squashed in a little closer. All the owls, that is, except Eglantine and Ginger, who continued jabbering away to each other in low whispers.

Soren blinked. He was shocked at his sister’s rude behaviour. “Eglantine! Could you stop talking for one second and move your butt feathers to make room for Primrose?”

“Oh dear. Sorry Prim.” Eglantine looked up and began to move over.

But Soren was still angry. He blinked and looked at Eglantine and then Ginger. “You know Eglantine, whispering at the table isn’t very polite. If you have something that is so private that the rest of us can’t hear it, maybe you should eat by yourselves.”

What, Primrose wondered, could Eglantine and Ginger have to say that was so private? Primrose suddenly realised 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 behaviour.

“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 skilful 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 colourful, 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 Grey, scoffed. “Look, we can’t all 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 swear 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 words ‘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.