Guardians of Ga'Hoole 05 - The Shattering Read Free

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 allthat 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