Guardians of Ga'Hoole 05 - The Shattering

times?”
    “Yes…yes…” Eglantine said hesitantly. She looked more closely at her mother. Something seemed just a little bit off.
    “Mum, your face seems so big and so white.”
    “Well, we all do change a bit, dearest.”
    Mum sometimes called me dearest. But it was usually dearestEggie. She’s sort of got it by half. But never darling . Her mum’s explanation made Eglantine feel a bit more comfortable. But she felt that she was not quite as happy, quite as relieved as she should be.
    “But what’s that line down your face?”
    “Just a scratch, dear. A silly little collision during a storm with a flying branch. That’s all.”
    “But where’s Da?”
    “Out hunting with Kludd and Soren.”
    “But that can’t be.”
    “Well, why ever not?”
    “Soren’s at the great tree, the Great Ga’Hoole Tree.”
    “Now, Eglantine. We don’t tell fibs.”
    “It’s not a fib, Mum. It’s a real place.”
    “It’s a legend, dearest, that’s all. And when your da gets back, he’ll tell you stories of it as he always does before you go to sleep.”
    “But I don’t think I can stay here all through the day. I’ll be missed.”
    “Who could ever miss you more than me, your own mother?”
    Eglantine was getting more confused by the second. She looked around for Ginger. “I brought a friend. Where is she?”
    “Well, there was no one here but you, darling.”
    “No, Ginger was here. I’m sure she came with me. I told her that she could stay with us. She’s an orphan.”
    “Oh, dear, how sad.” Her mother sighed. “Of course, darl—dearest. We always have room for another.”
    “I knew you’d feel that way, Mum. I told her she would be welcome.” Eglantine said all this while studying her mother as if she were trying to convince herself of some truth. “I just don’t know where she could have gone to now.”
    “Well, perhaps she wanted to leave the two of us alone. You know, so we could be just mother and daughter. It’s been so long.”
    “Yes, it has,” Eglantine said in barely a whisper.
    “But I’m going to feed you all your favorite things—centipedes and a nice plump vole and a bit of field mouse.”
    “Oh, yum!” Eglantine said, for she suddenly discovered that she was ravenously hungry.
    She ate, yawned, and vaguely wondered where Ginger could have gone. Then, just before she fell asleep in a nest especially prepared by her mother with the loveliest mosses and her mum’s own down plucked from her very own breast, Eglantine did manage to say in a slow, groggy voice, “Mum, please don’t let me sleep too long. I will be introuble if I don’t get back in time. It may be a legend to you, but it’s something real to me.”
    “Of course, darling. It’s all too real for many.” And just as Eglantine’s eyes shut, there was a flash of harsh light that slid into the hollow like the edge of the sharpest blade.
    On a limb outside the hollow a huge Barn Owl perched as the moonlight struck his metal mask.

CHAPTER TEN
Eglantine Researches
    A m I here? Am I there? In her dream she had felt the softest moss and fluffiest down, but something was a bit more scratchy now, not like the softness of the nest she had dreamed of. Eglantine’s eyes blinked open. It was full daylight. There was Ginger. They were back in their hollow at the Great Ga’Hoole Tree. She knew she had been someplace, to the dream hollow, but she had not gone there in a dream. I really went there. I think I saw Mum. She said, “Come back,” but how in the world did I get back here?
    Eglantine had no recollection of flying back. She looked around the hollow. Where was Primrose? Oh, yes, in the infirmary, she remembered. And she had promised to go visit her at tween time when everyone would be getting up. She resettled herself in what she now felt to be an exceedingly scratchy bed of moss with no nice fluffy down, and she waited for sleep to come.
    But sleep didn’t come. In fact, Eglantine was not at all sleepy. She felt wide awake and had a sudden urge to go tothe library. She got up and flew from the hollow, weaving through the bright sunlight of midday, spiraling upward in the tree toward the entrance to the library. Nobody would be there now. It would be empty. Not even Ezylryb—who was always in the library—ever came at this time of the day. Normally, Eglantine went to the shelf with the game books and puzzles, but for some reason these seemed boring to her now. So instead she went to another shelf,