Guardians of Ga'Hoole 05 - The Shattering

reading.
    “There’s one, Mum, that tells all about flecks and how to make more flecks from flecks.” At this her mum grew very excited.
    “Oh, darling! I would love to know about that. Please copy that one down.”
    “Oh, Mum, I don’t know. It’s in a very big book with a lot of writing on each page and very complicated diagrams.”
    “Well, darling, I think if you would just tear out a couple of the pages, no one would notice.”
    Eglantine blinked. Did something perhaps prick at the back of her mind? Did her gizzard perhaps flinch ever so slightly? Although it hardly stirred at all anymore. She simply said, “Sure, I’ll get it next time.”
    And she did.

CHAPTER ELEVEN
Primrose’s Last Thought
    B ut Eglantine, I was in the infirmary for two weeks and never once did you come to visit me. Not one time.” Primrose peered at her friend in genuine confoundment.
    Eglantine blinked. “I’m sorry, it just slipped my mind.” But she didn’t look the least bit sorry. She did look different, though. Her usually lustrous black eyes had a dull gaze to them. Primrose didn’t know what to think. “I’ve been so busy, you know.”
    “No, I don’t know,” Primrose replied. “How would I if you never came to visit me?”
    “Oh, well. I’ve been busy, trust me.”
    And it was when Eglantine said those two simple words “trust me” that something clicked in Primrose’s brain and her gizzard gave a painful little twitch. Primrose did not trust Eglantine. Not one bit. And she was going to find out why. What had changed her friend? It was no longer a question of not being included. Primrose guessed that she might not even want to be included in whateverEglantine was up to, but she planned to find out what it was, nonetheless. Until she knew more she would keep her thoughts to herself, but as soon as she figured it out, she would go directly to Soren. However, before she did that, she dared to ask Eglantine a question. “Eglantine, I want to know something.”
    “Yes. Sure. Anything, Primrose.”
    “What’s Ginger really like?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “I mean it seems strange to me that she is always wanting to get you off by yourself.”
    “Off by myself?”
    “Yeah, it’s kind of like she’s jealous.”
    “Jealous?” Eglantine blinked and stared blankly into space.
    “Yeah, jealous. I don’t think real friends are jealous.”
    “Real?”
    It’s useless, Primrose thought. All Eglantine did was echo back her own words. This wasn’t a conversation at all. She didn’t know what it was, but it certainly was not two good friends talking.
    So Primrose watched carefully for several days. She noticed nothing unusual. But then a week after she had come out of the infirmary, as the days of the summer, the season of the golden rain, began to shorten and the nightsgrew ever longer, Primrose noticed that Eglantine often simply went off by herself during free flight after class or chaw practice.
    The third time this happened, Primrose decided to follow her. It was a dark, moonless night. Thick cloud cover obscured the stars and Primrose, not the most silent of fliers, thanked a wind that ruffled off the land and across the water, muting her wingbeats. She was surprised when she saw Eglantine set off due south. It was a long stretch of water between the Island of Hoole and any land. Indeed, the first land in that direction would be The Beaks, a place that they had been warned to avoid. Mrs. Plithiver was particularly outspoken about The Beaks and frequently recalled the time when she and the band went there, and the four owls had fallen into some kind of odd trance. The lakes in that region were considered beautiful but terribly dangerous. Why would Eglantine be setting off for The Beaks? What would ever draw her there? Well, thought Primrose, if it takes going to The Beaks to get to the bottom of this, then I will go. She might be small, but she was strong—strong of wing, strong of gizzard.
    So Primrose flew on. She did wonder, however, what Eglantine was carrying in her beak. It looked like papers of some sort. She hadn’t had them at the beginning of free flight, but she had lighted down on some cliffs before setting out across the sea. After they had been flying a while, the cloud cover cleared off, and land appeared like a darker smudge in the distance. The distinct sharp hills of The Beaks could actually be felt before they were seen. The wind curled up from those hills in seductive thermal