Guardians of Ga'Hoole 05 - The Shattering

looked around in utter bafflement.
    But suddenly there was a great commotion outside the library sky port and Ruby flew in. “Primrose is missing!”
    “What?” they all said.
    “She never came back from night flight.”
    All their heads swung toward Eglantine. “Didn’t you notice?” Soren asked.
    “I came in early and went to sleep, and then this evening I got up late and thought she was already out. Gee, I hope she’s all right.”
    Digger observed Eglantine closely. Her words sounded hollow to him.
    The search-and-rescue chaw members, as well as those in tracking, were now organizing the other owls to divide up into small groups to conduct a search. Because they were the most experienced, each senior member of the search-and-rescue chaw would lead owls from other chawson the hunt. A member from the tracking chaw would accompany each group for the groundwork of finding any traces of a downed owl.
    They were given only a few minutes to get ready. Eglantine rushed back to her hollow.
    “What’s going on?” Ginger asked her.
    “Oh, it’s Primrose. She seems to have gotten herself lost.”
    “Oh,” Ginger said and yawned.
    Eglantine blinked. For just a split second, it was as if she had stepped out of her own body, her own feathers, and was listening to herself. Why did she sound this way? Primrose is my best friend. Why don’t I feel anything? Why do I sound so weird? Am I me? Where is me? It was almost as if a stranger inhabited her body, her gizzard. Gizzard? Did she still have one? She had not felt anything in her gizzard, not a twinge, in days, weeks!
    This should panic her, she realized, but oddly it did not. Something is wrong. Something is very strange, but why don’t I care? All I care about is seeing Mum and I don’t even care that she forgets and calls me ‘darling’, not ‘Eggie’ like she used to. Even when the other owls discovered the pages that she herself had torn out of the higher magnetics book, Eglantine had felt nothing. Not guilty, not happy that she had done it, although her mum was happy when she’d brought them toher. In truth, Eglantine didn’t even know what happy was anymore, just as she didn’t know what sad was. She should be sad about Primrose. But it was just too much trouble, too much energy to feel anything. And the oddness of it all struck her now. Her gizzard was still as a stone. She looked at Ginger and out of curiosity said, “You know, Primrose is my best friend. It’s funny I don’t feel sad or anything.”
    “Well, maybe she’s not really your best friend, Eglantine,” Ginger replied. She paused and walked up to her. “Maybe I am.”
    Eglantine looked at Ginger a very long time and then squinted her eyes. “No, no. I don’t think so.” And for the first time in days she felt a dim little pulse in her gizzard.
    “Suit yourself,” Ginger said amiably, and turned her back.
    Eglantine had been assigned to a team of trackers and rescuers led by Digger, who was one of the best in the tracking chaw. Eglantine was a trainee in search-and-rescue and knew many of the basics, such as how to first scan for crows’ nests in any vicinity. Crows were known to mob owls, especially owls flying alone in daylight hours. And then, of course, the searchers tried to listen for any cries of distress. Barn Owls were renowned for their hearing abilities. With unevenly placed ear slits and slightly concave faces that could scoop up sounds from any direction,Barn Owls were able to detect the slightest noise—from the chirp of a lone cricket to the heartbeat of a mouse. As Eglantine flew, she felt that something was just a little off-kilter. Her sight and her hearing were not matching up as they had in the past. That was weird. Oh, well. She just began to say the words to herself when she thought, Oh, well? I shouldn’t be thinking “oh, well” It can mean life or death for an owl if its hearing and its vision don’t match up. I should be in a complete panic. But I’m not. What is happening to me? What has happened to me?
    “For Glaux’s sake!” Martin, a little Northern Saw-whet and a good friend of Soren’s, shouted at her. “Watch where you’re flying, Eglantine! You nearly clipped me on that last turn.”
    “Sorry,” she said mildly.
    Digger swiveled his head around. What is wrong with Eglantine? he wondered for perhaps the tenth time in the last couple of hours.
    There was no sign of Primrose. They had flown out in multiple directions and found