Guardians of Ga'Hoole 05 - The Shattering

nothing. There was now talk of contacting their slipgizzles in certain regions of the Southern Kingdoms. They returned before dawn. Eglantine skipped breaklight and went directly to bed. But she did not sleep. All morning and through the afternoon she satperched above her bed of moss and down. It was scratchier than the one that her mum had fixed so lovingly for her in the dream hollow. She blinked and wondered. Is that all I feel anymore, just the softness or roughness of something? Then there was another little pulse, a twinge in her gizzard. That dream, the very real dream, it had been nice, even lovely. I can visit the dream hollow as I please…as I please. But does it please me? And Ginger is nice, but she’s not like Primrose, is she? Primrose was never jealous. Something stirred uncomfortably in her. Jealous. Primrose had said that Ginger might be jealous. Friends were not jealous. But Ginger wasn’t exactly a friend. Why am I thinking this? Eglantine wondered. And then like the bits and pieces of debris that swirled in the eddies and currents of the Sea of Hoolemere, Primrose’s exact words came back to her:
    “Yeah, jealous. I don’t think real friends are jealous”
    Real! Something wasn’t real. As if playing with a puzzle, Eglantine began assembling the scattered pieces. Real…Primrose is real. A real friend. Ginger is not quite real…Dreams are not real… Then she thought about her mum. And then about Ginger some more. And dreams. Could dreams be prisons? What if she didn’t want to be in this dream? Would her mum just melt away? Would she, herself, even care? After all, Eglantine didn’t really care about anything anymore. So what would it matter? Her thoughts wentaround and around, and she always came back to the same thought: Nothing really mattered. Suddenly she realized that she was caught in a dream that she could not escape. And now her gizzard gave a huge lurch. How could she escape? How could she make herself care? How could she find what was real again?
    To escape the dream, I must look into my dream mum’s eyes. I must look behind her eyes. I must see what is real and what is not. I must go back one last time. A terrible dread began to swim through Eglantine’s gizzard.
    And she was glad.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Lucky Charm
    P rimrose blinked. It was daylight now. So the night was done. She wondered if the owls at the great tree had missed her yet. And what about Eglantine? Was she still here or had she gone back? She was not sure how long she had been in the hollow, but at least they had let her out of the bag. A Sooty Owl, a species related to Barn Owls but more gray than buff-colored, stuck his head in. “I have orders for you to go to sleep. Settle down in that nest, now. You’ll never sleep on any finer moss. And she plucked down from her own breast for you and arranged it herself.”
    How kind! thought Primrose. “What if I don’t want to sleep?”
    The Sooty Owl blinked and then made a series of clicking sounds that Primrose supposed was to intimidate her. “It’s not a question of what you want. It’s an order.”
    “In the Great Ga’Hoole Tree we get to sleep when we want to.”
    “Well, guess what, Sweet Tuft? You ain’t in Ga’Hoole anymore.”
    “I take it I am among the Pure Ones,” Primrose replied.
    “You take what you want. Now get to sleep,” the Sooty snarled.
    Primrose flew up to an interior perch and lighted down. “Not there. Down here in the nice fluffy bed.”
    “I sleep better on a perch.”
    “Down in the nest! And that’s an order.”
    Primrose never heard of anything so ridiculous. Why was it so important where she slept in this hollow? She was a prisoner no matter what. So she settled into the nest, which indeed did have the softest, fluffiest moss she had ever experienced. But despite the luxurious trimming of this nest, she could not get comfortable. She then sensed a strange buzzing in her head and her gizzard seemed to grow still. She stepped away from the nest and the buzzing stopped. Pygmy Owls, weighing less than two ounces and measuring just a sliver more than seven inches long, were extremely sensitive to environmental changes that might not affect larger owls. And as soon as she stepped away she felt her gizzard change. She lifted one talon and touched the approximate place where her gizzard was lodged. She tried to picture in her mind Otulissa’s diagram with thequadrants. She remembered reading the book on humors and