Guardians of Ga'Hoole 05 - The Shattering

determined to appeal to her and ask if he could fly with the chaw. Twilight was another member of this chaw.
    “I don’t know if it will work, Soren,” Twilight said slowly.
    “Look, they need another owl. You’re short by two,” Soren replied.
    “But maybe you’ll get too emotional. It’s your sister, after all.”
    “Too emotional for what, Twilight?” Soren spat out the words. “Too emotional to fly? To see? To hear?”
    Twilight knew then that Soren could not bear to wait in the tree for news of his sister.
    Ten minutes later, Soren had stated his case to Barran. The dignified Snowy peered at him and blinked. Soren’s gizzard clenched. Would she say yes or no?
    “So you would like to fly as a replacement for either Eglantine or Primrose?”
    “Well, I know I can’t exactly replace Primrose. I mean she’s a Pygmy owl, after all.”
    “Precisely.” Soren’s heart and gizzard began to sink somewhere toward his talons. “I mean, how good are you at low-level flight, threading your way through tall grass? You know those Pygmies are noisy when they fly, but you cannot beat them for low-level precision surveillance.”
    “Yes, yes, I suppose that’s true, but…” Soren’s voice trailed off.
    Barran blinked, then her eyes softened and the yellow light streaming from them was like the delicate pale light of the sun in the earliest morning, in that small fraction of a second when it first slips above the horizon. “I’ll tell you what, my dear. How about we get Gylfie to fly Primrose’s position?”
    “But…but…what about me?”
    “Hush, Soren, hear me out. Elf Owls are as good as Pygmies at this low-level stuff, and I propose that you fly left ear. Eglantine had been covering that spot.”
    “You mean, I can go?” Try not to be too emotional. Try not to cry. Oh, Glaux! Don’t cry in front of her! But if he could get Eglantine back, even shattered, he swore to himself he would put her back together, piece by piece.
    Piece by piece? Soren wondered why these words reminded him of something. Something very dim and shadowy. Piece by piece. The words nagged at the edges of his mind, prickling his gizzard. Well, no time for wondering now. Time for action.
    Fifteen minutes later, the search-and-rescue chaw lifted off with Soren flying in the spot normally occupied by Eglantine. They had no idea where they might find either one of the missing owls, but Barran sensibly thought that since both Eglantine and Primrose had been ill this summer, chances were, they would not fly into an opposing wind. The wind had been blowing north by northeast, a perfect wind for Cape Glaux, the site of the great massing of the Pure Ones months before. What a scene that had been, Soren thought. The Chaw of Chaws had been sent on a covert mission to penetrate St. Aggie’s. The Chaw of Chaws was the special forcecomprised of the band in addition to Otulissa, Ruby, and Martin. On their return from the mission, they had heard the rumor that owls were massing on Cape Glaux and, indeed, they had been! There had been close to a thousand Pure Ones that Kludd had recruited for his invasion and siege of the Island of Hoole and the Great Ga’Hoole Tree. The Pure Ones had long since evacuated the cape as a base. There were rumors of them in a region known as Beyond the Beyond, but others had placed them in the Desert of Kuneer. They were all rumors, however, and now Soren reminded himself that they were not looking for great massings of Pure Ones, but for one very tiny Pygmy Owl and his own sister, who was shattered by the deadly power of the flecks. “Full-blown fleckasia,” Otulissa had called it.
    The coastline of the cape began to appear as a blurred line jutting out into the sea. They would make their landfall on a more or less protected beach within a bay called The Bight. There were some good trees that would afford perches for a rest before they began scouring the landscape in a tiered formation of low-level, mid-level, and high fliers.
    It has to work, Soren thought. It just has to work. He had lost Eglantine once. But he would not lose her twice! Twice would be too cruel to endure.
    The dread that Eglantine had first felt when she realized that she was caught in a dream from which she could not wake up had continued to build. As she flew into the headwinds that tossed up slop from the Sea of Hoolemere, there was one thought that she tried to keep in her mind. She repeated it again and again. I must look into my