Primrose?”
“Oh dear. Sorry Prim.” Eglantine looked up and began to move over.
But Soren was still angry. He blinked and looked at Eglantine and then Ginger. “You know Eglantine, whispering at the table isn’t very polite. If you have something that is so private that the rest of us can’t hear it, maybe you should eat by yourselves.”
What, Primrose wondered, could Eglantine and Ginger have to say that was so private? Primrose suddenly realised that Ginger was often trying to get Eglantine alone, not just away from her but from the group. Was Ginger jealous of all of Eglantine’s friends? True, they were all in training to be Guardians, and she knew how much Ginger hoped to be approved for training too. Did Ginger think that Eglantine would have some special influence over that approval?
There was an awkward silence, and then Eglantine and Ginger erupted into convulsive laughter as if sharing a very private joke. The other owls looked on grimly, but Primrose wilfed in the biggest way and became so slender that there was hardly any need for anyone to squash in. She just knew they were laughing about her, or thinking how she wouldn’t understand their little joke anyway. To think that just last evening she had looked for a joke book. Well, the joke’s on me, she thought sourly.
To change the subject, Soren began talking about the weather experiments that Ezylryb wanted him to do. “Martin can’t go and neither can Ruby because they are doing other experiments for him. That’s why he said I could ask friends from other chaws for help. So Twilight and Gylfie and Digger are going. You want to go, Otulissa?”
“No I can’t,” she replied. “I have to run that experiment on the far beach for him.”
“Ginger and I will go,” Eglantine piped up.
“You have to be full-fledged chaw members, and you’re still in training, Eglantine. I don’t think he’d agree. What about you Primrose? You’re full-fledged. Want to go?”
“No, not tonight,” she answered quietly. She knew that if she got to go and Eglantine didn’t, it would drive an even deeper wedge in their friendship.
“Come on, Soren. Go ask Ezylryb,” Eglantine urged her brother.
“No, I’m not going to bother him when I know what the answer will be.”
“That frinks me off,” Eglantine said sourly.
“Well, too bad.” Soren saw Ginger give Eglantine a nudge and whisper something in her ear.
“Young’uns!” Mrs P interrupted. “No bad language, not at the table, please. And need I remind you, I am the table!”
Tweener, usually a cheerful meal, was not going well. Now Gylfie, in another attempt to change the subject, reminded everyone that on the next evening Trader Mags would be arriving. “Trader Mags always comes on the first day of full shine in the summer,” she said.
“Why’s that?” Primrose asked, relieved to be talking about something other than Eglantine’s rude behaviour.
“She thinks the full moon shows off her wares best,” Soren said.
“As if the tawdriness of all that frippery needs any more sparkle,” Otulissa said acidly. Otulissa did not approve of Trader Mags.
“Who’s Trader Mags?” Ginger asked.
“You don’t know about Trader Mags?” Eglantine blinked. “Ooh, she brings the most wonderful stuff. We’ll have so much fun looking at it together. Shopping!”
Primrose sensed a wilfing in her gizzard.
“Trader Mags,” Otulissa said in a very haughty, superior voice, “is an ostentatious magpie who – true to her nature – is quite skilful at ‘collecting’ a variety of items. ‘Collecting’ is, of course, a euphemism for what some might call stealing.”
“Ooh!” Ginger exclaimed again, her eyes blinking darkly in anticipation. “Where does she get the stuff?”
“The Others – their old ruins, their churches or castles, what have you,” Otulissa continued. “Bits of stained glass, broken crockery, beads and baubles – all the colourful, garish doodads that the Others seem to have loved. Tawdry, awful stuff, in my opinion.”
“Madame Plonk likes it,” Eglantine said, cheerfully undeterred by Otulissa’s sneering tone.
“She would,” Otulissa said. “Madame Plonk is hardly known for her restraint in matters of style. There’s a touch of the tawdry in that Snowy Owl, to say the least.” Otulissa sniffed. “One might even say she’s an exhibitionist.”
“Come off it, Otulissa,” Twilight, the huge Great Grey, scoffed. “Look, we can’t all be as pure as you.”
Silence fell on the table like a blade slashing through the chatter. Since the siege and their fierce battle with the Pure Ones, something had happened to the word ‘pure’, as if it had become a swear word overnight. Soren felt Mrs P squirm and the owls’ Ga’Hoole-nut cups of milkberry tea trembled slightly. Ezylryb’s words from the Last Ceremony for Strix Struma following her death in battle came back to him:
We have been fighting a war that has been instigated by this vile notion that declares that some breeds of owls are better than others, more pure. Not one of us shall, I suppose, ever again say the words ‘pure’ or ‘purity’ without thinking of the bloodshed these words have caused. How unfortunate that a good word has been ruined by the evilness of one group.
Twilight, realising too late what he had just said, clamped his beak shut.
Knowing how mortified Twilight must feel, Otulissa tried to set things to rights again. “Oh, I have never been all that comfortable with fancy stuff. Madam Plonk’s voice is so beautiful when she sings, and she herself is so lovely to look at, I feel she needs no further adornment. And such ornamentation would be completely wasted on me.”
It had been a gracious speech until this point, but then for some reason that eluded even Otulissa, she swivelled her head towards Ginger. “Just give me my helm, my nickel-alloy battle claws and a burning branch, and I feel adorned.” The glare in the young Spotted Owl’s yellow eyes was harsh. It had been in just such battle gear that Otulissa had served with great bravery in one of the fiercest encounters with the Pure Ones.
Once more silence settled on the table, thickly this time, like fog that wouldn’t burn off.
A wet poop joke, that’s what we need, Soren thought desperately.
“Did you hear the one about the seagull that got hit by the wet poop of a bat?” Often, wet poop jokes began with seagulls, for they were considered the worst and messiest of the wet poopers.
“No, what’s that?” said Gylfie, equally desperate to lift the mood.
“Well, this seagull got hit right in the eyes by an off-loading bat and could hardly see to fly. And the bat turned around and said, ‘Now you’re as blind as a splat!”’
The table roared with the churring sound of owl laughter. A little too hard, Soren thought, for the joke was not that funny. He nervously looked down at Mrs P because they had just violated one of the few rules of the dining hollow
