in the high-pitched tone of voice understood instantly by all owls to express anger. “Eglantine, on your way. And you!” He turned his attention back to Ginger. “You, I am reporting to Boron and Barran.”
“Oh Soren, don’t report her. She’s been raised by those awful owls, the Pure Ones. They never taught her anything. They were brutes, all of them,” Eglantine pleaded. Within seconds both Ginger and Eglantine were sobbing.
“She’s right. I know nothing,” Ginger was saying, suddenly contrite. “I learned nothing except bad manners.”
“This is beyond bad manners. This is brutality.”
“Well yeah. That too,” she replied. “Your own brother was the most brutal owl imaginable.”
“Yes, but I’m not, and Eglantine’s not. And we were all born in the same tree, in the same hollow, in the same nest to the same parents. We are not like Kludd, and you don’t have to be this way either. Don’t use excuses. You’re among civilised owls now. Haven’t you learned anything?”
“Oh yes, so much. So much from your sister.”
Soren saw that Eglantine was yawning now. When Soren had mentioned the tree, the hollow, the nest and their parents, it had made her think of her dream.
“What are you yawning about, Eglantine? You’re always yawning. Don’t you get enough sleep?”
“No, I don’t think she does,” Ginger said. “I think she might have summer flux.”
“Oh great. Now you’re a doctor?”
“Just don’t report her, Soren. Please!” Eglantine yawned again, and her eyes fluttered as if she could barely keep them open.
“All right, all right. But Eglantine, I want you to sleep in my hollow. Then you’ll feel included, right?”
“Right,” Eglantine said sleepily.
“But what about me?” whined Ginger.
“What about you?” Soren shot back.
“I’m not included. Now I feel left out.”
“Tough pellets! When you learn not to play with your food, maybe you’ll be fit to be included.”
Soren made sure that Eglantine was bedded down in his hollow and then went to find Gylfie. “You’re not going to believe what I just saw.”
“Look over there,” Gylfie replied, nodding in the direction of Trader Mags. “Do you believe what you’re seeing now?”
Otulissa was oohing and aahing over some stick that Trader Mags had. “You really have the most enormously interesting collection. Let me see. What can I trade you for this stick? And look, after giving you all my finest lucky stones for that chart, I almost don’t have any left over. You really are wonderful.”
Soren could not believe his exceptionally good ears. “Stick? Chart? Trader Mags is ‘wonderful’?” What had happened to the Otulissa who had never approved of the magpie trader?
“She’s struck gold with Trader Mags,” Gylfie whispered excitedly. “That stick is a dowsing rod for finding flecks in the ground or in streams. The chart is a diagram of the owl brain, cross-referenced to a diagram of the gizzard, which could help explain fleckasia.”
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