The Shattering. Kathryn Lasky

Trader Mags and her assistant Bubbles, a rather scatterbrained young magpie.

      “Oh, Madame Plonk, as gorgeous as ever,” Mags addressed the large and lovely Snowy. “What have we here to show off the glorious whiteness of your silken plumage?” Mags cast a sweeping, beady-eyed glance over her goods. “Ah yes. A crimson, ermine-trimmed cape – well, part of a cape.”

      Trader Mags then swivelled her head towards Primrose, who was examining a drop of amber. “Hold it up to the moonlight, dear. It’s got a bug in it. Little, tiny beetle. They say it’s a good-luck charm. Not heavy at all. Even a Pygmy like you can fly with it.”

      “Fool’s iron! That’s what I call it.” Bubo the blacksmith had come up. “But pretty.” He nodded towards the amber drop.

      It is lovely, Primrose thought. She didn’t much believe in good-luck charms, but most of the jewellery and pretty things that Madame Plonk sold were too heavy for a small owl like herself. She had some awfully pretty turquoise chips that she had found in a stream on a search-and-rescue mission once.

      “Would you take some turquoise chips for the amber, Trader Mags?” Primrose asked.

      “Oh yes, dear. I am mad for turquoise chips. They become me, you know. You have to have a certain plumage and stature for them to show. Run and get your turquoise and I’ll wrap up the amber for you.”

      Soren, who was watching the bargaining from a wingspan away, caught a blur of movement behind a small stand of birch trees where mice could often be found. He decided to explore and, without saying where he was going, slipped away silently.

      Soren’s beak dropped open in utter horror as he peered down through the slim white branches of the birch tree. Never in his life had he seen anything as revolting as the scene beneath him. An owl had just pounced upon a mouse. After having made a deep gash in its back exposing the spine, the mouse not yet dead but still mewling in agony, the owl had proceeded to tickle the dying creature with a blade of grass, all the while singing a little song. And then, most shocking of all, Soren recognised his own sister, Eglantine, who seemed frozen in rapt attention, watching as her friend Ginger sang, tickling and playing with what she would soon eat. This was in violation of every food and hunting law in the owl kingdom. Where had this Barn Owl been raised? What kind of family allowed this sort of behaviour? Without thinking, Soren swooped down and thwacked the mouse on the head, killing it instantly, and then gulped it down headfirst in proper fashion.

      “Hey, no fair! Why did you do that? That was my mouse.”

      Soren glared at Ginger. “You are a disgrace to the tree, a disgrace to every owl kingdom on the face of the earth. What sort of creature plays with her food? You don’t deserve to eat.” Then he swivelled his head towards Eglantine. “Eglantine, you go back to my hollow. I’ll talk to you there.” Eglantine blinked. It was as if she were coming out of a spell.

      “You’re always ordering her around. She doesn’t like it. And you never include her. She feels left out,” Ginger said.

      “I hope she feels left out of this!” Soren shreed, 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.”