“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 – no wet poop jokes at meals. Nest-maids were under strict orders to writhe at the first words of a wet poop joke and throw everything off the table and send the owls scattering. But Mrs P was as still as could be. She must have been as desperate as the rest of them to change the subject once the dreadful word had been mentioned.
Everyone continued to churr and guffaw. Soren noticed that other tables began to look at them as loose feathers from the laughing owls drifted down. But then he swivelled his head towards Primrose and caught his breath when he saw her. Glaux! Is she laughing or crying? The little Pygmy was shaking hard and making unintelligible sounds, but there were tears streaming from her eyes.
“You see, Eglantine,” Ginger was saying back in the hollow, “just one more way you’re being left out.”
“I know. It’s getting bad. And did I tell you how Soren missed my first Fur-on-Bones ceremony?”
“No, you don’t say! I am shocked. Your own brother didn’t come to your Fur-on-Bones ceremony? That’s unforgivable.”
“He had some excuse, but he was really out larking about with the band.”
“The band?”
“That’s what everyone calls the four of them – Soren, Gylfie, Twilight and Digger – because they all came here together, and they stick together.”
“And leave you out!”
“Right! I’ve never felt more left out in my life.”
You feel left out?! What about me? Primrose almost screamed from the branch she was perched on just outside the hollow. She was eavesdropping. She knew it wasn’t very nice, but it was her hollow too after all, and they wouldn’t talk this freely if they knew she were around.
“Do you know what I think you should do about it?” Ginger asked.
“What?”
Primrose inclined her head a bit more so she could hear better.
“Well,” Ginger said in a cozy, chatty voice. “If I were you, I’d make a list.”
“A list?” Eglantine said.
“Yes, a list of all the things that your brother and his friends have left you out of. I think it always makes one feel better to make a list.”
Racdrops! Complete racdrops! That idiot owl doesn’t even know how to write! Primrose raged silently.
“Hmmm,” Eglantine said.
“Making