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interesting book, Eglantine,” Otulissa said as she came into the library. “I was just reading it the other day. It’s about the correspondences between the quadrants of the gizzard and those of the brain. I do believe that the owl who had the most perfect correspondence of brain and gizzard was our dearest Strix Struma.”
    Eglantine flinched and then seemed to wilf so noticeably that both Otulissa and Soren, who was also in the library, jumped toward her.
    “What’s wrong, Eglantine?” Soren cried.
    “Why did you say ‘dearest’?” Eglantine asked Otulissa.
    “Dearest?” Otulissa said again. “Because she was. Strix Struma was the dearest owl I have ever known.”
    Eglantine seemed to freeze. “Only Mum ever said that word to us, Soren. You know it.”
    Soren and Otulissa peered at Eglantine in complete bewilderment. “Eglantine, don’t be ridiculous. You can’town a word. If Otulissa wants to use the word ‘dearest’ she can. Holy Glaux, what’s gotten into you?”
    “Well, why don’t you call her darling instead?” Eglantine said stubbornly.
    “I don’t like the word ‘darling.’ I think it’s phony and ostentatious. It sounds like some gewgaw that would be dangling all glittery in Madame Plonk’s apartment. Darling! Yecch!” Otulissa made a disgusting sound that came from the back of her throat as if she were spitting out a bad slug.
    “Give it a blow, Eglantine,” Soren said. He rarely spoke rudely to his sister, but she didn’t even seem to notice. And this fact intrigued Digger, who had his beak buried in a tracking book he was researching for Sylvana, the tracking ryb on whom he had an enormous crush. Now why, Digger thought, did Eglantine flinch over the word “dearest” and not when her brother was pointedly rude to her?
    Just then, Otulissa suddenly exploded. “Holy Glaux! This really frinks me off…It spr—” Otulissa seemed to be fighting with her own beak not to say the vilest swear word in owl language—the s-p-r word: sprink.
    “What in the world is it, Otulissa?” Soren asked.
    “Someone has ripped two pages out of this higher magnetics book.”
    “You’re kidding!” Gylfie gasped.
    “Look.” Otulissa held up the book. The jagged edges of torn pages prickled up from the inside of the book like an ugly wound.
    “Dewlap?” Digger said.
    “She hasn’t been in the library since she collapsed after Strix Struma’s Last Ceremony.”
    “Who would do this?” Digger said. The owls looked around in utter bafflement.
    But suddenly there was a great commotion outside the library sky port and Ruby flew in. “Primrose is missing!”
    “What?” they all said.
    “She never came back from night flight.”
    All their heads swung toward Eglantine. “Didn’t you notice?” Soren asked.
    “I came in early and went to sleep, and then this evening I got up late and thought she was already out. Gee, I hope she’s all right.”
    Digger observed Eglantine closely. Her words sounded hollow to him.
    The search-and-rescue chaw members, as well as those in tracking, were now organizing the other owls to divide up into small groups to conduct a search. Because they were the most experienced, each senior member of the search-and-rescue chaw would lead owls from other chawson the hunt. A member from the tracking chaw would accompany each group for the groundwork of finding any traces of a downed owl.
    They were given only a few minutes to get ready. Eglantine rushed back to her hollow.
    “What’s going on?” Ginger asked her.
    “Oh, it’s Primrose. She seems to have gotten herself lost.”
    “Oh,” Ginger said and yawned.
    Eglantine blinked. For just a split second, it was as if she had stepped out of her own body, her own feathers, and was listening to herself. Why did she sound this way? Primrose is my best friend. Why don’t I feel anything? Why do I sound so weird? Am I me? Where is me? It was almost as if a stranger inhabited her body, her gizzard. Gizzard? Did she