Read The Shattering (Guardians of Ga'hoole) for Free Online

called Nimsy night, and all of the owls looked forward to it because it was after Nimsy that the nights began to grow longer by slivers, first in seconds, then in minutes, and finally, at summer’s end, by hours. Eglantine had decided that she would fly to the hollow in The Beaks after Nimsy, when the longer nights would give her more time.
    However, on these short summer nights and long summer days before Nimsy, the owls tended to stay up longer and go to sleep later. There were only so many hours an owl could sleep during the day, especially when their night flight exercise was cut short.
    “Let’s go to the library,” Otulissa said. “I want to study this chart.”
    On one of the larger tables, Otulissa unrolled the chart she had gotten from Trader Mags. It showed a diagram of the owl brain cross-referenced with a diagram of the owl gizzard. Perhaps it could help explain fleckasia, Otulissa thought. “If I only had that whole book on fleckasia,” she sighed.
    “But you have that page we found when we were out doing weather experiments for Ezylryb,” Gylfie said.
    “Yes, but it was hardly legible.” Otulissa stared down at the diagram. “Quadrant!” she suddenly said in ahushed voice. With a shaking talon, Otulissa pointed to the chart.
    “You see the word ‘quadrant’ in both that section of the brain and that section of the gizzard. The very word that was on the torn page you found! I’ll be back in a second.” Otulissa flapped her wings and flew out of the library. In less than a minute, she was back with the torn page in her beak. She bent over the page and peered. Then swung her head toward the chart. “There’s the number two, look. I can barely make it out, but it’s there.” She blinked and slowly began to speak. “I get it. See. The gizzard is divided into four quadrants and so is the brain.”
    “And so is the night sky for navigation,” Gylfie said. “Strix Struma taught us that.”
    “Right!” Otulissa said. “When Ezylryb was lost, it was because the bags of flecks had destroyed his sense of the quadrants for navigation. He no longer knew where the earth’s magnetic poles were.”
    A creaky voice scratched the air. “Indeed, Otulissa. You are right.” It was Ezylryb. “Aha! A humors chart,” the old Whiskered Screech proclaimed.
    “Humors?” Twilight said. “What’s so funny about an owl gizzard and brain?”
    “It’s not ha-ha humor. No, not in the least. The lost book, Fleckasia and Other Disorders of the Gizzard, would haveexplained much about humors…and how they relate to shattering.”
    Soren blinked. Shattering was the terrible disease that Otulissa had told them about.
    “Tell me, Ezylryb,” Soren asked hesitantly. “Is that what’s wrong with Dewlap? Was she shattered?”
    Ezylryb sighed heavily, then shook his head. “No, she is not shattered. She is an old and foolish owl. Still, there was no rupture between the gizzard and brain. She was just misguided, used bad judgment, and her focus was limited. She felt the Pure Ones would take better care of the tree than we would.”
    “But what exactly is ‘shattering’?” Otulissa asked.
    “It is very complicated, Otulissa. It is even beyond higher magnetics, which I know you know a lot about. But without the book, I don’t know how I could begin to explain it.”
    “It’s connected to higher magnetics?” Otulissa asked.
    “Oh, indeed it is. You know how in all of our brains there are tiny bits of magnetic particles much smaller than flecks. They are sometimes called iron oxides. They aid us with navigation because they help us sense the earth’s magnetic field.”
    Primrose had come into the library and was now also listening intently.
    “Imagine, however, if something disturbed those bits in our brain,” Ezylryb continued. “Exposure to too many flecks not only causes problems to the internal compass that we use for navigational purposes, as it did mine, but in certain conditions it can cause a