Starlight, p.8
Starlight, page 8
She padded down to the edge of the water and dipped in her paw, drawing it out again with a hiss; the water was obviously icy cold. Then she shook herself and walked into the water, placing each paw carefully on the slippery pebbles.
There were fewer reeds here than in the first stream where they had stopped to fish the day before, and hardly any shrubs or other undergrowth. A pang of disappointment bit through Brambleclaw. This would be no place for a camp, especially not with traces of Twolegs so close by.
“Watch out when you get to the middle,” Mistyfoot called.
“Sometimes there are hollows that you can’t see above the water, and it could suddenly get deeper.”
The water almost reached Tawnypelt’s belly fur by now.
She paused and nodded without looking back, then went on more cautiously. Brambleclaw and the others followed; Crowfeather let out a startled meow as he slipped on a loose stone, but found his balance again after some rather undigni-fied splashing, and managed to keep his head above the surface of the water.
Tawnypelt jumped out and shook herself from nose to tail, scattering drops of water around her. “You’ll be fine,” she W A R R I O R S : T H E N E W P R O P H E C Y : S T A R L I G H T
8 0
called to the others. “I didn’t have to swim at all.”
Cold, wet, and with his belly fur clinging uncomfortably to his skin, Brambleclaw wasn’t sure that was much of a benefit right now. Beside him, Mistyfoot padded confidently through the water as if she were on dry land; Brambleclaw noticed her keeping one eye on Squirrelflight, who had the shortest legs of all of them, and had to tip back her head to stop the water from lapping at her muzzle.
There was another stretch of open grass on the far side of the stream, with more trees beyond. Soaked to his ears by the time he scrambled up the opposite bank, Brambleclaw made a dash for cover, but the branches here had shed their leaves, and didn’t offer much shelter from the rain.
He crouched beneath a tree while he waited for the others to catch up, trying to imagine what it would be like in greenleaf, with thicker grass and ferns and a canopy of leaves rustling above him. Right now the ground was unpleasantly soggy, and he couldn’t see any thickets of bramble or hazel like the ones in their old territory.
At least these trees were oak and beech, not pines like the forest they had just left. They would provide good shelter for the mice and birds ThunderClan was used to hunting.
Brambleclaw’s spirits began to lift, but he was still uneasy about all the signs of Twoleg activity—the paths, the brightly colored mark on a tree, the half-bridges. He wondered if it was just his nerves telling him there were more signs of Twolegs here than in their old territory, and he shook himself to clear his head.
W A R R I O R S : T H E N E W P R O P H E C Y : S T A R L I G H T
8 1
“What do you think?” Mistyfoot prompted, joining him.
Before Brambleclaw could reply, Squirrelflight bounded up and began scuffling with one forepaw among the dis-carded beech shells lying in the grass.
“With all these nuts around there should be plenty of squirrels,” she meowed.
Mistyfoot narrowed her eyes at Brambleclaw, and he tried not to look as if he were beginning to give up all hope of finding somewhere for ThunderClan to live. “Why don’t we rest for a bit?” she suggested. “Find somewhere out of the rain and hope it stops soon.”
“Hope catches no prey,” Crowfeather commented dryly as he and Tawnypelt came up, flicking droplets of water from their ears.
“That’s a good idea, Mistyfoot,” Brambleclaw meowed.
“If we can find any shelter,” Tawnypelt added.
“Let’s go farther into the woods,” Mistyfoot decided. “The wind will be colder blowing off the water.”
They padded into the trees on a slanting course that led away from the lake. When they could still make out the silver sheen of water behind them, they came to a huge, ancient oak standing among the beech trees. The ground had fallen away around the twisting roots, and there was a faint, stale scent of rabbit, as if this had once been used as a burrow. There was room for all the cats to creep in among the roots, where they were sheltered from the wind, though rain still trickled in.
Brambleclaw huddled close to Squirrelflight and began to lick drops of rain from the fur around her neck and shoulders.
W A R R I O R S : T H E N E W P R O P H E C Y : S T A R L I G H T
8 2
“This feels way harder than anything we had to do on the journey,” she murmured after a while. “All that way—all the danger we faced getting here, the times we nearly didn’t make it—and now we have to decide where the Clan is going to make its new home. It doesn’t feel as if StarClan is going to lead us straight to a nice, safe camp. What if we make the wrong decision?”
She had come so close to the heart of his fears that Brambleclaw paused to gaze into her forest-green eyes. “I thought it would be easier than this too,” he admitted.
Squirrelflight peered out of their shelter, blinking raindrops off her eyelashes. “These are the right sort of trees, but it’s so open here compared with the old territory.
ThunderClan won’t feel safe if there isn’t enough cover.”
“Or if the territory’s full of Twolegs,” Brambleclaw pointed out.
“Come on!” Tawnypelt stopped licking her chest fur and looked up to face him. “There were plenty of Twolegs back in the forest. It wasn’t a problem then, and it won’t be a problem now.”
She was talking sense, but more than anything else, Brambleclaw knew that he wanted to feel safe in his new home, and he didn’t feel safe here, at least not yet.
“It’ll look better in newleaf,” Mistyfoot meowed encouragingly. “Everywhere does.”
“Hmm. . . .” Squirrelflight shifted so that she could lick the damp fur at the base of her tail. “We still have to find a camp, though.”
W A R R I O R S : T H E N E W P R O P H E C Y : S T A R L I G H T
8 3
“You’ve hardly set paw in the territory yet,” Crowfeather pointed out.
“I know.” Brambleclaw made a determined effort to stop worrying and concentrated on giving Squirrelflight a few more vigorous licks.
Her jaws gaped in an enormous yawn. “This rain doesn’t help. If it goes on much longer it’ll wash my fur off.”
Brambleclaw stopped and let his muzzle rest against Squirrelflight’s warm flank. He was just dozing off when he felt her give a wriggle and heard her say, “I think it’s easing off.”
Lifting his head, Brambleclaw realized that the steady pattering of the rain on the grass outside their shelter had faded away into uneven, short-lived bursts. The wind had dropped, and a watery beam of sunlight glinted on the drops that hung from every branch and twig.
Tawnypelt meowed, “The clouds are breaking up.”
Brambleclaw scrambled out from the roots and glanced up to see that it was almost sunhigh. The rest of the patrol emerged behind him. Mistyfoot scented the air, while Crowfeather groomed the ruffled fur on his gray-black shoulder.
“Any chance of hunting?” Squirrelflight meowed, stretching each hindleg in turn.
“Sure,” Brambleclaw replied. “Let’s look for something on the way.” It would be a chance to see how well the woodland could feed hungry cats.
The five cats spread out among the trees. Brambleclaw kept his ears pricked for the sound of prey, and he paused W A R R I O R S : T H E N E W P R O P H E C Y : S T A R L I G H T
8 4
every few steps to taste the air. At first all he could smell were wet leaves and dripping branches, and he felt his spirits sink.
Were there so many Twolegs here that all the prey had fled?
But at least the ground was becoming more uneven, with bushes and clumps of dead bracken where little creatures might hide.
Suddenly he picked up a tiny scuffling sound among the leaves at the foot of a tree. Squirrelflight heard it at the same moment, and streaked toward it. Her paws thudded on the ground, and the prey—a vole—shot out and vanished into a clump of brambles. Squirrelflight raced after it with her nose stretched out. Brambleclaw groaned—she should have known better than to chase something so noisily in the quiet forest.
“She won’t catch it now,” Crowfeather commented.
They watched Squirrelflight plunge into the bushes. For a heartbeat her dark ginger fur was visible among the waving branches before it disappeared. A fading yowl came out of the bushes, and then all was still.
“What happened?” exclaimed Tawnypelt.
Brambleclaw dashed toward the brambles, the vole forgotten. “Squirrelflight!” he yowled. “Squirrelflight, where are you?”
He pushed his way into the thorny branches.
“Careful!” he heard Mistyfoot warn him from behind.
Brambleclaw scarcely heard her. Springy twigs slapped him across the face, and he felt a thorn sink into his pad.
“Squirrelflight!” he called again.
W A R R I O R S : T H E N E W P R O P H E C Y : S T A R L I G H T
8 5
“I’m down here!” The faint reply came from somewhere below.
Brambleclaw looked down and gasped. A tail-length in front of him the ground fell away sharply; another couple of pawsteps and he would have slipped over too.
Glancing back over his shoulder he saw Tawnypelt pressing up close behind him. “Stay back,” he warned. “There’s some sort of cliff here. Let me have a look first.”
Keeping his belly close to the ground, he crept forward until he could look over the edge. Remembering the gorge in the mountains where Smokepaw had fallen, he braced himself to see Squirrelflight’s broken body lying on stones far below. Instead she was standing in a clump of brambles no more than three or four fox-lengths beneath him, staring up at him with wide green eyes.
“Squirrelflight!” He gasped. “Are you all right?”
“No, I’m not!” Squirrelflight meowed crossly. “I’ve got so many thorns in me I feel like a hedgehog. And I never caught that wretched vole. But I’ve found something amazing!
Come and see.”
“Will we be able to get out again?”
Squirrelflight sighed. “Honestly, Brambleclaw, are you a mouse? Get down here. You’ve got to see this.”
Brambleclaw felt his fur prickle with excitement. He glanced back at the other members of the patrol. Tawnypelt was standing where he had left her, and Mistyfoot and Crowfeather peered anxiously around her flank.
“Is Squirrelflight hurt?” Mistyfoot called.
W A R R I O R S : T H E N E W P R O P H E C Y : S T A R L I G H T
8 6
“No, I think she’s fine,” Brambleclaw replied. “She wants me to go down there. Will you keep watch?”
Mistyfoot nodded, and Brambleclaw turned back to the cliff. When he looked at it closely, he saw that it wasn’t as sheer as the gorge. It was steep, but there were plenty of pawholds on jutting stones and tussocks of grass. Half slipping, half scrambling, he made his way down until he reached Squirrelflight, who was standing among the brambles looking rather disheveled.
“There!” She spun around, impatiently twitching her tail.
“See?”
Brambleclaw followed her gaze more slowly. They were standing on the edge of a bramble thicket; a wide, grassy space stretched in front of them, surrounded by walls of stone. Where he and Squirrelflight had come down, the walls were fairly low, but on the opposite side of the clearing they stretched above their heads for many fox-lengths.
“It’s a good thing you didn’t fall down on that side,” he meowed.
“Yes, I know, but don’t you see, Brambleclaw?” Squirrelflight demanded. “This is ThunderClan’s new camp!”
“What?”
“Look at it,” she insisted. “It’s perfect.”
Brambleclaw unhooked a bramble from his fur and padded into the center of the clearing. The stone walls rose all around him except for a gap not far away, which was choked with dead ferns and grass with whiskery, seedy stems.
There were more bramble thickets all around him, and he W A R R I O R S : T H E N E W P R O P H E C Y : S T A R L I G H T
8 7
could see one or two cracks that might lead to caves in the highest part of the wall. He could see what Squirrelflight meant. The place could make a good camp, but something about it spooked him all the same.
“I don’t know . . .” he began, not wanting to crush Squirrelflight’s excitement but unable to ignore the disquiet that made his paws itch. “Look at the surface of the stone, how smoothly it’s been cut. Only Twolegs could have done that, and we can’t camp anywhere near Twolegs.”
“But that must have been ages ago,” Squirrelflight argued, coming to join him in the center of the clearing. “Look at the grass and bushes growing up the walls. They didn’t spring up overnight, did they? And there’s no scent of Twolegs.”
Brambleclaw tasted the air. Squirrelflight was right. No Twolegs had been there for a long time. She was right about the bushes, too. Twolegs must have cut out the stone—maybe to build their nests—and then gone away and left the hollow in the middle of the forest. In a way, it reminded him of the ravine that had sheltered the old ThunderClan camp.
Perhaps that would make it feel like home to the Clan.
He forced himself to be calm. His Clanmates needed him to be strong, and not see danger in every shadow and stirring leaf. “It might do, I suppose.”
Squirrelflight flicked her ears. “Don’t get too enthusiastic, will you?” she mewed.
“I’m just wondering what it would be like to defend. That part over there would be fine”—he gestured with his tail to the highest, steepest wall—“but it’s pretty low where we came W A R R I O R S : T H E N E W P R O P H E C Y : S T A R L I G H T
8 8
in. And what about that gap?”
“Well, it’s an easier way in and out than the one we took just now! We can fill it in with thorns or something to keep out uninvited visitors.”
She bounded over and prowled through the long grass, sniffing here and there. Watching her, Brambleclaw felt a wave of homesickness sweep over him, and he closed his eyes.
The feeling seemed to pick him up and swamp him like the waves at sun-drown-place, and for a few heartbeats he thought he would drown in it. He wanted the old ThunderClan camp with its strong thorn walls and the gorse tunnel that was so easy to defend. He wanted to lie down in the warriors’ den under the thornbush, or visit Cinderpelt in her den among the soft green ferns. He wanted to eat fresh-kill by the nettle patch while the apprentices scuffled by their favorite tree stump, their fighting moves carefully imitated by the kits outside the nursery.
The pain of knowing he could never go back was almost too much for Brambleclaw to bear. The Twoleg monsters would have torn up every part of the camp by now, all the places that were so deep in his heart. It wasn’t fair! Why had StarClan let this happen?
The wind picked up, rattling the branches of the trees that surrounded the hollow and jolting Brambleclaw back to his surroundings. Taking a deep breath, he padded over to Squirrelflight, who was still nosing about in the gap between the walls.
“Are you okay?” she asked. “You’re limping.”
W A R R I O R S : T H E N E W P R O P H E C Y : S T A R L I G H T
8 9
“Oh—there’s a thorn in my pad.” Brambleclaw had almost forgotten about it.
“Lie down and let me look.”
When Brambleclaw obeyed, she licked experimentally at his pad and managed to get the end of the thorn between her teeth. With a sharp tug it came away.
“There,” Squirrelflight meowed. “Now give it a good lick.”
“Thanks. You’re nearly good enough to be a medicine cat!”
Squirrelflight gave a little mrrow of amusement. Then the laughter died from her eyes and she looked closely at him.
“You don’t like it here, do you?”
“It’s not that.” Brambleclaw paused in rasping his tongue over his injured pad. “It’s just . . . well, I suppose I wanted to find a camp exactly like the one we left behind, in a ravine with gorse to keep out invaders. . . .”
He trailed off, afraid Squirrelflight would think he was being ridiculous; instead she pressed her muzzle affectionately against his. “There isn’t a cat among ThunderClan who doesn’t want our old home back. But it’s gone now. StarClan has brought us to a new place, and we’ve got to find out how to live here. Don’t you think this hollow would make a good camp? Twolegs don’t come here, and there’s no sign of Thunderpaths.”
Gazing into her shining eyes, Brambleclaw knew that he had brought with him from the forest everything that was truly important. “You’re right,” he murmured, leaning into the warmth of her fur. “I couldn’t do this without you. You know that, don’t you?”
W A R R I O R S : T H E N E W P R O P H E C Y : S T A R L I G H T
9 0
Squirrelflight’s tongue rasped gently over his ear. “Stupid furball.”
Brambleclaw returned the affectionate lick, then froze as he heard the sound of something approaching through the gap.
“Hi, there.” It was Crowfeather’s voice, muffled by a mouthful of vole. He shouldered the long grass aside as he came up to them and dropped the fresh-kill at their paws.
“You’ve been so long, we started to think a fox might have gotten you.”
“No, we’re fine,” replied Brambleclaw.
“If a fox had gotten me,” Squirrelflight added, “you would have heard about it, don’t worry.”
“I daresay we would,” Crowfeather meowed, pushing the vole toward them. “This is for you,” he went on. “We’ve all had ours. We hunted while we were waiting for you to come back.”
“Thanks, Crowfeather,” mewed Brambleclaw.
The WindClan warrior acknowledged his thanks with a wave of his tail.
“Well, what do you think of the new ThunderClan camp?”
Squirrelflight demanded.
“Here?” Crowfeather blinked, and turned slowly around while the ThunderClan warriors shared the vole in swift, hungry bites. “I suppose it’s okay,” he meowed at last, “if you want to be closed in like this. It would be easy to defend, but it wouldn’t do for WindClan.”
