Brambleclaw brought up the rear, with a final glance over his shoulder at the rocky teeth that framed the mouth of the cave and the waves that still surged back and forth. The last crimson rays of the drowned sun still stained the sky; in a single heartbeat Brambleclaw seemed to see an endless river of blood pouring down upon him, filling his ears with the screams of dying cats.
“Brambleclaw?” Squirrelpaw’s voice cut through the terrified sounds. “Are you coming?”
The vision was gone; Brambleclaw found himself back in the wave-filled cave to see that the colour was rapidly fading from the sky and a single warrior of StarClan shone down on him. Shivering, he followed his friends and Midnight.
The tunnel sloped upward. Brambleclaw could see nothing in the pitch darkness, but he felt sandy soil beneath his paws, rather than pebbles or rock. As well as the wary cat-scent of his friends, there was a powerful reek of badger.
Then he came out into another cave. Fresher air moved against his fur, and at the far end a hole led into the open. A faint silvery gleam filtered through it, telling Brambleclaw that outside, the moon was crossing the sky. By its light he saw that this cave had been dug out of the earth, with twisting roots entangled in the roof and the floor covered with a thick layer of bracken. Feathertail was already helping Tawnypelt to make a nest among the soft fronds, and settled down beside her to lick her wound again.
“You have injury?” Midnight asked the ShadowClan warrior. “What gave it?”
“It’s a rat bite,” Tawnypelt replied through gritted teeth.
The badger made a spitting noise. “Is bad. Wait.” She vanished into the shadows at one side of the cave and returned a moment later with a root clamped in her jaws.
“Burdock root!” Squirrelpaw exclaimed, with a triumphant glance at Brambleclaw. “You use it too?”
“Good for bite, good for infected paw, good for all sores.” The badger chomped up the root and laid the pulp on Tawnypelt’s wound, just as Squirrelpaw had done in the wood. “Now,” she went on when she had finished, “is time for talk.”
She waited until all the cats had settled themselves among the bracken. Brambleclaw felt his excitement rising. He was only just beginning to realise that they had reached the end of their journey. They had found the place where StarClan had sent them, and now they were about to hear what Midnight had to tell them.
“How is it you can speak to us?” he asked curiously.
“I have travelled far, and many tongues have learned,” Midnight told him. “Tongues of other cats, who speak not same as you. Of fox and rabbit also.” She grunted. “They speak not of interest. Fox talk is all of kill. Rabbit has thistledown for brain.”
Squirrelpaw let out a mrrow of laughter. Brambleclaw could see that her fur lay flat again and her ears were pricked. “So what do you want to tell us?” she meowed.
“Much, in good time,” replied the badger. “But first, tell me of your journey. How came you from your tribes?”
Stormfur looked puzzled. “Tribes?”
Midnight shook her head irritably. “My brain thistledown also. Forget which sort of cats here. You say Clans, not?”
“That’s right,” meowed Brambleclaw. He nudged away the uneasy thought that there were other cats like them, not loners, who lived in Clans known as tribes. They had not seen them on their journey—they probably lived far in a different direction.
With the others to help him, he began the story of their journey, from the first dreams that four of them had shared, to his own dream of the sun-drown place and the decision to leave the forest. Midnight listened intently, with a low chuckle as the cats told her of their misadventures with Purdy, and an understanding nod when they described how they had all, in the end, received their own saltwater sign.
“So here we are,” Brambleclaw finished. “We are ready to know what StarClan’s message is.”
“And why we had to come here to find out,” Crowpaw added. “Why couldn’t StarClan have told us what we needed to know back in the forest?”
His tone was still hostile, as if he had not accepted that Midnight was not a threat, but that didn’t seem to bother the badger. Feathertail flicked her tail out in a calming gesture, and at her touch the WindClan apprentice relaxed a little.
“Think, small warrior,” Midnight replied to his question. “When you set out, you were four. Six with friends who would not stay behind. Now you are one.” Her voice grew deeper and seemed to Brambleclaw to be full of foreboding as she went on, “In days coming now, all Clans must be one. If not, trouble destroy you.”
Brambleclaw felt icy claws rake down his spine. The shudder that ran through him had nothing to do with his sodden fur. “What is the trouble?” he whispered.
Midnight hesitated, her deep, dark gaze resting on each cat in turn. “You must leave the forest,” she growled at last. “All cats must leave.”
“What?” Stormfur leaped to his paws. “That’s mouse-brained! There have always been cats in the forest.”
The badger heaved a long sigh. “No longer.”
“But why?” Feathertail asked, anxiously kneading her paws on the bed of bracken.
“Twolegs.” Midnight sighed again. “Always is Twolegs. Soon they come with machines . . . monsters is your word, not? Trees will they uproot, rocks break, the earth itself tear apart. No place left for cats. You stay, monsters tear you too, or you starve with no prey.”
There was silence in the moonlit cave. Brambleclaw struggled with the dreadful vision the badger had summoned. He imagined Twoleg monsters—huge shining things in bright unnatural colours, roaring through his beloved camp. He could almost hear again the screams he had heard in the cave with teeth, though now they were the terrified cries of his Clan mates as they fled. Everything in him strained against what he had heard, yet he could not tell Midnight that he did not believe her. Every word she had spoken was filled with truth.
“How do you know all this?” Stormfur meowed quietly; there was no challenge in his voice, only a desperate need for an explanation.
“It happened to my sett, many seasons ago. I have seen all before; I can see what will come now. Just as the stars speak to you, they talk to me also. All that you need to know is written there. Is not hard to read, once you know.”
“No more Sunningrocks?” Squirrelpaw mewed in a small voice; she sounded as scared as a kit without its mother. “No more training hollow? No more Fourtrees?”
Midnight shook her head, her eyes tiny bright berries in the shadows.
“But why would the Twolegs do that?” Brambleclaw demanded. “What harm have we ever done them?”
“Is no harm,” Midnight replied. “Twolegs hardly know you there. They do it for build new Thunderpath—go here, there, more faster.”
“It won’t happen.” Crowpaw stood up with a fierce gleam in his eyes, as if he were ready to take on the whole race of Twolegs single-pawed. “StarClan won’t allow it.”
“StarClan cannot stop it.”
Crowpaw opened his mouth to protest again, but nothing came out. He looked utterly bewildered to think of a disaster that was beyond the power of StarClan to stop.
“Then why did they bring us here?” mewed a faint voice. Tawnypelt had raised her head from her nest of ferns to fix her gaze on Midnight. “Are we supposed to go home and watch our Clans being destroyed?”
“No, indeed, injured warrior.” The badger’s voice was suddenly gentle. “For hope is given to you. Hope you shall bring. You must lead your Clans away from the forest and find new home.”
“Just like that?” Crowpaw let out a snort of disgust. “I’m supposed to go to my Clan leader and say, ‘Sorry, Tallstar, we’ve all got to leave’? He would claw my ears off, if he didn’t die laughing first.”
Midnight’s reply rumbled from deep in her chest. “When you reach home I think you will find that even your Clan leaders will listen.”
Terror seized Brambleclaw. What more had the badger seen in the stars? When they returned to
the forest, would they find that the destruction had already begun?
He sprang to his paws. “We must go now!”
“No, no.” Midnight shook her head from side to side. “Time is for rest tonight. Hunt in moonlight. Eat well. Let injured friend sleep. Tomorrow is better for travel.”
Brambleclaw glanced at his friends and nodded reluctantly. “That makes sense.”
“But you haven’t told us where to go,” Feathertail pointed out, her blue eyes full of trouble. “Where can we find another forest where all the Clans can live in peace?”
“Fear not. You will find, far from Twolegplaces, where is peace. Hills, oak woods for shelter, running streams.”
“But how?” Brambleclaw persisted. “Will you come with us and show us?”
“No,” Midnight rasped. “Much have I travelled, but no longer. Now enough is this cave, roar of sea, wind in grasses. But you will not be without a guide. When return, stand on Great Rock when Silverpelt shines above. A dying warrior the way will show.”
Fear clutched harder at Brambleclaw. Midnight’s words sounded more like a threat than a promise. “One of us will die?” he whispered.
“I did not say. Do so, and you will see.”
Evidently the badger was not prepared to say more, if indeed she knew. Brambleclaw did not doubt her wisdom, but he realised that not everything had been revealed to her. His breath grew shaky as he caught a glimpse of other powers beyond StarClan—perhaps a power so great that the whole blaze of Silverpelt was no more than the dazzle of moonlight on water.
“OK,” he meowed, letting out a long breath. “Thank you, Midnight. We’ll do as you say.”
“And now we’d better hunt,” added Stormfur.
Dipping his head in deep respect to the badger, he padded past her up the tunnel and out into the night. Crowpaw and Feathertail followed him.
“Squirrelpaw, you stay with Tawnypelt,” Brambleclaw mewed. “Rest and get your fur dry.”
To his surprise, Squirrelpaw agreed without question, even giving his ear a quick lick before settling down in the bracken beside his sister. Brambleclaw watched them for a moment, realising how much they meant to him—even the pesky ginger apprentice whom he had tried so hard to leave behind. Stormfur and Feathertail, too, were true friends, and even Crowpaw had become an ally he would want beside him in any battle.
“You were right,” he meowed thoughtfully to Midnight. “We have become one.”
The badger nodded gravely. “In days to come, you need each other.” She pronounced the words with all the force of a prophecy from StarClan. “Your journey not end here, small warrior. It only just begin.”
EPILOGUE
The long grass beside the Thunderpath parted and Firestar prowled into the open, the weakening leaf-fall sun shining on his flame-coloured pelt. Beside him Greystripe sniffed suspiciously at the air.
“Great StarClan, it smells foul today!” he exclaimed.
Cloudtail and Sandstorm padded up to join them, and Leafpaw, the last member of the patrol, turned away from the clump of marigold she was examining. Cloudtail let out a snort of disgust. “Every time I come up here, it takes me all day to get the reek out of my fur,” he complained.
Sandstorm rolled her eyes but said nothing.
“You know, there’s something strange about today,” Firestar meowed, glancing up and down the Thunderpath. “There aren’t any monsters in sight, but the smell’s worse than ever.”
“And I can hear something,” Leafpaw added, her ears pricked.
The wind carried a deep-toned roaring sound toward the group of cats, faint with distance but growing gradually louder.
Cloudtail turned to his Clan leader with a puzzled look in his blue eyes. “What’s that? I’ve never heard . . .” His voice trailed off and he stood gaping.
Over a rise in the Thunderpath came the biggest monster any of the cats had seen in their lives. Sunlight dazzled off its gleaming body, and its shape rippled in the heat rising from the surface of the Thunderpath. Its throaty roaring grew and grew until it seemed to fill the whole forest.
It came slowly, followed by another and yet another. Twolegs swarmed over them like ticks, yowling at each other, their words all but drowned by the roar of the monsters.
Then as the leading monster drew abreast of the five watching cats, the unthinkable happened. Instead of going past it swerved, crunched over the narrow strip of grass that edged the Thunderpath, and headed straight for them.
“What’s going on?” Greystripe gasped as Firestar howled, “Scatter!”
He dived for cover into a clump of bracken while his deputy fled deeper into the forest and turned to stare out from underneath a thornbush. Cloudtail shot up the nearest tree and crouched in the fork between two branches, gazing down. Sandstorm headed into a narrow gully with a trickle of water at the bottom, pausing to look back only when she reached the other side, her fur bristling in mingled shock and anger. Leafpaw followed her, and flattened herself in the long grass.
The monster barrelled forwards on huge black paws that crushed everything in its path. As all five cats watched, frozen with horror, it rammed its shoulder up against an ash tree; the tree shook under the impact, and then, with a shriek like all the prey in the forest dying at once, its roots tore out of the earth.
The tree crashed to the ground. The monster rolled on.
The destruction of the forest had begun.
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ALSO BY AUTHOR
WARRIORS
Book One: Into the Wild
Book Two: Fire and Ice
Book Three: Forest of Secrets
Book Four: Rising Storm
Book Five: A Dangerous Path
Book Six: The Darkest Hour
WARRIORS: THE NEW PROPHECY
Book One: Midnight
Book Two: Moonrise
Book Three: Dawn
Book Four: Starlight
Book Five: Twilight
Book Six: Sunset
COPYRIGHT
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2011
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First published in the USA by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2005
Copyright © Working Partners Limited 2005
Series created by Working Partners Limited.
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Source ISBN: 9780007419227
Ebook Edition © October 2013 ISBN: 9780007551040
Version: 2013-08-24
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Erin Hunter, Midnight
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