Cherryfall went next, more slowly but without mishap, and Molewhisker followed her.
“Your turn now, Alderpaw,” Sandstorm told him. “I’ll go last.”
Alderpaw’s belly squirmed as he approached the fence. He tried not to think of the spikes tearing into him, or of looking a fool in front of his Clanmates—and Needlepaw.
To begin with he climbed slowly, but he made himself think of the cats in his vision, crying out in anguish and far more terrified than he was now. I have to do this. They need me.
More determined, he managed to pick up the pace, and he found it wasn’t as hard as it looked to haul himself upward with his paws slotting into the narrow gaps. The only really frightening moment was when he clung to the top of the swaying fence. For a moment his belly felt queasy; then he launched himself into the air and thumped down beside his sister.
I did it!
Sandstorm had already begun to climb. She made it quickly to the top, but clinging between the spikes, she hesitated. Her paws slipped, and she fell, crashing down to the ground and rolling over.
“Sandstorm!” Molewhisker’s yowl was full of panic as he lurched forward, dropping to his belly to stop her momentum.
The older cat fell against him and then lay still, panting. Alderpaw rushed over to her, with his other Clanmates hard on his paws. “Are you okay?” he asked anxiously.
Sandstorm sat up. “I’m fine,” she rasped, as if for a moment she had trouble breathing. “I just felt like being a bird.”
“Well, don’t try it again,” Alderpaw responded.
Sandstorm rested for a little while, and then the cats set out again, still heading for the big Twoleg den. Walking beside Sandstorm, Alderpaw noticed that her wound looked bigger, and drops of blood were oozing out of it.
“Did you catch your shoulder on one of the spikes?” he asked her.
Sandstorm shrugged. “I might have scraped it. Don’t fuss, Alderpaw; it’s fine. If you want to worry,” she added, “you might worry about that enormous beast up ahead!”
Alderpaw had been so concerned about Sandstorm that he hadn’t noticed what lay in front of them. Now he looked up to see that the other cats had stopped and were uneasily eyeing a huge creature that stood a few fox-lengths away. Even Needlepaw looked scared.
It was smaller than the horses Alderpaw had seen as they left Clan territory, but still big enough to be frightening. Its lumpy body was covered in black-and-white fur; its legs were spindly with hard, sharp paws. Its tail, ending in a tuft of hair, swung to and fro. Enormous eyes in a square face gazed expressionlessly at the cats.
“What is it?” Sparkpaw gasped.
“Nothing to be afraid of,” Sandstorm mewed calmly. “I’ve seen them before, and they’re not unfriendly. Mostly they just ignore cats.”
“Mostly?” Alderpaw asked nervously.
“They’re okay unless something scares them into running. Then they’re big enough to trample us underpaw. So we need to be careful not to scare this one.”
“You’ve no idea how good that makes me feel,” Molewhisker muttered.
Alderpaw forced his paws into motion, heading in a wide circle around the strange animal, never taking his eyes off it. His friends followed him. The creature swung its head around to track their progress, still gazing at them with those large, incurious eyes. Then without warning it opened its jaws and let out a deep-throated bellow.
Thoroughly spooked, Alderpaw gave a yowl of terror and raced for the big Twoleg den. He could hear caterwauling from behind him as the others pelted after him.
Have we scared it? Will it run?
But when he halted and looked back, panting, the huge animal hadn’t stirred. It just stood there, still staring at them. Its jaws moved rhythmically as it chewed.
“Great StarClan!” Cherryfall exclaimed. “What is that?”
After a moment Sandstorm let out a mrrow of laughter, and the others joined in, beginning to relax. Alderpaw suddenly felt ashamed of his nervousness, and he could see from his friends’ faces that they felt the same.
“Let’s move on,” he meowed.
Skirting the big yellow den and the cluster of smaller dens, the cats headed away at a brisk lope. Alderpaw hoped they were leaving the Twoleg stuff behind them, until he spotted a smaller wooden den, with birds pecking at the earth around it and straying into the cats’ path.
“What are those?” he asked curiously.
The birds were bigger than pigeons, with reddish-brown feathers and scaly yellow legs. They didn’t pay much attention as the cats approached.
“They’re birds, mouse-brain,” Sparkpaw replied to Alderpaw. “And that means they’re prey.”
Crouching down, she began to creep up on the nearest bird. But there was no cover, and the bird spotted her as she pounced. It spun around to face her, flapping its wings and letting out a series of harsh squawks.
The rest of the birds scattered, running across the grass as if they didn’t know how to fly. But the bird Sparkpaw had tried to hunt stretched its neck out and attacked her with furious pecks. Sparkpaw leaped backward, hissing defiantly.
“It looks like you’re the prey,” Needlepaw meowed, her voice full of laughter and her eyes gleaming.
“Leave them,” Sandstorm ordered, gesturing with her tail for Sparkpaw to rejoin the group. “It’s not worth risking injury. We’ll hunt when we get past this place.”
“Yes, we need to keep going,” Alderpaw added, urgency pricking his paws as he remembered the desperate cries of the SkyClan cats.
Looking sulky, Sparkpaw obeyed. She glared at Needlepaw as the ShadowClan cat let out a stream of squawks in imitation of the weird birds. “Stop messing around, you crazy furball,” she muttered.
But Needlepaw seemed not to understand the need to move on quickly. Alderpaw’s irritation with her rose as she poked her nose into every hole and clump of long grass. She halted at the sight of another strange creature, smaller than the first, but with the same hard, pointed paws. It had curving horns and a long wisp of hair dangling from its chin. Alderpaw shivered at the sight of its eerie eyes.
It let out a high-pitched, drawn-out cry, and Needlepaw at once tried to imitate it, snorting with laughter at her own weird meows.
“Whenever you’ve finished. . . ,” Alderpaw snarled, giving her a hard shove.
“Keep your fur on!” Needlepaw retorted.
She was still bouncing around like a kit on its first day out of the nursery when the cats approached a hedge. Beyond it, rows of tall, yellow-brown plants stretched into the distance. Alderpaw could hear a faint rumbling and noticed a haze hanging in the air.
“There may be a Thunderpath on the other side of this,” he mewed.
Sandstorm nodded. “I still think this is the way we should go.”
Without hesitating, Alderpaw began to push his way through the hedge; fortunately the bushes weren’t too thick. “Sandstorm, watch out for your shoulder,” he warned her.
Sandstorm brushed through without mishap, while Cherryfall and Molewhisker followed. Sparkpaw pushed Needlepaw ahead of her and brought up the rear. “I swear by StarClan,” Sparkpaw hissed as she emerged, “if you behave like this for much longer, I’m going to claw your ears off.”
Needlepaw swiped playfully at her. “You can always try.”
“Let’s go,” Alderpaw mewed curtly.
He headed out into the stretch of yellow-brown plants. Their stalks were hard and scratchy, and the ground underpaw was hard, bare earth. At least Needlepaw seemed to have calmed down as she slid through the gaps between the plants.
The rumbling sound Alderpaw could hear grew louder, and he guessed that they might be coming to the Thunderpath. Then he realized that the plants on one side were thinning. Veering in that direction, he poked his head out of cover. His companions clustered around him, peering over his shoulder.
There was no Thunderpath. Instead Alderpaw saw a stretch of ground where the plants had been cut down, leaving only stubble behind. Now he disc
overed where the rumbling came from: a huge monster with spinning jaws was moving straight toward them, slicing off the next swath of plants and tossing them into its belly! All around it the air was full of dust.
Alderpaw felt as if his whole body had been suddenly drenched in icy water. “It’s eating the field!” he gasped out.
“And it’ll eat us!” Sandstorm meowed. “It could gulp down all six of us at once. Run!”
Alderpaw whipped around and began to race through the plants, bobbing and weaving as gaps opened up. Behind him he heard Cherryfall yowl, “Stay together!”
Glancing over his shoulder, Alderpaw could spot all the other cats racing along with him. The tall plants blocked his view of the monster, but he knew it was close—the noise it made seemed loud enough to rattle the air. We have to keep running!
As he fled, Alderpaw realized that the hard ground had given way to soft mud that clung to his paws and gave off a terrible smell. He was too scared to wonder what it was, or to do anything except keep on pelting away from the monster.
Alderpaw was glancing behind him again when he suddenly crashed into something hard but springy that bounced him back a tail-length into the plants. Regaining his balance, he looked up and let out a groan.
“No! I don’t believe it!”
He was facing another fence made out of the shiny tendrils with the spikes along the top. His companions gathered around him.
“We’ll have to climb it,” Molewhisker meowed, “or the monster will get us.”
“Right.” Sparkpaw took the lead, climbing rapidly up the fence and hurling herself down on the other side into soft grass. “Hurry!” she urged the others.
Needlepaw went next. While Alderpaw was waiting for his turn, he noticed that some of the foul-smelling mud had got into Sandstorm’s wound, which was red and swollen now. Alderpaw was certain that it was infected. And Sandstorm was standing with her head lowered and her chest heaving; she was clearly exhausted, much more so than her age and the race through the plants would explain.
It must be her wound, Alderpaw told himself. I can just feel it. With an inward start of surprise he realized that this must be part of what being a good medicine cat was all about. I can’t just see that she should probably rest; I can tell that she needs to.
“You ought to rest,” he mewed to Sandstorm.
Sandstorm raised her head and gave him an annoyed look. “I’m an elder,” she retorted. “I’ve been around for a long time. I know I’m okay.”
Alderpaw had heard that argument before, and this time he wasn’t about to accept it. “No!” he meowed sharply.
Sandstorm’s eyes stretched wide in outrage. “What do you mean, no?”
“Sorry,” Alderpaw responded. “It’s just that I can tell how tired you are. I’m your medicine cat, and I’m saying you need to rest.”
The ginger she-cat hesitated for a moment. “Maybe you’re right. But let’s get across this StarClan-cursed fence first.”
She began to climb without waiting for a reply. Alderpaw could see how hard it was for her to haul herself upward. When she reached the top, she toppled rather than jumped onto the far side, letting out a screech as she fell.
Alderpaw scrambled over the fence without even thinking about it, and ran to Sandstorm. His eyes widened with horror as he saw her wound pooling with blood. She must have torn it on one of those spikes!
“That does it,” he growled. “We rest now.” Turning to the others, he added, “Find me some cobwebs.”
The cats scattered to search among the bushes that were dotted here and there across the grassland. While he waited for them to return, Alderpaw licked the clinging mud out of Sandstorm’s wound. The old cat just lay on her side, panting.
When his companions returned, Alderpaw packed the wound with cobwebs, but blood still kept oozing out of it. He gazed down at Sandstorm, trying to ignore his rising panic.
Her wound is worse now, and she’s weaker. How will she fight off the infection?
Cherryfall touched him on the shoulder. “It’s getting late,” she meowed. “Should we hunt?”
Alderpaw looked up, startled. In his anxiety he hadn’t noticed that the sun had gone down and the shadows of night were gathering.
“Please,” he responded. “I’ll stay with Sandstorm and fix up some nests.”
He found a gentle hollow sheltered by elder bushes and heaped dead leaves into it before helping Sandstorm across to it. The old cat had stopped insisting that she was fine, and she leaned heavily on his shoulder as she staggered across to her nest.
Cherryfall came back with a mouse as Alderpaw was getting Sandstorm settled. “Thanks,” Alderpaw mewed. “Sandstorm, eat this. And then you can go to sleep.”
“Bossy furball,” Sandstorm muttered, but she ate the mouse and curled up without protest.
Watching her, Alderpaw was relieved to see that the bleeding had almost stopped. At the same moment he realized how bone-weary he was. He could hardly keep awake until the other hunters returned, and he managed just a few mouthfuls of thrush before he too sank into sleep.
The patter of raindrops on the bushes above his head woke Alderpaw to the light of a chilly morning. Fortunately the bushes were so thick that very little rain penetrated to his nest.
Raising his head, Alderpaw saw that Sandstorm was still sleeping beside him. All the other cats were gone, except for Cherryfall, who crouched with her back to him at the top of the hollow, peering out through the branches. As Alderpaw sat up, the dead leaves crackling under his paws, she turned around.
“The others have gone hunting,” she mewed. “I stayed to keep watch. How is Sandstorm?”
Alderpaw examined the old she-cat. She was muttering in her sleep, shifting restlessly in her nest. Her wound had stopped bleeding, but it was more swollen than ever, red and hot to the touch.
Sandstorm’s green eyes blinked open as Alderpaw bent over her. “Hi,” she murmured. “Have you come to do my ticks?”
Alderpaw realized that Sandstorm thought she was back in the ThunderClan camp. “No, we’re on our quest, remember?” he replied. “Is there anything I can do for you? How are you feeling?”
“I’m perfectly okay,” Sandstorm told him, her voice a little stronger. She winced, gasping in pain, as she tried to sit up, and let herself flop back into the nest. “Don’t worry about me.”
But Alderpaw couldn’t help worrying. Sandstorm’s green eyes looked glassy, and he guessed that she was just trying to put on a brave front. When he stroked her pelt, she felt warm all over, and already she was drifting back into sleep.
She roused again a few moments later as the hunters returned, dragging a rabbit and a couple of blackbirds into the shelter of the bushes.
“It’s horrible out there,” Needlepaw complained, shaking her pelt so that the drops spattered Alderpaw. “Most of the prey is in hiding.”
“You did well, though,” Alderpaw praised her. “Come on, Sandstorm, do you want one of these blackbirds?”
His misgivings increased as Sandstorm struggled to stay awake enough to eat, and after a few mouthfuls she turned her head away. “I’m full,” she mewed. “You finish it, Alderpaw.”
When the other cats had settled down at the top of the hollow to eat their prey, Alderpaw rose to his paws to talk to them. “Sandstorm is sick,” he announced. “We can’t start traveling again until she’s fit to move.”
“I’m fit now,” Sandstorm protested, though any cat could see she was lying. “Don’t listen to this stupid furball.”
Clearly all the others understood how serious the situation was; they gazed down silently at Sandstorm, their eyes somber. Even mischievous Needlepaw had stopped joking around.
“What can we do?” Cherryfall asked.
“You know we’ll do everything we can,” Molewhisker added, and Sparkpaw nodded eagerly.
“I need marigold, horsetail, or honey,” Alderpaw told them. “They’ll help Sandstorm’s infection. I don’t know what kinds of herb
s grow around here, but hopefully you’ll be able to find at least one.”
When his companions had gone, Alderpaw sat beside Sandstorm, gently licking her ears as she drifted in and out of sleep. He hardly noticed when the rain eased off, until a weak ray of sunshine sliced through the bushes. It brought Alderpaw a slight glimmer of hope.
Sparkpaw was the first cat to return, and relief flooded over Alderpaw as he saw that she was carrying a few stalks of marigold. “Good job!” he told her. “Now I can make a poultice. Can you get the cobweb off Sandstorm’s wound? Very carefully, please.”
Sparkpaw sat beside Sandstorm and began to ease the wad of cobweb away. Sandstorm twitched and grunted in her sleep, as if she was in pain, but when Sparkpaw hesitated, Alderpaw just nodded to her to keep going.
While he was chewing up the marigold, Needlepaw pushed her way through the bushes with a dripping ball of moss in her jaws. “I couldn’t find any herbs,” she meowed, setting the moss down beside Sandstorm, “but I brought this. I thought she might be thirsty.”
“That was a really good idea,” Alderpaw told her, feeling warmer toward the ShadowClan cat than ever before. Needlepaw ducked her head to lick her chest fur, embarrassed at his praise.
“Sandstorm.” Alderpaw gently stroked the old cat’s head. “Wake up and have a drink.”
Sandstorm’s green eyes blinked open. “Oh, that’s good,” she breathed out, lapping at the moss.
While she drank, Alderpaw plastered the marigold poultice to her wound. I just hope it’s enough, he thought. I wouldn’t worry so much about the infection if she weren’t so weak from the bleeding. He let out a long sigh. Oh, I wish Leafpool or Jayfeather were here to help me!
Sandstorm reached out her tail to touch him briefly on his shoulder. “Don’t worry, Alderpaw,” she rasped. “I’m going to be fine, and we must set out again soon. The . . .” For a heartbeat she hesitated. “The others need us,” she finished.
“Which others?” Sparkpaw asked curiously.
Alderpaw’s belly lurched. “Oh, she’s feverish,” he mewed quickly. “She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.” But inwardly he felt worse than ever. Sandstorm must be losing her sharpness, to mention the secret.