As he spoke, a dim light began to grow around him, pale and unhealthy like the shine of rotting wood. It was only enough to show him the outlines of the cats, still weaving around him, with here and there the gleam of predatory eyes.
“Is this . . . is this the Dark Forest?” he stammered.
“Clever Crowfeather,” a third voice purred. “We’re so glad you’ve come to join us.”
“What? No!” Crowfeather lurched upward and this time managed to scramble to his paws. “I’m not going to join you. I’m not even dead!”
“Not quite . . . ,” another voice breathed out. “But soon.”
Crowfeather couldn’t remember ever having been so terrified, not even when he’d been trying to squeeze into the cleft, away from the cruel talons of Sharptooth. I know Onestar banished me, he thought frantically. But surely what I did wasn’t so bad that I would end up here? If I have to die, I should be in StarClan!
He was growing dizzy as he tried to watch the circling cats and work out where the voices were coming from.
“Come with us, Crowfeather.”
“You’re welcome here.”
Crowfeather wanted to barrel his way through the circle and flee, but he knew that he didn’t have the strength. Besides, he had no idea where he could flee to. A medicine cat might know the paths that would lead him out of this dreadful place and into the sunlit territory of StarClan, but he wasn’t a medicine cat.
Soft pelts brushed more firmly against his sides as the circle of cats grew tighter, closing in. Crowfeather forced back a screech of terror. “Leave me alone,” he gasped. “I’m not going with you!”
But he knew that his bravado was pointless. There was nothing he could do.
Now the light was strengthening, but this time it came from behind Crowfeather, casting his shadow out in front of him. With a sudden tingling of hope, he realized that this light was different, clear and silvery like the radiance of the full moon.
The Dark Forest cats froze, staring with wide, horrified eyes at something beyond Crowfeather. Then, letting out a chorus of eerie caterwauls, they turned tail and fled.
“Great StarClan, Crowfeather!” A familiar voice spoke behind him. “What have you gotten yourself into now?”
Crowfeather whirled around. “Ashfoot!” he exclaimed.
CHAPTER 20
Crowfeather’s mother stepped delicately over to him and sat down beside him with her tail wrapped neatly around her paws. With a grunt of relief Crowfeather slumped to the ground beside her.
“What in StarClan’s name do you think you’re doing, Crowfeather?” his mother asked him. Her voice was exasperated, but her eyes were warm. “You should be helping your Clan, not wandering about on the moor in the snow.”
“You do know that I was banished, right?” Crowfeather retorted. “I was banished for following your advice, and Feathertail’s. You told me to go behind Onestar’s back and ask Bramblestar for help.”
Ashfoot gave her whiskers a twitch, seeming briefly embarrassed. “I’m sorry. I’d hoped that Onestar wouldn’t refuse to let ThunderClan help, or insult Bramblestar. But, Crowfeather,” she added more briskly, “you know you could have been more tactful in dealing with Onestar. A good deputy needs to judge his leader’s mood.”
“But I’m not deputy,” Crowfeather reminded her sourly. “Right now I’m not even a WindClan cat.”
“That can be put right,” Ashfoot assured him, with a dismissive flick of her tail. “The most important thing is for you to convince Onestar to take Kestrelflight’s vision seriously. Don’t you remember the second wave of water, the one that engulfed all the Clans? Don’t you understand what it means? The stoats are threatening WindClan now, but they’re only the forerunner of a much greater threat.”
“That’s what I thought! What threat?” Crowfeather asked, suppressing a shiver.
“I don’t know,” Ashfoot admitted. “I’m not sure that even the warriors of StarClan can see so far ahead. But I know this—when trouble strikes, WindClan will need you.”
Crowfeather let out a snort of disbelief. “I wish you would tell Onestar that! He doesn’t seem to need me at all right now.”
“Then you have to make him see sense,” Ashfoot pointed out. “You need to stop worrying about yourself and start worrying about your Clan and the cats who love you.”
“‘Love’?” Crowfeather tried to put all his contempt into the single word. “If any cats ‘love’ me, why didn’t they speak up to defend me?”
“Don’t be such a daft furball!” Ashfoot scolded him. “Of course Breezepelt loves you! And there are many more cats who respect you—Heathertail, for one. Didn’t they come after you and try to persuade you to go back?”
Crowfeather wasn’t sure that he believed his mother, but he wasn’t about to argue with her anymore. “But how can I put things right?” he asked her. “Those . . . those other cats—they said I was dying.” He shuddered, remembering the soft voices that had tempted him to go with them.
“You won’t die.” Ashfoot touched her nose to his ear. “It is not your time to journey to StarClan.”
“Then . . . then I won’t end up in the Dark Forest?”
Ashfoot’s tail curled up in amusement. “Crowfeather, you may be the most annoying furball in all four Clans, but not even your worst enemy could call you evil. Those cats were trying to trick you.” The light around her began to fade, and her pale shape began to blur in front of Crowfeather’s eyes.
“Don’t go!” he begged.
“You’ll see me again,” Ashfoot mewed, her voice seeming to come from an immense distance. “For now, wake up and get on with it.”
Crowfeather struggled to open his eyes; snow was crusting his lids, and a sharp pain stabbed through his head as if some cat were pounding it with a spike of rock. He was lying on his side; above him the broad head and muscular shoulders of a cat were outlined against the sky.
With a hiss of defiance, Crowfeather tried to spring to his paws, but the explosion of pain in his head made him stagger and he sank to the ground again. He could feel a smooth wall of rock at his back.
“Keep still, flea-brain,” the cat grunted. “I’m trying to fix your head.”
Crowfeather became aware of some kind of sticky juice trickling into his head fur, and picked up the clean tang of some kind of herb. “Are you a medicine cat?” he asked, confused.
“Why do cats keep asking me that? I’m a cat who helps other cats.”
Crowfeather felt even more bewildered as the pain in his head eased and his vision cleared. The cat tending to him was a huge tabby tom, with white chest and paws, and amber eyes fixed in concentration as he squeezed out the healing juices from a mouthful of leaves. Crowfeather had never set eyes on him before.
“Who are you?” he asked. “You’re not a Clan cat.”
The strange cat spat out the leaves and began to massage the juices into Crowfeather’s fur with one forepaw. “Oh, you’re one of those lunatics who live in the forest,” he meowed. “No, I’m not one of them. I like to keep myself to myself. My name’s Yew.”
“You?” Crowfeather decided he was still in some weird dream. “Like ‘Hey, you’?”
“No, flea-brain,” the tabby tom responded, with an exasperated twitch of his whiskers. “Yew, like the tree.”
“Oh, sorry,” Crowfeather mewed, then added after a moment, “I’m Crowfeather. Thanks for helping me.”
“You’re welcome. I’ve learned a bit about patching up injured cats in my time, and I like to help out when I can.” Yew finished his massage and stood back, rubbing his paw in the snow to clean off the juices. “Try sitting up.”
Crowfeather obeyed; his head swam, and every one of his muscles shrieked in protest, but he managed to stay upright. He found himself in the lee of a large, jutting outcrop of rocks, with only a thin powdering of snow covering the tough moorland grass. Beyond the shelter, all the hills were hidden in a thick layer of snow, the white expanse stretching in all direc
tions as far as Crowfeather could see. More flakes were slowly drifting down. Though clouds hid the sun, he guessed that sunhigh would be long past.
“How did you find me, in all this?” he asked.
Yew looked thoughtful. “That was strange,” he replied. “I was hunting, down there on the edge of the forest. Then I saw a gray she-cat—the prettiest cat I ever laid eyes on. She beckoned me to follow her, and she brought me up here. But when we got here, I couldn’t find her . . . only you, half buried in the snow and looking just about dead.” For a moment his bold amber gaze softened. “Her fur glittered like stars. . . .”
Feathertail! Warmth spread through Crowfeather from ears to tail-tip, as if he were basking in the sun of greenleaf. She saved me! Injured and unconscious in the snow, he would have frozen to death if no cat had found him.
“Thank you,” he repeated. “I guess I would be dead if it weren’t for you.”
Yew let out another grunt, looking faintly embarrassed. “I don’t know about that,” he muttered. “I guess you’ll be fine once you have some prey inside you. Rest for a bit and I’ll see what I can find.”
He rose and loped off, vanishing around the other side of the rock.
Crowfeather curled up in the shelter of the overhang. He was half afraid to sleep, remembering his dreadful vision of the Dark Forest cats. But he was too exhausted to fight off unconsciousness, and he was drowsing when the warm, delicious scent of rabbit drifted into his nose. He opened his eyes to see Yew dropping the limp body in front of him.
“Come on, there’s enough for both of us,” he mewed.
Crowfeather didn’t need telling twice. Hungrily he tore at the fresh-kill, savoring the juices and the rich taste of the flesh. This is the best prey I’ve ever eaten! he thought. “Thank you, StarClan, for this prey,” he mumbled around a huge mouthful. “And thank you, too, Yew.”
“My pleasure.” Yew gulped down a few mouthfuls of the rabbit and continued, “You know, I came across another cat with the same scent as yours, a half-moon or so ago.”
“You did?” Crowfeather felt his heart begin beating faster. “Where? What was she like?”
Yew gave him a long look through narrowed eyes. “It sounds like you might know her,” he remarked. “She was a black she-cat—a pretty tough one, too.”
Nightcloud! Crowfeather’s chest felt like it would burst. Could she really be alive? “Was she okay?” he asked eagerly.
“No, she had a bad wound down one side,” Yew told him. “But she wasn’t letting it slow her down. She was quite ready to claw my fur off before I finally convinced her I meant her no harm.” He paused, then added, “She’s a friend of yours?”
“She’s one of my Clan,” Crowfeather replied, not wanting to launch into an explanation of his complicated relationship with Nightcloud. “We were afraid she was dead. Where did you meet her?”
“On the edge of the Twolegplace.”
That reply made no sense to Crowfeather. The only Twolegplace he knew was the one between ShadowClan and RiverClan. He couldn’t imagine why Nightcloud would have gone there. “Across the lake?” he asked.
Yew shook his head, giving Crowfeather the sort of look that Crowfeather himself might have given to a dim apprentice. “No, the one on the other side of the forest.”
Crowfeather blinked, bewildered. “I don’t know that one.”
“I’ll show you.” Yew lumbered to his paws. “Can you climb the rock?”
Crowfeather wasn’t at all sure. His head was still spinning as he rose, but Yew was already climbing upward, nimble for all his bulk. Crowfeather gritted his teeth and followed. To his relief, there were plenty of crevices in the rock where he could wedge his paws, and he managed to haul himself to the top. Yew bent his head and fastened his teeth in his scruff to drag him up the last tail-length.
“Over there,” Yew meowed, pointing with his tail.
Crowfeather looked out across the snow-covered landscape. The forest was a dark mass far below, and beyond it he could make out a stretch of uneven ground, which he realized was the Twolegplace Yew had spoken of, snow covering the pointed roofs of the Twoleg dens until they looked like small, steep hills. It was bigger than the one Crowfeather knew, beside the lake. A Thunderpath curved around it like a black snake, with monsters like tiny bright beetles moving to and fro along it.
“I’d been down there visiting my housefolk,” Yew began. “I—”
“You’re a kittypet?” Crowfeather interrupted. This tough, competent cat is a kittypet? “I don’t believe it!”
A purr of amusement rumbled in Yew’s chest. “Well, I drop in on my housefolk now and again,” he responded. “When I feel like it. It’s warm and comfortable there, but it’s pretty boring, and the food is disgusting. So, when I’ve had enough of it, I leave and go exploring. That’s when I met your friend, just outside the Twolegplace.”
Crowfeather slid out his claws, scraping on the gritty surface of the rock. “Please tell me what happened,” he begged.
Yew crouched down with his paws tucked underneath him, flakes of snow blotching his tabby pelt. “She was on the edge of the forest, right next to the Thunderpath,” he meowed. “She was in a pretty bad way, wounded and exhausted. But like I said, she was ready to fight me until I convinced her I was no enemy.”
“What happened then?”
“I found her some marigold for her wound,” Yew told him, “but it was worse than I could cope with, so I told her to go into the Twolegplace.”
Crowfeather gazed at the tabby tom in horror. “You told her what?”
Yew twitched his whiskers in amusement. “Most Twolegs are pretty kind to injured cats. Someone would take her in, and they might even take her to the vet.” As Crowfeather opened his mouth to ask a question, Yew added quickly, “I guess that’s what you would call a Twoleg medicine cat. They’d give her the help she needed.”
“And Nightcloud did that?” Crowfeather asked, fascinated by the idea of his former mate agreeing to set paw inside a Twoleg den.
Yew shrugged. “I think so. She didn’t look happy about it, but the whole of the forest there reeked of dogs and foxes, so she couldn’t go back that way. She headed for the housefolk dens, and I never saw her again.”
“I have to go and find her!” Crowfeather exclaimed. The herbs Yew had given him, and the prey warm in his belly, made him feel full of strength again and ready for anything.
Yet he knew it would be mouse-brained to go into the Twolegplace alone. He had no idea what he would find there, but he was certain that Nightcloud must be trapped somehow, or she would have come home. Crowfeather was worried that it might be hard to get her out. If she even wants to come with me.
His first impulse was to ask Yew to go with him. Yet Yew had already told him that he’d been leaving the Twolegplace when he met Nightcloud. He wouldn’t want to go back there so soon. Besides, Crowfeather already owed him his life. He couldn’t bring himself to demand any more of him.
No, he thought. I need a different cat for this. And he knew which cat he wanted by his side.
I need Breezepelt.
CHAPTER 21
Crowfeather plodded across the moor toward the WindClan camp. The daylight had faded, and the first warriors of StarClan had appeared through ragged gaps in the cloud, casting a pale glimmer on the surface of the snow. Crowfeather’s head still throbbed, and he was exhausted from pushing his way through drifts that reached almost to his shoulders. But at least no more flakes were falling, and his determination to find Nightcloud kept him going.
He became more watchful as he approached the camp. He was acutely aware that he was still not allowed inside, and if Onestar or any of the warriors spotted him, he could be driven out before he got the chance to explain why he had returned.
I need to find a way to talk to Breezepelt without any other cat knowing.
Drawing closer still, Crowfeather could see a cat standing at the top of the hollow, keeping watch. At first he crouched down in the sh
elter of a jutting boulder, hoping for a chance to sneak past without being noticed. Then he recognized the graceful figure outlined against the gleaming snow.
Thank StarClan! It’s Heathertail.
Crowfeather emerged from behind the bush and dropped into the hunter’s crouch. Using the snow for cover, he crept forward, thrusting his way through and wincing as the cold stuff soaked into his fur. He was acutely conscious of how his dark gray pelt would stand out against the snow, and he didn’t want to alert Heathertail in case she called out to warn the Clan before he was close enough for her to recognize him.
When he was within a few tail-lengths he rose up and called out in a low voice. “Heathertail!”
Heathertail stiffened as she gazed at him, then bounded lightly through the snow until she reached his side.
“Crowfeather! You came back after all!” she exclaimed.
“Yes, but I don’t mean to stay,” Crowfeather responded. He felt slightly embarrassed by the warmth in Heathertail’s voice, and the glow in her blue eyes. “I’m sorry for the way I behaved before, Heathertail. I’m sure you’re figuring out . . . I’m not always the easiest cat.”
Heathertail’s eyes danced with amusement. “Well, I enjoy a challenge sometimes. Breezepelt isn’t always easy, either.”
Like father, like son, Crowfeather thought. “Speaking of Breezepelt . . . I need to talk to him, and tell him that I’ve found out where Nightcloud is.”
Heathertail gave a gasp of astonishment. “Really? That’s great! How did you do that?”
Quickly Crowfeather explained how he had met Yew, and how the powerful tabby had told him about meeting Nightcloud on the edge of the Twolegplace. “I think she must be trapped there,” he finished, “and I want Breezepelt to come with me to get her out.”
Heathertail nodded agreement. “I’ll go fetch him for you.” Heading back to the camp, she glanced over her shoulder. “I’m coming too,” she mewed.
While he waited, Crowfeather trudged over to a nearby thornbush and slid underneath the branches. His heart was racing with tension; if any other cat spotted him now, there would be real trouble.