“Not when your paws were covered in mouse bile,” Leafpool reminded her. “And this sickness isn’t your fault either.”
“It is!” Mothwing dug her claws into the earth. “If I were a true medicine cat, I would know what to do for my Clan.”
“That’s nonsense,” Leafpool mewed sharply. “You are a true medicine cat. You’ve done nothing to cause this sickness, but we need to find out where it comes from.”
“I haven’t had time to check everywhere in the territory, not since the first cats fell ill,” Mothwing admitted. “But all the streams are running clear, and there’s no sign of Twoleg rubbish in the lake.” She scraped the ground again with her claws. “I’m a useless medicine cat. Mudfur should never have chosen me.”
“That’s nonsense too, and you know it,” Leafpool meowed more gently, brushing her tail against Mothwing’s pelt. “What about the moth’s wing that Mudfur found outside his den? It was a clear sign from StarClan that they wanted you to be his apprentice.” Mothwing looked as if she was about to protest, but Leafpool went on rapidly, “Tell me what you’ve been doing for these sick cats.”
“I gave them watermint for bellyache, and when that didn’t work I tried juniper berries. That seemed to soothe the pain a bit, but the cats didn’t get better.”
“Hmm …” Leafpool ran her list of remedies through her mind. “If they’ve eaten something poisonous, then we should try to make them bring it up. Have you got any yarrow leaves?”
“A few,” Mothwing replied. “Not enough for every cat, though.”
“Then some cat will have to go and fetch more.”
While she was speaking, Leafpool saw Mistyfoot and a young black warrior she didn’t know padding down the slope towards her. Mistyfoot waved her tail in greeting. “Leopardstar sent us to help you,” she meowed.
“Thanks,” Leafpool replied. “We need yarrow leaves.”
“I’ll get some,” the black tom offered immediately. Dipping his head to Leafpool, he added, “You don’t remember me, do you?”
Scanning his slender figure and small, neat ears, Leafpool felt as if she should recognise him, but she couldn’t remember his name. She shook her head. “Sorry.”
“I’m Reedwhisker,” the black warrior meowed. “You saved me when I nearly drowned, back in our old home.”
“He was Reedpaw then,” Mistyfoot added.
Surprise silenced Leafpool for a moment, as she remembered the cat Mistyfoot had dragged out of the flooded river. Mothwing hadn’t known what to do to get the young cat breathing again, and Leafpool had been forced to take over. The spirit of Spottedleaf had been close beside her all the time, guiding her paws until it was clear that the apprentice would live.
“I’m glad to see you again,” she mewed briefly, not wanting to remind Mothwing of another occasion when she had panicked. “We need as much yarrow as you can carry, and quickly. Do you know where to find it?”
“There are some good clumps near the horse place fence,” Mothwing put in before he could reply.
Reedwhisker waved his tail. “I’m on my way. I’ve got an apprentice of my own now,” he added. “Ripplepaw. I’ll take her with me so we can carry more.”
“Juniper berries too,” Leafpool called after him as the slender black warrior whipped around and raced off. “There are bushes near the top of the slope above the marshes.”
Reedwhisker flicked his tail to show he had heard and vanished over the top of the bank.
“Right, Mothwing,” Leafpool meowed when he had gone. “Where’s the yarrow you do have? We can get started while we wait for Reedwhisker to come back.”
“Tell me what I can do first,” Mistyfoot mewed. “Are there any other herbs you need?”
“Not right now,” Leafpool answered. “But you could check the territory for anything that might have caused this.”
Mistyfoot looked puzzled. “What kind of thing am I looking for?”
Leafpool shook her head, careful to say nothing that would reveal that the warning dream had come to her and not to RiverClan’s own medicine cat. “I wish I could tell you. Anything unusual—especially anything that doesn’t smell right. Look for something that Twolegs might have done or left behind.”
“Twolegs? Around here?” Mistyfoot put her head on one side. “Well, you know best, I suppose. I’ll send out all the cats we can spare.”
She cast a sorrowful look at the row of sick cats lying along the bank of the stream, then disappeared over the top of the bank.
Meanwhile Mothwing had retreated into her den and came back with a bunch of yarrow leaves, which she dropped at Leafpool’s paws. Leafpool blinked in dismay at how few there were, but at least they looked reasonably fresh.
“OK, let’s treat the kits first,” she meowed. “There’s enough here for all three of them, and with any luck Reedwhisker will be back soon.” She nosed the grey kit, who was still writhing in pain and letting out faint mewling sounds; a chill crept over her as she realised he had weakened even in the short time since she had first seen him. “Help me move him over here,” she directed Mothwing. “We don’t want him vomiting in the place where he’s got to sleep.”
As gently as they could, the two she-cats moved the kit closer to the bank of the stream and laid him on a soft cushion of moss. Leafpool chewed up a single yarrow leaf, being careful to spit out all the scraps. Then she stuffed the pulp into the kit’s wide-open mouth.
“Swallow it,” she ordered, although she wasn’t sure if the kit could hear her.
The tiny throat convulsed as the kit tried to spit out the scraps of bitter-tasting leaf. But some must have gone down, because a moment later he vomited up several mouthfuls of evil-smelling mucus. His cries died down, and he lay limp and shivering, blinking up at Leafpool.
“Well done.” Leafpool stroked one paw over his head. “Now I want you to eat one juniper berry for me, and then you can go to sleep. Mothwing?”
The RiverClan medicine cat was already at her side with the juniper berry. She crushed it carefully and held it where the kit could lick it up, massaging his throat to make sure he swallowed it. Her soothing purr—so different from her earlier panic—quieted the tiny kit, and he was asleep by the time Leafpool and Mothwing moved him back to his nest.
“I think he’ll be OK,” murmured Leafpool, sending up a silent prayer to StarClan. “Let’s treat the next one.”
The next kit was still sleeping, but she stirred as the two medicine cats moved her to the edge of the bank.
“My belly hurts,” she moaned.
“This will make it better,” Leafpool promised, stuffing another yarrow leaf into the kit’s mouth.
Instantly the kit spat it out. “Yuck, it’s horrible!”
“Minnowkit, do as you’re told and eat it,” Mothwing mewed sharply.
“Don’t want—” The kit’s protest was interrupted by a feeble wail as her belly was seized by another cramp.
Mothwing took the chance to stuff the yarrow leaf back into her mouth, while Leafpool stroked her throat. Minnowkit wailed again, and like the first kit soon brought up the reeking mucus.
“Now you can have a juniper berry,” Mothwing meowed, popping it in swiftly as Minnowkit opened her mouth to protest.
“Juniper’s horrible,” Minnowkit murmured, her voice fading as she drifted, still complaining, into sleep.
Leafpool and Mothwing dragged her back to the nest and examined the third kit, the one who seemed weakest.
Mothwing’s eyes were huge with distress. “I think she’s dead.”
Leafpool bent over the tiny kit and felt her whiskers stirred by a faint breath. “No, she’s still alive.” She tried to sound hopeful, though privately she was afraid the kit was well on the way to joining the ranks of StarClan. Not if I can help it, she decided. “I don’t think we should try moving her, though,” she warned. “Fetch a dock leaf, and she can vomit onto that.”
Mothwing hurried over to where docks grew at the edge of the stream and bit thr
ough the stem of a large leaf. Meanwhile Leafpool chewed up more yarrow. All her efforts to rouse the kit failed, so Mothwing had to part the kit’s jaws while Leafpool forced the yarrow as far down her throat as she could.
The kit retched feebly and spat a few scraps of yarrow mixed with mucus onto the dock leaf before lying still.
“That’s not enough,” Mothwing mewed worriedly.
“No, but it’s better than nothing. We’ll let her rest for a while, then try again.”
There were only two yarrow leaves left.
“We should treat Beechpaw next,” Mothwing decided, pointing with her tail to where the young cat lay at the end of the row of sick warriors. “He’s the weakest, except for the kits.” She picked up the remaining yarrow in her jaws and padded off. Leafpool was about to go with her when Mistyfoot reappeared at the top of the bank, her sides heaving.
“Leafpool,” she panted, “I’ve found something. Will you come and see?”
Leafpool glanced at Mothwing, who had also heard the deputy’s arrival and turned to listen. “Go on, Leafpool,” she urged. “I’ll be fine here.”
Leafpool made one last swift check of the sleeping kits, then climbed the bank to join Mistyfoot. To her relief, she spotted Reedwhisker and a silver-pelted apprentice padding across the camp, their jaws full of yarrow.
“That’s great!” she exclaimed. “Take it straight to Mothwing, please.”
“No problem,” Reedwhisker mumbled around his mouthful of stems. “We’ll fetch the juniper next.”
The RiverClan deputy led Leafpool along the top of the bank as far as a barrier of thorns that stretched from stream to stream, blocking off the camp from intruders. When the two cats had pushed their way through a narrow tunnel, curved around many sleek bodies, Mistyfoot followed the smaller stream up a steep slope in the direction of the ShadowClan border.
Soon the slope became an almost sheer, sandy cliff, with jutting rocks that cats could climb, while the stream cascaded down beside them in a waterfall. Leafpool slowed down, careful not to slip on the wet stone. Mistyfoot waited for her at the top, where the stream gushed out of the hillside between moss-covered boulders.
“Not far now,” she promised.
Leafpool paused to catch her breath and taste the air. She caught a faint hint of the Thunderpath that formed the border between RiverClan and ShadowClan, but the scent of monsters was faint and stale, as if none had been there for many days. Her ears pricked as she identified another scent—unfamiliar, but reminding her of the reek of sickness around Mothwing’s den. She glanced at Mistyfoot.
“This way,” the deputy mewed.
The stench grew stronger as they approached the border with ShadowClan. Leafpool was just starting to wonder if the problem lay in RiverClan’s territory at all when Mistyfoot swerved around a hazel thicket and headed back into her own territory. Hawkfrost and Blackclaw were waiting a few fox-lengths away, in a small clearing enclosed by brambles. Hawkfrost swung to face them as they approached, neck fur bristling, then relaxed when he saw who they were.
“Nothing to report,” he meowed. “Everything’s been quiet since you left.”
“No sign of ShadowClan,” Blackclaw added.
Leafpool wondered why the RiverClan warrior was so worried about ShadowClan. They hadn’t crossed the border between the territories. Perhaps he wanted to blame ShadowClan for the sickness.
“This has nothing to do with ShadowClan,” Mistyfoot mewed sharply. “It’s a Twoleg thing, just like you said, Leafpool. Come and see, but don’t get too close.”
Hawkfrost and Blackclaw stepped aside to reveal a smooth, round object about the size of a badger lying at the far side of the clearing, half hidden by brambles. It was hard and shiny, like the Twoleg monsters. As Leafpool crept towards it, she saw that in one place the smooth surface was crushed and broken. A sticky liquid oozed out of the crack, dripping down the side to form a silvery-green puddle. Traces of the liquid on the grass further away suggested that cats or some other animal had trodden in the puddle and picked up some of the sticky stuff on their paws.
Leafpool opened her jaws to speak and coughed as the reek hit her throat. “This must be it!” she gasped. “That stuff could kill a cat; it even looks evil.”
“And smells vile,” Hawkfrost growled, his nose wrinkled in disgust.
“I don’t get it,” Blackclaw argued. “Surely no cat would be mousebrained enough to drink that.”
“Mousebrain yourself,” Mistyfoot retorted. “Can’t you see cats must have picked it up on their pads? You tread in it accidentally, you lick yourself clean, and there you are.”
“Other animals would tread in it too,” Leafpool agreed. “Mice, for example. If cats killed them and ate them, they would pick up the poison that way.”
Mistyfoot looked horrified. “That means it could be over the whole territory by now!”
“I don’t think it’s as bad as that,” Leafpool told her. “You’ll need to warn every cat to keep away from this area for a while, but any prey that picked it up would die before they had the chance to travel very far. I don’t think there’s much risk they’d be caught as fresh-kill anywhere else.”
Mistyfoot nodded. “I’ll tell Leopardstar right away.”
“It’s about time,” Hawkfrost commented in a low voice to Blackclaw. “If the patrols had been properly organised, we would have found this long ago.”
Leafpool froze. Patrols were the deputy’s responsibility; Hawkfrost was criticising Mistyfoot practically to her face. She remembered that back in the old forest Mistyfoot had been trapped by Twolegs, and while she was away Hawkfrost had been made RiverClan deputy in her place. Becoming an ordinary warrior again when Mistyfoot returned must have been hard for Hawkfrost, but that was no excuse for undermining Mistyfoot’s authority to other cats. What he said wasn’t even true; a Clan’s territory was too big for patrols to find every single hazard right away.
Blackclaw was nodding agreement, with a hostile glance at the blue-furred she-cat; did he think Hawkfrost should still be deputy? Leafpool wondered. Was Hawkfrost trying to gain followers who were loyal to him alone, and not to the Clan?
Mistyfoot had begun to pad away, back to the camp. If she had noticed the exchange, she gave no sign of it.
“We’ll find some thorns and build a barrier around the thing,” Hawkfrost offered, calling after her. “Come on, Blackclaw,” he added more softly. “We don’t want any animals coming near it, cats or prey. Some cat has to look out for the Clan.”
He bounded over to the nearest thicket and started clawing at a dead thorn branch. Blackclaw followed and helped to drag it back to the Twoleg thing with its stinking pool.
“Wash your paws when you’ve finished,” Leafpool advised, trying to pretend she hadn’t heard what Hawkfrost said. “Don’t lick them.”
“Good thinking,” Hawkfrost replied, as he went off to find another branch.
Leafpool ran to catch up with Mistyfoot. “There’s one thing I don’t understand,” she meowed, as the choking stench began to die away behind them. “How did those kits get ill? Surely they’re too young to be this far from the nursery?”
Mistyfoot let out an exasperated sigh. “The other day they ran away from camp and went exploring on their own. It was Minnowkit’s idea. She can think of more ways of getting into trouble than there are stars in Silverpelt. The sooner she has a mentor to keep an eye on her, the happier I’ll be.”
“They’re too young to have caught any prey around here, so they must have found that Twoleg thing.” Leafpool shivered at the thought of young kits sticking their paws into the vile green liquid. “They never told any cat what they had found?” When Mistyfoot shook her head, Leafpool went on, “The other cats must have gotten sick from poisoned prey, or they would have reported the Twoleg thing to Leopardstar.”
“The kits never said a word,” Mistyfoot agreed. “I was furious when I caught them trying to sneak back into camp. They probably thought they were in enough
trouble already.” She stopped suddenly. “Dawnflower’s their mother. She gave them a good licking when they got back, and she was the first full-grown cat to fall ill.”
“That makes sense,” Leafpool meowed. “I’ll have to have a word with those kits when they wake up.”
“They will wake up?”
“I think so.” Leafpool didn’t mention the black kit who hadn’t responded to the yarrow treatment. Mothwing needed more help than she alone could provide to save some of these fragile lives. “With the help of StarClan,” she added quietly.
The day was nearly over when the two cats returned to the RiverClan camp. The setting sun was a sullen red glow behind bars of cloud. Leafpool had hardly noticed time passing; it seemed no more than a few heartbeats since Mosspelt had dashed into the stone hollow.
At least the camp was quiet; no eerie wailing signalled another death. Most cats were settling into their dens for the night, although two or three still crouched beside the fresh-kill pile.
“That reminds me,” Leafpool meowed. “It would be a good idea to go through the fresh-kill pile and throw out anything with that scent on it.”
Mistyfoot nodded. “I’ll check the camp, too, in case any cat has brought that stuff in on their paws. And every cat should check themselves, and wash off the scent downstream if they have it.”
She headed towards Leopardstar’s den to report to her leader. Leafpool watched her go, then she slipped over the top of the bank and down to where Mothwing stooped over the sick cats.
“How’s it going?” she asked, joining the RiverClan medicine cat who was examining Dawnflower.
“OK, I think. No cat has died, though Heavystep has fallen ill.” She pointed with her tail to where the big tabby elder was curled up on the bank. “I’ve given him yarrow, and he doesn’t seem as bad as some of the others.”
Leafpool remembered that Heavystep was one of the cats who had been carrying out the dead cat when she arrived. Perhaps he had picked up the poison that way. Hawkfrost had been with him, but he seemed fine, and he knew now that he had to be careful not to get the sticky Twoleg stuff on his fur.