At the same moment a second mouse shot out of some dead leaves. Crowfeather grabbed it with one paw.
“There, what did I tell you?” he mewed, padding over to Leafpool so they could eat together.
They found a patch of sand between the roots of one of the stunted trees, sheltered from the wind by its twisting branches, and devoured the mice in a few famished gulps.
“You were right about the prey,” Leafpool murmured, swiping her tongue around her mouth. “I’m glad you’re here. I would be so scared without you.”
“I’ll always look after you,” Crowfeather promised, resting his nose in her fur. “Tomorrow we’re bound to find somewhere better to live. After all, the Clans found the lake, and we don’t need such a big territory when it’s just the two of us.”
Leafpool nodded. “These hills can’t go on forever.”Can they?
“We’ll be fine. You’ll see,” Crowfeather assured her.
“I know.” Leafpool’s voice faded as she sank exhaustedly into sleep.
She was standing in a dark place, her paws cold on dew-drenched grass. She was surrounded by fearful snarling, but she couldn’t see where it came from, even though she wrenched her head frantically from side to side. Then she realised that the darkness that surrounded her was a rolling cloud of black fog. It drifted apart for an instant to show her waves lapping the lakeshore. Her dream had taken her home. But the reek of blood engulfed her, and she saw that the water in the lake was a blood-red tide sucking hungrily at the land.
“No!” she gasped.
Before all is peaceful, blood will spill blood, and the lake will run red.
Every hair on her pelt stood on end. She had left her Clan far behind. Why couldn’t she escape StarClan’s terrible prophecy?
The snarling died away, only to break out again behind her, louder than before. Leafpool spun round. The black fog still billowed around her, but she could see huge lumbering shapes moving within it. They were too blurred for Leafpool to make out, although she caught glimpses of blunt claws, snapping jaws, and small, malicious eyes. A huge dark mass loomed over her, and a claw slashed across her face, ruffling her whiskers and barely missing her eye. She leapt back and felt sticky liquid washing around her paws. The stench of blood filled her nose and mouth.
“StarClan help me!” she yowled.
Her eyes flew open. She was lying in the moorland hollow with thorn branches above her head and Crowfeather at her side. She drew a long breath of relief. Then she realised that the WindClan warrior was rising to his paws, his body rigid with tension as he stared into the darkness.
“Who’s there?” he called sharply.
Leafpool heard shuffling pawsteps coming closer. Crowfeather moved protectively in front of her; peering past him, Leafpool could just make out a dark, slowly moving shape like the ones in her dream.
Am I really awake?
Then a cloud moved away from the moon. Silver light washed down into the hollow, revealing a large, thick-furred creature with a broad white stripe down its pointed muzzle. A badger!
Leafpool sprang to her paws. “Keep back!” she growled.
Crowfeather waved his tail. “It’s all right, Leafpool,” he meowed. “It’s Midnight.”
Still trembling, Leafpool gazed up at the old she-badger. Midnight lived beside the sun-drown-place; what was she doing here on the moor? Leafpool padded forward curiously. She had always wanted to meet the badger who had warned her sister and Brambleclaw that the forest was being destroyed by Twolegs, and all the Clans would have to leave. Without her, they would never have discovered the new place StarClan had chosen for them.
“Greetings, Crowpaw.” Midnight’s eyes were bright with surprise. “Even I not foresee meeting you here.”
“Greetings, Midnight,” Crowfeather meowed. “We didn’t expect to see you, either. And I’m not Crowpaw any more,” he added. “My warrior name is Crowfeather … in memory of Feathertail.”
“Yes, she watches you still,” Midnight told him.
Leafpool winced. Crowfeather seemed to sense she was feeling awkward, and he brought her forward with a gesture of his tail. “This is Leafpool,” he meowed. “Squirrelflight’s sister.”
Leafpool dipped her head. “It’s good to meet you at last, Midnight. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“Your sister speak of you,” Midnight replied. “StarClan show you much of future also?”
“Yes, I’m a medicine cat.” Leafpool blinked. Not any more.
The old badger glanced from her to Crowfeather and back again. “You flee, yes?” she demanded.
Leafpool stiffened. Did Midnight know she and Crowfeather were running away from their Clans? Is that why she came to find them?
“How do you know?” she asked warily.
Before Midnight could reply, Crowfeather took a pace forward. “We had to leave,” he explained. “We’re from different Clans, and there’s no way we could stay together if—”
“Wait.” Midnight raised a massive paw. “You mean here alone you are? Where rest of cats?”
“In their territories, by the lake.” Crowfeather pointed with his tail.
“Then you not know?”
“Know what?” Leafpool’s claws slid out in sudden panic.
Midnight lowered her head. “Is great trouble coming. Many of my kin with Clans are angry,” she rasped. “Cats drive them out of their place. Now they come to attack and drive you out, take back what once theirs.”
Leafpool drew in a sharp breath. “We drove a badger out of our territory,” she remembered. “A female with kits.”
“And Hawkfrost chased one out of RiverClan,” Crowfeather meowed.
Leafpool hardly heard him. Her head spun as she plunged back into her dream of blood and slashing claws. “You say they’re going to attack the Clans?” she whispered.
“And whose side are you on, Midnight?” Crowfeather added harshly.
Midnight’s gaze met his. “I have no side. Cats, badgers, in peace could live. I speak against attack, but my kin not listen to me. For many days now they talk of blood and revenge.”
Crowfeather drew closer to Leafpool. She could feel his body quivering. “What do they plan to do?” he asked.
“Many badgers gather. Your sets they will attack, kill many cats, drive out others.”
Our sets … She means our camps. Leafpool’s fur stood on end. She and Crowfeather would be safe out here, but the Clans they had left behind would be destroyed, their Clanmates murdered.
“No …” she whispered. “It can’t happen!”
“So what are you doing here?” Crowfeather asked Midnight.
“I go to warn Clans, tell them what is coming,” the old she-badger replied. “Will you help?”
Leafpool opened her jaws to speak, but Crowfeather interrupted. “No. We have left our Clans for good. There’s nothing we can do.”
“Crowfeather, no!” A shiver of horror passed through Leafpool from ears to tail-tip. “We can’t leave our Clans to die.”
Crowfeather’s amber eyes were full of pain. Gently he touched his nose to Leafpool’s muzzle. “I know,” he mewed. “But Midnight is going to warn them. They’ll be safe if they listen to her. What more could we do?”
“We—” Leafpool broke off, not sure she knew the answer.
“We’ve come too far,” Crowfeather insisted. “If we go back now, every cat will know what we’ve done. We won’t be able to leave again. Things will be the same as they ever were—worse, because we won’t be able to meet up like we used to. Every cat will be watching us, waiting for us to slip away. All this will have been for nothing.”
Leafpool gasped with pain, as if the claws of the badgers in her dream had torn her pelt away. She knew Crowfeather was right; they would lose everything if they went back now. Yet how could they keep going, when they knew what terrible danger their Clanmates were facing?
Midnight looked from her to Crowfeather and back again. Leafpool didn’t know how much the badger
understood about the duties of medicine cats, or about the warrior code that said that cats from different Clans could not be together. But there was warmth and understanding in her gaze, as if Midnight somehow sensed the struggles they had gone through before they made the decision to leave.
“StarClan go with you,” the badger murmured. “Future rests in paws of warrior ancestors. All I can I will do.”
“Thank you,” meowed Leafpool.
She watched as Midnight lumbered away up the slope in the direction of the territory they had left. Her paws trembled with guilt and sadness; her Clanmates were in trouble, and she was deliberately choosing not to help them.
Crowfeather nuzzled her ear. “Let’s get some more sleep,” he meowed.
Leafpool curled up beside him under the thorn trees, but sleep refused to come. Her mind was filled with images of snarling badgers bursting into the ThunderClan camp, ripping apart her Clanmates.
StarClan be with them! she prayed.
Her dream had shown her how savage the attack would be. She remembered the dreams that the other medicine cats had described at the Moonpool, dreams of darkness and slashing claws. And now she had received the same message from StarClan. Leafpool’s pelt tingled; the starry warriors were still speaking to her. She hadn’t lied to Midnight when she said she was still a medicine cat.
She could tell Crowfeather wasn’t asleep either. He kept shifting restlessly, and once she heard him sigh. He pressed closer to her, as if trying to comfort her, or himself.
At last Leafpool drifted into a light, troubled sleep. She seemed to float in grey mist, with nothing to tell her where she was. Suddenly the emptiness was ripped apart by a shriek of agony.
“StarClan, help me!”
Leafpool leapt up, trembling, to see the thorn branches outlined against a sky growing pale with the first light of dawn. She had recognised the voice in her dream; it was Cinderpelt.
“Crowfeather!” she gasped. “I can’t stay here. We have to go back.”
Crowfeather lifted his head. His amber eyes were sad. “I know,” he meowed. “I feel the same way. We have to go and help our Clans.”
Relief flooded over Leafpool. She loved him even more at that moment because he understood, because he cared for his Clanmates as much as she cared for hers. Briefly she pressed her muzzle against his, with a purr that lasted no more than a heartbeat.
“Let’s go,” she meowed.
CHAPTER 21
“Mouse dung!” Squirrelflight muttered. The starling she had just missed fluttered on to a branch above her head, while her empty claws sank into the moss. How was she supposed to concentrate on hunting when every waking moment was filled with worry about her sister?
I should have stopped her, she thought bleakly.
“Bad luck,” Ashfur meowed, coming up behind her. “Should we call it a day? We’ve got more than enough to carry back.”
“OK.” Squirrelflight followed him to the place under a thorn bush where he had scraped earth over their previous kills. Spiderleg joined them, a squirrel dangling from his jaws, and the hunting patrol headed back to camp.
“Come on,” Ashfur murmured to Squirrelflight when they had dropped their catch on the fresh-kill pile. “Leafpool will be fine.”
“How can she be fine, when she’s left everything behind?” Squirrelflight retorted.
“Why don’t you rest for a while?” the grey warrior suggested, pointing with his tail at a sunny spot near the wall of the hollow. “You hardly slept at all last night.”
“And I won’t be able to sleep now. I’m going to make sure Cinderpelt has eaten.”
Squirrelflight grabbed a vole from the fresh-kill pile and padded across the clearing to the medicine cat’s den. Rounding the screen of brambles, she found Cinderpelt crouched in the opening of her den with her paws tucked under her. Her blue eyes were fixed on nothing. Squirrelflight shivered; it looked as though Cinderpelt were gazing at horrors that only she could see.
The medicine cat blinked and looked up at her. “Squirrelflight—is there any news?”
“About Leafpool?” Squirrelflight set the vole down in front of Cinderpelt. “No, nothing. I brought you some fresh-kill.”
The medicine cat turned her head away. “Thanks, but I’m not hungry.”
“You have to eat!” Squirrelflight protested. She wondered if Cinderpelt blamed herself for Leafpool’s disappearance. The medicine cat seemed to have no courage or energy left. “We need you more than ever, now that Leafpool’s gone.”
Cinderpelt let out a long sigh. “But I’ve failed. Utterly failed.”
“It’s not your fault!” Squirrelflight wriggled into the narrow opening beside Cinderpelt so that she could press herself comfortingly against her. “You’re a great medicine cat. What would ThunderClan do without you?”
Cinderpelt gazed at her, a searching look that made Squirrelflight feel like she was about to drown in the blue depths of her eyes. Cinderpelt seemed to be on the verge of confiding something to her, but all she said was, “I wish things didn’t have to change.”
“They don’t have to. They won’t. Leafpool will come back. We have to believe that.”
Cinderpelt shook her head and closed her eyes.
Squirrelflight stretched out a paw and nudged the vole a bit closer to her. “Come on, you’ll feel better when you’ve eaten.”
Cinderpelt hesitated, then bent down to sniff the fresh-kill. “Squirrelflight, will you go and check on Sorreltail?” she meowed after a moment. “I’m worried about her. You know what good friends she and Leafpool were.”
“Does Sorreltail know what’s happened?” Confined to the nursery because her kits were due any day, the young tortoiseshell warrior might not have heard the news.
“Yes, I told her last night.” To Squirrelflight’s relief, Cinderpelt was beginning to sound more like her normal self. “She was upset, and I gave her some poppy seed to help her sleep.”
“Sure, I’ll look in on her. On one condition—that I see you eating that vole before I go.”
A faint gleam of humour crept into Cinderpelt’s eyes. “You never give up, do you? All right—and call me if Sorreltail needs anything.”
As Squirrelflight slid out of the den, the medicine cat sniffed the vole again, took a bite, and then began to eat more quickly, as if she had suddenly realised how hungry she was.
Squirrelflight left her to it and headed for the nursery. Just outside, Brightheart was bending over Berrykit. She straightened up as Squirrelflight approached.
“There!” she mewed. “That thorn won’t bother you again. Give your paw a good lick now.”
“Thanks!” Berrykit looked up admiringly at the ginger and white she-cat. The horse place cats seemed to have stopped noticing her scars. “You’re the best medicine cat ever!”
“I’m not a medicine cat,” Brightheart corrected him, with a sidelong glance at Squirrelflight. “ThunderClan already has two medicine cats. I’ll never be one.”
“Well, I think you are,” Berrykit meowed, licking his paw vigorously.
It’s a pity Brightheart couldn’t have said that while Leafpool was here, Squirrelflight thought. “Hi,” she mewed. “Cinderpelt sent me to check on Sorreltail.”
“Sorreltail’s fine,” Brightheart told her. “She and Daisy shared a rabbit earlier, and now she’s asleep again. Great StarClan, she’s huge,” she added. “It can’t be long before she starts to kit.”
“That’s good.” Squirrelflight tried to summon up enthusiasm, but she couldn’t get excited about the first kits to be born in their new home when her mind was filled with worrying about Leafpool and Cinderpelt.
She poked her head into the nursery and saw a tortoiseshell mound of fur sleeping peacefully among the moss and ferns. Daisy and Ferncloud were close beside the young warrior, sharing tongues and mewing softly to each other. Both of them glanced up and twitched their whiskers in greeting to Squirrelflight.
Brightheart had gone by the time she bac
ked out again; Squirrelflight caught a glimpse of her tail whisking behind the bramble screen in front of Cinderpelt’s den. Trusting Brightheart to report about Sorreltail to the medicine cat, Squirrelflight headed for the fresh-kill pile to find a piece of prey.
Firestar was there, sharing a squirrel with Sandstorm, while Brambleclaw devoured a thrush a tail-length away.
“I want you to lead the dawn patrol tomorrow,” Firestar was meowing to Brambleclaw as Squirrelflight came up. “Have a good look along the WindClan border. It’s possible you’ll come across more traces of Leafpool.”
Brambleclaw swallowed a mouthful. “I’ll take Cloudtail. He’s one of our best trackers.” Hesitantly, he added, “But we followed her trail quite a long way into the hills. I don’t think we’ll find anything else now.”
“You might,” Firestar insisted. It was as if he couldn’t admit they might never see Leafpool again.
Like Greystripe? Squirrelflight suddenly wondered.
Sandstorm lifted her head. “You might meet her coming back,” she mewed. “If you do, don’t be angry with her.”
Brambleclaw nodded. “Don’t worry. If I see her I’ll make sure she feels safe to come home.”
Squirrelflight could tell he didn’t hold out much hope of setting eyes on the missing medicine cat. She was beginning to agree with him. Even though she clung to the hope that her sister would come back, she knew how hard it would be for Leafpool once she had made the impossible decision to leave.
She chose a magpie from the pile and settled down to eat it.
“Are you OK?” Brambleclaw asked quietly.
“Not really,” she replied.
“You shouldn’t blame yourself,” Sandstorm assured her.
“But it’s my fault!” All Squirrelflight’s worries spilled over and she had to stop herself from wailing like a lost kit. “I knew Leafpool was leaving the camp at night and I didn’t do anything.”
Firestar leaned over to give her ear a comforting lick. “We should all have seen that there was something troubling Leafpool.”
“Yes,” Brambleclaw put in unexpectedly. “If you had done anything, you might have driven her away sooner. No cat knows.”