“You sound like an elder,” Kestrelflight teased.
Flametail joined in. “He almost is one.”
“Cheek!” Littlecloud pretended to sound offended, but there was warmth among the medicine cats as they trekked up the stream.
Any other moon, Jayfeather would have relished the lack of boundaries and suspicion. But tonight he was worried. The old trust he felt with his fellow medicine cats felt threatened by the ghost of Tigerstar. He walked behind the small group of cats as they followed the stream to the waterfall. As he concentrated on picking his way over the rocks, he felt the distance between them stretching.
“Do you want us to slow down?” Littlecloud called back.
“I’ll catch up,” Jayfeather replied, scrabbling between two boulders. He wondered again if Tigerstar and his Dark Forest Clanmates would visit any of the medicine cats tonight.
Absurd! he told himself. But was it really? They were used to being visited by StarClan cats. Why not cats from the Dark Forest, the Place of No Stars?
Jayfeather skidded as he landed on a slippery rock.
“Careful.” He felt Littlecloud’s steadying paw. The ShadowClan tom had waited for him.
He paused as Jayfeather padded on a few steps, then fell in behind. “How’s Leafpool?”
Jayfeather detected worry in Littlecloud’s mew as he asked about his old friend.
“How is she managing as a warrior, I mean?” Littlecloud uttered the word as though he still didn’t quite believe she’d made the decision.
“She’s fine.” Jayfeather picked up his pace. Why did he have to explain her behavior?
“Doesn’t she miss it?”
Jayfeather turned on him. “No cat forced her to leave!” he snapped. But how could she remain a medicine cat after she’d broken the code?
Jayfeather pushed away the prick of sympathy plucking at his heart as they headed on; then Littlecloud spoke again.
“We all make mistakes,” he murmured. “Some have echoes that last forever.”
Flametail was already scrambling up the waterfall a few tail-lengths ahead. By the time Jayfeather had clawed his way to the top, the ShadowClan apprentice and Mothwing were already settled beside the Moonpool. Willowshine was still looking for a space.
Littlecloud padded down to join them.
“You were right, Littlecloud,” Kestrelflight called. “It is more sheltered here.”
Jayfeather followed the paw prints spiraling down to the pool, dimples made over countless moons. He waited for the whispers that always called him to share with his ancestors, but heard only the wind whining above the rocks.
A desolate pang opened in his belly. No ancient pelts brushing his? No murmuring welcome? No half-familiar scents?
Were they angry he’d broken Rock’s stick?
I’m sorry! he wailed silently.
Mothwing’s breathing had already deepened into sleep by the time he settled beside the Moonpool. It would be pointless probing her dreams. If StarClan never visited her, it was hardly likely any cat from the Dark Forest would make it through her barrier of disbelief.
Flametail was most likely to hold clues about Tigerheart. But Littlecloud or Willowshine might betray fresh information. They might have their worries too. They may have seen a Clanmate acting strangely or have treated unexplained wounds.
Perhaps it was best simply to walk alone among his ancestors?
Jayfeather touched his nose to the cold, clear water and closed his eyes.
A world opened before him, green and lush. Warm breezes enfolded him and the smell of fresh prey touched his nose. Sunlight slanted through the trees as he padded through the long grass.
A familiar, matted pelt moved through the undergrowth ahead. Jayfeather recognized it at once. He broke into a trot. He was about to call out when another cat jumped out from the long grass and greeted the shaggy StarClan warrior.
“Yellowfang!”
“Hi, Flametail!”
Jayfeather halted, pricking his ears.
“Runningnose wants to speak with you,” Yellowfang told Flametail.
I wonder what the old ShadowClan medicine cat has to say?
Jayfeather ducked into the ferns and began to shadow Flametail’s path through the trees.
“Don’t you ever learn?”
Jayfeather reared in surprise as Yellowfang landed a whisker ahead of him.
He bristled. “He jumped into my dream!”
“And asked you to follow him?” Yellowfang’s amber gaze was sharp with rebuke.
“You don’t know everything!” Jayfeather growled. He could see Flametail disappearing into the undergrowth.
“I know you need to trust him,” Yellowfang snapped back. “He’s a medicine cat.”
“Leafpool was a medicine cat.” Jayfeather snorted.
Yellowfang narrowed her eyes and Jayfeather tensed, waiting for the lecture. But no lecture came. Instead she looked thoughtful. “You said I don’t know everything,” she murmured. “Tell me, what don’t I know?”
“Where do I start?” Jayfeather huffed.
Yellowfang growled. “There’s no time for smart replies.” Her eyes darkened. “Several StarClan cats are troubled. Something bad is coming. This might be what the Three will be needed for.”
Jayfeather tensed. “Something bad? Do you know what it is?”
Yellowfang shook her head. “We were hoping you’d know.”
“All we know,” Jayfeather told her, “is that Tigerstar is training warriors from different Clans in their dreams. Hawkfrost might be working with him.”
Yellowfang’s eyes stretched. “Training them? Why?”
“The Dark Forest is rising.” Jayfeather heard the words fall from his lips. His heart quickened. “The Dark Forest is rising against us.”
“What do you mean?” Yellowfang’s fur was on end.
“Tigerstar is training cats to fight us. He’s already trained Breezepelt. I fought him by the Moonpool. But not just him. Another cat fought with him. A cat from the Dark Forest.”
“Who?” Yellowfang pressed her muzzle closer.
“I don’t know,” Jayfeather answered. “He was big and dark pelted. I didn’t recognize him.”
“You think he’s working with Tigerstar?”
“And Hawkfrost.” Jayfeather felt suddenly cold. “I don’t know how many there are. But they’re entering cats’ dreams—cats who have a grudge against us or who are kin to them. They’re training them to fight.”
“You suspect Flametail’s one of their recruits?” Yellowfang’s eyes flashed with horror. “He’s a medicine cat!”
“We don’t know who we can trust,” Jayfeather fretted. “Tigerheart’s been crossing our border at night. And he might not be the only one. I promised Lionblaze I’d try to find out if there are others. Perhaps RiverClan cats. Kin of Hawkfrost.”
Yellowfang sat down, forcing her fur flat. “Then they were right to be worried.” She was muttering to herself.
“Who was right?” Fear pricked in Jayfeather’s paws. “StarClan?” How could StarClan be worried? It was StarClan. Dread began to run like cold water along his spine. “What should we do?”
Yellowfang looked into the distance, her grave amber gaze stretching far past Jayfeather.
“We must go to the Dark Forest.”
CHAPTER 16
Trees in full leaf whispered gently in the breeze. Yellowfang hopped over a narrow stream that meandered through the long grass. Jayfeather followed, relishing the warm lushness underpaw after walking the dried-leaf floor of the forest. She led him through flourishing bushes that brushed their pelts with dew and pollen as they passed.
A meadow stretched ahead, graced by trees, flecked with flowers, aglow in the slanting sunlight. Warriors, sleek and content, walked through the long grass, or stretched in sunny hollows, their pelts soft in the sun. A tabby crouched, rump waggling, before pouncing after a plump mouse. A white cat with rose-tipped paws stretched up the cracked trunk of an ash tree and plucked ha
ppily at the bark while she watched a squirrel bobbing along a high branch. With a sudden bound she scooted upward and was swallowed by the fluttering leaves.
Jayfeather tasted the air. Half-familiar scents floated in the breeze: WindClan, ShadowClan, ThunderClan, and RiverClan.
“Hi, Silverstream,” Yellowfang purred to a gray tabby padding from a swath of ferns.
“Yellowfang.” The tabby nodded. “Have you seen Feathertail?”
“She was resting at Warm-rocks earlier.”
“Thanks.” Silverstream slid away through the grass, her tail-tip flicking.
Jayfeather narrowed his eyes. “No quarrels. No leaf-bare. No hunger,” he observed. “No wonder everyone seems so content.”
Yellowfang’s eyes darkened. “We never cease watching and worrying over those left behind.”
Jayfeather shrugged. “If this is where we’re heading, what is there to worry about?”
“No cat enjoys another’s suffering. And not every path leads here,” Yellowfang answered.
With a shiver, Jayfeather remembered where they were going.
Another familiar pelt caught his eye. Frighteningly familiar. Blazing ginger fur, large pricked ears, emerald gaze—the slender tom weaved through the bushes ahead. He seemed paler than the other cats, almost invisible. And yet he was there.
“Firestar?” Jayfeather breathed.
“Not quite,” Yellowfang mewed gently. “Five of his lives are here, but he won’t be able to hear or speak until his ninth life has joined us.”
Jayfeather watched the ghostly cat disappear behind an oak. Could Firestar feel his lives ebbing away? No. He shook off the thought. How could he stay such a strong leader if he did?
Jayfeather began to realize that other pelts were paler too. Some were so ghostly they hardly seemed there at all. More like mist than flesh.
“Are those cats half-dead too?” he asked Yellowfang as a wraithlike tortoiseshell crossed their path, hardly acknowledging Yellowfang’s greeting nod.
She shook her head. “They’ve been here a long, long time,” she explained. “So long that they’re forgotten.”
“By everyone?” The thought chilled Jayfeather.
“Being forgotten is nothing to fear. Not even the stars last forever. All cats fade and disappear eventually. They’ve earned their peace.”
Jayfeather imagined Yellowfang fading into nothing and was surprised to find grief pricking his heart.
“Don’t worry,” Yellowfang purred, as though she could read his mind. “Who could forget a cantankerous old badger like me?”
“Hey! Yellowfang!” A pretty tortoiseshell hailed them from the rocks above a waterfall churning above a sparkling brook. She leaped down, disappearing into the long grass for a moment before bounding up toward them.
Jayfeather recognized Spottedleaf at once. “Hi.” He dipped his head as she reached them and shook the grass seeds from her dappled pelt.
Her eyes were bright as stars. “Where are you going?” They dimmed as they met Yellowfang’s tough gaze.
“The Dark Forest.”
“You mustn’t!”
“We must.”
Jayfeather watched the exchange, tipping his head to one side. It was hard to tell which cat was most frightened, though both fought to conceal it. “Tigerstar is plotting against us,” he told her. “We have to find out what he’s planning.”
Spottedleaf bristled at the name. “Is it wise to go alone?”
“We have each other,” Yellowfang told her.
“I’m coming with you,” Spottedleaf decided.
Yellowfang flinched. “I don’t want to attract too much attention.”
Spottedleaf held the old cat’s gaze. “Firestar would never forgive me if I let anything happen to Jayfeather.”
Jayfeather lifted his nose. “I’m not helpless,” he objected.
Spottedleaf turned her amber gaze on him. “You’re going to find Tigerstar,” she reminded him. “Against that fiend, every cat is helpless.”
Jayfeather lashed his tail. “Then maybe it’s time for things to change!”
They padded through the trees, the lushness fading with every pawstep. The trunks grew thinner and smoother, the branches too high to reach. The sun faded from the sky, leaving white, eerie light that permeated the woods like water flooding through a reed bed. Jayfeather drew a breath of cold, damp air, tasted nothing but decay, and shivered. The grass had thinned and disappeared, and mist wreathed the bare forest floor. It rose and thickened, enfolding them in fog until Jayfeather realized with a tremor that he could no longer see Yellowfang’s thick, matted pelt or hear Spottedleaf’s soft tread.
Gulping air so thick that it made him cough, Jayfeather quickened his pace, hoping to catch up. He was too scared to call out, in case other ears heard him.
The ground grew peaty underpaw as he hurried into a trot.
Where are they?
His heart began to pound, the blood rising and roaring in his ears. He broke into a run.
Yellowfang! Spottedleaf!
He couldn’t see. The mist was choking him. This was worse than running blind through ThunderClan territory. He bolted through the trees, paws tripping on a gnarled root snaking across his path. Pain seared his leg but he raced on. A yowl echoed through the fog, and paws began to thunder on the ground behind.
Someone was chasing him.
He pushed on harder, weaving around trees, cutting so close that they ripped at his fur. The pawsteps were gaining on him, rhythmic, powerful, pounding the forest floor in his wake.
Panic seized him. He was hardly breathing now, just running.
Crash!
Shock rang through him as he hit a tree. It sent him reeling, chest first, into a puddle. Twisting onto his back, he saw a figure looming over him, a broad face leering down through the mist.
“No!” His voice cracked into a whimper.
“It’s Yellowfang, you mouse-brain!” The she-cat grabbed him by the scruff and hauled him to his paws.
Spottedleaf came skidding to a halt beside them. “You found him,” she puffed.
Yellowfang was trembling with rage. “We have to stay together!” she hissed.
Jayfeather had seen her cranky, but never this furious. That was when he realized how frightened the tough old she-cat was.
He nodded, gulping for air.
“Come on.” Yellowfang began to head away, then paused to make sure that Jayfeather and Spottedleaf were following. They padded through the sucking mud until the fog began to clear.
Jayfeather recognized the trees, the eerie light, the echoing silence. He’d met Tigerstar here once before. Spottedleaf had come and guided him home that time. She wasn’t pleased to be back in the Place of No Stars now, her pelt pricking, her eyes stretched wide. But it was Yellowfang who was really afraid.
Jayfeather glanced nervously at the tattered old she-cat. He’d never imagined she could be scared of anything. But there was a stiffness in her movements that betrayed real terror. He probed her mind.
A flash of panic flooded him. A hulking, dark-furred cat stalked her thoughts. The glow of bright red berries like drops of blood. Searing grief and fury.
Curiosity enticed him on, further into her thoughts. No! He must concentrate on where he was. There was enough danger without losing himself in another cat’s nightmare.
Jayfeather jerked his head as he heard rustling in the sparse undergrowth, the pattering of paws. He glanced questioningly at Spottedleaf.
She shook her head. “No prey here.”
Jayfeather’s fur rippled, chilled by the gaze of watchers in the shadows. He scanned the trees. Eyes glowed from the gloom.
Jayfeather drew closer to Spottedleaf. “Who are they?” he whispered.
“Cats, dead and long forgotten,” Spottedleaf murmured. “Ignore them.”
How? Jayfeather could feel menace in their stares, their minds haunted by evil beyond the reach of every memory but their own.
Yellowfang pau
sed and tasted the air. “We have to find Tigerstar and figure out what he’s up to.”
Spottedleaf blinked. “You think we’re going to stumble over him plotting?” She narrowed her eyes. “He knows this forest too well. He’ll know we’re here long before we find him.”
Jayfeather headed along a trail weaving between the gray, whispering trees. “We’ve got to try. Otherwise, why did we come?” He smelled tom. The scent was darkly familiar, but he couldn’t tell which Clan it belonged to. He glanced over his shoulder, checking that Yellowfang and Spottedleaf were close behind.
Spottedleaf’s mouth was open, her nostrils twitching.
“Can you smell that?” he whispered.
“Wait!” Yellowfang was staring wildly into the trees. “Let’s go back. We can’t do any good here.”
Jayfeather shifted his paws. What was spooking the old cat so much?
“Hello.” A deep growl sounded on the path ahead. Jayfeather jerked his head around.
A huge black cat blocked the way. “What are you doing here?”
Jayfeather froze, the scent of the tom stirring his memory. Where had he met this warrior? He lifted his chin bravely, preparing to answer the tom’s question.
Then he realized that the cat wasn’t talking to him. The warrior’s hard amber gaze was fixed on Yellowfang.
At once Jayfeather found himself plunged into a whirl of memories. Yellowfang yowling as she kitted, squirming in the shadows, hiding from her Clan. A small bundle of fur dropping into another cat’s nest—a queen who did not care for her new charge, who bit it and nipped it and deprived it of milk as punishment for being born at all. Then the kit, fully grown. Brokenstar. The name blazed in Jayfeather’s mind. A strong, well-muscled warrior, fattened by his own hunting skill, as hungry for power as a fox was for rabbit. The death of a leader and darkness descending over a Clan in chaos. Then suddenly he saw Yellowfang again, powerful now; the warrior weak, blind, battered, imprisoned, but still with the murderous glint in his eye. Through Yellowfang’s eyes Jayfeather watched the cat struggle as she forced him to eat deathberries, saw him convulse and die, swearing hatred and vengeance. He felt searing guilt slice through his heart: the guilt of a queen who had brought such a monster into the world. The guilt of a mother who had driven him from it.