Bramblestar’s Storm

Chapter 6

On the day after the visit to the horseplace, the weather changed. A fierce wind lashed the trees and sent clouds scudding across the sky. The forest floor was littered with splintered branches, and Bramblestar warned all his cats to look out for signs of falling trees. He continued to keep a close watch on the ShadowClan border, but there were no more traces of trespassing.

“Maybe they’ve learned their lesson,” he remarked as he led a patrol past the pelt-den clearing.

“And maybe they’re just keeping quiet until we relax the watch,” Molewhisker growled with a flick of his tail.

“Let’s enjoy the peace while it lasts,” Sandstorm suggested.

Bramblestar murmured agreement. He headed down the stream until the patrol emerged from the trees on the lakeshore.

Blossomfall ran ahead and sprang onto a rock at the water’s edge. She studied the smooth gray stone beneath her paws. “The lake is still rising!” she announced. “I’ve been scratching marks on this rock, and—” She broke off with a yowl as a wave rose up and engulfed the rock. As the water rolled back, it carried Blossomfall with it and she plunged into the lake. She flailed with her paws, managing to keep her head above water, but the waves buffeted her too much for her to make it back to the shore.

“Blossomfall!” Molewhisker wailed, dashing to the water’s edge.

“Keep back!” Bramblestar warned him. “We don’t want two of you in there.”

“Bramblestar, over here!” Sandstorm’s voice sounded behind him.

Turning, Bramblestar saw that she was trying to tug a tree branch out of the undergrowth at the edge of the forest, but the twigs were snagged among brambles, and she couldn’t move it.

“Help me get this free!” she panted.

Bramblestar raced over and grabbed the branch in his jaws. Together they managed to wrench it free. Bramblestar dragged it across the pebbles until the lake water was lapping around his paws, and shoved it out into the waves. The branch bobbed madly, and Bramblestar braced his feet among the stones to hold it steady.

“Be careful!” Sandstorm called.

Blossomfall’s head was still bobbing above the surface, but the end of the branch was just beyond her reach. Bramblestar could see that her long, thick fur was waterlogged and dragging her down. “Molewhisker, Sandstorm,” he rasped. “Put your weight on this end. Don’t let it move.”

The warriors waded into the lake and gripped the branch with their front paws. Bramblestar pulled himself onto the narrow length of wood and began to work his way forward, balancing on his hind paws and digging his front claws into the branch after each step. Waves slapped against him and with every heartbeat he expected to be torn away into the swirling water. Blossomfall bobbed a tail-length beyond the end of the branch, spluttering and thrashing as she was dragged under by the weight of her fur.

When the branch narrowed too much to hold Bramblestar, he shuffled carefully around and held out his tail toward the drowning cat. “Blossomfall!” he yowled. “Here!”

Blossomfall shook her head to get water out of her eyes, then made a frantic lunge toward Bramblestar. He winced as she sank her teeth into the end of his tail. The she-cat’s eyes bulged as she clamped her jaws shut. Bramblestar took a deep breath against the pain and pulled her toward him until she could grip the branch with her claws and release his tail. Drops of blood scattered into the lake and sank quickly.

“Hold on!” Bramblestar called.

Sandstorm and Molewhisker began to haul the branch in, dragging it up the shore until first Bramblestar and then Blossomfall managed to find a paw hold. They waded out of the lake and flopped down on the pebbles well above the waterline.

“Thank you, Bramblestar!” Blossomfall choked, coughing up several mouthfuls of water. “I thought I was going to drown!”

Bramblestar got up and gave his pelt a shake. “It’s too dangerous down here,” he meowed. “I’m going to order every cat to stay away from the lake until the water level goes down.”

“Good idea!” Molewhisker agreed.

Turning to Sandstorm, Bramblestar continued, “Will you take Blossomfall back and have Jayfeather check her out? Molewhisker and I can finish the patrol on our own.”

“No, I’m okay,” Blossomfall objected, struggling to her paws. “I can keep going.”

Bramblestar hesitated. I wonder if she’s trying to prove her loyalty. Then he told himself to stop second-guessing the motives of every cat who had been connected with the Dark Forest. He gave a brisk nod. “Tell me if you want to stop,” he warned her. “There’s no shame in needing to rest after what you’ve been through.”

“I’m fine,” Blossomfall insisted. Her pelt was still wet, sticking up in spikes, but her eyes were bright and determined.

Bramblestar led his patrol a safe distance from the water’s edge and turned inland to follow the stream at the WindClan border. He spotted a WindClan patrol racing across the moor after a couple of bulky, low-flying white birds. As he watched, two of the cats leaped into the air and almost clawed one of the birds out of the sky. At the last moment it gave a vigorous beat of its wings and lurched away, gaining height.

“I’ve never seen WindClan hunting like that before!” Sandstorm exclaimed.

“It’s pretty brave of them.” Molewhisker sounded impressed. “Those birds are big!”

“I wonder how hungry they must be to try learning how to fly after prey,” Bramblestar mused. “The Tribe cats hunt birds like that, but it doesn’t seem natural for us.”

The wind was blowing strongly over the moor, bringing so much WindClan scent that it seemed to fill the forest.

“It’s hopeless trying to tell if they’ve trespassed,” Molewhisker growled. “I can’t smell anything but WindClan!”

The patrol renewed their own scent markers, but the wind whisked the scent away into the forest almost immediately. Battling through the gusts, the cats finally reached the ridge and gazed down at the churning gray lake. It’s definitely bigger than usual, Bramblestar realized.

“It’s hard to believe it was once empty,” Sandstorm murmured.

“Was that in the Long Dry?” Molewhisker asked. “Purdy started telling me about it, but he never said how the water came back.”

Purdy hardly ever gets to the end of his stories, Bramblestar thought, twitching his whiskers in amusement.

“Well,” Blossomfall began, “all the Clans sent two cats to form a patrol, and they traveled up the dried-out stream until—”

“Which cats went from ThunderClan?” Molewhisker interrupted.

“Dovewing—she was Dovepaw then—and Lionblaze,” Blossomfall replied.

The tortoiseshell she-cat broke off with a startled squeal as a huge white bird flew unsteadily over their heads. Bramblestar ducked to avoid its erratic wingbeats. A moment later it crashed into a holly bush and struggled in the branches, trapped.

Bramblestar raced over to it with Molewhisker beside him. Reaching the bush, he stood back to let the younger warrior make the easy kill.

Molewhisker dived into the bush and sank his teeth into the bird’s neck. It stopped struggling and went limp; Molewhisker backed out of the bush, dragging his prey with him.

“Good job!” Bramblestar praised him.

Blossomfall let out a snort. “You’ve made a bit of a mess of its wings,” she pointed out. “You should be more careful.”

“I only bit its neck!” Molewhisker protested.

Looking more closely, Bramblestar saw claw marks on the wings, and a spattering of blood on the white feathers. “This must be the bird we saw the WindClan warriors attacking,” he meowed. “They’ve wounded it badly enough to bring it down, but it managed to get onto our territory.” He let out a satisfied purr. “It’ll make a great addition to the fresh-kill pile,” he added, “but it’s so heavy we might need more warriors to carry it back, so we don’t do any more damage.”

“Hey—what are you doing?” An outraged yowl came from the other side of the stream.

Bramblestar turned to see Nightcloud at the head of a WindClan patrol. Her apprentice, Hootpaw, and gray-and-white Gorsetail were just behind her.

“That’s our catch!” the black she-cat growled. “We should have it.”

“It is not your catch,” Molewhisker defended himself. “I killed it, so it’s mine!”

“It was alive when it entered ThunderClan territory,” Bramblestar pointed out, “and that makes it ours.”

All three WindClan cats were bristling with fury. “Look at this,” Nightcloud snarled, holding up one paw to show scraps of white feathers stuck between her claws. “That proves we wounded it. If we hadn’t, you would never have caught it.”

“And we need it more than you,” Hootpaw put in. “Rabbits are scarcer than usual, so these white birds are all we have.”

“Be quiet!” Nightcloud hissed, giving her apprentice a cuff around the ear.

Sandstorm spoke softly to Bramblestar. “We have plenty of prey. I think Firestar would have let WindClan have this bird.”

“I’m not Firestar,” Bramblestar retorted. “We caught this fairly, so it belongs to us.”

“Absolutely right, you’re not Firestar,” Gorsetail muttered, overhearing.

Bramblestar felt a flash of anger. Snatching up the white bird, he stalked away with it, even though it was almost too heavy for him to carry and the trailing wings threatened to trip him. Sandstorm and Molewhisker hurried to help him, one on each side, while Blossomfall padded ahead to clear any twigs or bramble tendrils out of the way. As they headed into the trees, Bramblestar could hear the WindClan cats hissing behind him, but he paid no attention.

“You made the right decision,” Sandstorm meowed after a moment. “You’re the leader now, and you can’t show weakness to another Clan.”

Bramblestar shrugged. “Whatever,” he mumbled around his mouthful of feathers. He was thinking about what Hootpaw had said: Rabbits were getting scarce in WindClan, and they were relying on birds that didn’t usually come to the moor. There’s something very familiar about the scent of the white bird’s wings…

The ThunderClan cats gathered around to stare at the white bird when the patrol returned to the hollow.

“Wow, it’s huge!” Berrynose exclaimed.

“I never saw a bird like that before,” Ivypool meowed. “It’s enough to feed the whole Clan!”

“I caught it,” Molewhisker announced, giving his shoulder a couple of proud licks.

His sister Cherryfall blinked at him. “Great catch! Those wings could really have hurt you.”

“Oh, it wasn’t that difficult,” Molewhisker mewed.

No, because the bird was already wounded and trapped in a bush, Bramblestar thought, suppressing a mrrow of amusement. He said nothing. Let Molewhisker have his moment of glory!

“Squirrelflight!” he called, beckoning to his deputy with his tail. He led her up to the white bird and angled his ears toward it. “Smell it,” he mewed. “What does it remind you of?”

Squirrelflight took a deep sniff, then looked up, puzzled. “Er… dead birds?” she guessed.

Bramblestar twitched the tip of his tail. “No, think of a place,” he urged.

Squirrelflight sniffed again, and understanding began to dawn in her eyes. “Now I remember! There’s a salt-tasting tang on the feathers, like the water in the sun-drown-place. Do you think that’s where it came from?”

Bramblestar remembered that Onestar had mentioned at the Gathering that WindClan were hunting birds from the sun-drown-water. He hadn’t paid much attention at the time, thinking that the WindClan leader must be imagining things. Now he wasn’t so sure.

“The wind must be incredibly strong,” he commented, “to blow these birds all the way here.”

He gazed through the trees as though he could see all the way to the sun-drown-place. A shiver passed through him from ears to tail-tip as he remembered the surging mass of blue-green water.

Squirrelflight waited a few moments more to let all the Clan, especially the apprentices, get a good look at the white bird. Then she raised her voice to make herself heard throughout the clearing. “Come on, all of you! There’s enough prey here for every cat!”

That night Bramblestar found it hard to rest. Wind blustering around the Highledge disturbed him, and when he did manage to snatch a few moments of sleep he was assaulted by strange dreams of salty water and falling down holes on top of badgers.

A paw prodding him in the side woke him. The faint light of dawn was trickling into his den, and he just managed to make out the features of Jayfeather. The medicine cat was wide-eyed and agitated.

“Wha…?” Bramblestar muttered. “Did I call out in my sleep and wake you?”

Jayfeather shook his head. “No. I went out before dawn, because I was concerned about the new plants in the wind. And I found something… something awful. Come and see, Bramblestar!”

Shaking off the last remnants of sleep, Bramblestar followed Jayfeather out of his den and down the tumbled rocks to the floor of the hollow. Jayfeather led the way into the forest at a run, sure-pawed as always in spite of his blindness, while Bramblestar blundered after him in the near darkness.

The two cats followed the disused Thunderpath until they came to the abandoned nest. By now there was enough light for Bramblestar to see more clearly. He stopped, his fur bushing up in dismay. The plants that Leafpool and Jayfeather had tended so carefully had been destroyed by a branch from a nearby ash tree. Wind had blown it across the patch of earth, churning up the ground and flattening the young herbs. Torn leaves had blown everywhere.

“Well, it’s bad, but it should be possible to repair it,” Bramblestar meowed. “Some of the roots must have survived. I’ll send you a patrol later today, to help clear up the mess and look for new plants in the forest.”

“You don’t understand,” Jayfeather told him, his voice somber. “This is an omen. Something terrible is going to happen. Darkness and destruction and tragedy are closing in on our Clan once more.”

Bramblestar felt an icy trickle of fear run down his spine. “Not the Dark Forest again?”

“No,” Jayfeather replied, and his voice sounded far away, and somehow older. “Something different from the Great Battle. I don’t know what it is, but I can feel it coming on the wind.”