Firestar’s Quest

Chapter 14

Throughout the night, Firestar and Sandstorm traveled slowly upstream beneath a claw scratch of moon. They left behind the familiar stretch of river with the Twolegplace standing forlornly in a sea of mud, and the path that led to the deserted Twolegplace. The river shrank and flowed more swiftly, chattering over stones; a thick hedge bordered it, leaving only a narrow path for the cats to pass.

Firestar didn’t feel the need to talk; it was enough to have Sandstorm back with him, padding alongside him.

At last the first traces of dawn appeared on the horizon.

The sky grew milky pale, and one by one the warriors of StarClan winked out.

“Do you think we should eat now?” Firestar suggested. He didn’t want Sandstorm to think he was making all the decisions. “Then we could rest for a bit.”

“What?” Sandstorm’s green eyes flew wide with shock.

“Rest? Eat? Are you completely mouse-brained? We should keep going.”

Firestar stared at her. “Well, if that’s what you want…”

Amusement glimmered in Sandstorm’s eyes, and she let 1 7 3

out a tiny snort of laughter. “No, you daft furball, I’m only joking. Eating’s a great idea, and as for resting, I’m practically asleep on my paws!”

Flicking her ear with his tail tip, Firestar halted and stretched his jaws wide to taste the air. There was a strong scent of vole. Sandstorm angled her ears forward. “There,” she murmured.

Firestar caught sight of the creature pulling itself out of the water a couple of tail lengths farther up the bank. “If we’re not careful, it’ll go straight back into the river.”

“Stay there,” Sandstorm breathed.

Slinking up the side of the hedge, she passed the vole and started creeping back toward it. When she was close to it, she leaped to the edge of the river, the water splashing up around her paws. Startled, the vole dashed up the bank, straight into Firestar’s paws. He killed it with a swift bite to the neck.

“That was brilliant!” he exclaimed as Sandstorm joined him, shaking her wet paws.

“Don’t expect me to make a habit of it,” she replied, flicking a droplet of water crossly from her nose. “I’m not a RiverClan cat.”

As they shared the vole, the daylight grew stronger and the sun came up. The sky was blue, with only a few faint traces of cloud, high and misty. Firestar felt the warmth of the sun soaking into his fur.

“Let’s find a comfortable place to sleep,” he suggested when he had finished the last mouthful of vole.

Sandstorm’s only reply was a yawn.

Not much farther along the path, they discovered a soft patch of moss among the hedge roots. Sunlight shone through the branches, dappling their pelts as they curled up together. Feeling Sandstorm’s tongue rasping along his neck, Firestar relaxed for what felt like the first time in days. He bent his head to his mate’s, sharing tongues until sleep drifted over them both.

Firestar stood on the riverbank. It looked like the place where he had fallen asleep, but the hedge wasn’t so tall and bushy, and there was no sign of Sandstorm. Panic clawed at him for a moment. Then he realized that he was standing at the edge of a large group of cats. Some of them were sitting at the water’s edge, while others lay stretched out as if they were exhausted.

Sound gradually faded up around him, the fretful mewling of kits and wails of distress from older cats.

“How much farther?” a tabby kit was asking his mother.

“My paws are sore!” a little tortoiseshell added.

Their mother, a beautiful gray-furred queen, bent to give them both a comforting lick. “Not far now,” she promised them. “And then we’ll find a nice new home.”

“I don’t want a new home,” the tortoiseshell kit protested.

“I want to go back to our camp.”

Her mother gave her ears a gentle lick. “Our camp is gone,” she mewed. “Twolegs have taken it. But we’ll find a better one; you’ll see.”

The anxiety in her green eyes told Firestar that she wasn’t sure she was telling her kits the truth. He followed her gaze over the cats sprawled on the bank until he spotted the gray-and-white cat he had seen so many times, who had spoken to him in Smudge’s garden. He stood commandingly on the brink of the river, his head turned upstream.

“Is this the right way?” he meowed quietly.

A small tabby she-cat, sitting on the bank beside him, replied, “You’re our leader, so you have to decide. I’ve had no signs from StarClan since we left the forest.”

“StarClan don’t care about us, Fawnstep,” growled the gray-and-white cat. “If they did, they would never have let the other Clans drive us out of the forest.” He bowed his head. “All we can do is keep going until we find a place to live.”

Movement in the corner of his eye distracted Firestar. He froze as a long-furred tabby kit darted straight at him. He waited for it to spot him and raise the alarm, but it bundled past him, so close that their pelts almost brushed, and never noticed him.

Suddenly realizing that none of the cats could see him, Firestar began to pad among them. He was horrified by how thin they were, their ribs visible through dull, ungroomed pelts.

A black-and-white elder was lying on his side, his breath coming in short gasps. “I can’t go any farther,” he rasped.

“You’ll have to go on without me.”

“Rubbish,” a ginger warrior growled. “No cat is staying behind.”

The elder closed his eyes. “We should never have left the forest.”

A brown tabby she-cat came to stand beside the ginger tom. “We’ll find a good place to stay; I promise.”

“Better than the one we left,” the ginger warrior agreed, lashing his tail. “Without the other Clans to bother us. No more border raids, no more prey stealing. And especially no more Twolegs. We’ll have it all to ourselves.”

The black-and-white elder let out a faint hiss.

“Buzzardtail, there have always been five Clans in the forest.”

“Not anymore,” the ginger tom muttered.

“We’ll find you some fresh-kill,” the tabby meowed, “and you’ll soon feel better.” Glancing at the tom, she added, “Let’s hunt.”

The two cats left their Clanmates and began to prowl up the hedge. A squirrel sat chittering in a tree that spread its branches over the riverbank; the tabby she-cat gave an enormous leap and grabbed it in strong jaws, falling back to the ground with her prey between her paws.

Firestar stared in amazement. What a catch! He had never seen a cat jump so high. At first he was surprised that the ginger tom didn’t congratulate her. Then he noticed that both cats had strong, muscular back legs; jumping must have been SkyClan’s special skill, just as RiverClan cats could swim well and WindClan cats could run fast after rabbits.

The hunters took their fresh-kill back to the rest of their Clan. A couple of other warriors had killed voles, but it still wasn’t enough. He saw the fresh-kill being shared among the elders and mothers with kits first, just as he would expect from cats who followed the warrior code.

When the Clan had devoured the prey in a few ravenous bites, the gray-and-white leader padded into their midst. “It’s time to go on,” he meowed.

The whole Clan rose to their paws. The gray-and-white cat took the lead, heading upriver. The ginger tom and the tabby supported the black-and-white elder. As they limped past Firestar, he realized he could see river and grass through each pelt. The SkyClan cats seemed to walk one by one into a bank of pale mist, and Firestar found himself blinking awake in the sunlight under the hedge.

“I must help them,” he murmured aloud. “Whatever happens, SkyClan must be found.”

For the next three sunrises Firestar and Sandstorm journeyed on. The river grew steadily narrower, foaming around sharp gray rocks. Everywhere Firestar could see traces of the huge wave that had swept Sandstorm away: scattered branches, debris caught in the hedge, drying puddles left on the path. In the shallows under the bank, moorhens called miserably for lost chicks.

“Do you think it’s much farther?” Sandstorm meowed. “If the river gets much narrower, it’ll vanish altogether.”

“You’re right. We should start looking for signs of SkyClan,” Firestar replied.

“What sort of signs? Border scent markings?”

Firestar shook his head. “I doubt it. That would mean there’s still a Clan protecting its territory. The SkyClan cat I spoke to said the Clan had been scattered.”

“But there must be some SkyClan cats left,” Sandstorm pointed out. “Otherwise what are we doing here?”

“Maybe there’ll be just a few cats, trying to live by the warrior code,” Firestar suggested.

Sandstorm nodded, then sighed. “I wonder. Or maybe they don’t remember who they are anymore.”

Looking ahead, Firestar saw the jagged tops of a range of hills. They didn’t look as sharp and bleak as Highstones, but they were higher than WindClan’s moorland. It might have looked like a refuge to a fleeing Clan who wanted to be far away from other cats and Twolegs.

The path grew sandy, staining their paws orange and stinging their eyes when a breeze picked up. The sun was still strong; Firestar and Sandstorm were glad of the shade from trees that grew along the hedge.

Firestar felt his neck fur begin to bristle as two or three Twoleg nests came into view. Was this the beginning of another Twolegplace to get lost in? The path led right past the front of the nests, and a litter of Twoleg kits were running up and down.

Sandstorm touched his shoulder with her tail tip. “Let’s see if we can get around.”

She found a gap in the hedge and led the way through into a field of rough grass. The two cats padded across it, skirting the fences of Twoleg gardens, until they came to a narrow Thunderpath.

Firestar paused; the reek of monsters was faint and stale.

He glanced at Sandstorm. “Do you think it’s safe to cross?”

Sandstorm gave a quick glance up and down, then darted across. Firestar followed hard on her paws. On the other side was more rough grass, and it didn’t take long to skirt the remaining Twoleg nests until the river came in sight again.

As they drew closer, Firestar could hear the squeals of more Twoleg kits. He let out a faint hiss of annoyance; he thought they had dodged all the Twolegs by avoiding the nests. Once he reached the path again he could see that here the river widened into a round, shallow pool. Several Twoleg kits were bouncing around in the shallows, shrieking happily and splashing one another with water. On the bank two older Twoleg females sat on pelts.

“Playing in water!” Sandstorm wrinkled her nose with disgust as she came to stand beside Firestar. “I always knew Twolegs were mad. They’ll freeze to death without any hair on their pelts.”

Before she finished speaking, a louder screech came from the young Twolegs. A couple of them bounded out of the water and dashed toward Firestar and Sandstorm with their paws outstretched, sending drops of water flying.

“Run!” Firestar meowed.

The first Twoleg kit nearly grabbed him as he whisked away. Behind him, he heard a yowl from one of the older Twoleg females. Glancing back, he saw that she had risen to her paws and was calling the young Twolegs, who trailed back toward her. Still, he and Sandstorm kept running until the river curved away and the Twoleg kits were left behind.

At last they halted, sides heaving, where an elder bush cast deep shade over the riverbank.

“I can hear something,” Sandstorm whispered.

Firestar pricked his ears. From somewhere ahead came a roaring sound like the waterfall in RiverClan territory.

Cautiously he led the way around the next bend.

In front of him, water slid in a smooth curve over the top of a cliff, turning to white foam as it tumbled over jutting rocks and crashed into a pool below. The air was full of mist, splitting the sunlight into tiny dancing rainbows.

Firestar stood still for a moment, enjoying the cool spray as it soaked into his hot fur. Meanwhile Sandstorm padded up to the edge of the pool and ventured out onto an overhanging rock.

“Be careful!” Firestar called out, his heart lurching as he imagined her falling into the churning pool. “The rocks will be slippery.”

Sandstorm waved her tail to show she’d heard him; Firestar hoped she wasn’t annoyed that he’d tried to warn her.

A couple of heartbeats later, the ginger she-cat darted a paw down into the water; silver flashed in the air, and a fish lay wriggling on the rock. Sandstorm planted a paw on it to stop it from flopping back into the pool.

“Hey, I thought you said you weren’t a RiverClan cat,” Firestar teased as he bounded up to her.

Sandstorm picked the fish up in her jaws and joined him on the bank. “The stupid creature practically came up and begged to be caught,” she told him, dropping her prey at his paws.

ThunderClan cats didn’t usually eat fish, but Firestar found the unfamiliar taste delicious as he devoured his share.

Cleaning his whiskers when he had finished, he looked up at the cliff face beside the waterfall. Moss-covered rocks jutted out of it, with clumps of fern spilling over them.

“It doesn’t look too hard to climb,” he mewed. “We’d better try, before the sun goes down.”

He started to claw his way up the rocks, anxiety throbbing through him as he struggled to keep his balance. The water thundered down less than a tail-length away; if they slipped into it they would be flung into the pool below. Where the rocks were bare they were slick with spray, and the moss pulled away when Firestar tried to put his weight on it. Ferns slapped him in the face, showering him with drops of water.

Dragging himself onto a flat rock, he paused for a moment to rest, his flanks heaving as he fought for breath. Looking back to check on Sandstorm, he spotted her balanced precar-iously on a boulder at the bottom of a sheer slab of rock.

“Are you stuck?” he called to her. “Hang on; I’ll come down and help.”

Sandstorm gazed up at him and bared her teeth in a hiss that was drowned by the thunder of the water. “Stay where you are,” she called back. “I can manage.”

Firestar flicked his tail irritably. Why did Sandstorm always have to prove that she could cope on her own? “Don’t be mouse-brained. You can’t—”

“I said I can manage!” Sandstorm interrupted. “It’s no good putting us both in danger. One of us has to survive to find SkyClan.”

Before Firestar could respond, his mate launched herself upward, snagging her claws in a clump of moss above her head. As the moss started to give way, she scrabbled with her hind paws until she reached a deep crack in the rock. From there she managed to spring across to where Firestar stood waiting, his heart pounding with alarm.

“See?” Sandstorm shook herself, scattering drops of water from her pelt. “I told you I’d be fine.”

Firestar pressed his muzzle against hers and tried to stop his legs from trembling. Then he began to climb again. His breath came fast and shallow, his pelt bristling with tension by the time he hauled himself up over the cliff edge and collapsed onto level ground. A heartbeat later Sandstorm joined him and flopped down by his side. He felt her warm breath on his ear.

“Sorry,” she murmured.

The sun was close to setting; the river reflected the red sky, barred with the long shadows of trees that lay across it.

Firestar and Sandstorm padded on upstream; the river grew narrower still, and the banks rose until they were traveling through a sandy gorge, close to the edge of the water. It was smaller than the gorge at the edge of WindClan territory, but the sides were just as steep, and although there was still light in the sky they were soon walking through shadow.

“We’d better find somewhere to spend the night,” Sandstorm suggested. “If there are any signs of SkyClan here, we could miss them in the dark.”

As much as Firestar wanted to keep going, he knew that what she said was sensible. They found a small cave in the side of the gorge, sheltered by a stunted gorse bush, and crawled into it. The sandy floor was more comfortable than Firestar expected, and it was not long before he slept with Sandstorm’s sweet scent all around him.

Daylight filtering through the spiky gorse woke him.

Alarm stabbed him when he saw that Sandstorm was not there. He pushed his way past the thorny branches and emerged beside the river, blinking in the bright sunlight and shaking seeds from his pelt. To his relief, Sandstorm was trotting toward him.

“I thought I’d hunt,” she mewed as she came up to him, an annoyed look in her eyes. “But I haven’t found any prey.

There’s hardly anywhere up here for them to live.”

“Don’t worry. We’ll carry on and hunt on the way. There’s bound to be something.”

Sandstorm’s only response was a sniff. Firestar knew how proud she was of her hunting skills; it was unusual for her not to bring back any prey at all.

In full daylight he could see that their surroundings were very different from the lush territory below the waterfall.

The sides of the gorge had turned into sandy cliffs, with a few straggly bushes and clumps of tough grass rooted in cracks.

The path beside the river almost vanished on both sides, so the cats had to scramble over boulders in order to keep close to the water. Though they kept on stopping to scent the air, there was only the faintest trace of prey.

“This is no good,” Firestar meowed after a while. “No cats could live this close to the water, with no space for a camp.

We’d better climb to the top of the gorge.”

This time the climb was easier; although the sandy cliff was smooth and slippery, there were cracks and occasional shallow ledges to give them plenty of pawholds. When Firestar scrambled over the edge wind buffeted his pelt, and he bounded a few pawsteps away from the cliff in case he was blown over. He found himself looking out over a wide stretch of sandy earth, with patches of scrubby grass dotted with stunted trees. In the distance he could just make out the walls of a Twolegplace, and the glitter of monsters speeding along a Thunderpath.

“We’ll stay away from there,” he muttered as Sandstorm climbed up to join him.

His mate was already scenting the air. “Rabbits!”

Firestar didn’t feel too hopeful. He was used to stalking prey in thick woodland; he wasn’t a WindClan cat, swift enough to run it down in the open. “Let’s keep going,” he mewed. “There might be a better place to hunt farther on.”

As they padded along the edge of the gorge, his paws began to tingle. He could smell cats! Tasting the air carefully, he tried to pick out the SkyClan scent that was familiar from his encounters with the Clan leader. But these scents were completely different.

Sandstorm had drawn a few paces ahead, and had paused at the foot of a tree to sniff the bark. “Come and look at this,” she called, beckoning with her tail.

Bounding up to her, Firestar saw long claw marks scored into the bark. The cat scent was stronger here, too.

“A cat made those marks,” Sandstorm mewed, her green eyes gleaming.

Firestar nodded. “One with long, sharp claws, by the look of it. Come on,” he meowed, eagerly drawing air over his scent glands again. “Let’s see what else we can find.”

A few pawsteps farther on, a cloud of flies buzzed into the air when he almost stumbled onto the half-eaten body of a rabbit.

“Ugh!” Backing away, he swiped his tongue over his jaws.

“Crow-food.”

Sandstorm examined the dead rabbit from a distance.

“Some cat killed that. It didn’t die naturally, and there’s cat scent on it. So there are cats around here who hunt for prey.”

Firestar made himself pad forward again and give the car-cass a more careful scrutiny. “I’d guess the cat was hunting alone,” he meowed. “That would explain why it didn’t finish its meal.”

“And they must be fast, like WindClan, to catch rabbits.”

Firestar retreated, and they set out again along the edge of the gorge. “The scent on that rabbit was different from the scent by the tree. These are rogues, not Clan cats.”

“But isn’t that what the SkyClan cat said?” Sandstorm asked. “That his Clan had been scattered?”

Firestar didn’t reply. Although the signs of cats were encouraging, he had never really considered, until now, what it would be like to put a Clan together from rogues and kittypets. He would have to treat every cat as if he were training an apprentice—no, a kit, because these cats would have no knowledge of the warrior code, or what it meant to live in a Clan. The task was so daunting that for a heartbeat he thought of turning around to go home. Then he gritted his teeth with determination. He wouldn’t give up his quest until he had discovered exactly what cats lived here, and whether there was any hope of restoring SkyClan. But right now he felt as if his quest would never end, and he would never see the forest again.

Sunhigh was past when they came to a sandy bank with several rabbit holes leading down into the earth. The scent of rabbits grew stronger. Suddenly one burst out from behind a gorse bush and fled along the edge of the gorge. Firestar raced after it but Sandstorm flashed past him, and he slowed to watch while she chased the prey and brought it down.

“Well done!” he meowed, padding up to meet Sandstorm as she dragged the rabbit back. “Now you’re a WindClan cat!”

When he and Sandstorm had shared the fresh-kill, Firestar felt full-fed for the first time in days. If his mate could catch prey here, so could the SkyClan cats.

Sandstorm blinked at him. “You’re excited, aren’t you?”

Firestar nodded. “Every pawstep we take is bringing us closer.”

“I’m glad I’m here with you.”

Firestar touched his nose to her ear. “I’m glad you’re here, too. I don’t think I could do this without you.”

They spent that night curled among the roots of a spreading oak tree, one of the few full-sized trees growing on this windswept cliff. With the scents of sap and bark wreathing around him, the rustle of leaves in his ears, Firestar could almost imagine that he was at home in the forest.

Sunlight shining into his face woke him. His eyes flew open in alarm; how had he managed to sleep for so long?

Then he realized that the roots where he had settled to sleep had vanished, replaced by the sandy walls and roof of a cave.

Sunlight was angling in through the opening, a few tail-lengths away. The air around him was warm. He could hear the murmurs of many sleeping cats, and SkyClan scent surrounded him. Raising his head, he saw the furry shapes of warriors curled up among moss and bracken.

A shadow fell across the cave, and Firestar saw a muscular tomcat outlined against the light. He recognized the ginger tom he had seen in his vision by the river. Fear clawed at him; what would these cats do to him when they found him in their den? But the ginger tom stared straight at him without seeing him, and Firestar realized that once again he was invisible to the SkyClan cats.

“Come on,” the ginger warrior meowed. “It’s time you were moving.”

All around Firestar the warriors began to stir and raise their heads. One of them—the brown tabby she-cat who had caught the squirrel—got up and arched her back in a long stretch. “Keep your fur on, Buzzardtail. We’re coming.”

“Okay, Fernpelt, you can lead the dawn patrol,” the ginger tom went on. “Pick a couple of others to go with you, and keep your eyes open for that fox we spotted on the other side of the gorge.”

Fernpelt flicked her tail. “Don’t worry. If we come across it, it’ll be crow-food.”

The ginger tom stalked across the cave and prodded a sandy colored she-cat with one paw. “Up you get, Mousefang.

You’re coming hunting with me, and we’ll pick up Oakpaw on the way. Nightfur,” he added to a black tom on the other side of the cave, “you can lead another hunting patrol.”

By now all the cats had risen to their paws and were shaking moss and bracken from their pelts. “This is our home now,” meowed Buzzardtail, glancing around approvingly.

“You know where to go…”

As he spoke, he and all the rest of the cats began to fade.

For a heartbeat Firestar saw the sandy walls of the cave appearing through their pelts; then the cave walls dissolved too, and he was blinking awake in the gray dawn. Buzzardtail’s voice still echoed in his ears. You know where to go…

Firestar padded out from the shelter of the tree. The sky shone with a milky light, and a gentle breeze teased his fur.

All his senses strained to pick up traces of the lost Clan. His paws tingled with their nearness; would this be the day when he found them?

“I’m here,” he mewed aloud.

Turning back to where Sandstorm still slept, he spotted a mouse scuffling among the oak roots. He dropped into the hunter’s crouch and pounced on it, killing it swiftly with a bite to the throat.

He woke Sandstorm by trailing the end of his tail across her nose. “Time to get up,” he announced, as her whiskers twitched and she opened her eyes. “There’s fresh-kill waiting for you.”

When they continued their journey, they had to skirt thickets of gorse and bramble that grew close to the edge of the cliff. Firestar still picked up occasional traces of cats, but nothing to tell him where the Clan had gone.

Then as the bushes dwindled, Sandstorm padded up to the edge of the cliff again. Firestar, who had scented a mouse among the brambles, heard her let out a gasp. He whirled around to see her staring down into the gorge.

“Firestar, come and see!” she exclaimed. “The river has vanished!”