Firestar’s Quest

Chapter 20

Firestar flattened his ears in disappointment. “I thought he would at least stay until we got back,” he meowed. “There’s so much more I wanted to ask him.”

Sandstorm dropped her prey beside Firestar’s and padded across to the hollow where Sky had slept. “He’s used to being alone,” she pointed out. “I suppose he just didn’t feel comfortable around other cats.”

Firestar twitched his tail tip, irritation raising the fur on his shoulders. “Now we’ll have to trek all the way up the gorge again. I don’t want to leave without speaking to him. I have to know more about SkyClan, especially why they left these caves.”

Sandstorm’s green eyes glinted at him. Firestar was afraid she would think he was becoming obsessed with SkyClan, particularly when there was no Clan to restore, nothing but memories and sand.

“I’ll feel as if I’ve failed the cat in my dreams if I don’t find out what destroyed the Clan in the end,” he defended himself. “It wasn’t just leaving the forest. They reached this place, and they could have thrived here, especially with their special 2 4 3

ability to leap. So what happened next? Why did they go?” He shook his head in frustration. “I have to know,” he repeated.

“It’s okay.” Sandstorm pressed her muzzle against his. “I understand. And if—”

A panting, scraping noise from outside the cave interrupted her. Sky clambered into the cave; a huge bundle of moss was clamped in his jaws.

Relief flooded over Firestar. “You’re still here!”

“And you found moss!” Sandstorm added.

The old cat dropped his burden and looked at her as if he thought she was mad. “You do use moss for bedding, don’t you? I haven’t dragged this stuff all the way up from the river for nothing?” He gave his nest of ferns a scathing look.

“Maybe you enjoy being pricked all night.”

“Yes, we use moss,” Firestar meowed, “but we couldn’t find any.”

Sky snorted. “I’ll show you later.” He pushed the bundle of moss toward them with one paw. “There, put it in your nests.

I don’t need any; I won’t be staying another night.”

“I wish you would.” Sandstorm brushed her muzzle against Sky’s shoulder; the old cat tensed, but didn’t protest.

“There’s so much you can tell us.”

Sky hesitated, then flicked his ears. “I’m not welcome here.

Those kittypets… I’ve been driven out, just like my ancestors.”

“I’m sorry—” Firestar began.

“Don’t feel sorry for me!” Sky’s blue eyes flashed. “I’ve got a perfectly good den of my own. I don’t need anything.”

His voice ached with a loneliness that contradicted his words.

Sandstorm padded across to the small fresh-kill pile she and Firestar had made, and picked out a plump vole, which she carried over to Sky. “Please eat,” she mewed.

The old cat’s eyes glinted with surprise, but he crouched down to devour the vole. Sandstorm fetched a starling for herself, while Firestar used Sky’s moss to line their nests. It was paler than the moss that grew in the forest, and he was still puzzled about where Sky had found it. There hadn’t been time for the old cat to go far.

By the time Firestar settled down to eat, Sky was swallowing the last scraps of fresh-kill. “Thanks.” He grunted. “I’ve eaten worse.”

Sandstorm dipped her head. “Please, will you show us where you found the moss?” she asked. “And maybe some of the other places you remember from when you were young?”

Firestar gave Sandstorm an appreciative glance. It was a good idea to nudge the old cat along the path of his memories; he must want to share them, after being so long alone.

Sky rose to his paws and padded over to the cave entrance.

His gaze fell on the scratch marks on the stone trunk; Firestar thought he flinched before he turned to look out at the hazy sky. “I’ll show you the moss,” he meowed, “and the other places my mother used to take me. But we should go now. It’s going to be a hot day, so we’ll need to be back before sunhigh.”

Firestar gulped down the rest of his sparrow and stood up.

“I’m ready,” he mewed to Sky. “Lead the way.”

The elderly cat took the stony trail that led to the bottom of the gorge, then leaped up to the top of the pile of boulders where the river appeared. His movements were stiff, but Firestar was impressed by how agile he was, in spite of his age.

Sky’s flanks were heaving with effort by the time he reached the top, but as he turned back to watch Firestar and Sandstorm scrambling up after him, Firestar thought he could detect a hint of amusement in his eyes.

“This was called the Rockpile,” he announced once

Firestar and Sandstorm were standing beside him, panting.

“The SkyClan leader stood up here when he wanted to call a Clan meeting. The rest of the Clan gathered around the pool.” He flicked his tail toward the jutting rock high overhead, behind them. “You already know the Skyrock; that’s where the Clan gathered at the full moon.”

“Why did SkyClan hold Gatherings when there weren’t any other Clans?” Firestar asked.

The old cat’s eyes clouded. “Because that is the way of the warrior. The Clan would gather there to be closer to the stars.” He turned away from the jutting rock. “Up there were the dens,” he went on, pointing to the caves with his tail.

“The warriors used the one where we’ve been sleeping. Below that was the elders’ den, and—”

“Oh, we thought the lowest den would be where the elders lived,” Sandstorm interrupted. “Because—” She broke off, giving her chest fur a few quick licks to cover her embarrassment.

“Because old cats are too stiff to climb?” Sky growled, though Firestar was sure that his eyes were warm. “No—SkyClan cats never lost the power to jump. That lowest den was the medicine cat’s, close to the water and where the herbs grow.”

He went on to point out the nursery—which was the cave with the tiny claw marks Firestar and Sandstorm had picked out—the apprentices’ den, and the Clan leader’s, a little way away from the others, next to the trail that led up to the Skyrock.

“Did the river ever flood?” Sandstorm asked.

“Yes, but never as high as the warriors’ cave,” Sky replied.

“The whole Clan used to shelter there in the worst storms, so my mother said.”

He gazed up at the caves for a heartbeat longer, as if he were imagining the trails busy with cats. Then he gave himself a brisk shake. “Come on. I’ll show you the moss.”

He jumped down from the highest boulder and picked his way down the pile on the opposite side of the river. Firestar wondered where he was going. They were uncomfortably near the black water where it appeared from among the rocks; did Sky expect them to swim?

Instead, the old cat veered around the lowest boulder and vanished. Firestar blinked. Where had he gone? Then he spotted a narrow ledge leading into the cave just above the level of the blue-green water.

A voice came from the darkness. “Are you coming or not?”

Firestar swallowed, exchanging a glance with Sandstorm.

His mate shrugged. “We can’t not,” she mewed.

Carefully setting down his paws in a straight line, Firestar ventured onto the ledge. The rock was slick with water, and his claws skidded when he tried to cling to it. The river lapped less than a tail-length below his paws. “I must be mouse-brained!” he muttered.

To his relief, after a while the ledge grew wider and opened out into a shallow cave. The river slid silently out of the shadows ahead and past them to the cave entrance, now a ragged gap of light behind them.

Sky was standing at the edge of the shadows. Pale dappled light shone on his gray fur. “All the moss you could want,” he announced, sweeping his tail around.

Firestar stared in amazement. Behind the old cat, the walls of the cave were covered with thick hanging clumps of moss.

But what really astonished Firestar was the eerie glow that came from it.

“Shining moss!” Sandstorm gasped.

“It’s perfectly safe,” Sky assured her. “You can use it for carrying water as well as for bedding. No cat knows why it glows like that. This was called the Shining Cave,” he went on. “No cat lived here, but the SkyClan medicine cats came to share tongues with their ancestors at each quarter moon.”

Firestar felt humbled that Sky had brought them to such an important place. He was glad, too, that he and Sandstorm hadn’t discovered it on their own. They might have taken the moss without realizing how special the cave was.

“Thank you for showing us,” he murmured to Sky. The softly spoken words seemed to echo around the cave like a whole Clan of voices answering, and Firestar was relieved when the old cat led the way back to the sunlight.

Once they were all on the bank again, opposite the cave dens, Sky led them downstream until they reached the trees.

Firestar noticed that Sky’s stiffness seemed to be wearing off; he moved like a younger cat, as if exploring his ancestors’ territory with visitors had given him another life. His tail held erect, he followed a twisting path through the undergrowth, farther than Firestar and Sandstorm had explored, until he reached a fallen tree that bridged the stream. Most of its branches had rotted away, and its trunk had been scoured to a silvery gray.

Sky leaped onto it and trotted confidently across to the far bank. Firestar and Sandstorm followed more cautiously, Firestar glancing down at the river bubbling underneath and digging his claws in as he crossed.

“This was the edge of SkyClan’s territory,” Sky announced as they joined him on the bank. “And that’s where I was born.”

He waved his tail toward a small cave at the bottom of the cliff, its entrance sheltered by a straggling bush. The sandy floor was littered with sharp little stones; Firestar tried to imagine what it would be like with a warm nest of moss and bracken, and a mother cat caring for her kits.

“What was your mother’s name?” Sandstorm asked.

“Lowbranch,” the old cat replied. “I never knew my father—another rogue, I suppose. I had a littermate called Twig.”

“Does he still live here too?”

Sky stiffened, glaring briefly at Sandstorm. Instead of answering, he muttered, “This way,” and swung around to pad off upstream.

“Sorry,” Sandstorm whispered to Firestar. “I’ve obviously upset him. I wasn’t trying to be nosy.”

“I know.” Firestar touched her ear with his muzzle. “I suppose Twig must be dead.”

Instead of returning to the caves, Sky began to climb the cliff again. This time there were no trails to follow; Firestar and Sandstorm had a hard scramble over tumbled rocks and along narrow ledges before they reached the top, panting and limping on paws scraped by sharp stones.

Sky was waiting for them, his tail tip twitching impatiently. His pale blue gaze raked across them, but he said nothing, only turned to lead the way through the strip of bushes and into the scrubland. Firestar and Sandstorm plunged into the undergrowth after him, and caught up to him a few tail-lengths into the open.

“Are we still in SkyClan territory?” Firestar panted.

Sky angled his ears toward a tree stump that poked up out of a bramble thicket. “That marks the border. My mother said her mother remembered when it was a tree. And that thicket is where I caught my first mouse.” His voice grew softer and he paused, as if he were looking back through long seasons to the young cat he had once been. Then a gleam of amusement appeared in his eyes. “Pricklenose was impressed,” he added. “I never told her that the bramble thorns slowed the mouse down. It was an easy kill.”

“Pricklenose? Who—” Sandstorm broke off, in case this was another painful question. “Didn’t Lowbranch teach you to hunt?”

“Pricklenose was my mother’s friend. It was the custom for a mother cat to give her kits to another to be trained. Pricklenose trained me and Twig, and my mother took her kits.”

Firestar’s ears pricked. “Why did they do that?”

Sky shrugged. “I don’t know. It was the custom. Maybe they thought that a mother would be too soft on her own kits, or that she would be tempted to hunt for them instead of teaching them to do it for themselves.”

Firestar exchanged a glance with Sandstorm. “It’s as if the mother cats were mentors,” he murmured. “They must have remembered something of the way warriors were trained when the cats still lived in SkyClan.”

“Their names are a bit like Clan names, too,” Sandstorm responded. “But somehow they don’t sound quite right.”

“Do the rogue she-cats still train one another’s kits?”

Firestar asked Sky, turning back to the old cat.

“I’ve no idea.” Sky snorted. “I have nothing to do with the cats around here.”

He set off again. Firestar followed, battling frustration that all these echoes of Clan life were nothing more than that—echoes without meaning, if there were no SkyClan cats left.

“This is a waste of time,” he whispered to Sandstorm. “It’s interesting, but we’re not getting anywhere. We might as well go home.”

Sandstorm’s green gaze was calm. “Wait. All sorts of things could happen yet.”

Firestar stared at her. Before he could ask her what she meant, Sky interrupted to show them a dark hole amid the roots of a gorse bush.

“That used to be a fox’s den,” he meowed. His gaze grew somber. “Two kits were killed there once, my mother said.”

Firestar tasted the air, but there was no fox scent there now.

“It’s close to Twolegplace,” Sandstorm commented, gazing toward the fences of the Twoleg nests.

“The nests used to be farther off, but then the Twolegs built more,” Sky told her. His tail lashed. “I can remember that happening when I was a kit. Huge monsters tearing up the ground, frightening off the prey with their noise.”

Firestar shivered. He was used to monsters racing along Thunderpaths; he couldn’t imagine what it would be like if they crashed their way into a Clan’s territory, tearing up trees and destroying the camp…

“Is that why SkyClan left the gorge?” he asked.

Sky narrowed his eyes. “No. Weren’t you listening?

SkyClan was already scattered when the monsters came.”

“Then why—”

Not waiting for Firestar to finish his question, Sky swung around and led them along the Twoleg fences. Firestar’s pelt began to bristle at the thought of being so close to Twolegs; he could see that Sandstorm was uneasy too.

“There are a lot of cats here,” he remarked; the scents were almost overwhelming.

Sky gave a grunt of contempt. “Kittypets! What good are they? They can’t even hunt.”

Firestar could distinguish the scents of Cherry and Boris, but there was no sign of the two young cats. He felt sorry; he wanted them to meet Sky and treat him with respect from now on, especially if Sky was right and the kittypets were his distant kin.

“A dog used to live in that nest,” Sky meowed, waving his tail at the closest fence. “Every cat was scared of it, its bark was so fierce!” A hint of amusement crept into his voice.

“One day Twig dared me to climb up on the fence and look at it. And do you know, the dog was no bigger than me! I snarled at it, and it went yelping back into its nest.”

Sandstorm let out a mrrow of laughter. “I wish I’d seen that!”

“Now, in this nest,” Sky went on, leading them farther along the row, “the Twolegs were friendly. They used to leave out food.” All the amusement vanished from his eyes and voice; a deep sadness swept over him, like the shadow of a cloud on a sunny day.

“What happened here?” Sandstorm asked softly.

“Twig ate the food and decided it was easier than hunting.”

Sky’s voice rasped in his throat. “He went to live with the Twolegs. I never saw him again.”

Sandstorm touched her tail to his shoulder, while Firestar remembered how his kin Cloudtail, back in the forest, had gone back to living the life of a kittypet, only to discover that it wasn’t as good as life in the forest. It must have been hard for Sky to watch his kin scattering, just as his ancestors had done.

Eventually they came to the end of the Twoleg fences.

Now they walked alongside a shiny mesh like silver cobweb that Firestar had seen before in Twolegplaces.

“We can go back now,” Sky announced, stopping abruptly.

Firestar was surprised. The sky was still hazy and the day was not too hot to carry on. “Are we far out of SkyClan territory?” he asked.

“Far enough,” Sky growled. His legs were stiff, his ears pricked, and his neck fur bristling. His pale blue eyes darted swift glances from side to side.

Firestar looked around. Beyond the silver mesh was a broad expanse of white stone, cracked and split with weeds.

It surrounded a huge Twoleg nest that reminded Firestar of the barn where Barley and Ravenpaw lived. But this barn was much bigger, with a shining silver roof and gaping holes in the sides. It didn’t look as if any Twolegs lived here; all that Firestar could smell was Twoleg rubbish, crow-food, and rats.

A ShadowClan cat might be happy to hunt there, but Firestar didn’t want to set one paw inside the fence.

“Okay, let’s go,” he meowed.

Sky’s relief was obvious, his neck fur lying flat again as he began to lead the way back to the gorge. Firestar didn’t want to ask him what had disturbed him so deeply, and the old cat didn’t offer to explain.

As they drew closer to the cliff top, Sky slackened his pace.

Firestar guessed he was walking the paths of memory, lost among the shadows of his scattered kin and Clan. He slowed down too, letting the old cat draw ahead; Sandstorm kept pace with Firestar.

“He’s so lonely and sad. I wish we could help him,” she murmured.

“So do I,” mewed Firestar, “but what can we do? He spends too much time caught up in his ancestors’ past, like a fly in a cobweb, but those days will never come again.”

Sandstorm halted, her green eyes sparking. “Why won’t they? We’ve proved that this is a place where cats can live.

And there are plenty of cats around—kittypets and loners—to build up the Clan again. Some of them even have SkyClan blood.”

Firestar stared at her. “And who’s going to tell the kittypets and loners that they have to come here and live in caves? A Clan isn’t just cats, Sandstorm. A Clan belongs together and lives by the warrior code.”

“Then you’re just giving up?” Sandstorm drew her lips back in the beginning of a snarl.

“What else can I do? SkyClan lived here once, but then something terrible happened—something so terrible that Sky won’t even talk about it—and they scattered. They’re gone. I would stay if I thought I could help, but I can’t.

There’s nothing to work with.”

His voice shook, but he couldn’t see any other way. All that was left of the once-proud Clan was one old cat, clinging to the fading echoes of Clan life. It wasn’t enough. SkyClan was lost forever.

The haze had cleared away and the sun beat down from a deep blue sky. Firestar was thankful for the shade of the warriors’ cave when he and Sandstorm joined Sky there. The old warrior was crouched in the entrance, his paws tucked under him, his gaze fixed on the cliffs opposite.

Firestar dipped his head. “Thank you for showing us the territory. We’ll rest until it starts to get cooler, and then we’ll have to leave.”

Sky rose to his paws and looked from Firestar to Sandstorm and back again, his eyes narrowed. Suddenly he seemed to have grown taller and his gaze was sharper. He seemed less like a lonely elder and more like a true Clan warrior.

“Leave?” he echoed. “What do you mean? What I want to know is, will you do it?”

Firestar stared at him, bewildered, while Sandstorm, who clearly understood more, let out a small mew of satisfaction.

“Do what?” Firestar asked. “Our journey is over. We’ve found the place where SkyClan used to live, but the Clan is gone.”

“That’s not why you were sent here,” Sky spat. “You told me that a SkyClan ancestor visited you in your dreams. He must have known his Clan was long gone, forced out of the gorge by something even more terrible than their reason for leaving the forest. Yet still he asked you to come.”

Firestar remembered his vision of the SkyClan leader in Smudge’s garden. The cat had told him that it was his destiny to restore SkyClan. But then, Firestar had imagined that he would find at least the remnants of a Clan surviving in their new home. Not one old warrior, surrounded by rogues and kittypets who had never heard of the warrior code.

“Oh, no,” he meowed. “You can’t ask me to—”

“You must right the wrongs your Clan’s ancestors did all those seasons ago,” Sky insisted. His pale gaze burned into Firestar’s eyes like sunlight on water. “You must rebuild SkyClan.”