Firestar’s Quest

Chapter 21

“I know it seems impossible,” Sky continued, “but I know too that you have the strength to do this. Have faith in yourself, Firestar. We will meet again soon.”

With great dignity he dipped his head and padded down the stony trail, away from the warriors’ cave.

“Well?” Sandstorm prompted softly. “Are you going to follow him and tell him you can’t do it? Or just leave, and let him discover for himself that all his hopes have come to nothing?”

Firestar shook his head helplessly. The idea of rebuilding SkyClan was so huge that he couldn’t even think about it.

“I’m going hunting,” he announced. “I’m sorry, Sandstorm. I just need to be alone for a while.”

Sandstorm pressed her muzzle against his; her eyes glowed with her love for him. “I understand.”

Not wanting to catch up to Sky, Firestar headed in the opposite direction, downstream toward the trees near the old boundary of SkyClan territory. His mind was whirling. He was leader of ThunderClan; that was where he belonged. Yet Sky was asking him to take responsibility for another Clan as 2 5 8

well. Surely it couldn’t be the will of StarClan for one cat to lead two Clans, especially when their territories were nearly a moon’s journey apart?

He remembered how Tigerstar had made himself leader of ShadowClan and RiverClan, and tried to take over the other two Clans as well. His bloodthirsty ambitions would be remembered in the forest for many seasons.

“I won’t be another Tigerstar.” Firestar spoke aloud, halting by the edge of the river. “My loyalty is to ThunderClan.”

But was he right? Should he be loyal to the warrior code, rather than to any individual Clan?

Trying to shrug off the questions, he pressed on down the riverbank. Even though the sun was sliding down the sky, the sand was still hot against his pads, and the scrubby bushes by the cliff face cast very little shade. He longed for the cool, damp glades of the forest, the thick canopy of leaves, and the small rustlings of prey in the undergrowth. He had stayed here long enough that his paws were hardening from con-stant running on sand and stone, and he was learning how to track prey through the scanty cover that was all the gorge had to offer.

But this isn’t my home, he thought. It never will be.

He clambered over the rock spur, relieved at the sight of the thicker shrubbery beyond. Slithering down the other side, he caught a glimpse of movement and spotted the dark ginger tomcat he had seen before.

“Hey!” he called out. “Wait up!”

The ginger tom cast a glance over his shoulder, but he didn’t stop. Instead, he pushed his way deeper into the undergrowth; Firestar lost sight of him, and didn’t know whether to be glad or sorry.

He picked his way across the pebbles, heading for the nearest clump of bushes, his ears pricked and his jaws open to sense the first traces of prey. Then he paused, puzzled. There was a scent here he couldn’t identify: prey, but so thickly covered by the tang of crushed leaves that he couldn’t be sure what creature it came from. His fur prickled with the sensation that he was being watched.

Trying to shake off the feeling, Firestar slid into the ground cover, brushing through clumps of fern and seeding grasses until he reached the shadow of the bushes. His conviction that he was being watched grew stronger still. Icy claws raked his spine as he pictured a cold, malevolent gaze fixed on him. Something was lurking in the thicket that didn’t welcome cats.

“Who’s there?” Firestar hissed. He spun around, disturbing a thrush that shot up into the nearest tree. Disgusted, he realized that its loud alarm call would have alerted all the prey in the gorge.

He crept under a low growing thornbush and crouched there. Nothing moved; he could see nothing that might explain the evil force that he felt so strongly. His heart thudded, and he dug his claws into the ground as he braced himself to meet an attack.

Gradually the sensation faded. Firestar’s heartbeat slowed, and, feeling slightly foolish, he crawled out from underneath the bush. You’re not a kit, he scolded himself. Haven’t you enough problems without imagining more?

He tried to concentrate on the hunt. Soon he scented a mouse, and spotted it scuffling among the debris underneath a holly bush. Flattening himself to the ground, Firestar began to creep up on it. He was about to pounce when a loud rustling in the undergrowth alerted his prey; the mouse vanished deeper into the thicket with a flick of its tail.

Firestar let out a snarl of frustration and sank his claws into the ground. He was aware of eyes on him again, but this time there was none of the hostility he had felt before.

Glancing over his shoulder, he caught a glimpse of tortoiseshell fur and heard a voice hiss, “Be quiet! He’ll hear us.”

“Get off me, then,” another voice replied. “Stupid furball.”

Firestar heaved a sigh, drawing in kittypet scent. Cherry and Boris! I might have known it. He began slipping through the undergrowth, meaning to come up on them from behind and give them the fright of their lives. Then he hesitated.

So they wanted to spy on me? Okay, I’ll give them something worth watching.

He tasted the air again, and almost at once found another mouse, nibbling on a seed under a beech tree. Dropping into the hunter’s crouch, he crept forward, hardly letting his paws touch the ground. The mouse started to run, but this time Firestar was faster, and he brought it down with one blow from his paw.

From somewhere behind him he heard a gasp of admiration; his whiskers twitched with satisfaction as he scraped earth over his fresh-kill. He wanted to show these kittypets what a Clan cat could do with skills trained by a lifetime of following the warrior code.

A couple of tail-lengths away from the edge of the thicket a blackbird was pecking at the ground. Firestar stalked toward it. StarClan, please don’t let this one fly away! Bunching his muscles, he pushed off with his powerful hind legs and pounced on his prey as it fluttered up from the ground.

“Thank you, StarClan!” he exclaimed aloud, before carrying it back to bury it beside the mouse.

He had only just finished when the scent of squirrel flooded over him; the creature was bounding over the grass toward a tree a few fox-lengths away. Firestar shot out of the bushes, racing at an angle to intercept the squirrel at the foot of the tree, where he killed it with a swift bite to the throat.

Turning back to the thicket, he fixed his gaze on a gorse bush whose branches were waving wildly. “I know you’re there,” he meowed. “Do you want to come out and try for yourselves?”

For a heartbeat there was silence. Then Cherry pushed her way out through the gorse branches with Boris a couple of pawsteps behind her. “I told you he’d hear you!” she snapped over her shoulder at her brother.

“I could hear both of you,” Firestar told her. “Rampaging through the thicket like a couple of foxes in a fit. I’m surprised there was any prey left at all. Come on,” he added in a friendlier tone. “I’ll show you what to do.”

Cherry exchanged a glance with her brother, then ran up to Firestar with her tail in the air. “Can you really teach us to hunt like that?”

Boris followed more slowly. “Why did you bury the mouse and the blackbird?” he asked. “Don’t you want to eat them?”

Firestar dropped the squirrel. “Yes,” he explained, “but not yet. We bury fresh-kill to hide the scent so other predators don’t find it before we’re ready to take it back to the camp.”

“But what’s the point of taking it back?” Cherry persisted.

“Why not eat it here and save yourself the trouble?”

Firestar’s memory winged back to one of his first lessons as an apprentice: the Clan must be fed first. He had only just left his life as a kittypet; he couldn’t have been much different from these two young cats. “Clan cats don’t hunt only to feed themselves,” he explained. “They take their prey back to camp to feed the elders and the nursing queens and any other cats who can’t hunt for themselves. That’s a very important part of the warrior code.”

Cherry and Boris glanced at each other again, round-eyed.

Firestar wondered if they’d understood what he had told them.

“Okay, let’s start,” he meowed. “What can you scent?”

Cherry let out a little mrrow of amusement. “You and Boris!”

“Apart from me and Boris.” Firestar sighed. “What about prey?”

Both young cats stood still, drawing in air over their scent glands. At least they seemed to be concentrating hard.

Firestar picked up his squirrel and took it across to his other fresh-kill, so they wouldn’t confuse its scent with the prey they were searching for.

When he returned, Boris bounced up to him with a triumphant gleam in his eyes. “Mouse! I can smell mouse.”

“Well-done,” mewed Firestar. “But you won’t smell it for long if you go thumping about like that. A mouse can feel your pawsteps through the ground long before it hears you or smells you. Remember how I crept up on the mouse I caught?”

“I remember!” Cherry boasted. She dropped into the hunter’s crouch and glided forward, only stopping to sneeze when a drooping grass stem tickled her nose. “Mouse dung!” she spat.

“That wasn’t bad at all,” Firestar told her. The crouch wasn’t quite right, and she would have to learn to set her paws down much more lightly if she hoped to catch a mouse, but for a first effort it was promising. “Boris, you try.”

The young tabby wasn’t as eager to show off as his sister, and his greater weight made it harder for him to step lightly, but he was doing his best.

“Like this.” Firestar began to stalk forward, and the two kittypets followed his movements with fierce concentration.

Then he spotted a mouse just beyond a clump of dry bracken, and pointed to it with his tail. With a twitch of his ears he told Cherry to try catching it.

Her eyes glittered with excitement. Breathlessly trying to get her movements right, she crept closer and closer, but with her gaze fixed on the mouse she didn’t notice that the arching fronds of bracken were in her way. She blundered into them, and their shadow swept back and forth over the mouse.

An instant later it was gone.

Cherry sat up, her tail lashing. “I’ll never get it right!” she wailed.

“Yes, you will,” Firestar reassured her, while her brother rested his tail across her shoulders. “It was just bad luck about the bracken.”

He glanced around, tasting the air again. He wanted at least one of the kittypets to make a catch before their lesson was over. The only prey he could spot was a squirrel on the lowest branch of a nearby tree.

“What about that?” he suggested, wondering if Cherry would make another of her spectacular leaps. “Do you think you can catch it?”

“I can!” Cherry charged off, with Boris a mouse-length behind her. Reaching the tree, she leaped up, forepaws extended, and snagged one claw in the squirrel’s tail. It fell to the ground, where Boris pounced on it and killed it by biting its throat. Cherry stood staring in astonishment, as if she couldn’t believe they had really caught something.

“Well done!” Firestar exclaimed. “Great catch, both of you!

Can you both jump like that?”

“Sure.” Boris scraped the ground with his paw. “The other cats say we’re showing off, but it’s just something we’ve always been able to do.”

“Well, it’s a good skill,” Firestar meowed. “And if you both have it, it must mean that your ancestors could jump like that too. If they can see you now, I’m sure they’re very proud.”

Boris was looking puzzled. “Yeah, but they can’t see us, can they?”

Firestar wondered if this was the time to tell the young cats about SkyClan, but he felt it was too soon. “Eat the squirrel if you like,” he encouraged them, changing the sub-ject. “You haven’t got a hungry Clan to feed.”

“It smells yummy,” Boris mewed. “Do you want some?”

Water was flooding Firestar’s jaws at the warm aroma of the fresh-kill. His belly yowled with hunger after the long day with Sky, but he wouldn’t take another cat’s prey. Besides, he had fresh-kill of his own to share with Sandstorm when he returned to the cave.

“No, thanks,” he replied. “You and Cherry share it.”

The two young cats glanced at each other uncertainly.

“The thing is,” Cherry began, “our housefolk get worried if we don’t eat their food. And if we’re stuffed full of squirrel, well…”

“They might give us less next time!” Boris meowed worriedly.

Firestar, who had seen cats starving for lack of prey, couldn’t really sympathize. But some cat had to eat the squirrel. Left lying there, it would only attract foxes.

“You know what?” Cherry put in before he could speak. “It smells so good, I don’t care! We can always catch another if our housefolk don’t feed us enough.”

She crouched down beside the squirrel and began to tear into it. A heartbeat later Boris joined her, ravenously gulping down the fresh-kill. Hiding his amusement, Firestar wished them good-bye and went to collect his own prey.

The sun was going down and the caves were in shadow by the time he returned to the SkyClan camp. Sandstorm was sitting at the entrance of the warriors’ cave, gazing across the gorge.

“You had good hunting,” she commented as Firestar dropped his fresh-kill at her paws.

“Yes, and I came across those two kittypets again.” He told her about the hunting lesson, and how Cherry and Boris had caught the squirrel. He said nothing to her about his odd sensation of being watched by hostile eyes before the kittypets arrived; he might have imagined it, and he didn’t want to worry her for nothing.

“They’ve got the makings of good warriors,” Sandstorm commented when he had finished. “Did you ask them if they wanted to join SkyClan?”

“No—”

“Why not?” Sandstorm twitched the tip of her tail. “You have to start somewhere.”

“I haven’t decided whether I want to start at all.”

She tipped her head to one side. “So you’re going to let Sky down?”

Firestar couldn’t answer. He still felt it was too late to rebuild the lost Clan, but guilt swept over him when he thought of the pain Sky would suffer if he refused to try.

“I think we can do it,” Sandstorm went on. “But we can’t stay here forever. We have Clanmates of our own who need us, so we ought to start collecting the scattered SkyClan cats as soon as we can.”

She knew him so well, putting her paw on the reason for his doubts. How could he reconcile his duty to his own Clan with the task that Sky had set him? Which path must he choose if he was to stay faithful to the warrior code?

“Cherry and Boris are strong-willed cats,” he began. “If they’re going to live by the warrior code, they need to adapt to it of their own accord. At the moment, they see nothing wrong with their lives. They have to choose the warrior code because they really believe it’s the right way to live.”

Sandstorm gave him a doubtful look, clearly wondering if he was just making excuses. Firestar wasn’t sure himself.

“Have some fresh-kill,” he mewed, patting the squirrel toward Sandstorm. “I’ll think about what Sky said. Maybe it will be clearer in the morning.”

StarClan, show me the way! Show me how I can help this Clan!