Firestar’s Quest

Chapter 29

“How is Patchfoot?” Firestar asked as he slipped into the medicine cat’s cave. Night had fallen, and the half-moon shed silver light into the gorge. Back in the forest the medicine cats would be traveling to Highstones for their twice-moon meeting. Firestar wished he had the benefit of Cinderpelt’s wisdom now.

Sandstorm looked up as Firestar entered, her eyes filled with sorrow. “He’s getting worse,” she mewed. “His wound is infected—just what I was afraid of.”

“You’ve tried marigold?” Firestar asked, padding forward to look down at Patchfoot. The black-and-white warrior shifted restlessly in his sleep and let out a moan of pain.

Sandstorm nodded. “Petal and Rainfur brought me plenty, but it’s not doing any good. I wish there was something stronger to use for rat bites, but if there is, Cinderpelt didn’t tell me.” She lashed her tail in frustration.

“You couldn’t learn everything in the time you had before we left,” Firestar consoled her. “I know you’re doing your best.”

“It’s a pretty poor best if Patchfoot dies.”

Firestar wanted to reassure her, but he knew the words would sound empty. He could feel the heat of fever rising from Patchfoot’s body. His legs twitched as Firestar watched; he opened eyes glazed with pain and let out another moan.

Sandstorm rested her tail tip soothingly on his head; the black-and-white tom’s eyes closed again and he seemed to sink back into a quieter sleep.

“He can’t go on like this,” Sandstorm murmured. “No cat has the strength.”

Firestar rasped his tongue over her ear, but before he could say anything to comfort her, he heard a soft pawstep behind him. A sweet scent drifted around him and every hair on his pelt started to tingle. Spottedleaf!

Spinning around, he saw the pale outline of a tortoiseshell cat with the frosty glimmer of StarClan around her. She set down a mouthful of herbs and padded up to settle close by Patchfoot, between Firestar and Sandstorm.

Am I dreaming? Firestar wondered. When did I fall asleep?

Then Sandstorm’s ears pricked; she turned and her eyes flew wide with astonishment. “Spottedleaf!”

Firestar opened his jaws to speak, but at first not the faintest mew came out. How could Sandstorm see Spottedleaf if she was inside his dream? “Spottedleaf, how…?”

Spottedleaf silenced him by touching noses with him. “I’ve come because you both need me.” She turned to the herbs she had set down and patted them over to Sandstorm. “Burdock root is best for rat bites.”

Sandstorm was staring at the StarClan medicine cat as if she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. As the glossy green leaves rustled around her paws she blinked and looked down, sniffing the roots. “This will help Patchfoot?”

Spottedleaf nodded. “I’ll chew the root up. You clean the marigold off his wound.”

As if she had made up her mind not to think too closely about what was happening, Sandstorm began licking the chewed-up marigold from Patchfoot’s shoulder. Firestar watched numbly as Spottedleaf crouched down beside the burdock, tucked her paws underneath her chest, and began to chew one of the roots. When the pulp was ready she showed Sandstorm how to use it, patting it well down into the wound.

Patchfoot stirred uneasily; Spottedleaf bent over him.

“Sleep now,” she whispered into his ear. “All will be well; I promise.”

As if he could hear her, Patchfoot sighed and seemed to settle more quietly.

Sandstorm blinked anxiously. “Will he really get better now?”

Spottedleaf nodded. “Just keep putting the root on his shoulder. You’ll find more in the wood by the stream that marks the boundary. Show the leaves to your warriors; then they’ll know what to look for.”

“Thank you, Spottedleaf,” Firestar meowed. Brushing his pelt against the medicine cat’s, he added, “I didn’t know you could come so far to help us. I haven’t seen you since we left the forest.”

Too late, he realized that Sandstorm was bristling beside him. “You mean you’ve seen Spottedleaf before?”

Firestar faced her to see anger and hurt in her green eyes.

“Spottedleaf visits me in dreams. She helps me—”

“You never told me!”

Firestar’s belly churned with guilt. He knew how insecure Sandstorm felt when she thought about Spottedleaf, knowing the connection she had shared with Firestar when she had been ThunderClan’s medicine cat. But he had never felt that he was betraying her by meeting Spottedleaf in his dreams.

Before he could reply, Spottedleaf slipped between the two of them and laid her tail tip gently on Sandstorm’s shoulder. “Peace, dear one,” she murmured. “Firestar loves you.”

“He loves you more.” Sandstorm’s voice was choked.

Spottedleaf hesitated, her amber eyes warm as she gazed at the ginger she-cat. “That’s not true. Firestar and I never discovered what we might have meant to each other,” she mewed at last. “I was alive in the forest for such a short time after he came to ThunderClan. But I know for sure”—her voice grew more intense—“that he and I could never have been mates. I was and always will be a medicine cat. That comes first, more than any cat who walks the forest, more even than Firestar.”

Sandstorm searched the tortoiseshell cat’s face. “Is that really true?”

“Of course,” Spottedleaf purred. “Even now I’m a medicine cat, not for my Clanmates in StarClan, but for all the cats in the forest below.”

“I love you, Sandstorm,” Firestar put in. “You’ll never be second-best for me. My love for you belongs here and now, in the life we share—and it will last for all the moons to come, I promise.”

Sandstorm looked from Spottedleaf to Firestar and back again. At last she took a long breath. “Thank you, Spottedleaf.

I’ve never stopped thinking about how you and Firestar seemed to belong together when he first came to the forest.

But I understand better now.”

“I thought you always knew how I felt about you,” Firestar mewed, bewildered.

Sandstorm blinked at him. Even though her eyes were full of love, there was a trace of exasperation there too. “Firestar, you can be so dense.”

Spottedleaf dipped her head. “I must go, but we will meet again, I promise. Until then, may StarClan light your path.”

“Good-bye, and thank you—not just for the burdock root,” Firestar meowed.

The tortoiseshell she-cat padded toward the cave entrance and paused for a heartbeat, her pelt brushing against his. Too softly for Sandstorm to hear, she murmured, “Sometimes I would give anything for things to be different.”

She did not wait for a reply. The moonlight had faded; for a heartbeat her slender shape was outlined against the first pale light of dawn from the sky above the far side of the gorge; then she was gone.

Sandstorm shook her head. “Have I been dreaming, or did that really happen?”

Firestar stepped to her side and pressed his muzzle against her shoulder. “It really happened.”

“I can’t believe she came to help us.”

“There’ll never be another cat in the forest like her. But she’s not you, Sandstorm.”

Sandstorm turned to gaze at him. “No more secrets, Firestar. I promise to try to understand how important Spottedleaf is to you, but I need to be able to trust you.”

“You can,” Firestar vowed.

Patchfoot let out a sigh, distracting Firestar from the depths of Sandstorm’s green eyes. The black-and-white warrior was quieter now, his breathing easier. He seemed to be sleeping more deeply.

“He’s going to be all right,” Firestar mewed. “And I think the rest of the Clan will be, too.”

“We’ll start extra battle training right away.” Firestar stood at the bottom of the Rockpile, with the SkyClan cats clustered around him. The sun had risen over the cliff top, casting long shadows down into the gorge. “We need to be as strong as possible when we go out to fight the rats.”

Sandstorm stood beside him. Since Spottedleaf’s visit earlier that morning, Patchfoot had improved so much that she had told Firestar she could leave him for a while to come to this meeting. “Don’t wait too long,” she advised, with a twitch of her ears. “Otherwise the rats will come and we won’t be ready for them.”

Firestar knew she was right. “I want a permanent watch on the Skyrock.”

“We should send extra patrols out to the Twoleg barn, too,” Leafdapple suggested.

Firestar nodded. “Right, but not too close. I don’t want a fight until we’re ready.”

“I’ll sort out the patrols,” Sandstorm meowed. “And the training schedules.”

“Watches and extra patrols and battle training?”

Cherrypaw’s eyes were wide with dismay. “It sounds like really hard work.”

“You’d rather have your throat torn out by a rat?”

Sharpclaw flicked his tail over the young tortoiseshell’s ear, and she sprang back with an indignant hiss. “My apprentice will do as she’s told, and do it without complaining.”

Cherrypaw opened her jaws to protest, but Firestar silenced her with a flick of his ears. “We can get started,” he meowed, “unless you have any other suggestions?”

Rainfur rose to his paws. “Petal and I want to be trained as well.”

“That’s right.” Petal looked nervous to be speaking in front of the whole Clan. “The kits are too small for us to leave yet, and we want to be ready to defend ourselves.”

“Thank you.” Firestar dipped his head. “We’re glad to have you. Sandstorm will add you to the training schedule.”

“Either Clovertail or I must stay with the kits,” Petal pointed out.

“Don’t worry,” Sandstorm replied. “I’ll work around that.

Are there any more questions? Right,” she went on when no cat responded, “Leafdapple and Sharpclaw, you can be the first patrol. Cherrypaw, will you keep watch on the Skyrock?

Give me a few moments to check on Patchfoot, and then I’ll lead a training session with Sparrowpaw and Rainfur, and Petal, you can join us, as Clovertail’s with the kits right now.”

“What about me?” Shortwhisker asked.

“You can come with me on a hunting patrol,” Firestar replied. “We’ll need all the fresh-kill we can get to keep our strength up. One more thing,” he added before the cats split up for their duties. “No cat leaves the camp alone from now on. And every cat must stay alert. If the rats come, they’ll find us ready and waiting.”

He dismissed the meeting with a wave of his tail.

Sharpclaw and Leafdapple sprang up the rocks toward the top of the cliff, and Cherrypaw followed, taking the trail that led to the Skyrock. Petal, Rainfur, and Sparrowpaw made their way up the gorge toward the training area.

Asking Shortwhisker to wait for him, Firestar padded beside Sandstorm as she headed for the medicine cat’s cave.

“You know, Cherrypaw was right,” he meowed. “It will be hard work. We don’t have enough cats to prepare for a rat attack as well as all the regular duties.” He sighed. “I’d give my pelt to have a patrol of ThunderClan warriors here now.”

“Well, you can’t.” Sandstorm rasped her tongue over his ear. “But don’t worry. You’ll find a way. You defeated Scourge, and you’ll defeat these rats.”

Firestar wished he shared her confidence. “At least

Spottedleaf told us what to do for Patchfoot.”

“True,” Sandstorm replied, “but it just goes to show how much we need a medicine cat.”

“Medicine cats are born, not made. And I’ve yet to see any SkyClan cat show any connection with their warrior ancestors. None of them heard anything when they went into the Whispering Cave.”

“We should have a cat who knows about herbs and can treat injuries, at least,” Sandstorm pointed out, with an impatient twitch of her tail. “I could teach one of them what I know. It would be a start.”

Firestar paused on the trail just below the entrance to the medicine cat’s den. “Sharpclaw wouldn’t do,” he mused. “He’s far too good a warrior. Clovertail has kits… What about Shortwhisker?”

Sandstorm shook her head. “He froze at the sight of blood when Patchfoot was injured.”

“Leafdapple, then?”

“Maybe…” Sandstorm mused. “She cares about weaker cats.”

“I know,” Firestar decided. “If Spottedleaf visits me, I can ask her.”

Sandstorm glanced away for a moment, then faced him again. “Yes, that’s a good idea,” she murmured.

Firestar curled up in the warriors’ den, his legs aching and his head spinning with tiredness. Three days had passed since he had organized the new schedule of patrols and training, and every cat had been on their paws from dawn to sunset.

That morning he had led a patrol to the Twoleg barn, then spent the rest of the day hunting. The moon was already climbing the sky before he had the chance to sleep, and he would have to wake later to take his turn watching on the Skyrock.

How long can we keep this up?

No sooner had Firestar closed his eyes than he found himself standing on the Skyrock. The moon floated high above his head and Silverpelt glittered across the sky. The night was silent except for the rushing of the river far below.

It’s not time for my watch yet! Firestar thought confusedly.

“Greetings.” A voice spoke behind him, and Firestar spun around to see a cat standing on the very edge of the Skyrock.

His thick gray fur was turned to silver by the moonlight, and his eyes shone like pale flames. Frosty starlight glimmered around his paws.

Something about the cat was familiar; Firestar’s first thought was that he was the SkyClan ancestor who had been haunting him. Then he caught his breath as he picked up a trace of familiar scent. “Skywatcher!”

The StarClan cat dipped his head. “It’s good to see you again, Firestar. Come on,” Skywatcher went on, proving that he had lost none of his sharp tongue. “Don’t stand there with your mouth open. We haven’t got all night.”

Firestar made an effort to pull himself together. “Why have you come?”

“SkyClan stands at a fork in the path,” Skywatcher replied.

“Danger is very near.”

“You mean the rats? They’re what destroyed the first

SkyClan, aren’t they? Why didn’t you tell me about them?”

Skywatcher sat down and steadily met Firestar’s gaze.

“What good would that have done? It would have been wrong to tell you if it made you give up. And how would it have helped you to know about SkyClan’s old enemies before they attacked? Now you have a Clan of strong warriors to stand against them.”

“But are they strong enough?” Firestar murmured.

“They must be ready to defend themselves,” Skywatcher replied. “Perhaps you should see these rats as the first challenge for the Clan to overcome. They will be even stronger afterward.”

Firestar nodded; the StarClan cat was right, and yet he wondered how the Clan could be stronger if all its warriors were dead. Thinking about death reminded him that so far the Clan had no way of making contact with their warrior ancestors.

“Can you tell me if SkyClan has a medicine cat yet?” he asked. “No Clan can survive long without one. What about Leafdapple?”

Skywatcher twitched his ears. “No, that is not Leafdapple’s destiny.”

“But we must have a medicine cat!”

“Even now your medicine cat’s paws are on the path that will lead her to you,” Skywatcher told him. “But you must look farther than the cats of SkyClan. There is a cat who dreams of her warrior ancestors, but she has not heard of the new Clan.”

“So I have to go and find her?” Firestar felt a tingle of excitement in his paws. “Where is she?”

But Skywatcher did not reply. Rising to his paws, he swept his tail around in a gesture of farewell and leaped from the edge of the rock into the sky. Firestar bit back a yowl of alarm; any living cat who tried that would have crashed down onto the rocks below. Instead Skywatcher’s body dissolved midleap, leaving behind a faint glittering dust that faded as Firestar watched. A heartbeat later he opened his eyes inside the warriors’ den, with Shortwhisker prodding him to wake up and go to the Skyrock.

“Sparrowpaw, you can be excused from battle training this morning,” Firestar announced. “I want you for a special mission.”

The young tabby tom’s eyes gleamed with excitement.

“What mission?”

“I have to go to the Twolegplace, and I need a cat who knows his way around.” Quickly he explained to Sparrowpaw what Skywatcher had told him in his dream.

Though Skywatcher hadn’t said that the new medicine cat lived among Twolegs, Firestar thought it was most likely.

Sharpclaw and Leafdapple hadn’t told him about any other rogues living in the forest, and he couldn’t look farther afield because that would mean leaving SkyClan to face the rats without him.

Not long ago they would have raced across the scrubland toward the Twolegplace; now they crept along, slinking from one patch of cover to the next, all their senses alert for any trace of rats. Firestar remembered how he had felt when the dog pack roamed the forest; it went against everything in the warrior code when cats were forced to behave like prey.

Clouds scudded across the sky, driven by a cold wind.

Leaves whirled in the air; the warmth of greenleaf would soon be no more than a memory. How would the Clan cope, Firestar wondered, through the harsh days of leaf-bare if they still had to guard against invasion from the rats?

“I hate this,” Sparrowpaw hissed as they crouched behind a gorse bush, spying out the next stage of their journey. “This waiting… it spooks me. Why don’t the rats just attack and get it over with? What are they waiting for?”

“I can’t be sure.” Firestar flexed his claws. “But I’d guess the rats know exactly how unsettled we are by waiting. They think they’re going to win whenever they attack, so they’ve nothing to lose by making us suffer.”

He didn’t add that the longer they waited, the more tired the Clan would become. Any cat could see that. The rats probably knew it too; they more were clever than any rats he had ever known. Firestar’s respect for them was growing every day, but that only made him hate them all the more. He would have led a patrol to fight the rats on their own territory, to attack them first and win the advantage of surprise, but for one thing: SkyClan didn’t have a medicine cat to heal their wounds or read the signs from StarClan.

“Let’s keep going,” he muttered.

As they paused in the shelter of the fence that surrounded the first Twoleg gardens, Sparrowpaw peered through a gap with a trace of sadness in his eyes. “That’s where Cherrypaw and I used to live,” he murmured. Defensively he added, “It’s not that I want to go back—”

“I know,” Firestar reassured him. “Twolegs aren’t our enemies, even if they don’t understand the warrior’s way of life.

Now and then I miss my old Twolegs.”

“You do?” Sparrowpaw’s eyes widened.

Firestar nodded. “They were good to me. But I was born for the life of a warrior.”

Sparrowpaw straightened up; pride replaced the sadness in his eyes. “So was I.”

“My Twolegs have a new cat now,” Firestar went on. “Her name’s Hattie. She seems nice—much better suited to living with housefolk than I was.”

For a heartbeat Sparrowpaw looked alarmed at the thought of another cat taking his place. Then he gave his chest fur a couple of quick licks. “I hope my housefolk get another cat, too,” he mewed bravely. “Then they wouldn’t be sad anymore about losing me and Cherrypaw.”

Firestar rested the tip of his tail on the young cat’s shoulder. “Come on. We have a cat to find.”

He felt his bristling pelt relax a little as he and Sparrowpaw slipped down the first alley that led into the heart of the Twolegplace. Twolegs and dogs he had dealt with before, and here among the Twoleg nests they were less likely to encounter the clever, coldhearted rats.

Sparrowpaw, however, looked much less at ease than he had when he and Firestar had last visited the Twolegplace.

His pelt fluffed up at the distant barking of a dog, and when they emerged from the alley onto the edge of a small Thunderpath, he leaped into the air as a glittering monster snarled past. “I guess I’ve forgotten what it’s like around here,” he mewed, giving his shoulder an embarrassed lick.

After carefully checking that no more monsters were around, Firestar led the way down another alley, to be met at once by a powerful scent of cat.

“Well, look who’s here,” a voice drawled.

Sparrowpaw jumped, his pelt bristling again. Firestar looked up to see the black kittypet, Oscar, stretched out on the top of the wall. His jaws gaped in a yawn, showing sharp teeth.

“If it isn’t the mad rogue,” he sneered, with a dismissive twitch of his whiskers at Firestar. “And little Boris! Actually, I’ve been expecting you,” he added. “But I thought you’d come a bit sooner than this.”

Firestar froze. Surely Oscar couldn’t be the medicine cat Skywatcher had told him of?

The black tomcat leaped lightly down from the wall and confronted them. “Crawling back to your housefolk, are you, now the weather’s turning cold?”

“No, I am not!” Sparrowpaw glared at the black tom. “I’m going to be a warrior. And don’t call me Boris. I’m Sparrowpaw now.”

Oscar let out a snort of amusement. “Sparrowpaw! What sort of name is that?”

“It’s my name.” Sparrowpaw slid his claws out. “Do you want to make something of it?”

Hastily Firestar thrust himself between the two bristling toms. “We’re not here to fight,” he meowed, though privately he would have liked to see the battle-trained SkyClan apprentice show Oscar just how much he had learned in the past moon. “We’re looking for a special cat,” he went on to Oscar. “One who has weird dreams. Have you heard about a cat like that?”

Please, Skywatcher, he added silently, don’t let Oscar tell me that he dreams about you!

Oscar’s green eyes widened, gleaming with contempt.

“No,” he replied. “And I haven’t heard about any cats who fly, either.”

“You think you know everything, you—” Sparrowpaw began hotly.

“I think you are looking for me,” another voice interrupted him from behind, clear and young. “My name is Echo.

I dream of cats with stars in their fur.”