Long Shadows

Chapter 23

The noise of the storm and the fire faded and the only sound Jayfeather could hear was the blood roaring in his ears. He shook his head, straining to hear what Squirrelflight and Ashfur said next, cursing the blindness that hid their expressions from him.

“You’re lying.” Ashfur’s voice was choked with disbelief.

“No, I’m not.” Squirrelflight spoke softly, but her intensity pierced through the crackle of the f lames. “Did you see me give birth? Did I nurse them? Stay in the nursery until they were apprenticed? No.”

“But—I” Ashfur began, then fell silent. Jayfeather could almost hear the paws of memory racing through his mind.

“I fooled all of you, even Brambleclaw,” Squirrelflight went on scornfully. “They are not mine.”

“And no cat in the Clan knows?” Ashfur’s disbelief was changing to uncertainty.

“No. They’re all as blind as you are to the truth.”

Jayfeather sensed a shift in Ashfur’s thoughts, reaching out toward power once more. “What do you think will happen when I tell them?” he challenged. “Will your Clanmates let you stay in ThunderClan, knowing you have lied to them—to Firestar, to your sister, to Brambleclaw?”

“You’ll tell them?” Squirrelflight’s voice was sharp with pain.

“Do you really think I won’t? I can still make you lose what you love most. Brambleclaw will want nothing to do with you.

You were a fool to think I would keep your secret. But you have always been a fool, Squirrelflight. I’ll let these cats—whomever they belong to—live. But your suffering has only just begun.”

There was a rustling in the undergrowth, and Ashfur’s scent faded as he stalked away.

“Jayfeather, here’s the branch.” Lionblaze’s voice was tense.

Jayfeather felt his brother’s teeth sink into his scruff and lift him bodily until his paws felt the rough bark of the branch underneath them. Lionblaze kept hold of him until he had got his balance. “Straight ahead,” he ordered. “Hurry.”

Jayfeather forced his paws to move, trusting Lionblaze as he stumbled forward with the heat and roaring of the fire on either side. He let out a hiss as pain stabbed one of his pads, as if he had trodden on a burning twig. Then the worst of the heat died away behind him, and he half fell, half leaped off the branch. The ground beneath his paws was hot, but not burning. He was safe!

Heartbeats later he heard Hollyleaf and Lionblaze leap down beside him.

Thunder rumbled above them, but now it was farther off, as if the storm was moving away. Mercifully rain began to fall again, hissing onto the flames. The wind was dying down; there would be no more danger from falling trees. Jayfeather heard yowls from down in the hollow, as if the cats were returning to the camp, and had spotted the cats on the top of the cliff. But he and his littermates ignored them.

“Squirrelflight?” Hollyleaf’s voice quivered; Jayfeather could sense her disbelief warring with fear. “That’s not true, is it? We are your kits, aren’t we?”

There was a long pause, but Jayfeather already knew the answer. His mind was filled with Squirrelflight’s desperate sorrow and regret—and overwhelming love, the love of a mother for her kits. That much had been a lie among what she had told Ashfur; Squirrelflight did love them. But she was not their mother.

“I’m so sorry,” Squirrelflight whispered. “I should have told you the truth a long time ago.”

“What do you mean?” Lionblaze demanded. Jayfeather reeled from the blast of his brother’s growing outrage.

“We thought it was for the best,” Squirrelflight pleaded. “I promise you, it was the hardest thing we’ve ever done.”

“We? Who’s we?” Lionblaze snapped.

Squirrelflight didn’t reply, and her mind was such a chaos of love and regret that Jayfeather couldn’t pick the answer out of it.

“Does Brambleclaw know?” Hollyleaf whimpered; Jayfeather heard her claws tearing at the ground.

“He has never lied to you,” Squirrelflight meowed. “He… he doesn’t know.”

“You let him believe that we were his?” Hollyleaf’s voice rose to a shrill squeak. “So you lied to him as well. But… if you’re not our mother and father, who is?”

Jayfeather reached out to Squirrelflight’s mind again, searching for memories, but all he could sense was a blur of snow, a long journey, brambles clawing at her pelt and the guilt of her terrible secret already weighing her down. He was aware of another cat with her, but so shadowy that he couldn’t make out who it was.

“I can’t tell you.” Squirrelflight’s murmur was barely loud enough to hear.

“You can, but you won’t!” Pain and anger filled Lionblaze’s voice. Jayfeather sensed the same feelings in Hollyleaf, too, but something inside him stayed icily calm, as if he had always known this would happen. If they were the three, with the power of the stars in their paws, then it made sense that there would be something extraordinary about where they came from. This was just one more truth to be discovered, something done long ago that had cast a shadow over all the moons since.

“I’m sorry.” Squirrelflight’s voice had grown stronger. “I know it won’t help, but I couldn’t have loved you more if you had really been mine. I’m so proud of all three of you.”

“Go away and leave us alone!” Hollyleaf hissed. “You have no right to be proud of us, no right to feel anything toward us! You let us believe you were our mother, and you’re not!”

“Please…” Squirrelflight begged.

Lionblaze’s voice was hard. “Just go.”

Misery rolled off Squirrelflight like a choking cloud, almost carrying Jayfeather off his paws. He heard her turn and go blundering through the undergrowth as if she didn’t care whether she burned her pads on still-smoldering leaves.

Left behind at the edge of the charred bushes, none of the three spoke. Jayfeather was numb with shock, and could sense that his littermates felt the same. They had almost died, and they had confronted Ashfur in his destructive madness, but most devastating of all was the secret that Squirrelflight had revealed.

“If they’re not our mother and father, then who are our real parents?” Hollyleaf quavered at last.

“We can worry about that later.” Cold anger still vibrated in Lionblaze’s voice. “First we have to decide what we’ll do when Ashfur tells the Clan.”

“Do you really think he will?” Hollyleaf asked.

“Do you think he won’t?” Lionblaze countered. “He doesn’t care what he does so long as he can hurt Squirrelflight, and that will hurt her more than anything.”

Jayfeather was strangely detached from his littermates’ anxious questions. The secret was out, and no cat could stop the consequences. All he felt was a mild curiosity to see what would happen next.

“We mustn’t say anything to our Clanmates,” Hollyleaf mewed worriedly. “What if they punish us, too? They might think we knew all along. We’ll have to go on just as usual.

Maybe Ashfur won’t say anything after all.”

“And hedgehogs might fly,” Lionblaze retorted. “But I agree we shouldn’t tell any cat. Not until we find out the truth. If the Clan learns what happened, we need to be able to defend ourselves so they know we had nothing to do with this. Okay, Jayfeather?”

Jayfeather nodded. “Okay.”

“Then let’s get back to the camp,” Hollyleaf meowed.

“There’ll be a lot to do there.”

The stone hollow smelled charred and bitter when Jayfeather scrambled over the remains of the thorn barrier. He started at the sound of his father’s—no, Brambleclaw’s—voice.

“Are you all right?”

“We’re fine, thanks,” Lionblaze replied tightly.

“Then can you help Brackenfur patch up the nursery? You too, Hollyleaf. You’ll need to bring more brambles from the forest. And Jayfeather, I think Leafpool wants you. Spiderleg’s paws are burned and Longtail had a nasty bang on the head from a falling branch. And there may be others I don’t know about.”

“Okay, fine,” Jayfeather meowed. As he heard Brambleclaw bounding away, he turned to his littermates. “Don’t forget, we say nothing.”

But as he padded across to the medicine cats’ den, limping a little from his scorched pad, Jayfeather was aware of Ashfur standing at the edge of the clearing. He knew that the gray warrior’s eyes were fixed on him as clearly as if he could see the burning blue gaze.

Midnight said knowledge isn’t always power, he recalled. But sometimes it is. And Ashfur has the power to destroy us all.