Mistystar’s Omen

Chapter 1

Mistyfoot stood at the edge of the rock and watched the water swirl below her paws. It was brown and thick with debris—twigs, scraps of leaf, even a knot of roots that had once held up a tree—and however hard Mistyfoot stared, she was unable to glimpse the stones on the bottom of the lake, or the distinctive flash of silver that gave away the position of a fish. She stretched down to lap at the surface with her tongue. The water tasted bitter and muddy.

“It’s not the same, is it?” Leopardstar commented beside her. Mistyfoot raised her head and looked at her leader. Leopardstar’s golden fur looked dull and dusty in the gray dawn light, and the dark spots that had inspired her name seemed to have faded in the last moon. “I thought when the water returned that everything would be as it was before,” Leopardstar went on. She dipped her paw in the lake, staggering a little as she straightened up again, and watched the drips fall from the tips of her claws onto the stone.

“The fish will come back soon,” Mistyfoot meowed. “Now that the streams are flowing, there’s no reason for them to stay away.”

Leopardstar gazed at the ruffled water. “So many fish died in the drought,” she sighed, as if Mistyfoot hadn’t spoken. “What if the lake stays empty forever? What will we eat?”

Mistyfoot moved closer to her leader until her shoulder brushed Leopardstar’s fur. She was shocked to feel the she-cat’s bones sharp just beneath the skin. “Everything will be fine,” she murmured. “The beavers’ dam has been destroyed, the rain has come, and the long thirst is over. It’s been a hard greenleaf, but we have survived.”

“Blackclaw, Voletooth, and Dawnflower didn’t,” Leopardstar snapped. “Three elders lost in a single season? I had to watch my Clanmates starve to death because there were no fish to catch, nothing left in the lake but mud. And what about Rippletail? He was as brave as any of the other cats who went to find where the water had gone—why didn’t he deserve to come back? Did he go too far beyond the sight of StarClan?”

Mistyfoot let her tail curl forward to rest on Leopardstar’s back. “Rippletail died saving the lake, and all the Clans. He will be honored forever.”

Leopardstar turned away and began to pad up the shore. “He paid too high a price,” she growled. “If the fish haven’t returned with the water, we’re no better off than we were during the drought.” She stumbled, and Mistyfoot jumped forward, ready to support her. But Leopardstar shrugged her off with a hiss and continued over the stones, limping.

Mistyfoot followed at a respectful distance, not wanting to fuss over the proud golden cat. She knew Leopardstar was in pain most of the time now, worn down by a sickness that had resisted all of Mothwing’s medicine skills, although it wasn’t unknown: the ravaging thirst, the dramatic weight loss in spite of constant hunger, the growing weakness that dulled a cat’s eyes and hearing. Mistyfoot felt her gaze soften as she watched Leopardstar reach the end of the pebbles and push her way into the ferns that ringed the RiverClan camp.

Suddenly there was a muffled cry from the depths of the undergrowth.

“Leopardstar?” Mistyfoot bounded into the green stalks. A few strides in, she reached her leader’s side. She was slumped on the ground, her eyes stretched wide with pain, her flanks heaving with the effort to draw another breath. “Don’t move,” Mistyfoot ordered. “I’ll fetch help.” She thrust her way through the rest of the ferns and burst into the clearing at the heart of the territory. “Mothwing! Come quick! Leopardstar has fallen!”

There was the sound of racing paws; then Mothwing’s sandy pelt, so close to the shade of Leopardstar’s, appeared at the entrance to her den. The medicine cat paused, looking around, and Mistyfoot called, “This way!”

Side by side, the cats pushed through the ferns to their leader. Leopardstar had closed her eyes, and her breath rattled in her chest as she gasped for air. Mothwing bent over her, sniffing and tasting her fur with her tongue. Mistyfoot leaned forward but recoiled from the musty stench coming from the sick cat. Close up, she could see dirt and scurf in Leopardstar’s pelt, as if the leader hadn’t groomed herself in days.

“Fetch Mintfur and Pebblefoot,” Mothwing mewed quietly over her shoulder. “They haven’t gone out on patrol yet. They can help us carry Leopardstar to her den.”

Relieved to have an excuse to leave, and guilty that she wanted to, Mistyfoot backed away and raced to the clearing. She returned with Mintfur and Pebblefoot and watched as Mothwing eased Leopardstar to her paws, propped heavily on either flank by the warriors. Mistyfoot held the ferns aside as the cats half guided, half dragged their leader into the camp.

“Is Leopardstar dead?” Mistyfoot heard one of Duskfur’s kits whisper.

“Of course not, dear. She’s just very tired,” Duskfur mewed.

Mistyfoot stood at the entrance to the den and watched Pebblefoot pat moss into place beneath Leopardstar’s head. This was more than mere exhaustion. Already the den seemed darker, the shadows thicker, as though warriors from StarClan were gathering to welcome the RiverClan leader. Mintfur brushed past Mistyfoot as he left, his pale gray pelt smelling sharply of ferns. “Let me know if I can do anything else for her,” he murmured, and Mistyfoot nodded. Pebblefoot followed, his head lowered and the tip of his tail leaving a faint scar in the dust.

Mothwing tucked Leopardstar’s front paw more comfortably under the she-cat’s chest and straightened up. “I need to fetch some herbs from my den,” she meowed. “Stay with her; let her know that you are here.” She rested her muzzle briefly against Mistyfoot’s ear. “Be strong, my friend,” she whispered.

The den seemed deathly quiet after Mothwing had gone. Leopardstar’s breathing had grown shallow, a barely audible wheeze that did little more than flex the moss by her muzzle. Mistyfoot crouched down by her leader’s head and stroked her tail along Leopardstar’s bony flank. “Sleep well,” she mewed softly. “You’re safe now. Mothwing is gathering herbs to make you feel better.”

To her surprise, Leopardstar stirred. “It’s too late for that,” rasped the she-cat without opening her eyes. “StarClan draws near; I can feel them all around me. This is my time to leave.”

“Don’t say that!” hissed Mistyfoot. “Your ninth life has barely started! Mothwing will heal you.”

Leopardstar let out a grunt. “Mothwing has served me so well, but some things are beyond even her skills. Let me go peacefully, Mistyfoot. I won’t fight this last battle, and neither should you.”

“But I don’t want to lose you!” Mistyfoot protested.

One clouded blue eye opened and gazed at her. “Really?” Leopardstar wheezed. “After what I did to your brother? To all the half-Clan cats?”

For a heartbeat, Mistyfoot was plunged back into the dark and stinking rabbit hole in RiverClan’s old camp in the forest. Tigerstar and Leopardstar had united to form TigerClan, and in their quest for the purest warrior blood, they had imprisoned all cats with mixed Clan heritage. Mistyfoot and Stonefur, who had been the RiverClan deputy, had recently learned that Bluestar of ThunderClan was their mother. This had been enough to condemn them in Leopardstar’s eyes, and she had allowed Tigerstar to persecute them until Stonefur had been killed, murdered in cold blood by Tigerstar’s deputy, Blackfoot. Mistyfoot had been rescued by Firestar and taken to ThunderClan until the terrible battle with BloodClan had ended Tigerstar’s death-soaked rule.

“I never deserved your forgiveness,” Leopardstar whispered, jerking Mistyfoot back to the cold, quiet den.

“Tigerstar was responsible for the death of my brother,” Mistyfoot growled. “Tigerstar and Blackfoot. The time of TigerClan had nothing to do with the warrior code that I believe in. I was always loyal to RiverClan—and to you, as our leader.”

Leopardstar sighed. “Your life has been harder than I wanted, Mistyfoot. Losing your brother and three of your kits. You have borne your heartache well.”

Mistyfoot stiffened. No cat would ever know the pain she had felt when she buried her children. “Every queen knows that the life of a kit is a precious and fragile thing. I will see them again in StarClan, and I walk with them in my heart every day,” she mewed.

There was a pause as Leopardstar strained to take a breath, and Mistyfoot half rose, ready to call for help. Then Leopardstar relaxed again. “I am sorry not to have known the joy of having kits. There was a time when I thought it might happen, but it was not to be.” Her words faded away as though she was picturing something she had dreamed of long ago. “Perhaps it was for the best. But I would have been proud to call you my daughter, Mistyfoot.”

Mistyfoot couldn’t reply. Her heart ached with the familiar sorrow that she had never had a chance to know her real mother, Bluestar. The ThunderClan leader had revealed her darkest secret to Mistyfoot and Stonefur just before she died on the banks of the river. For a moment, Mistyfoot had been scorched by the love of a mother, but then it had vanished, leaving a cold emptiness that could never be filled.

She curled herself around Leopardstar, just as she had tried to warm Bluestar’s sodden body all those moons ago.

“Sleep now,” she murmured into Leopardstar’s ear. “I’ll be here when you wake.”