Moonrise

Chapter 9

Stormfur stared in amazement. The cave was at least as broad as the waterfall that screened it from the outside world, and stretched far back into the mountainside, until the farthest recesses were lost in shadow. He could just make out a narrow passage leading off on either side of the wall opposite the sheet of water. The roof, far above his head, was shadowed too; here and there, stones like fangs emerged to point straight down at the cave floor.

The only light came through the rushing water, pale and wavering, so that it was like standing in the depths of a pool.

As the cats ushered them farther into the cave, Stormfur heard more running water beneath the roar of the falls, and saw a stream trickling over a mossy rock to fall into a shallow pool on the floor of the cave. Two or three cats—a skinny elder and a couple who looked young enough to be apprentices—were crouched beside it to drink. All of them looked up warily at the arrival of the newcomers, as if they were expecting danger.

Just beyond the pool was a pile of fresh-kill and, as Stormfur watched, a couple more of the mountain cats came in and deposited prey. It was the first thing he had seen that looked at all familiar, and his belly growled with hunger at the sight of the rabbits.

“Do you think they’ll let us eat?” Squirrelpaw muttered close to his ear. “I’m starving!”

“For all you know, they think we’re fresh-kill,” Crowpaw hissed from Squirrelpaw’s other side.

“They haven’t done anything to harm us yet,” Brambleclaw pointed out.

Stormfur tried to share his optimism, but Crag and Brook had vanished, and for a few moments none of the other cats came up to speak to them. Instead, the cats who had been drinking sidled over to their guards, and the elder whispered something, all the while darting glances at him. The two apprentices murmured excitedly to each other. The roar of the waterfall drowned their voices, though Stormfur noticed that the mountain cats seemed to have no trouble hearing one another.

Trying to ignore the muttering—most of which seemed to be directed at him, though he told himself to stop being so paranoid—Stormfur identified what looked like sleeping places beside the cave walls: shallow scoops in the earth floor, lined with moss and feathers. One cluster of sleeping places lay close to the entrance and the other two were farther back, at opposite sides of the cave. He wondered if one set was for warriors, one for apprentices, and one for elders. Spotting a couple of kits scuffling outside the entrance to one of the passages, he guessed that led to the nursery. Suddenly he saw the dark, noisy, frightening cave in a different way: This was a camp! The Tribe shared some of the ways of the Clans in the forest; Stormfur began to feel much more hopeful of getting food and rest, and help for Tawnypelt, who had sunk shivering to the floor.

Then he spotted Crag again, emerging from the far passage and padding across the cave floor toward the tight group of forest cats. He was followed by another cat, long-bodied and skinny as a WindClan warrior. So much mud plastered his fur that Stormfur couldn’t make out what color it was underneath, but his eyes were a deep and glowing green, and a few white hairs around his muzzle betrayed the fact that he was older than the cats they had seen so far.

“Greetings,” he meowed in a deep voice that seemed to echo around the cave. He made the odd gesture with one paw extended that Crag and Brook had used outside. “My name is Teller of the Pointed Stones, though you will find it easier to call me Stoneteller. I am the Healer of the Tribe of Rushing Water.”

“Healer?” Brambleclaw glanced uncertainly at his friends.

“Do you mean the medicine cat? Where is the leader of your Clan—I mean, Tribe?”

Stoneteller hesitated for a moment. “I am not sure what you mean by a medicine cat, and there is no other leader of this Tribe. I interpret the signs of rock and leaf and water, and that shows me what the Tribe should do—with the help of the Tribe of Endless Hunting.”

Stormfur picked out the bit of Stoneteller’s speech that he understood. “Then he’s medicine cat and leader,” he muttered to Brambleclaw. “That’s pretty powerful!”

In reply, Brambleclaw dipped his head politely. “We come from a forest a long way from here,” he began, repeating his own name and the names of his friends. “We have a difficult journey ahead of us, and we need food and shelter before we can go on.”

More of the Tribe cats crowded around as he spoke, openly curious. Stormfur picked out kits and apprentices by their sizes, and noticed that the warriors seemed to divide into two groups, one with massive shoulders and powerful muscles, the other more slender, with wiry strength and long limbs for speed. He noticed too how anxious they all looked; they seemed to be on edge, as if they were poised to flee.

A brown tabby she-cat, her eyes fixed on Stormfur, murmured, “Yes! This is the one—it must be!”

Stormfur started. Brook had said something similar, when they first met beside the pool. He opened his mouth to ask what she meant, but the Tribe’s Healer had turned to the young brown tabby. “Be silent!” he hissed. More smoothly he went on to the Clan cats, “You are welcome to our cave. Here is caught-prey in plenty.” He flicked his tail toward the fresh-kill pile. “Eat your fill, and rest. We have much to say to one another.”

Brambleclaw looked at the other Clan cats. “We might as well eat,” he meowed quietly. “I don’t think they’re going to hurt us now.”

As Stormfur followed him toward the pile, he felt once more dozens of eyes burning into his fur. It wasn’t his imagination—they were definitely watching him more closely than the others. His fur prickled from nose to tail-tip as he settled down to eat.

As he bit into the rabbit he had chosen, he heard a gasp from somewhere behind him and a shocked voice whispering, “They don’t share!”

Glancing up, he saw a young gray cat giving him a hostile stare, while an older tabby bent her head to him and murmured, “Shh. It’s not their fault if they haven’t been properly taught.”

Stormfur didn’t know what they meant. Then he spotted two of the Tribe cats who were eating side by side; each of them took a bite from the piece of fresh-kill they had taken, then exchanged pieces before they settled down to finish it off. Embarrassment flooded over him as he realized how rude he and his friends must look to the cats of the Tribe.

“We don’t do that,” he meowed directly to the young cat who had spoken at first. “But we do share.” He flicked his tail toward Feathertail, who was gently coaxing Tawnypelt to eat a mouse. “None of us would let our friends go hungry, and the hunting patrols always feed the Clan before taking food for themselves.”

The gray cat backed away a pace or two, looking confused, as if he hadn’t intended the newcomers to hear his com-ments. The tabby dipped her head with a friendlier look.

“Your ways are strange to us,” she meowed. “Perhaps we can learn from one another.”

“Perhaps,” Stormfur agreed.

He began gulping down his rabbit again. After a few moments one of the bolder kits pattered right up to the group of Clan cats, urged on by his littermates. “Where do you come from?” he asked.

“A long way away,” Squirrelpaw mumbled with her mouth full. Swallowing the bite of prey she added more clearly, “Across these mountains and lots of fields and then a forest.”

The kit blinked. “What are fields?” Before Squirrelpaw could reply, he added, “I’m going to be a cave-guard.”

“That’s nice,” Feathertail mewed.

“’Course, I’ve got to be a to-be first.”

“Tooby? What’s a tooby?” asked Crowpaw.

Stormfur hid his amusement at the scornful look the kit gave the WindClan apprentice. “To-be a cave-guard, of course. You know, training and stuff. Don’t you new cats know anything?”

“He means an apprentice,” Stormfur explained, and couldn’t resist adding, “Like you.”

Crowpaw curled his lip as the kit stared at him and exclaimed, “You’re only a to-be? You’re way old!”

“It sounds as if they have some of the same traditions as us,” Tawnypelt murmured.

“I wonder if they believe in StarClan?” Squirrelpaw whispered.

“It’s too far for them to go to Mothermouth,” meowed Stormfur, “and no cat has ever seen them there.”

“Stoneteller mentioned the Tribe of Endless Hunting,” Feathertail remembered. “Perhaps that’s what they call StarClan.” Her blue eyes stretched wide and her voice was uneasy as she added, “Or do you think they have different warrior ancestors?”

“I don’t know,” Brambleclaw replied. “But I guess we’ll find out.”

When he finished eating, Stormfur had not felt so comfortably full since they left the woods where they said good-bye to Midnight and Purdy. He would have liked to sleep, but as he swallowed the last mouthful and swiped his tongue around his jaws he spotted Stoneteller making his way toward them with three other cats. One of them was Crag; the others were she-cats, though neither of them was Brook.

Stormfur felt faintly disappointed. The young she-cat had shown courage and friendliness when they first met, and he had looked forward to seeing her again.

“You have eaten well?” Stoneteller asked as he approached.

“Very well, thanks,” Brambleclaw replied. “It’s good of you to share prey with us.”

“Why wouldn’t we?” Stoneteller sounded surprised. “The prey is not ours—it belongs to the stones and the mountain.”

He sat down in front of the forest cats, wrapping his tail neatly around his paws. The other three cats gathered around him, but remained standing. Brambleclaw looked expectantly at them.

“Crag you already know,” meowed Stoneteller, introducing his companions. “He is the leader of our cave-guards, the cats who protect this place,” he added, when the Clan cats looked confused. “This”—he flicked his tail toward the younger of the two she-cats—“is Mist Where Sunlight Shimmers. She is one of our best prey-hunters.”

Mist dipped her head and blinked with friendly interest at the forest cats.

“And this,” Stoneteller went on, indicating the other she-cat, “is Star That Shines on Water. For now she is a kit-mother, though when her kits are grown she will go back to being a cave-guard.”

“You all have different duties, then?” Tawnypelt questioned, as the other forest cats murmured greetings.

“We do,” Stoneteller replied.

“Do you choose the best fighters to be cave-guards, and the fastest cats to be prey-hunters?” Stormfur asked, fascinated in spite of his wariness.

Stoneteller twitched his whiskers in disagreement. “No.

All the cats in our Tribe are born to their duties. That is our way. But tell us something more of yourselves,” he went on, interrupting Squirrelpaw as she was about to ask another question. “Why are you making this long journey? We have never seen cats like you before.”

Brambleclaw gave Stormfur a sideways glance and muttered, “What do you think? Do we tell them?”

“I think we have to tell them we were sent by StarClan.”

Stormfur breathed his reply close to the tabby warrior’s ear, aware of how acute the mountain cats’ hearing was.

“Otherwise they might think we’re outlaws. But don’t tell them why we had to make the journey in the first place,” he added. “We don’t want to sound weak.”

Brambleclaw nodded. Clearing his throat self-consciously he began to explain about the dreams each of the four chosen cats had received from StarClan, and the saltwater signs that had led them to the sun-drown place where they had met Midnight.

More of the Tribe cats gathered warily around to listen.

Stormfur spotted admiring glances from them as Brambleclaw spoke of the dangers they had faced, but there were a few suspicious mutterings too, as if some of them found it hard to trust the strangers.

“Don’t worry,” he put in, when Brambleclaw paused in his story. “StarClan hasn’t sent us to fight you. They didn’t say anything about meeting you, in fact.”

“StarClan?” Mist echoed, glancing at Stoneteller in bewilderment. “What is StarClan?”

Stormfur heard Tawnypelt stifle an exclamation of surprise. Feathertail was right after all; these cats were not guided by StarClan. His fur prickled as he suppressed a shiver at the thought that perhaps StarClan was not watching over him and his friends in this strange place.

“Do not be troubled,” Stoneteller meowed, touching Mist’s shoulder with the tip of his tail in a reassuring gesture. “Not all cats believe as we do, and we must respect that which we do not know. Ignorance is nothing to be afraid of. Please”—he gestured toward Brambleclaw with one paw—“continue.”

“So at last we came to the sun-drown water and discovered that Midnight is a badger,” Brambleclaw explained. “She told us the meaning of StarClan’s prophecy, and now we’re going home to tell our Clans.”

“A prophecy?” Stoneteller meowed. His green gaze was fixed on Stormfur in a stare of eerie intensity. “Then you too have visions of what is hidden?”

“Well, sometimes we have dreams,” Tawnypelt explained.

“But mostly our medicine cats interpret signs for us—clouds, the flight of birds, the fall of leaves…”

“This I do also,” Stoneteller mewed.

He broke off as a group of cats appeared in the cave entrance. Rising to his paws, he murmured, “Forgive me. These are cave-guards, returning from patrol. I must hear what they have to tell me.” Dipping his head, he walked off to meet the leader of the group.

Mist and Star stayed with the forest cats. Stormfur was struck again by how anxious the Tribe cats looked, and he realized that so far he had not seen any of them enjoying themselves: no apprentices play-fighting, no warriors sharing tongues, or elders gathering to exchange gossip and stories.

The whole Tribe seemed to live in an atmosphere of suppressed fear.

“Are you okay?” Tawnypelt meowed to Mist, echoing Stormfur’s thoughts. “You look worried. Is something wrong?”

“Are you being attacked by another Tribe?” Squirrelpaw added.

“No, there are no cats to attack us,” Star replied. “There are no others in the mountains that we know of. How could there be another Tribe when we guard the Cave of the Pointed Stones?”

“What’s that?” meowed Crowpaw.

His question was ignored.

Mist exchanged a swift glance with Star and murmured, “Should we tell them?” Stormfur barely caught the words and realized that he had not been meant to hear.

A hiss came from one of the Tribe cats who had crept closer to listen to the conversation. More than one of them looked scared or angry with Mist.

“What are you afraid of?” Stormfur persisted, his fur beginning to prickle with dread of the unknown.

“Nothing,” Star replied. “Or nothing we may speak of.”

Rising to her paws, she dipped her head and began to walk away, gesturing with her tail for Mist to follow her. Mist gave the forest cats a backward glance, her eyes filled with fear, before she vanished into the shadows at the back of the cave.

The other cats too began to creep away.

Mystified, Stormfur turned to Brambleclaw, and saw his own apprehension reflected in the ThunderClan cat’s amber eyes. “What was all that about?” he muttered.

Brambleclaw shook his head. “StarClan knows. But whatever it is, it’s obvious that something is frightening them. I wonder why they don’t want to tell us what it is.”