Moonrise

Chapter 20

The mouse’s tail slipped between Leafpaw’s outstretched claws, leaving her to glare in frustration at the crevice where the tiny creature had vanished. She had left the camp to collect more herbs for Cinderpelt, and following Firestar’s order that no cats were to go out alone, Sorreltail was with her.

“Bad luck,” the tortoiseshell warrior meowed sympathetically. “But it was pretty scrawny to start with.”

“It was prey,” Leafpaw retorted. “I’d have caught it if I weren’t so hungry that I can’t see straight.”

She began backing out from underneath the bush.

Suddenly she noticed its familiar dark green leaves for the first time, and the red berries that clung to its branches and lay scattered around the trunk.

“Mouse dung!” she hissed. “And I’ve got the filthy stuff on my paws.”

“What’s the matter?”

Leafpaw backed out the rest of the way and pointed at the berries with her tail. “Deathberries,” she meowed. “I was so keen to catch the mouse that I never saw them.”

Sorreltail shivered. “Let’s find some water and wash it off, quick.”

Leafpaw was puzzled to see the look of horror in her friend’s eyes. Deathberries were pretty bad, but only if you ate them. Sorreltail was one of the bravest cats she knew, yet she looked thoroughly spooked by the sight of the berries, her ears lying flat and her fur bristling.

“Are you okay?” Leafpaw asked as they padded on into the forest, keeping a lookout for a puddle where she could wash off any poison that might have gotten onto her pads.

“I’m fine.” Sorreltail blinked. “Did you know that I once nearly died from deathberries?”

“No!” Leafpaw stopped, her eyes wide with shock. “What happened?”

“It was when I was a kit, before you were born. I’d followed Darkstripe into the forest—you won’t remember Darkstripe; he was Tigerstar’s biggest ally in ThunderClan. When I spotted him talking to Blackstar— he was Blackfoot then, Tigerstar’s deputy—on our territory, he gave me the deathberries so I couldn’t tell any cat what I’d seen.”

“That’s terrible!” Leafpaw pressed her muzzle against Sorreltail’s side.

“It’s thanks to Cinderpelt I survived,” Sorreltail meowed.

“Still, it’s all over now. Whatever the Twolegs are doing to us, at least we don’t have Tigerstar to worry about anymore.” She spun around, her tail held high in the air. “Come on; let’s get your paws clean. A deathberry poisoning is the last thing the Clan needs right now.”

Dark thoughts flew into Leafpaw’s mind as she followed her friend deeper into the undergrowth. If Tigerstar really was the father of Hawkfrost and Mothwing, then perhaps that trouble wasn’t all over.

The roar of the Twoleg monsters grew louder as they approached the Thunderpath. At last they found a small pool in a hollow where Leafpaw dipped her paws several times and rubbed them on the grass until she was sure all traces of the deathberries were gone. All the same, she knew she would feel uneasy about licking her paws for many days to come.

“There,” she mewed. She had to raise her voice to make herself heard above the growling of the monster. “That should be okay. And look, there’s a huge clump of chervil over there. Cinderpelt will—”

She broke off with a terrified gasp as the roar of the monster grew suddenly louder, as if the whole sky were splitting apart with thunder. A vast, glittering shape broke through the undergrowth, crushing the chervil she had just spotted.

Sorreltail let out a startled yowl and fled for the nearest tree, clawing her way up the bark and coming to rest in the first fork, her fur fluffed up until she looked twice her size.

Leafpaw flattened herself in a hollow in the ground. She watched in frozen horror as the monster seized a half-grown ash tree and ripped it out of the ground with no more effort than she would have taken to dig up a burdock root. It lifted the tree high in the air, turning it in a huge, twisting limb as it stripped off the branches. Debris began to rain down around Leafpaw, pattering on the ground like hail.

“Leafpaw!” Sorreltail’s yowl cut through her fear. Her friend had leaped down from the tree, perhaps realizing there was no safety there anymore. She pelted across the open ground and nudged Leafpaw to her paws. “Run!”

Leafpaw gave the monster one more terrified glance, to see it beginning to slice the tree into pieces. Then she was dashing through the forest behind Sorreltail, blundering into brambles and through deep troughs of mud in their mad rush to escape.

When the roar had died to a faint rumble behind them, the two cats halted, panting.

“They’re taking more and more of our forest,” Sorreltail gasped. “Soon there’ll be nowhere left for us.”

Leafpaw stood trembling, looking back and half expecting the monster to burst through the trees in pursuit. “I hate them!” she spat. “They’ve no right to come here. What did we ever do to harm them?”

“That’s Twolegs for you,” Sorreltail mewed. She was growing calmer, the fur on her shoulders beginning to lie flat again. After a moment, she touched Leafpaw’s ear with her tail-tip. “Come on, let’s go and look for herbs near the RiverClan border.

We’ll get as far from those horrible monsters as we can.”

Leafpaw nodded, suddenly too scared to speak. She followed the tortoiseshell warrior through the forest, grief surging through her at the thought of the peaceful places that would never be peaceful again, the trees that would never again grow green in newleaf and cast their shade on the forest. StarClan must be grieving too, she realized, especially if they could do nothing to stop the destruction.

“What are we going to do?” Sorreltail asked after a few moments. “I can’t remember the last time I was full-fed… or any other cat in the Clan. Look at Ferncloud. She blames herself because Larchkit died, but it’s not her fault at all.”

Leafpaw thought of gentle Ferncloud, grieving over her dead kit, and Dustpelt’s misery as he tried in vain to comfort her. She thought of Dappletail, dead because hunger had forced her to eat the tainted rabbit. Frostfur had become too feeble to leave the elders’ den, and she had started to cough.

Cinderpelt was waiting every day for an outbreak of greencough, which could so easily turn into fatal blackcough.

“Sometimes I think the Twolegs won’t stop until we’re all dead,” Leafpaw mewed softly.

Sorreltail let out a murmur of agreement. “It’s as if StarClan has abandoned us. Leafpaw, haven’t they spoken to you, or to Cinderpelt? Why didn’t they warn us? Don’t our warrior ancestors care about us anymore?”

Leafpaw shut her eyes. She desperately wanted to tell her friend that StarClan had prophesied all this, though not to the medicine cats or their apprentices. But she had promised to keep the secret of the chosen cats, and if she was to break her word it must be to tell Firestar or Cinderpelt before any other cat.

And more than this, she was starting to think that wherever the cats had been sent by StarClan, they weren’t coming back. It was days now since she had been able to reach Squirrelpaw in her mind. Leafpaw’s heart ached at the thought that she might never see her sister or Brambleclaw again. There was no point in dangling hope in front of Sorreltail and then snatching it away.

As they approached the RiverClan border, where the ground sloped down to the river and the Twoleg bridge, Leafpaw began to feel calmer. The sound of the Twoleg monsters did not reach this part of the territory yet; everything was so peaceful that she could almost imagine the forest was just as it used to be.

Tasting the air, she caught the scent of rabbit, and spotted the creature hopping between one clump of bracken and the next. Her paws itched to pursue it, but she remembered Firestar’s order and Dappletail’s dreadful death.

“Infuriating, isn’t it?” Sorreltail muttered, with an angry flick of her tail. “I’d swear the stupid creatures are laughing at us.”

Leafpaw nodded, water flooding her mouth at the prey-scent. She couldn’t help wondering how long it would be before they were all so desperate that, like Dappletail, they would take the risk of eating the rabbits.

Just ahead of her, Sorreltail dropped into the hunter’s crouch. Cautiously, so she didn’t disturb her friend’s concentration, Leafpaw edged her way forward until she could see what Sorreltail had spotted: a squirrel, moving slowly across an open space. Yes! Leafpaw thought. Prey that was fit to eat, to take back to the camp for Ferncloud and Frostfur…

Sorreltail leaped. Though she made no sound, the squirrel fled a heartbeat before the warrior’s front paws hit the spot where it had been. Sorreltail let out a yowl of frustration and hurled herself after it as it made for the nearest tree.

“Sorreltail, no!” Leafpaw called out as she realized that the tree was on the other side of the border.

But Sorreltail was deafened by the hunger in her belly, fixed on chasing the squirrel. As it ran up the tree she launched herself up and managed to snag a claw in its tail, but the squirrel twitched itself free. Sorreltail fell to the ground, spitting fury.

“Come back!” Leafpaw cried. “You’re on RiverClan territory!”

Sorreltail scrambled to her paws, bits of grass clinging to her fur. “Fox dung!” she snarled. “I nearly had it.”

Before Leafpaw could call to her again, a familiar scent swept over her. A tabby shape appeared from behind the tree, and as Sorreltail spun around a huge paw slapped her to the ground and pinned her there.

“What’s this?” Hawkfrost growled. “ThunderClan cats trespassing on our territory?”