Outcast

Chapter 6

Poppypaw dived forward; Lionpaw could see she was trying to use the move he had taught her in their earlier training session, the one Tigerstar had shown him. But when she tried to hook out Honeypaw’s legs from under her, Honeypaw was too fast.

Leaping backward, she met Poppypaw head-on and delivered two blows to her nose before darting away.

“You’ll need to be quicker than that,” Berrynose meowed.

Lionpaw bristled. Firestar had released the two young warriors from their apprentice duties, but didn’t Berrynose have anything better to do than interfere in the training session? He was sprawled on a rock at the edge of the clearing, making loud comments on the apprentices’ performance.

“That was very good,” he remarked condescendingly to Honeypaw. “Your moves are coming along nicely.”

“Thanks, Berrynose!” Honeypaw blinked adoringly at the cream-colored warrior.

Lionpaw stifled a twinge of jealousy. Not long ago, Honeypaw had seemed to like him best. It was hard to lose her admiration so soon after he had been forced to give up his friendship with Heatherpaw.

“Your turn, Lionpaw!” Berrynose broke into his thoughts.

“Let’s see what you can do.”

Who made you my mentor? Lionpaw glanced around the clearing for Ashfur, who should have been in charge of the training session, but he was several fox-lengths away, demonstrating a move to Hollypaw.

“Come on, you lazy lump,” Berrynose urged him. “You’ll never get to be a warrior sitting on your tail all day.”

No? Lionpaw gritted his teeth. If I looked at you, I’d think that’s all warriors do!

“Come on, Cinderpaw,” he meowed, beckoning with his tail to the gray apprentice who sat at the side of the clearing.

“Let’s practice.”

Cinderpaw bounced up to him, her fur bristling with eagerness and her tail fluffed out. She was moving confidently, Lionpaw thought, as if the leg she had injured felt fine.

As she approached, she aimed a blow at his ear with sheathed claws. He dodged to one side and tried to unbalance her by butting his head into her shoulder, but Cinderpaw stayed on her feet and wrapped her forepaws around his neck, thrusting him to the ground. Lionpaw battered at her belly with his hind paws. After a few heartbeats Cinderpaw let go and sprang away from him, waiting for him to get up again.

“That was great!” he panted. He knew he would have won eventually.

Cinderpaw was glowing with pride that she was getting her fighting skill back again. “Let’s try again!”

“You know, Lionpaw, you got that move all wrong,” Berrynose interrupted. “You should never have let her knock you over. If that had been a real fight, she could have bitten your throat out.”

Lionpaw spun around to face him; hot fury flooded through him from ears to tail tip. “I suppose you found that out when you were fighting ShadowClan,” he taunted.

Berrynose sprang off the rock, his ears flattened and his neck fur standing on end. “Don’t talk to a warrior like that!” he spat.

“Then stop being such a know-it-all!” Lionpaw retorted.

“You’re not my mentor, so stay out of my fur.”

For two mouse tails he would have hurled himself at Berrynose and raked his claws across the cream warrior’s muzzle. But he knew he would be in big trouble if he attacked a Clanmate for real, not as part of a training bout. Turning his back on Berrynose, he stormed off to the side of the clearing, where he stood with his flanks heaving, trying to control the waves of rage that surged through him.

“Just wait till I’m a warrior,” he vowed under his breath.

“Then I’ll show you who’s best at fighting.”

“Take it easy, Lionpaw.” The calm voice felt like a draft of cool water. At first Lionpaw thought it must be Tigerstar, and he looked around for the shadowy tabby figure. Instead, he spotted Stormfur sunning himself in a quiet patch of sunlight at the foot of an oak tree.

Awkwardly Lionpaw dipped his head to him. “Sorry,” he mewed. “But I can’t stand it when Berrynose acts like he’s Clan leader.”

Stormfur let out a sympathetic murmur.

“I know I shouldn’t let him get to me, but I can’t help it,” Lionpaw confessed. “Sometimes it’s the other apprentices too. Well, not Hollypaw, but the rest of them. I feel like I have to be the best all the time.”

Part of him was horrified that he’d blurted all that out to a senior warrior. There was no reason for Stormfur to care about his problems.

“Why?” the gray-furred tom asked.

“I don’t know why!” Lionpaw hesitated, thoughts battering his mind like a storm, then added, “I suppose I do know, really. It’s because I’m Firestar’s kin. There’s never been a leader like him, and every cat will expect me to be just as good because I’m related to him.”

“And Tigerstar?” Stormfur prompted.

Lionpaw dug his claws into the ground. How could Stormfur possibly know about his meetings with Tigerstar and Hawkfrost? “T-Tigerstar?” he gulped.

Stormfur blinked at him. “I know what problems your father had. Brambleclaw was always afraid the Clan would never trust him, because they hated Tigerstar so much.”

Lionpaw had never thought of that before. It was hard to imagine his father as a young cat, uncertain of his place in the Clan.

“What was my father like?” he asked, padding up to Stormfur and sitting beside him in the comforting splash of sunlight. The fur on his shoulders began to lie flat again; he had almost forgotten the quarrel with Berrynose. “What was it like when you went on the quest together?”

“Terrifying.” Memory glowed in Stormfur’s amber eyes, fear and courage, humor and friendship, all at once. “I don’t know what was harder—traveling through unfamiliar, dangerous territory, or trying to get along with cats from other Clans. We all came back changed.” He paused to rasp his tongue over his shoulder, and then went on. “At first we seemed to argue all the time. But it was usually your father who had the best ideas, and pretty soon we realized that he was the natural leader among us.”

“Tell me what happened,” Lionpaw prompted.

“Four cats, one in each Clan, had a dream telling them to go to the sun-drown-place,” Stormfur began. “They were supposed to listen to what midnight told them. None of us realized that Midnight was a badger.”

Lionpaw nodded; he and his littermates had never met the badger who helped the Clans find their new home, but his mother had told them stories about her.

“It must have been really hard,” Lionpaw mewed, trying to imagine getting along with cats from other Clans. Okay, he’d been friendly with Heatherpaw, but suppose he’d had to cooperate with Breezepaw or warriors from ShadowClan?

“It wasn’t all bad,” Stormfur replied. His tail curled in amusement. “There was the time your mother got stuck in a Twoleg fence. She was spitting with fury, and she couldn’t move!”

Lionpaw let out a little mrrow of laughter, imagining Squirrelflight stuck and furious. “Did my father rescue her?”

Stormfur shook his head. “No. Brambleclaw was thinking about digging up the fence post, and I thought we might bite through the shiny fence stuff. Meanwhile Tawnypelt and Feathertail smoothed down your mother’s fur with some dock leaves and got her out that way.”

“I wish I’d been there,” Lionpaw mewed.

“I wouldn’t have missed it. Even though we were scared a lot of the time, or tired, or hungry, we all knew we were doing our best to help our Clans.”

“And you became really good friends with my father.”

Stormfur twitched his whiskers. “We weren’t all that friendly to begin with. I was jealous of Brambleclaw.”

“Why?” Lionpaw asked, surprised.

“Because I liked your mother too much. But a blind rabbit could have seen that Brambleclaw was the cat she liked best, even though they spent most of their time arguing.”

“You liked Squirrelflight?” Lionpaw blinked in astonishment. Suppose Stormfur had been his father instead of Brambleclaw? I would have been a different cat…

“I’d never met a cat like her,” Stormfur admitted. “So bright and brave and determined, even though she was only an apprentice then. But then we stayed with the Tribe in the mountains, and when I met Brook I knew that she was the right cat for me.”

His amber eyes clouded and he fell silent. Lionpaw couldn’t understand why he should look like that, when he’d been talking about finding Brook. “What’s the matter?”

Stormfur let out a long sigh. “My sister, Feathertail, was with us on the journey,” he explained. “She was a beautiful, warm-hearted cat. She died in the mountains.”

Lionpaw dared to reach out with his tail and rest it on the gray warrior’s shoulder. “What happened?”

“The Tribe was being hunted by a mountain lion. There was a prophecy that a silver cat would come to save them. At first they thought it was me, but it was Feathertail. She died saving them.” His voice shook. “I had to leave her there, buried in the mountains.”

“I’m so sorry,” Lionpaw mewed, trying to imagine what he would feel like if Hollypaw died.

Stormfur licked his chest fur a few times and jerked his head as if he was shaking off a fly. “Moons pass, and you have to carry on.”

“I hope you didn’t mind my asking.”

“Of course not.” Stormfur sounded more like himself again. “You can ask me anything you like. If I can help at all, I’ll be glad to.”

“Thanks.” Lionpaw felt as warm and comforted as if he’d just eaten a plump piece of fresh-kill. “It’s easier talking to you than to a ThunderClan cat—oh, sorry.” He broke off, scuffling his paws with embarrassment. “I didn’t mean—”

“That’s okay,” Stormfur meowed. “I know what you meant.

It’s true that I’m only a visitor here, however loyal I feel toward Firestar and your father and the other ThunderClan cats.”

“Where do you feel most at home?” Lionpaw mewed curiously. “In RiverClan, or with the Tribe of Rushing Water, or in ThunderClan?”

Stormfur didn’t reply at once. His eyes grew thoughtful; he licked one paw and drew it over his ear a few times. “I’m a RiverClan cat at heart,” he replied at last. “That’s where I grew up and where I became a warrior. But that was back in the forest, and no cat has a home there now. Right now I feel loyal to ThunderClan, because you welcomed me and Brook.

And it’s good to live in the same Clan as Graystripe and get to know him better.”

“Will you stay here forever?”

“I don’t know. This isn’t Brook’s home, and if she doesn’t want to stay, I won’t force her.”

“Why don’t you go back to the mountains, then?”

A somber look crept into Stormfur’s eyes. “It’s not that easy.”

“You could go for a visit,” Lionpaw suggested.

“No, it’s too far,” Stormfur mewed briskly. He rose to his paws and gave his fur a shake. “Come on, it’s time we were going back to camp.”

Glancing over his shoulder, Lionpaw saw that the training session was over. Ashfur and the other apprentices were heading toward the stone hollow. There was no sign of Berrynose.

“You go ahead,” he meowed to Stormfur. “I’ll be back in a while.”

“Okay.” Stormfur bounded off to catch up with Ashfur and the others.

“Thanks, Stormfur!” Lionpaw called after him.

Stormfur waved his tail in reply as he vanished into the bushes.

Lionpaw turned and padded into the trees in the opposite direction from the camp. He paused to make sure that Stormfur really had gone, then picked up the pace until he was racing toward the WindClan border. Panting, he halted at the edge of the stream, looking across the open moorland.

The sun was going down, washing the surface of the lake with scarlet and throwing his long shadow to one side. Lionpaw enjoyed the warmth of its rays and the gentle breeze that ruffled his fur.

But the landscape ahead of him looked bleak and unwelcoming. There was no cover, no soft moss, no undergrowth where prey could hide. Lionpaw knew he could never live in WindClan. He would miss the trees: He could hear them now, just behind him, the faint creak of branches and the rustle of their leaves in the wind. He could never have given that up, however much he loved Heatherpaw.

And she could never have lived in ThunderClan, he realized. She felt trapped under the trees; she loved the open moorland, the tough, springy grass and the wild dash across the slopes in pursuit of rabbits. Stormfur must really have loved Brook, to give up his home and stay with her in the mountains.

Lionpaw raised his head and gazed into the distance. He could just make out a dark, misty band on the horizon, where the mountains lay. Brook had pointed it out to him once, on a border patrol; he wondered if she felt her paws tugging her toward it.

What do the mountains look like? he wondered. All his life he had heard about the Great Journey and the territories the Clans had crossed to find their new home by the lake.

Lionpaw felt his paws itching to explore. He longed to discover what lay beyond ThunderClan’s borders, beyond all the Clans’ borders. The world was so wide, and he had seen so little of it. There was so much out there, beyond the reach of the warrior code, beyond the knowledge even of the medicine cats and elders.

It was hard to wrench his paws away from the border and start padding back toward the camp. It’s as though the mountains are calling me…

But how could he ever answer the call?