Sign Of The Moon

Chapter 11

Dovewing halted, her gaze going up and up. She thought that the stretch of snow-covered slopes and jagged rocks would never come to an end, but finally she saw the topmost peaks crisply outlined against a pale blue sky. Clouds drifted around the summit.

“I don’t believe it!” she breathed.

“It’s just…just awesome!” Foxleap’s voice was the squeak of a startled kit.

“The mountains are pretty amazing, especially when you first see them,” Squirrelflight agreed, coming to stand beside the two younger cats. “I’ll never forget my first visit.”

“Nor will I.” Jayfeather’s neck fur was rising and he spat out the words as if he had unexpectedly bitten into crow-food. “It’s cold and windy and hard underpaw up there, but we have to go, so we may as well keep moving.”

It was the third sunrise since they had left the lake. The sky was clear, but Dovewing fluffed up her fur against the icy wind that blew down from the peaks. “How do cats live up there?” she asked. “Is there any prey?”

“Not that you’d notice,” Jayfeather retorted.

“Of course there’s prey,” Squirrelflight meowed, with an exasperated glance at the medicine cat. “But it’s different, and there are different ways of hunting. You’ll see.” Waving her tail, she set off with Jayfeather just behind her. Dove wing exchanged a wide-eyed glance with Foxleap and followed. Their path led them into gently rolling foothills, covered with rough moorland grass and the tough, springy stems of heather. Rocky outcrops poked through the thin soil.

“This feels like WindClan territory,” Foxleap grumbled. “I don’t like it.”

Dovewing murmured agreement. She was uneasy without the cover of trees and she missed the dense, prey-scented undergrowth of the forest. “At least we can see if anything is trying to creep up on us,” she pointed out.

Sending out her senses, alert for danger, she encountered nothing but the small sounds of distant, hidden prey and the trickle of streams. A harsh cry rang out from overhead; Dovewing looked up to see a bird hovering high above. She didn’t recognize the wide wingspan, but it felt vaguely threatening.

“Eagle,” Squirrelflight mewed. “We’ll see a lot of those where we’re going. We’ll need to watch out, because they’re big enough to attack a cat.”

Dovewing shivered. What sort of place is this, where the birds are dangerous?

The cats trekked through the hills for the rest of that day, with only a short stop at sunhigh. Squirrelflight and Foxleap, working together, caught a rabbit, which all four cats shared in quick, uneasy bites. Gradually the slope grew steeper and the grass thinned out, until the cats were toiling over rock with only tufts of grass and scrawny bushes rooted in cracks. The sun was going down, casting stretched-out shadows ahead of them and flooding the snowy mountain slopes with scarlet light.

I hope we find shelter before it gets dark, Dovewing thought.

Squirrelflight led them along a narrow track that twisted among sharp-sided rocks, where snow still drifted in the hollows, then across an open stretch of ground covered with big, smooth boulders. The cats had to scramble over them, Jayfeather spitting with annoyance because he kept slipping, unable to see where he was putting his paws. At the other side of the boulders, snow lay deeply in a dip in the ground. At the bottom was a pool of water, frozen at the edges, with snow-laden grass growing more thickly around the edges.

“Great, a drink!” Foxleap exclaimed, bounding forward. “My tongue feels as dry as these rocks.”

“Watch out!” Squirrelflight warned.

Following Foxleap more slowly, Dovewing picked up a powerful scent of cats; her paw steps led her across the strongest part, and she realized it must be a border like the ones that separated the forest territories.

“We’re on Tribe territory now,” Squirrelflight explained, satisfaction in her voice as she added, “They’re still keeping the border markers fresh.”

All four cats padded up to the water to drink, but as Dovewing stretched out a paw to break the thin ice at the edge and lap up the first cold drops, a yowl split the air behind her.

“Intruders!”

At the same moment a body slammed into her, carrying her off her paws; she hit the ground at the edge of the pool, throwing up droplets from her flailing paws. Sliding out her claws, she scrambled up, tail lashing, to see a black tom, no bigger than an apprentice, staring at her with undisguised hostility.

“Get off our territory!” he spat.

“Wait—” Squirrelflight yowled.

“Dark! Stop!”

A gray-and-white she-cat emerged from behind a boulder halfway up the slope on the other side of the pool, followed by a dark tabby tom and another young cat, a she-cat with a gray speckled pelt.

“But they’re trespassing!” Dark, the black tom, protested.

“No, they’re not.” The she-cat stalked down the slope to stand beside Dark, and gave him a light cuff over one ear. “They are not intruders, they’re guests.” She turned to Squirrelflight, surprise in her voice and the set of her ears, and added more warmly, “Squirrelflight, it’s good to see you again—and Jaypaw.”

“Jayfeather,” the medicine cat corrected her with a twitch of his ears.

“It’s Wing Shadow Over Water, isn’t it?” Squirrelflight stepped forward to touch noses with the gray she-cat. “And Sheer Path Beside Waterfall,” she added with a nod to the dark tabby. “This is Dovewing, and this is Foxleap.”

Dovewing dipped her head in greeting, eyeing the Tribe cats curiously. They were much smaller than the Clan cats, and they all looked as if they could do with a good meal.

“This to-be,” Wing went on, pointing with her tail toward the black tom, “the one who has no more sense than to attack four cats all by himself, is Dark Shadow on Water, and this is Rain That Passes Quickly.”

The gray speckled cat ducked her head politely.

“To-be?” Dovewing murmured.

“Like our apprentices,” Jayfeather hissed into her ear.

“No cat expected to see you here again,” Sheer meowed to Squirrelflight. “Are the Clans in trouble? Do you need help?”

“No, everything’s fine,” Squirrelflight purred. “We just wanted to pay a visit to our old friends.”

Wing twitched her whiskers, and Dovewing figured she had guessed that the Clan cats had more reason than that for trekking so far in leaf-bare, but all she said was “We’d better take you to the cave. It will be dark soon.”

Following the Tribe cats, the ThunderClan patrol headed deeper into the mountains. The sun had disappeared, and the last streaks of scarlet were fading from the sky. Twilight gathered, making the path even harder to see, but the Tribe cats bounded confidently forward, standing poised on the top of rocks as they waited for the Clan cats to catch up. Wind whined among the peaks; Dovewing blinked as it drove showers of ice into her eyes.

“Why any cat wants to live in such a StarClan-forsaken place as this,” Jayfeather panted as he hauled himself over a boulder, “I’ll never understand.” He hesitated, crouching on the rock; the ground ahead was uneven and Dovewing realized that he could injure himself if he jumped down in the wrong place.

“Wait a moment,” she mewed. She let herself drop onto a patch of snow and checked that it was clear of sharp edges. “Jump over here,” she instructed Jayfeather. “Follow my voice.”

Jayfeather leaped, landing awkwardly; Dovewing steadied him as he staggered. “Thanks,” he mumbled.

As they began to toil up a long slope, following Squirrelflight and Foxleap, who had drawn a little way ahead, Dovewing picked up a new sound: a deep, continuous roar that grew louder with every paw step they took.

“What’s that noise?” she asked Jayfeather.

“Oh, you can hear it already?” Jayfeather spoke in a low voice, and Dovewing guessed that without knowing it she had been using her special senses. “It’s the waterfall. That’s where the Tribe of Rushing Water lives.”

Soon all the cats could hear the rumble of the falls. They scrambled up one last steep slope and came out onto a flat stretch of rock where a river flowed past between boulders. Wind scoured across it, buffeting Dovewing’s fur and threatening to sweep her off her paws, but the sound of it was drowned by the deafening thunder of the cascade.

Dovewing padded to the edge of the cliff, where water slid over the lip of the rocks in a smooth curve. “Wow!” she exclaimed to Sheer, who stood beside her, one paw stretched out as if warning her to be careful. “You really live here?”

“Our cave is behind the waterfall,” he explained with pride in his voice.

“Awesome!” We actually have to walk behind that wall of foaming water? she thought privately. That’s no place for cats to live!

Sheer guided the Clan cats down the rocks beside the falls. The surface was wet and slippery; Dovewing tried to dig her claws into the hard surface and waved her tail wildly for balance. Her heart beat fast as she fought not to show these strange cats how scared she was. Jayfeather struggled down between Wing and Squirrelflight, grunting with every paw step.

Finally, every cat stood on a narrow path that led behind the waterfall. Dovewing walked along it carefully, keeping to Sheer’s paw steps, with the rock face on one side and the endlessly falling water on the other. She shivered as spray soaked her fur.

By now it was almost completely dark. The waterfall was a screen of rippling gray, shot through with silver where it reflected the moon and the slowly emerging stars. As Dovewing padded forward, a dark space opened up on the opposite side from the water; Sheer vanished into it and his voice came back to Dovewing, echoing strangely.

“Welcome to the Tribe of Rushing Water!”

Blinking, Dovewing entered the cave, followed by Squirrelflight, Jayfeather, and Foxleap, with the other Tribe cats bringing up the rear. Shaking her pelt dry, she gazed at the soaring cave walls, the roof lost in shadows high above her head. At the far end, two tunnels led away into darkness. Cats were crouching on ledges, staring down at the new arrivals. Others stalked around one another on the floor of the cave; it looked to Dovewing as if they were in the middle of some kind of training exercise. All of them froze as the visitors halted, bunched together, near the entrance. Dovewing’s pelt prickled.

Almost at once a voice yowled from the other side of the cavern. “I don’t believe it! Squirrelflight! Jaypaw!”

“Jayfeather,” he muttered.

A dark gray tom, longer legged than the other cats, bounded out of the shadows and skidded to a halt in front of Squirrelflight. “It’s great to see you again,” he meowed.

“Crag.” Squirrelflight’s voice was a warm purr. “It’s great to be here.”

More cats started to crowd around, offering greetings and asking questions about the Clans. Dovewing’s head began to spin; Squirrelflight tried to introduce every cat, but it was hard to remember, or to tell them all apart when they looked so much like one another: small and skinny, and mostly with gray-brown pelts.

And they have such long names! No wonder they cut them short.

“Remember when we ambushed you the first time you came here?” An old cat named Talon was speaking to Squirrelflight. “I nearly ripped your pelt off, but you managed to convince us you were on our side.”

“You might have been surprised at who did the pelt-ripping.” To Dovewing’s astonishment Squirrelflight butted the old tabby affectionately in the shoulder. “And we all fought on the same side against Sharptooth.”

Talon nodded, blinking sadly, then shook his head as if he was banishing painful memories. “Where’s Brook?” he asked, looking around. Pushing his way to the edge of the cats clustered around the visitors, he called out, “Brook, come see who’s here!”

A graceful tabby she-cat emerged from a corner near the back of the cave, herding two tiny kits in front of her.

Squirrelflight’s eyes widened, her green gaze sparkling. “Brook! You have kits!”

Brook padded up to Squirrelflight and touched noses with her, purring as if she would never stop. She parted her jaws to drink in Squirrelflight’s scent. “Welcome back,” she mewed, then added proudly, “This is Lark That Sings at Dawn, and Pine That Clings to Rock. Lark looks like her father, don’t you think?”

“I’m so happy for you and Stormfur!” Squirrelflight gasped. She bent her head to give each of the kits a sniff.

The two little creatures looked up at her with wide, curious eyes. “Have you come to join the Tribe?” Lark mewed.

Squirrelflight shook her head. “No, we’re just visiting.”

“You should stay,” Pine told her, his stumpy tail quivering eagerly. “Tribe cats are the best!”

“I’ll need some advice from you about raising kits,” Brook went on to Squirrelflight. “Your three turned out so well!”

Dovewing stiffened, waiting for Squirrelflight’s response. For a moment it looked as if Squirrelflight didn’t know what to say. Then she dipped her head. “You seem to be managing fine, without any help from me,” she mewed. “They’re lovely kits—so strong and healthy. Where’s Stormfur?” she added, clearly glad to change the subject.

“On border patrol,” Brook explained. “He should be back anytime now.”

“Yes, how are the patrols working out?” Squirrelflight asked. “Are you managing to defend the border against those rival cats?”

“It’s hard work,” a black tom replied; Dovewing remembered that his name was Screech of Angry Owl. “It doesn’t leave much time for catching prey when cats are tired from patrolling the border.”

“But you don’t have to go out all the time,” Foxleap protested, glancing around at the cave thronged with cats. “There are loads of you. Why don’t some of you patrol the border while others go hunting? That’s what we do.”

“The Tribe doesn’t work like that,” Squirrelflight explained. “They have two different kinds of cats, prey-hunters who catch prey and cave-guards who protect the prey-hunters. So more cats are needed to catch prey.”

“Yes, but they still could—”

Dovewing never found out what Foxleap was going to suggest. Her acute hearing picked up a soft paw step coming from the back of the cave. A voice rasped, “What are they doing here this time?”

Spinning around, Dovewing saw the crowd of cats part to reveal a skinny old tabby tom. He was no taller than a new apprentice, and his bony haunches strained at his patchy fur. As he paced forward, Dovewing was shocked to hear the uneven beating of his heart and his labored breathing. A whiff of scent like rotting crow-food came from his open jaws as he halted in front of Squirrelflight.

This cat is dying! Dovewing realized in alarm.

“Stoneteller…” Brook stammered. “Look who came to visit.”

“I can see who it is,” Stoneteller snapped. “I want to know what they’re doing here.”

Squirrelflight flashed a glance at Brook as she stepped forward and dipped her head courteously to the old tom. “Greetings, Stoneteller,” she meowed. “My Clanmates and I just came to visit. We wanted to see how you’re all getting on.”

“Do you think we can’t survive without you?” Stoneteller growled.

Dovewing could see that Squirrelflight was getting flustered, her claws scraping the hard floor of the cave. “It’s not like that—” she began.

Stoneteller cut her off with a snarl deep in his throat and a single lash of his tail. Foxleap’s eyes widened; he leaned over to Dovewing and hissed in her ear, “Who made dirt in his fresh-kill?”

Jayfeather stepped forward. Dovewing tensed; the short-tempered medicine cat was bound to make things worse with some cutting remark. Instead, she was surprised by Jayfeather’s even tones as he began to speak.

“Nothing is wrong, Stoneteller, believe me. We come in peace, as friends.” Waving his tail toward Foxleap and Dovewing, he added, “We thought it would be a good experience for these two young cats to see how the Tribe lives. We have as much to learn from you as you have learned from us in the past.”

Stoneteller let out a snort but didn’t challenge the visitors any further.

“Well done, Jayfeather,” Squirrelflight whispered.

Wing weaved her way through the cats and dipped her head to Stoneteller. “Healer, may these cats share today’s meal?”

“Today’s meal?” Foxleap sounded dismayed. “You mean you only eat once a day? Don’t you get hungry?”

“Don’t you get fat?” a young she-cat countered, looking Foxleap up and down.

Stoneteller gave his permission, though Dovewing could tell he wasn’t thrilled. He stood back as Wing and Brook led the visiting cats across the cave and halted in front of a fresh-kill pile.

“Help yourselves,” Wing invited.

Following Squirrelflight, Dovewing pulled a bird out of the pile and bit into it hungrily. A heartbeat later she was struggling to swallow. Great StarClan, that tastes bitter! She studied the prey carefully; the bird wasn’t any kind she had seen before: bigger than the forest birds, with brown feathers and a hooked beak.

“I don’t see how any cat could catch a bird like this alone,” she murmured, half to herself.

“That’s ridiculous!” Dark exclaimed, overhearing her. He blinked at her scornfully. “As if any cat would be expected to hunt alone. Prey-hunters work together; even kits know that. Watch; we’ll show you. Here—Rain, Snow!” He called to the other to-be who had met them in the mountains, and another young she-cat with a white pelt. “Snow, you be an eagle.”

“Okay.” Snow leaped up onto a ledge in the cave wall.

“Rain, be a prey-hunter with me,” Dark went on.

“But I’m a cave-guard,” Rain objected.

Dark sighed. “So? You can pretend, right? You know what prey-hunters do.”

Rain shrugged and crouched at the bottom of a boulder. Dark also dropped into a crouch a couple of tail-lengths away. The two young cats stayed where they were, quite motionless, while Dovewing watched, puzzled.

“They aren’t doing anything,” Foxleap whispered, looking up from his own prey.

At that moment, Snow dived off her ledge onto the cave floor below. Instantly Dark and Rain pounced in unison, bundling on top of her and slapping her to the ground with their paws when she tried to get up.

“Hey, not so hard!” she yowled.

“What are you doing?” A black she-cat, her belly heavy with kits, glanced over her shoulder with an irritated expression. “You to-bes! This is the time for eating, not for playing.”

“Sorry, Night,” Rain mumbled.

“We were only showing these strange cats—” Dark protested.

“I know, I know,” Night interrupted. “Always excuses… Show them at sunrise, okay?”

Dark ducked his head and yanked a rabbit out of the pile, dragging it away to share with the other to-bes.

“Weird,” Dovewing murmured to Foxleap. She felt a pang of homesickness for her Clan, where any cat who was hungry could eat when they felt like it, provided there was enough prey, and no cat told apprentices off for playing, if they’d finished their duties. “The Tribe cats are really strict!”

Foxleap moved closer to her. “Strict and weird,” he agreed.

When the Clan cats had finished eating, Brook led them across the cavern. “You can sleep here,” she announced. Peering around Squirrelflight, Dovewing saw several shallow scoops in the cave floor, lined with feathers. Those are nests? she wondered, longing for the soft moss and crackly bracken in her own den in the stone hollow.

Brook’s kit Pine leaned over the edge of the biggest scoop and sniffed at the feathers. “That looks really cozy!” he mewed.

“I want to sleep there!” Lark announced, taking a flying leap into the middle of the nest. Feathers swirled up around her and she sneezed as one settled on her nose.

“Certainly not!” Brook exclaimed, her fur fluffing up. “Come out of there at once. We have a perfectly good nest of our own.”

Lashing her tiny tail, Lark scrambled out with feathers clinging to her pelt. Brook brushed them off with her tail and patted her daughter’s fur down again. “Sorry,” she murmured to Squirrelflight. “But you know what they’re like at this age. Sleep well,” she added, as she gathered her kits together with her tail and prodded them away.

“Good night!” Squirrelflight called after her.

Curled up in one of the scoops, Dovewing found it impossible to sleep. The thunder of the waterfall was so loud that it hurt her ears, and there was no way to shut it out. She felt trapped by it; the noise drowned out any other sounds that she might have picked up from beyond it. Never before had she been so closed in by stone and water.

This isn’t right, she thought.

Raising her head, she saw that her three Clanmates were already asleep; Jayfeather was twitching uneasily, as if he walked in some ominous dream with the cats of StarClan…or in the Dark Forest. Farther away in the cave, she could hear the Tribe cats as they settled down for the night.

“Close your eyes, Lark.” Brook’s voice. “Or you’ll be too tired to play tomorrow.”

“Good night, Bird.” That was the old tom, Talon.

“Good night,” an unfamiliar she-cat’s voice replied. “Dream well.”

“Snow, if you don’t take your paw out of my ear, I’ll scratch you!” Dovewing stifled a mrrow of amusement at Dark’s indignant mutter.

Gradually the voices died away to silence. Dovewing cautiously pulled herself out of her nest and padded across to the cave toward the waterfall. Her paws tingled and she kept casting glances over her shoulder, aware that if any of the Tribe cats spotted her they might think she was spying. But no cat called out to her as she reached the path that led behind the waterfall and slipped along it. The falling water glittered in the moonlight, and as Dovewing emerged onto the rocks beside the pool the spray filled the air with a mist of silver.

It’s beautiful, she realized, catching for the first time a glimpse of what kept the Tribe in their inhospitable home.

Climbing with extra care in the darkness, Dovewing hauled herself up the rocks beside the waterfall until she reached the cliff top. She gave herself a good shake to dry her pelt before sitting down and looking around. Her breath snagged in her throat. She was surrounded by mountain peaks streaked with snow, rolling away into the distance as far as she could see. The waterfall was below her now, its roar still louder than thunder, but not making her feel trapped in the way it had when she was inside the cave.

Dovewing cast her senses out over the snowy landscape, her sight and hearing sharpened in the clear air. She could hear the stir of huge birds—eagles?—in their twiggy nests on the bare precipices; ice thawing on small streams hidden among the rocks; white-furred hares scuffling among snow and pebbles to find blades of grass. The mountains that seemed so barren were full of tiny lives.

Then Dovewing realized she could hear cats, too. They were too heavy-footed to be Tribe cats; they sprang arrogantly over the rocks, padding up to a Tribe scent marker, and giving it a sniff.

“Ooh, this is the Tribe’s border.” A mocking mew reached Dovewing’s ears. “Should we cross it? I’m shaking in my fur!”

“These cats have bees in their brain,” another voice responded. “They think they can keep us out with a barrier of air!”

Dovewing listened, anger growing in her belly as first one cat, then the second, jumped across the border, then back again, and for a third time, ending up inside the Tribe’s territory.

“Where are you?” the first cat yowled. “Where’s your patrol to drive us out?”

“Hiding like scared rabbits,” the second cat meowed. “Let’s hunt.”

Dovewing heard them padding off in search of prey—prey that belonged to the Tribe. She slid out her claws, scraping them against the rock. Jayfeather and Lionblaze had told her about their previous visit, how they had established the border and made the intruding cats promise to respect it.

What’s the point? she wondered angrily. The other cats don’t have any kind of code, so how can we expect them to stay on their side of the boundary?

A soft paw step sounded behind her; expecting to see a Tribe cat, she rose to her paws and turned. To her surprise, it was Jayfeather.

“How did you get up the rocks?” she asked, her belly twisting as she realized how easily a blind cat could slip and fall into the pool.

“With difficulty,” Jayfeather growled, giving himself a shake and sending a mist of spray into the air. With a long sigh he sat down beside Dovewing and waved his tail at the peaks that encircled them. “Amazing, isn’t it?” he puffed.

“How do you know?” Dovewing meowed, startled. The words were hardly out before she answered her own question, guessing that he had walked here in his dreams. “Why are we here?” she added.

“The Tribe has ancestors, too,” Jayfeather replied as he wrapped his tail around his paws. “The Tribe of Endless Hunting. I think they have something to tell me—something to do with the prophecy.”

“If we truly have the power of the stars in our paws,” Dovewing mused aloud, “then maybe we have power over the Tribe, too.”

Jayfeather twitched his ears. “I don’t think it’s as straightforward as that. Remember that Stoneteller has a lot of power—more than a Clan leader or a medicine cat alone. But I’m convinced that our destiny has something to do with the Tribe.”

“We’ve helped them so much before,” Dovewing meowed. “Maybe now it’s their turn to help us.”

“Maybe,” Jayfeather agreed.

As he spoke, Dovewing picked up the sound of another cat scrambling up the rocks, and a broad-shouldered gray tom hauled himself onto the plateau. He padded over to Jayfeather and dipped his head. “Greetings. It’s good to see Clan cats again.”

“Stormfur.” Jayfeather dipped his head in response. “This is Dovewing, Whitewing’s kit.”

Dovewing blinked, impressed that she was face-to-face with a cat who was almost a legend among the Clans. Born of a ThunderClan father and RiverClan mother, Stormfur had made the journey to the sun-drown-place to meet Midnight, and later had taken part in the Great Journey when the Clans discovered their new home by the lake. But he had loved Brook so much that he had abandoned his Clan to live with her and make his home with the Tribe.

“How are things beside the lake?” Stormfur asked. There was a hunger in his voice, and Dovewing understood that even though he had decided to stay here in the mountains, part of his heart would always be with the Clans.

“Pretty good,” Jayfeather replied. “We had a drought last greenleaf, and the lake almost dried up, but Dovewing went with a patrol to bring the water back.”

Stormfur’s amber eyes shone as he looked at Dovewing. “Well done! That must have been hard.”

Dovewing ducked her head. “I was scared most of the time. We had a tree fall into the stone hollow, too,” she added, eager to change the subject. “All the dens look very different now.”

Stormfur nodded. “And RiverClan?” he asked.

“I think they’re okay,” Dovewing told him. “But Leopard-star died.”

Stormfur bowed his head. “I’m sorry to hear that. She was a great leader.” He paused, then continued. “So is Mistystar Clan leader now?”

Dovewing nodded. “She’s a great leader, too.”

“I can imagine. StarClan made the right choice.”

“So who will Stoneteller’s successor be?” Jayfeather asked, with an edge to his voice that hinted there was more to the question than Dovewing understood.

Stormfur shook his head. “Stoneteller has refused to name any cat as his successor,” he meowed. “You can imagine how the Tribe feels about that.”

Dovewing felt puzzled. “Why is that such a problem?”

Stormfur turned to her. “Each Tribe Healer has the same name,” he explained. “Teller of the Pointed Stones, or Stoneteller. Usually each future Stoneteller is chosen as a kit, to be mentored by the current Stoneteller for as long as possible. Now the Tribe is afraid that a new Stoneteller won’t have time to learn everything before the present Stoneteller dies.”

“That means you might not have a leader!” Dovewing exclaimed. She knew that Stoneteller was both leader and medicine cat of his Tribe. How would the Tribe cope without either?

“So what is the Tribe of Endless Hunting doing about this?” Jayfeather asked. “If they—”

Stormfur interrupted him, signaling for silence with a sharp flick of his tail. He crept to the edge of the rock and looked over. Dovewing slid up beside him. Less than a tail-length away, the waterfall thundered down into the pool below.

“Careful,” Stormfur warned her softly.

Far below, where the path led behind the water to the cave, a cat had emerged. Dovewing recognized the scrawny shape of Stoneteller. “What’s the matter?” she whispered to Stormfur. “Maybe he just wants some peace and fresh air.”

Stormfur shook his head. “The Healer never leaves the cave,” he explained, “except to perform ceremonies here on the cliff top. And there aren’t very many of those…usually just when a cat dies. He’s supposed to stay in the cave the whole time, to receive messages from the Tribe of Endless Hunting.”

“He never leaves the cave?” Dovewing echoed, suddenly sorry for the fragile old cat imprisoned in those walls of stone and water.

“Never. Especially at night, when the reflections of stars are most vivid. So by coming out now, Stoneteller is defying his ancestors and the ancient laws of his Tribe.”

Dovewing looked down at Stoneteller, who was sitting at the edge of the pool, gazing at the mountains. She wondered what he was thinking, and why he was so angry that the Clan cats had come. Would he feel differently if he knew that Jayfeather and Dovewing had been promised the power of the stars?

What if the prophecy means that we have to protect the future of the Tribe as well as the Clans?