Sign Of The Moon

Chapter 13

Dark shapes flitted around Jayfeather, and from far away he could hear the wailing of unseen cats. Who are you? What do you want from me?

But there was no answer, and the mournful sound went on and on. Gradually the roar of the waterfall replaced the distant cries, and Jayfeather became aware of soft whispering, much closer to him. The shadowy shapes faded into blackness as he woke from troubled sleep.

“Don’t worry, Lark.” Jayfeather recognized the voice of Brook’s kit Pine. “He’s blind! He won’t know we’re creeping up on him.”

Oh, won’t he?

Jayfeather tensed his muscles as he detected the pad of tiny paws on the stone floor of the cave, and heard a stifled mrrow of laughter. He waited as their scent grew stronger, and he sensed soft breath riffling the tips of his whiskers.

“Looking for something?” As he spoke, Jayfeather leaped to his paws.

Two high-pitched squeals bounced around the cave. He listened with satisfaction to the sound of paw steps skittering away.

“Mother, that weird cat scared us!”

“He’s going to eat us!”

Jayfeather’s satisfaction faded and his pelt grew hot with embarrassment. They’re only small. They didn’t mean any harm.

“Sorry!” he called out. “I wouldn’t hurt you, kits!”

He could still sense the young cats’ fear, and heard Brook’s gentle voice from the other side of the cave as she soothed them.

“Mouse dung!” he muttered.

“I wouldn’t worry.” Another voice spoke closer to him, and after a heartbeat’s thought Jayfeather recognized the voice of the prey-hunter Screech. “I saw them stalking you. They could do with a few lessons in respect.” Turning away, he added, “It’s hard for them. They’re strong and active, but they’re not allowed outside the cave at all until they become to-bes.”

Jayfeather nodded, reminding himself to apologize to Brook later. He climbed out of the dip in the cave floor where he had slept, and began to groom himself, hissing with annoyance at the downy feathers that clung to his pelt.

Give me moss any day!

“Hey, Jayfeather!” Dovewing’s excited voice broke in on his thoughts. “Crag has invited Foxleap and me to go on a border patrol.”

Jayfeather could feel how eager she was to get out of the cave and start exploring. “That’s good,” he mewed. “But be careful, and don’t forget to keep your ears open.”

Dovewing sighed. “I always do.”

Squirrelflight padded up with Brook. The two kits were behind them. Jayfeather could picture them peering at him, round-eyed, from the safety of their mother’s hindquarters.

“Brook and I are going hunting,” Squirrelflight announced.

“Stormfur is coming, too,” Brook added. “Talon and Bird will look after the kits, Jayfeather, so they shouldn’t bother you again.”

“We don’t want to stay in the cave,” Lark squeaked.

“Yeah, that blind cat might scare us again,” Pine added.

“Nonsense!” Stormfur meowed as he joined them. “You startled Jayfeather, that’s all. You should say sorry.”

“Sorry,” Pine muttered.

“We won’t do it again,” Lark mewed, then added to her brother in a whisper, “It was fun, though!”

“While we’re out,” Stormfur went on to the kits, “you can ask Talon to tell you the story of Sharptooth, and how I first came to the mountains with the cats from the Clans.”

“Yes!” Lark jumped up and down.

“That’s the best story!” Pine squealed, as both kits scurried off to where the elders made their nests.

Jayfeather was aware of an orderly bustle in the cave as the patrols gathered together and went out. No cat was giving them orders; they all seemed to know what to do and what their duties were without being told by a senior member of the Tribe.

Where’s Stoneteller? Shouldn’t he be supervising this?

But there was no sign of the Tribe’s old Healer. Jayfeather couldn’t even pick up his scent.

“Will you be okay, left behind?” Squirrelflight asked Jayfeather as her patrol was moving off.

“Yes, of course,” Jayfeather replied, wondering why she bothered to ask. No harm is going to come to me in here. He could sense Squirrelflight’s awkwardness, and wondered why she was delaying when Brook and Stormfur were already waiting beside the waterfall for their turn to take the path that led out onto the mountain.

“Jayfeather…” she began quietly after a couple of heartbeats, “have you worked out why we’re here?”

Jayfeather shook his head. “No,” he admitted. “I have no idea.”

Squirrelflight suppressed a sigh. He knew that she wanted to ask more, but just then Brook called to her from across the cavern.

“Coming!” Squirrelflight called back. “We’ll talk later,” she added to Jayfeather before she bounded away.

Once the patrols had gone, the cave fell quiet, except for the roar of the water; Jayfeather was growing so used to the sound that he hardly noticed it anymore. It’s so different from our camp, he thought. There’s always something going on there, even when the patrols are out. He went on with his grooming; before he had finished he heard the kits come bouncing back into the middle of the cavern, followed by the slower paw steps of Talon and Bird.

“Okay, we’re going to play a game,” Talon instructed, raising his voice over the excited squeaks of the kits. “This bunch of feathers is a bird.”

“What sort of bird?” Lark mewed. “A lark like me?”

“An eagle!” Pine suggested.

“It doesn’t matter what sort of bird,” Talon told them. “Let’s make it a crow, okay? And you’re going to catch it.”

“Yes!” A scuffling sound told Jayfeather that Pine had tried to pounce on the feathers already.

“Wait a moment.” Bird’s quieter voice broke in. “It’s not as easy as that. You have to creep up on the crow across this patch of stones.” Jayfeather heard the sound of pebbles sliding across the cave floor. “If you disturb one and make a noise, the crow will fly away.”

“Oh, cool!” Lark exclaimed. “I bet I can do it.”

“So can I,” Pine declared. “I’m going to be the prey-hunter.”

Leaving the kits to their game, Jayfeather crossed the cavern to the tunnel that led into the Cave of Pointed Stones. The stone closed around him as he padded forward; after no more than a few paw steps he blundered into the wall, his paws almost skidding out from under him on the damp floor.

He let out a hiss. He hated having to squeeze through the narrow passage, and found it hard to check his position by the echoing drip of water when all other sounds were muffled by the rumble of the falls. Recovering his balance, he edged forward more slowly, frustrated by the way that every paw step felt the same; he missed the forest, where the covering of moss, twigs, ferns, and grass could tell him everything he wanted to know about where he was.

At last Jayfeather sensed that the tunnel walls had opened into a larger cave. The noise of the falls was fainter here, the drips of water echoing more loudly in contrast. There was movement in the cool air against his whiskers; he knew it came from the hole in the roof where moon and starlight could enter, bringing signs from the Tribe of Endless Hunting. Tasting the air, he located Stoneteller at the far side of the cave.

“Who’s there?” the old cat growled. Before Jayfeather could reply, he added, “Oh, it’s you.”

Jayfeather padded forward, skirting the stones and pools of water until he stood in front of Stoneteller.

“Why are you here?” the Healer growled. “And don’t give me that nonsense about wanting your young cats to gain experience. You can be honest with me.”

Jayfeather chose his words carefully. “I was told to come.”

To his surprise, Stoneteller didn’t ask who had summoned him. “We don’t need your help,” he insisted. “There’s nothing you can do.”

“You haven’t chosen a successor,” Jayfeather challenged him. “Is that because you don’t believe your Tribe will survive without you?”

Stoneteller let out a contemptuous snort. “Their survival doesn’t depend on me. Even while I’m alive, I can do nothing to help them. Nor can our ancestors,” he added bitterly.

Jayfeather knew that the old cat felt he had been betrayed by the Tribe of Endless Hunting, who had refused to guide him when the intruders came to the mountains. “The Tribe has to be given a chance to survive!” he protested. “It would be too easy to give up the first time something goes wrong.”

“It’s not the first time!” Stoneteller snapped. “Have you forgotten how so many of us were hunted like prey by Sharptooth? Our endless struggle against the cold and snow? The danger from eagles that means half the Tribe must stand guard while the other half hunts? We could catch twice as much prey if there were no eagles. Queens can’t even nurse their kits in peace; they have to go straight out on patrol again.” He lashed his tail. “Cats do not belong here!”

While Stoneteller was speaking, Jayfeather became aware of a faint light coming from above, illuminating one wall of the cave, slick with water, and one tapering column of stone that rose from the cave floor to meet another spike jutting from the roof, with no more than a mouse-length between their two points. If he could see, and he wasn’t asleep, that meant only one thing…

A shiver tingled through Jayfeather from ears to paws as he made out the shape of Rock in a beam of moonlight. The ancient, hairless cat stood with his head bowed. Then he looked up and turned his sightless eyes on Jayfeather.

“We do belong here,” he rasped. “This was my home once, before the cats lived by the lake, before they came back here to start again.”

Stoneteller didn’t react; he had no idea of the ancient visitor to his cave. Jayfeather opened his jaws to ask a question, but before he could speak Rock went on.

“I was the very first Stoneteller, though my legacy was long forgotten by the time my kin left here to find the lake. If the Tribe of Rushing Water leaves, it will not be forever. Cats must live here always.”

“You were the first Stoneteller?” Jayfeather whispered, but the vision was already fading and darkness covered his eyes once more.

“Of course not.” Stoneteller sounded puzzled. “I was chosen by my mentor.”

“Then you have to choose another one!”

“Why?” Stoneteller shot back.

Jayfeather scraped his claws against the wet rock in frustration. “Because cats must always live in the mountains.”

“Cats do live in the mountains,” Stoneteller responded dryly. “And more successfully than us, it seems. That’s why we have to waste time patrolling every day, to keep the invaders away from what we can catch.”

“But those aren’t the right cats!” Jayfeather protested. “The Tribe of Endless Hunting didn’t bring them here.”

Stoneteller snorted dismissively. “I just want to be left in peace,” the old cat muttered. He sounded old and very tired. “All that I was proud of has gone. The time of the Tribe is over. When I die, my Tribemates will leave the mountains and find other homes where they will be safe.”

As the old cat’s words faded into silence, Jayfeather’s ears were filled with the sound of roaring water and his vision became washed with gray, splashed with white foam. He was inside the waterfall! For a heartbeat he froze, waiting to feel himself crashing down with it, tossed in the torrent like a fallen leaf. But he could still feel his paws standing on the solid floor of the cave.

Then he choked back a yowl of horror. All around him, the cascade of dark water was full of cats, their paws and tails flailing helplessly, their jaws stretching wide in a soundless screech. They fell down, down, down, into a whirlpool of darkness and foam, and vanished.

But…I know these cats! Jayfeather started to shake. There’s Yellowfang…and Crookedstar…and Lionheart… Is StarClan being destroyed?

Mistystar…and Kestrelwing…and the Tribe cats, too. Brook…Crag…

“No!” Jayfeather choked as he spotted Firestar, the ThunderClan leader reduced to a scrap of orange fur tossed in the crashing torrent.

Dustpelt…Mousewhisker…Brambleclaw…

All his Clanmates, all the cats of the Tribe, falling, falling, to be consumed in water and blackness.

Jayfeather let out a screech and sprang forward as he saw Lionblaze carried past him, his claws outstretched to snag his brother’s pelt and drag him to safety. Instead, darkness slammed down over his vision once more and he found himself back in the Cave of Pointed Stones. Dazed with terror, he stumbled forward and crashed into one of the spikes of stone. His feet shot out from under him and he fell on his side in a pool of water.

Stoneteller began to speak, but Jayfeather wasn’t listening. Scrambling to his paws, he fled, and this time managed to get himself into the tunnel. He bounced off the narrow walls until he emerged in the cavern, gasping. The cave was cool and gray around him, silver light filtering in through the screen of water. A throng of cats were milling around restlessly, or slumped near the cave wall, and for a moment Jayfeather thought that the patrols had come back.

Then, as he tried to steady his breathing and quiet his pounding heart, he realized that he was looking at the cats in the cave.

Is this another vision?

As he hesitated at the mouth of the tunnel, a young white she-cat raced across the floor of the cave and skidded to a halt beside him. Her jaws gaped with astonishment.

“Jay’s Wing!”

Jayfeather stared at her. “Half Moon!”

The cats in the cave started to look vaguely familiar as his gaze flickered from one half-remembered face to the next. His thoughts flew back to when he had emerged from the tunnels below ThunderClan in the time of the ancient cats, who had lived by the lake seasons upon seasons ago, whose paw prints dimpled the path that led down to the Moonpool.

While I was with them, they decided to leave because it was too dangerous to live by the lake. I told them they could find a home in the mountains…and now they’re here!

Half Moon was still gazing at him, her green eyes stretched wide as two small moons. “You disappeared when we set out on our journey from the lake. I thought you didn’t want to be with me—with us, anymore.”

Jayfeather fought back panic, while inside his head thoughts skittered like a mouse trying to escape from a hunting patrol. “I stayed behind. I was scared,” he blurted out. “But when you’d all gone, I was lonely. I decided to follow you.”

Half Moon blinked, and her eyes were clouded. “You…you didn’t even say good-bye. I thought I’d never see you again.”

Before he could answer, Jayfeather spotted Stone Song, the powerful gray tabby tom who had led the ancient cats away from the lake. He was standing in the middle of the cavern with Jagged Lightning by his side, close enough for Jayfeather to hear what they were talking about.

“I’m still convinced that coming here was the right thing to do,” Stone Song meowed. “Back where we came from, we were losing too many cats. Badgers, Twolegs—”

“That’s all very well,” Jagged Lightning interrupted with a flick of his black-and-white tail. “But are we any better off here? We’re all hungry and exhausted, and I’ve never been so cold in my entire life. It was all Owl Feather and I could do to get our kits here. And Dark Whiskers didn’t even make it,” he added with a note of challenge in his voice. “If we’d stayed by the lake, he wouldn’t have been blown off a ledge in the middle of an ice storm!”

Stone Song bowed his head. “Perhaps we should be grateful that we lost only one cat,” he murmured.

“Try telling that to Shy Fawn!” Jagged Lightning snapped. “She’s carrying Dark Whiskers’s kits! How is she supposed to bring them up in this icy excuse for a den?”

Stone Song looked blank, as if he didn’t know what to say. He was saved from the rest of the conversation when Rising Moon hurried up to him and began speaking urgently, waving her tail toward the cats who were lying beside the cave walls.

“Chasing Clouds just came in with some prey,” she meowed. “But Shy Fawn is refusing to eat. Cloudy Sun’s pads are bleeding, and Running Horse says that he’s going back to the lake once the storm lifts.”

“You see?” Jagged Lightning flattened his ears. “Stone Song, you have to admit that this is a disaster.”

Stone Song let out a harassed sigh. “I won’t,” he retorted. “Rising Moon, as soon as the storm is over, can you go out and look for some dock leaves for Cloudy Sun’s pads? I’ll talk to Running Horse; there’s no question of an elder wandering about these mountains on his own, and deep down he knows it. As for Shy Fawn, we have to give her time to grieve.”

Jagged Lightning began to reply, but just then an excited yowl sounded from the other side of the cavern. “Jay’s Wing!”

Jayfeather spotted Fish Leap, the young tabby tom who had befriended him by the lake; he bounded across the cave and butted Jayfeather in the shoulder with his head. “Where have you been?” he demanded. “We thought we’d lost you.”

“I…er…I sort of changed my mind.”

Jayfeather realized that Stone Song had spotted him and was heading in his direction, with Jagged Lightning and Rising Moon at his heels. Whispering Breeze came running up to see what was going on, her silver tabby pelt glimmering in the light from the cave entrance. The other cats fell silent and stared at Jayfeather until his pelt felt as if it were going to crawl off his skin.

“Isn’t it wonderful?” Half Moon burst out. “Jay’s Wing came back!”

Stone Song’s gaze traveled over Jayfeather, his eyes narrowed in suspicion. “How did you get here? The journey was hard enough for all of us together. One cat alone would find it far harder.”

“Does it matter?” Fish Leap mewed. “He’s here now.”

Jayfeather shrugged. “I followed your trail for most of the way, and guessed the rest.”

“And how did you get into the cave?” Jagged Lightning growled. “Some cat should have seen you. I don’t like all this sneaking around.”

“I wasn’t sneaking!” Jayfeather retorted, feeling his neck fur beginning to bristle. “If you were all too tired to notice me, that’s not my fault. I thought I’d explore these smaller caves,” he added, eager to change the subject. “They might be useful for something.”

Jayfeather noticed that Half Moon had moved to stand closer to his side, as if she was ready to defend him; her sweet scent tickled his nose, and he remembered how empty he had felt when he had returned to his own time through the tunnels, and left her behind.

“Well?” Whispering Breeze gave him a nudge with her shoulder. “What did you find in the caves?”

“Er…pointed stones in the one behind me. Lots of them,” Jayfeather replied. “And pools of water. It’s not a good place to sleep, because there’s a hole in the roof.”

Stone Song grunted. “What about the other cave? Could we use that for shelter?”

Jayfeather shot a swift glance at the passage that led to Stoneteller’s den. “Oh…er…that one’s fine,” he reported. If Stoneteller sleeps there, it must at least be watertight.

Whispering Breeze turned her blue gaze on Stone Song. “You’re surely not thinking of staying here?” she asked, shocked. “Not for any longer than we have to?”

Stone Song angled his ears across the cave to where Chasing Clouds was grooming ice out of his gray-and-white pelt. “You can see that the storm isn’t over yet,” he meowed. “We may as well be comfortable while we wait.”

“Comfortable?” Whispering Breeze’s neck fur started to bristle. “You’re crazy if you think any cat could be comfortable here.”

“We should never have left the lake.” A soft voice, ragged with grief and exhaustion, came from the darkness at the edge of the cave, and Broken Shadows limped into view. Jayfeather felt a rush of pity. The mother of Fallen Leaves was even more gaunt than when he last saw her, her orange pelt thin and her amber eyes dull.

“We should never have left,” she repeated. “What if Fallen Leaves finds his way out of the tunnels, and we’re not there?”

Half Moon padded over to her and drew her tail gently down Broken Shadows’s side. “That won’t happen,” she murmured.

“You don’t know that!” Broken Shadows hissed. “He’ll think I abandoned him. He’ll be all alone!” She wrenched herself away from Half Moon and rounded on Jayfeather. “This is all your fault! You cast the final stone! You made me leave my son behind!”