Skyclan’s Destiny

Chapter 25

Leafstar dozed in her den until sunhigh. By then the shower was over and the sky had cleared; the rocks steamed as the hot sunlight sucked up the rain. Looking down into the gorge, Leafstar saw that most of the cats had returned from patrol. Sharpclaw and Egg were sitting together near the fresh-kill pile, talking with their heads close together as they ate. Stick and Cora were with them, too.

Egg seems to be settling in well, Leafstar thought.

She ran lightly down the trail into the gorge and jumped onto the Rockpile. “Let all cats old enough to catch their own prey join here beneath the Rockpile for a Clan meeting,” she yowled.

Most of the Clan were already there, glancing up curiously at Leafstar poised on top of the rocks. Tangle and Lichenfur emerged from their nests, their fur rumpled with sleep. Echosong appeared from her den and padded up to listen.

“We have a new Clanmate,” Leafstar announced, angling her ears to where Egg sat beside Sharpclaw. “Egg has decided to join us, and will become an apprentice today.” With her tail she beckoned Egg forward until he stood alone at the foot of the Rockpile. “From this day forward,” she went on, “this apprentice will be known as Eggpaw. Sharpclaw, you are a brave and skillful warrior, and I know you will pass on these qualities to your apprentice.”

Sharpclaw showed no surprise in being named Egg’s mentor. He dipped his head to Leafstar, then padded over to Egg and touched noses with him.

“Eggpaw! Eggpaw!” the Clan cats yowled, crowding around the new apprentice to congratulate him. Sparrowpelt and Rockshade looked particularly pleased, pressing up close to him and burying their muzzles in his shoulder fur.

Leafstar spotted Billystorm on the edge of the crowd; he had called out Egg’s name to welcome him, but he still looked slightly doubtful. Leafstar reminded herself to ask what was worrying him when she had the chance.

As the yowls of welcome died down, Egg looked up at Leafstar where she still stood on the Rockpile. “Er… Leafstar, Eggpaw’s an okay name, but if you don’t mind I’d like to stay as Egg. Stick said that’s what he and his friends did.”

Leafstar’s tail-tip twitched. She didn’t like the way that Stick and the other newcomers didn’t think that warrior names were important, and she was even more annoyed that they were spreading their opinion throughout the Clan. Names matter. They’re part of who we are as warriors.

The Clan waited in tense silence for their leader to make her decision, while Egg gazed up at her, blinking cheerfully as if he had no idea that he had said anything wrong. With an effort Leafstar hid her irritation. There was no point in putting Egg off right at the beginning of his apprenticeship. Maybe when he’s been with us for a while he’ll be ready for a warrior name.

“If that’s what you want,” she replied evenly. She was relieved when none of the Clan cats argued, though she saw Snookpaw lean over to say something to Billystorm, and she caught the young cat’s murmur. “I think Egg should be proud to have his apprentice name!”

Leafstar’s paws were itching; she jumped down from the Rockpile and made her way over to Sharpclaw and Egg as the crowd around them broke up. “I missed out on hunting this morning,” she meowed. “Do you want to come out with me now? Ebonyclaw, you and Frecklepaw can join us.”

“Good idea,” Sharpclaw replied, while Egg kneaded the ground in front of him in excitement. “Egg will get an idea of how SkyClan cats hunt.”

Leafstar headed for the bottom of the trail, weaving a path through Fallowfern’s kits, who were wrestling together near the foot of the Rockpile. But before she had gone more than a few paw steps, she heard Echosong calling her name, and waited for the medicine cat to catch up to her.

“Can Frecklepaw help me find herbs this afternoon?” Echosong puffed. “There’s no cat in the medicine den right now, and I want to build up my supplies for when Clovertail has her kits.”

Trying to ignore the eager light in Frecklepaw’s eyes, Leafstar shook her head. “Echosong, we’ve already discussed this,” she meowed. “Frecklepaw is Ebonyclaw’s apprentice, and she needs to keep up with her patrol duties.”

“But I need an apprentice,” Echosong protested, her ears flicking back in frustration.

“Well, then, wait until Fallowfern’s kits are old enough,” Leafstar suggested. “It won’t be long.”

“What?” Plumkit sat up suddenly, twitching her tail away from Rabbitkit. “I don’t want to be a medicine cat!”

“Neither do I,” Nettlekit agreed, scrambling to his paws from where he had been rolling Creekkit in the dust. “It’s stinky and yucky!”

“And boring!” Rabbitkit added.

“We’re going to be warriors,” Creekkit announced, scrambling to his paws and drawing his lips back in an attempt at a fierce snarl. “I’m going to be Clan leader.”

“No you’re not, I am!” Plumkit hurled herself at her brother.

Creekkit dodged and ran off; his littermates followed him, squealing at the tops of their voices. Leafstar sighed. None of them will ever make a medicine cat, she admitted to herself.

Echosong dug her claws into the ground while her gaze traveled around the listening Clan. Leafstar realized she was angry that most of the Clan had heard the argument, and found herself struggling hard not to show it.

“We’ll discuss this later,” the medicine cat hissed. “I don’t want to hold up your hunting patrol.”

Leafstar felt close to despair as she watched Echosong stalk away. We were so close once.

As the patrol headed up the trail and into the woods, Frecklepaw lagged behind. “I wanted to stay and help Echosong,” she complained.

“Well, you can’t.” Ebonyclaw sounded cross and frustrated, and Leafstar couldn’t blame her. “You’re my apprentice, and you need to train.”

“I don’t want to have a stupid training session.”

Leafstar guessed that Frecklepaw hadn’t meant her mentor to hear her last muttered comment, but the black she-cat’s ears were sharp.

“I’m not too keen, either!” she snapped, giving her apprentice a sharp flick over the ear with her tail. “Now stop moaning and concentrate!”

Leafstar spotted Sharpclaw rolling his eyes. “Both of you need to concentrate,” he meowed. “Carry on like that, and you’ll scare away all the prey between here and the Twolegplace.”

Ebonyclaw lashed her tail but said nothing. Relieved that she didn’t have to step in to end the quarrel, Leafstar led the way deeper into the woodland, picking up the strong scent of squirrel.

It was Sharpclaw who spotted it first. “Over there,” he whispered, angling his ears to where the squirrel was crossing a clearing just ahead of them in a series of short bounces. “Aren’t we lucky?” He glanced sideways at Ebonyclaw. “There’s still some prey left. Maybe it’s deaf. Egg, do you think you can catch it?”

Egg’s eyes gleamed. “I’ll try.”

Frecklepaw gave her fur a bad-tempered shake. “He’s only just been made an apprentice!” she grumbled.

Egg dropped into a crouch and began to creep forward, using tufts of long grass as cover. But he had forgotten to check the wind direction; the breeze was blowing directly from him to the squirrel. Suddenly the creature sat upright, then raced for the nearest tree, its bushy tail waving in the air.

Letting out a screech of frustration, Egg erupted out of the grass. He hurtled across the clearing, cutting down the squirrel’s lead, but he was still several paw steps behind when it reached the tree and began to climb. With a massive SkyClan leap, Egg hurled himself up the tree behind it, and fastened his jaws in its tail before it could reach the safety of the branches. Egg and the squirrel fell to the ground together; the squirrel struggled frantically for a couple of heartbeats, then went limp.

Egg rose to his paws with his prey dangling in front of him. “Was that okay?” he panted through a mouthful of fur.

“Great catch!” Sharpclaw declared, padding over to him and giving the squirrel a sniff.

Leafstar noticed that Ebonyclaw was nodding in agreement, and Frecklepaw’s eyes were wide with awe, her ill temper forgotten.

“Well done,” Leafstar meowed as they padded over to join Egg at the foot of the tree. “But next time, remember to check the wind. If you’d worked your way around so your scent wasn’t carried to your prey, you wouldn’t have had to chase it like that.”

Egg’s eyes were still shining with triumph. “I’ll remember,” he promised, dropping the squirrel at Leafstar’s paws.

“When we’ve caught some prey we bury it,” Sharpclaw explained, scratching busily at the soft ground beneath the tree with his hind paws. “Then we come back and fetch it later, when we’ve caught enough to take back to camp.”

“I can see a pigeon!” Frecklepaw hissed in an excited whisper as Sharpclaw dropped the squirrel into the hole and began scraping earth back over it. “Can I try to catch it?”

Ebonyclaw nodded, and her apprentice slipped away into the undergrowth. Leafstar spotted the pigeon: a fine plump bird pecking among the roots of a nearby oak tree. Frecklepaw was carefully skirting the clearing to approach from the right direction; Leafstar guessed she was extra eager to make a catch of her own to prove she was just as good as Egg.

As Sharpclaw finished burying the squirrel and dropped a beech husk on the spot to mark it, Leafstar caught sight of Frecklepaw peering out of a clump of fern next to the oak tree. But something alerted the pigeon; it fluttered upward to land on a branch.

“Bad luck!” Ebonyclaw muttered.

But Frecklepaw hadn’t given up. She emerged from the ferns and bunched her muscles to take a leap into the tree, on the side away from the pigeon. Though Leafstar didn’t think she could possibly have startled the bird, it flew off into another tree before she could get close enough to pounce. Frecklepaw followed with a neat jump from the end of a branch onto a fork in the next tree.

“Come on.” Leafstar waved her tail to beckon her patrol. “Let’s see what happens.”

Frecklepaw was gradually drawing closer to the pigeon. Leafstar’s pelt prickled with excitement as she watched the apprentice’s agile progress through the branches. Ebonyclaw had taught her well. Even so, Leafstar wasn’t sure that Frecklepaw would be able to manage the kill on her own. The pigeon was large, and becoming more and more flustered as Frecklepaw drew closer. With every heartbeat Leafstar expected it to fly off.

“Spread out,” she whispered to the rest of the patrol. “Climb trees so that we’re surrounding the pigeon.”

Sharpclaw, Egg, and Ebonyclaw headed off in different directions. Leafstar chose the tree next to the one where the pigeon had finally settled on a branch. Frecklepaw was edging closer, prowling along another branch a tail-length higher.

Leafstar had just started to climb when a terrified yowl split the silence of the woods. “Watch out! Get away from there!”

The pigeon flew off, vanishing into a more distant clump of trees. “Mouse dung!” Frecklepaw exclaimed, staring after it indignantly.

Leafstar dropped to the ground again to see Egg hurtling across the forest floor, his voice still raised in a loud wail. He charged into Ebonyclaw as she braced herself to jump onto the trunk of a fallen tree, bundling her away from it. “There’s a fox! A fox!” he screeched.

“Get off me!” Ebonyclaw pushed Egg away and scrambled to her paws, spitting in fury.

Leafstar paused for a heartbeat to taste the air. She picked up the SkyClan border markings a few tail-lengths ahead, and sure enough, a strong scent of young fox.

“How did you know about that?” she asked Egg, padding over to where the new apprentice had crouched in the grass and was staring around fearfully.

Egg staggered to his paws, trying to force his bristling fur to lie flat. “My den is on the other side of that tree,” he explained. “At least, it was until the fox came.”

Leafstar nodded worriedly. “Thanks for warning us,” she meowed. “We don’t want a fox in our territory. We’ll have to organize a patrol to hunt it down, and chase it away if we have to.”

“No need,” Sharpclaw assured her, strolling over to her side. “The fox has gone now.”

“You knew about it?” Leafstar asked, baffled. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

Sharpclaw shrugged. “There was no point. I knew the trail led away from our territory.”

“That’s not what you told me!” To Leafstar’s amazement, Egg pushed himself between her and her deputy, gazing at his mentor with troubled blue eyes. “You said that the fox had come to live here permanently, and I wouldn’t be safe if I stayed here on my own.”

A thorn of suspicion stabbed Leafstar. “When did he say this?” she asked Egg.

“A few days ago, when he came to find me to warn me about the fox,” Egg replied, looking confused. “He was right, wasn’t he? I mean, foxes won’t hurt me, now that I live with the Clan.”

Leafstar’s suspicions hardened into certainty. Sharpclaw lied to me! And he lied to Egg about the danger from the fox, just to get him to join the Clan.

With an effort, she fought back her shock and anger. She didn’t want to let the others know what Sharpclaw had done.

“Foxes are very unlikely to attack the gorge,” she assured Egg. “And even if they do, we have plans in place to defend ourselves. There’s nothing for you to worry about.”

“That’s great!” Egg puffed with relief.

Leafstar glanced at Ebonyclaw and Frecklepaw. The apprentice had clambered down from the branches and was sniffing around the fallen tree. “The fox scent is quite stale,” she reported to Ebonyclaw with a bewildered look.

Her mentor looked just as puzzled, while Sharpclaw was standing by with defiance in his green eyes, as if he was challenging Leafstar to say something about his plot.

“Ebonyclaw,” Leafstar meowed, “take Frecklepaw and Egg and see if you can find another pigeon. No, Sharpclaw,” she added, as her deputy was about to move off with the rest of the patrol, “you stay here. I want a word with you.”

She kept silent until the other three cats had disappeared among the trees. Sharpclaw gave his shoulder fur a couple of nonchalant licks as he waited for her to speak. Once she was sure they couldn’t be overheard, Leafstar turned on him angrily. “You can’t recruit Clan members with lies!”

Sharpclaw met her gaze steadily. “It wasn’t a lie. There was a fox here, and Egg will be much safer with the Clan. Look at him,” he added, waving his tail in the direction the cream-colored tom had taken. “Long legs, powerful haunches. He’s obviously one of us.”

“True.” Leafstar twitched her ears. She wondered what other secrets her deputy was keeping from her; suddenly she remembered what Billystorm had told her about Sharpclaw and Stick roaming through the Twolegplace at night. Can that possibly be true?

With a shock like a plunge into icy water, Leafstar realized that she no longer trusted her deputy.

“Is that all?” Sharpclaw interrupted her thoughts. He looked quite cheerful now, as if he was satisfied that he had explained himself successfully. “If so, I’ll go catch up with the others.”

He bounded off. Leafstar watched him, shaking her head sadly. He doesn’t even see that he’s done anything wrong. She resented his secrecy and the way he had manipulated Egg, yet she had to admit that the new apprentice would be a valuable addition to the Clan. He had natural talent, and seemed like a quick learner. Maybe it doesn’t matter how Egg was persuaded to join us. SkyClan is obviously where he’s meant to be.

The sun was starting to go down, filling the forest with red-gold light as the patrol made its way back to camp. Frecklepaw was delighted that she’d managed to catch another pigeon, and staggered along with it proudly. Ebonyclaw was carrying two mice, while Egg had caught a sparrow and Sharpclaw a blackbird.

When they were almost at the gorge, Leafstar set down her own prey, a couple of shrews. “Sharpclaw, can you manage to carry these back?” she asked. “I’ll go dig up Egg’s squirrel and follow you down.”

Sharpclaw gave her a brisk nod, and managed to get his jaws around the extra prey. Leafstar padded through the trees until she reached the spot where Sharpclaw had buried the squirrel, spotted the beech husk marker, and began to dig. As she was shaking damp earth off the fresh-kill she heard a rustle in the undergrowth, and Echosong came into view, with a bundle of herbs in her mouth. She looked tired; her pelt was ungroomed and its white patches were grubby.

A pang of sympathy shook Leafstar. “I’ll get you some help,” she promised when she had greeted Echosong. “Maybe Shrewtooth would like to take a break from his warrior duties.”

Echosong dropped her burden and stalked forward, tension in every line of her body. “Shrewtooth has never shown any interest in being a medicine cat,” she mewed bitterly. “But Frecklepaw obviously wants to change her apprenticeship!”

Leafstar sighed. “We’ve discussed this. We can’t have a daylight-warrior as our medicine cat.”

“We could find a way to make it work,” Echosong argued. “It’s not as if my bones are creaking with age. I plan on being around for a long time yet!”

Warmth flooded through Leafstar as she felt her old friendship with the medicine cat beginning to revive. “Good. I’m very glad,” she murmured, touching Echosong’s ear lightly with her nose.

Carrying the squirrel, she headed for the camp again. Echosong retrieved her bundle of herbs and padded by her side. Near the edge of the wood they came upon a sunlit tree trunk overgrown with grass and fern.

“Let’s rest for a bit,” Leafstar suggested, letting the squirrel fall.

Echosong put down her herbs next to the fresh-kill and joined Leafstar as she stretched out in the patch of warmth, enjoying the fresh green scent of the undergrowth.

“How’s Billystorm?” the medicine cat asked.

Leafstar felt her pads prickle at the cautious note in her friend’s voice. “He’s fine. Why do you ask?”

Echosong didn’t meet her gaze. “I think you ought to know,” she began, patting at a grass stem with outstretched paw. “Cats are beginning to talk.”

“What about?” Leafstar meowed.

“You and Billystorm. You’re obviously very… close.”

“He’s a good warrior!” Leafstar pointed out. She felt a burst of excitement. It felt so good to be able to talk about Billystorm to a friend. “We… we have a real connection,” she confessed. “He seems to think the same way I do, and when he’s not here, I feel… empty.”

“Yes, he’s a great Clanmate,” Echosong agreed, still with her gaze fixed on the waving stem. “We’re lucky to have him. But… Leafstar, you need to be careful not to show favoritism toward the kitty… daylight-warriors.”

“This isn’t favoritism!” Leafstar protested. “I… I want Billystorm and me to become mates.”

Her heart beat faster as she spoke her most secret hope aloud; but it was the truth.

Echosong turned to her, her eyes wide with shock. “But you can’t! Not now, with things so tense between the full warriors and the daylight-warriors. At the very least, you and Billystorm ought to wait until things are easier.”

If they ever are, Leafstar thought. I don’t want to wait, she added to herself, aware that she sounded like a mutinous apprentice or an impatient kit.

“I can cope,” she replied shortly to the medicine cat. “That shouldn’t make any difference to me and Billystorm.”

“Besides,” Echosong went on as if Leafstar hadn’t spoken, “it could be difficult if you had kits. I know that you have a deputy and a medicine cat to help you look after the Clan, but what if there was a battle?”

“Who said anything about kits?” Leafstar asked. “You’re being mouse-brained. It’s far too early to be thinking about that.”

“No, it’s not.” Echosong rose to her paws so that she was standing over Leafstar. “You have to stop thinking about Billystorm in that way, right now! You have a different destiny, one that involves the future of the whole Clan.” Her voice softened and her deep green gaze glowed with sympathy. “And it is a path that you must walk alone.”