The Blazing Star

Chapter 15

Clear Sky headed back to his camp with his cats around him, moving easily among the trees in the starlight. Petal, who had stayed behind to look after the kits, rushed to meet him as soon as he set paw in the clearing.

“Come quick!” she mewed urgently. “It’s Alder!”

Fear gripped Clear Sky’s heart, remembering the terrible symptoms of the sickness that he had seen on the dead bird. Are my worst fears starting to come true? He rushed over to the nest Petal shared with the kits, expecting to see Alder with a bloated belly and sores all over her skin.

But when he reached the nest, all he saw was Alder lying comfortably among the moss. Birch sat beside her, stroking her tail with one paw.

“Hi, Alder, how do you feel?” Clear Sky asked.

Alder blinked up at him sleepily, seeming confused, as if she wasn’t sure where she was.

“She’s just tired,” Clear Sky meowed. “Honestly, Petal, did you have to give me a scare like that?”

The yellow tabby glared at him. “She’s not just tired!” She waved a paw in front of Alder’s face; the gray-and-white kit didn’t react. “See how she’s not focusing on me?” Petal demanded.

“Something’s wrong.”

“Didn’t I tell you?” A sneering voice spoke behind Clear Sky.

Whirling around, Clear Sky saw One Eye standing a couple of fox-lengths away from him, a mocking gleam in his eyes. Nettle, who had been left with Petal to guard the camp, stood behind him, his gaze filled with a mixture of guilt and horror.

Petal shifted suddenly to stand in front of the kits. “Stay in your nest,” she warned them.

Clear Sky shot her a glance; the conviction that something terrible was happening swelled up inside him. “What’s going on?” he demanded.

Petal couldn’t meet his gaze. Her face showed the same guilt as Nettle’s, and her ears were flattened to her head.

“What do you know that I don’t?” Clear Sky insisted, but Petal still wouldn’t answer.

Desperation pulsed through Clear Sky until he felt that every hair on his pelt must be quivering, but he faced up to One Eye boldly, determined not to let the rogue intimidate him.

He humiliated me in front of my own cats, and Thunder and Gray Wing. He killed Tom and injured Sparrow Fur… Sudden realization flooded over Clear Sky, and he glanced wildly around the clearing. Sparrow Fur! Where is she?

“What have you done with Sparrow Fur?” he asked One Eye. He was determined not to allow her to be hurt again, not when he had insisted that she should stay in the forest to recover.

One Eye let out a snort of cruel laughter. “You don’t need to worry about that stupid little kit,” he sneered.

As he spoke a meow of distress sounded from behind Clear Sky. He whirled around to see twigs and branches wedged in a solid barrier, blocking the opening in a hollow tree. He could just make out Sparrow Fur peering out of a small gap. She let out another plaintive mew.

“Clear Sky, help me!” she begged.

Clear Sky turned back to One Eye. Taking a pace forward he let his shoulder fur bristle up and his tail bush out. “Let that kit out,” he snarled menacingly. “She still hasn’t recovered properly from what you did to her. She needs food and rest, not torturing.”

One Eye looked not at all threatened by Clear Sky’s challenging stance. “You can’t tell me what to do,” he snapped. “This is my territory now.” As Clear Sky stood frozen, stunned by the outrageous claim, One Eye stepped forward in his turn until he confronted Clear Sky nose to nose. “While you were off with your stupid friends sharing tales at the four trees,” he went on, “I took real action.

These cats need protecting from the sickness, and I’m the cat to do it.”

Clear Sky glanced around at the cats who had accompanied him to the meeting. They were bunched together, sharing looks of bewilderment and fear, as if they couldn’t believe this was happening. Neither can I, Clear Sky thought grimly. But if One Eye thinks he can just stroll in here and take over my territory, he’s got another think coming.

Clear Sky didn’t want to tackle One Eye on his own. He had seen how fiercely the rogue could fight. But with his cats behind him, surely they could drive One Eye out without any trouble.

So why does he look so confident?

Letting his gaze travel over his cats again, Clear Sky wondered how much support he could expect. Petal would stay where she was to protect the kits—and it was right that she should. Quick

Water had shown her mistrust of him ever since the battle, even though she was one of the cats who had accompanied him on the journey from the mountains. But he felt he could trust Acorn Fur; she had been hardworking and enthusiastic ever since she left the moor to come and live in his camp. With a hollow feeling inside him, Clear Sky realized that he wasn’t sure about the others. Leaf and Thorn, Nettle and Snake had only recently joined his group. Snake in particular was giving him a hostile glare, as if he would join One Eye for a couple of mousetails.

A pang of regret for the friends he had lost in the great battle shook Clear Sky. Now he realized how precarious his position was.

Clear Sky tried not to let One Eye see his doubts. “Get out of here,” he meowed firmly. “Or we’ll rip your pelt off.”

One Eye didn’t move. “Don’t you remember what I said?” he sneered. “I may only have one eye, but I see everything. I watched these cats carefully when I joined your so-called group, and there’s something I noticed. Most of them don’t like you very much, Clear Sky.”

Mews of protest sounded from Petal and Acorn Fur, but before either of them could say more One

Eye rounded on them furiously. “Shut up!” Turning back to Clear Sky, he added, “And there’s something else I noticed. You don’t actually know how to keep your cats in line. Oh, yes, you think you’re being very clever, guarding territories and hiding in the forest like a coward, but what does that actually achieve?”

“I don’t want to keep my cats in line,” Clear Sky argued. “I just want to help them survive.”

One Eye rolled his single eye. “What a fool!” he exclaimed. “What a deluded fool!”

Without shifting his gaze from Clear Sky, One Eye flicked his tail to beckon Petal forward. She stepped toward him, and for the first time Clear Sky noticed that she was limping. As she approached One Eye lunged toward her, and Petal instinctively jerked away. She fell on her back, paws flailing, and Clear Sky noticed a wound in the pad of her forepaw. It was a raw circle, as if the flesh had been drawn open by a claw.

It looks just like an eye…

“She and Nettle carry my mark now,” One Eye stated proudly. “And the rest of them will too, before the night is out.”

“But what about the sickness?” Clear Sky asked, hardly able to believe the depths to which this cat’s lust for power would lead them. “There’s illness in the forest, and you want to open up a wound in every cat? Are you flea-brained?”

“Not flea-brained,” One Eye responded, baring his teeth. “Just strict. I like my cats to toe my line.” His voice became a low, threatening snarl. “It’s time for you to leave—now.”

Clear Sky stood his ground. Glancing back at his cats, he made a last, desperate attempt to rally them. “Come on! I need your help. He can’t kill all of us!”

He noticed that Acorn Fur and Thorn slid out their claws, but the rest of them didn’t move. Petal, who had struggled back onto her paws, shook her head and mewed in a hoarse voice, “No, Clear Sky. You don’t understand.”

As Clear Sky stared at her in confusion, One Eye raised his head. “Come out now!” he yowled.

At his words the undergrowth rustled and from all around the clearing cats emerged into the open: rogue cats who Clear Sky had never set eyes on before. He took in their scrawny bodies, their sharp teeth and claws, and their cold, malignant eyes. Their fur was clumped and spiky; they had rolled in mud and plant juices to disguise their scent from him and his cats, he realized, so that there would be nothing to warn them as they returned from the meeting. Every hair on Clear Sky’s pelt shivered in horror as the strangers stepped forward, surrounding him and his cats.

“Really, Clear Sky,” One Eye meowed in mockery. “You didn’t think I would move in without a few friends to back me up? Not even you would be that stupid!”

Clear Sky could see that he and his followers were badly outnumbered. If they tried to fight the rogues under One Eye’s leadership they would be torn to pieces. His heart began to race as fear throbbed through him, though he continued to face One Eye with a look of defiance.

“I told you to leave, Clear Sky,” One Eye meowed. “I’m not going to kill you. I know that you’ll suffer far more knowing that I took the leadership out of your paws because you couldn’t hold on to it.

So leave, before I have to put my claw marks on you.”

Clear Sky cast one final glance at the group of cats. My cats! They were bunched together uneasily, thoroughly cowed by the appearance of the strange rogues. Fervently he tried to send them the silent message that he wouldn’t abandon them. Somehow, I’ll find a way to come back for you.

But Snake turned his head away, and Clear Sky felt something die inside him. Do they really want my help? he asked himself.

“As for the rest of you,” One Eye continued, “you’ll stay here and take my mark. You won’t be harmed, provided you behave yourselves.”

Defeated, Clear Sky turned to go. But as he took the first paw steps, his gaze lighted on the hollow tree, and Sparrow Fur peering out helplessly from between the branches that imprisoned her.

I won’t leave her to be tortured by One Eye, Clear Sky resolved.

Letting his head droop and his tail trail along the ground, Clear Sky padded across the clearing in the direction of the hollow tree. The two strange cats nearest to it fell back to let him pass between them.

As soon as he was out of the circle of One Eye’s rogues, Clear Sky sprang forward. Darting up to the hollow tree, he tore at the branches with paws given strength from desperation. A gap opened up and Sparrow Fur wriggled through it.

“Run!” Clear Sky yowled.

He thrust the kit in front of him as One Eye let out a screech of rage and the whole gang of rogues turned to pursue him. But Clear Sky knew the forest far better than any newcomer. He showed Sparrow Fur the way between trees, under bushes, through bramble thickets, splashing for several fox-lengths up a narrow stream to break their scent. He was thankful that the young cat’s wounds had almost healed, and her strength held out, though her chest heaved with the effort of running and her breath rasped.

At last the furious shrieks and caterwauls died away behind them. Clear Sky burst out of the forest with Sparrow Fur hard on his paws. As she collapsed panting, he turned and looked back at the line of trees, where the last few leaves clung to stark, bare branches.

My home… what was my home.

Throwing back his head, Clear Sky sent up a wordless yowling, a desperate cry to any of his cats who could hear him. The sound died away into silence, and there was no response.

Clear Sky glanced down at Sparrow Fur, who met his gaze with wide, troubled eyes.

“What are we going to do, Clear Sky?” she asked.

Clear Sky took a breath to answer, but said nothing. He had nothing to say. He had lost his home and his group of cats. One Eye had defeated him.