The Fourth Apprentice

Chapter 6

Dovepaw followed Lionblaze through the thorn tunnel and into the clearing just outside the camp. Is he angry with me as well? she wondered.

Lionblaze halted in the shade of a hazel thicket at the edge of the clearing and turned to face his apprentice. “Tell me what you can hear,” he mewed.

Dovepaw was startled. Was this her punishment? “Waves lapping at the edge of the lake,” she replied. “And the dawn patrol is on its way back.” Brightening up a little, she added, “Berrynose trod on a thistle earlier. He was trying to balance on three paws while he pulled the prickles out with his teeth.”

“Was he now?” Lionblaze murmured. “And where did this happen?”

“On the WindClan border, near the stepping-stones across the stream.”

As Dovepaw spoke, the bracken at the other side of the clearing parted, and Dustpelt led his patrol into the open. Rosepetal, Foxtail, and Berrynose followed him; the cream-colored warrior was limping.

“Hey, Berrynose!” Lionblaze called. “What happened to you?”

Berrynose didn’t reply, except for heaving a long sigh.

“He stepped on a thistle,” Dustpelt snapped. “You would think no cat ever had a thorn in his paw before.”

Lionblaze was silent until the patrol had vanished into the tunnel. Then he turned back to Dovepaw. Her fur prickled under the intensity of his gaze.

“Wait here,” he ordered.

Dovepaw crouched down as he padded across the clearing and followed the patrol into the tunnel. Her belly was churning uncomfortably. I don’t understand what all this is about!

A few heartbeats later, Lionblaze returned; Dovepaw stiffened when she saw that Jayfeather was with him. Does Lionblaze think that I’m sick, too? Does he think I need a medicine cat?

“This had better be important,” Jayfeather grumbled as he crossed the clearing beside Lionblaze. “I’m in the middle of making a yarrow poultice.”

“It is important,” Lionblaze assured him, halting in front of Dovepaw. “I think she’s the one.”

“One what?” Dovepaw’s nervousness made her voice sharp. “Don’t talk about me like I’m not here.”

Lionblaze ignored her. “She hears things,” he explained to Jayfeather. “Not from StarClan. I mean from really far away.” Turning to Dovepaw, he added, “Tell Jayfeather about the brown animals blocking the stream.”

Reluctantly Dovepaw repeated the story she had told to her Clanmates around the fresh-kill pile. When she had finished she waited for Jayfeather to make fun of her like the others. Why is Lionblaze making me go through all this again?

Jayfeather was silent for a moment; when he spoke it was to Lionblaze. “Do you think she’s telling the truth?”

Dovepaw’s frustration spilled over. Before Lionblaze could reply, she sprang to her paws and confronted Jayfeather. “I don’t understand why every cat thinks I’m making this up! There are animals blocking the stream; are you telling me that you can’t hear them?”

Jayfeather answered her with another question. “Do you just hear them?”

Dovepaw shook her head; then she remembered that Jayfeather couldn’t see her. “No, I know what they look like, too.” Confusion swept over her. “I mean, I can’t really see them, not like they’re in front of me. But—but I know what they look like. They’re brown, with stiff fur and flat tails. Oh, and they have big front teeth, which they use to cut the trees and branches.”

“She saw Berrynose treading on a thistle, too,” Lionblaze added. “While his patrol was at the other end of the WindClan border.”

Jayfeather’s whiskers twitched. “So, you saw him and heard him,” he mused. “Anything else? Did you feel his pain?”

“No,” Dovepaw replied. “But I saw him stumble, and I heard him complain about the thorns in his pad. And I knew he was trying to pull them out with his teeth.”

“That doesn’t sound like messages from StarClan,” Jayfeather remarked, turning to his brother. “It’s more as if she can see and hear things that other cats can’t.”

“We need to test her,” Lionblaze meowed.

“Do you mean I’m different from other cats?” Dovepaw asked, her brain whirling. Couldn’t all cats tell what was happening around the territory? How did they know when trouble was coming, then? She felt her fur beginning to fluff up in panic. “Is there something wrong with me?”

“No,” Lionblaze assured her, giving her a calming touch on her shoulder with the tip of his tail. “It—it means you’re special.”

“Can Ivypaw sense the same things?” Jayfeather asked.

Dovepaw shrugged. “We’ve never spoken about it. But…maybe not.” Now that she thought about it, she had always been the one who commented on things happening far away, not her sister. A worm of fear crept into her belly. I thought every cat could see and hear the same way I can. I don’t want to be the only one.

“We need to test her out,” Lionblaze repeated. “Is that okay?” he added quickly as Dovepaw began to bristle up again.

She met his amber gaze, aware that something had changed in the last few moments. Lionblaze was no longer just her mentor, teaching her things and telling her what to do. Instead, his eyes held respect, perhaps even awe.

Weird, she thought. “I’m fine with being tested,” she meowed. Let’s just get it over with, and then maybe life can get back to normal.

“I’m going to go off somewhere and do something,” Lionblaze told her. “When I get back, I want you to tell me what I did.”

Dovepaw shrugged again. “Okay.”

Without another word, Lionblaze dashed off into the trees, heading toward the WindClan border. Dovepaw felt a bit strange being left alone in the clearing with Jayfeather. She didn’t know the medicine cat like she knew the warriors, though she was well aware of his sharp tongue. But he didn’t seem inclined to talk; he just crouched down with his paws tucked under him, so Dovepaw let her attention wander out into the forest.

Gradually she made sense of the confusion of noise that poured from the trees. A ShadowClan patrol was investigating the scent of a fox near the border; RiverClan warriors were making a fuss about the sticky mud at the edge of the shrunken lake, where Mistyfoot was scolding an apprentice. And farther away, at the very edge of her senses, one of the big brown animals was adding another piece of wood to the blockage in the stream.

She jumped when Jayfeather spoke. “Can you tell what Lionblaze is doing yet?”

Dovepaw swiveled her ears in the direction Lionblaze had gone, toward the WindClan border. But there was no sign of her mentor there. Where could he have gone? She investigated the abandoned Twoleg nest and the training clearing, where she picked up the sounds of Cinderheart and Ivypaw practicing battle moves. Still no Lionblaze.

Dovepaw focused her senses on the edge of the lake. Yes! There he is! She could hear him and scent him, heading down the bank to the pebbly lakeshore. Did he think he would be able to trick me if he doubled back?

Lionblaze’s paw steps thudded on the dried mud. Pausing, he glanced around, then bounded over to a lump of battered wood and started dragging it onto the pebbles. Dovepaw could hear them rasping and rolling as Lionblaze tugged the wood higher. When he had pulled it all the way up to the grass, he pulled a tendril of bramble out of a nearby thicket and laid it over the wood.

“Lionblaze, what are you doing?” Dovepaw heard Sandstorm’s voice and spotted the ginger she-cat appearing around the edge of the thicket, with Leafpool, Briarpaw, and Bumblepaw just behind her. All four cats were carrying bundles of moss.

“Oh, hi, Sandstorm.” Lionblaze sounded startled. “I’m…uh…just trying an experiment.”

“Well, don’t let me interrupt you.” Sandstorm seemed puzzled as she waved her tail and led the two apprentices out onto the mud, heading for the water in the distance.

When Sandstorm had gone, Lionblaze ran back through the trees and arrived, panting, a few moments later. “Well?” he gasped. “Where did I go and what did I do?”

“You tried to trick me, didn’t you?” Dovepaw began; she felt so self-conscious that every hair on her pelt was prickling. “You set off toward WindClan, but then you went down to the lake. And you found a piece of wood…”

As she went on, she saw Jayfeather listening with his head to one side, his ears pricked. He didn’t speak until she had finished. “Was she right?”

“Yes, every detail,” Lionblaze replied.

Suddenly the air around the three cats seemed to crackle with things unsaid, as if a greenleaf storm was about to break. Dovepaw drew a shaky breath.

“It’s no big deal,” she protested. “I thought every cat could tell what was going on, even if it’s not right in front of us. We all have good hearing and sensitive whiskers, right?”

“Not that sensitive,” Lionblaze meowed.

“Listen.” Jayfeather leaned forward with an intensity in his sightless blue eyes. “There is a prophecy, Dovepaw,” he began. “There will be three, kin of your kin, who will hold the power of the stars in their paws. It was given to Firestar a long time ago by a cat from another Clan, and it refers to three cats who will be more powerful than any others in the Clans—more powerful even than StarClan. Lionblaze—”

“But what has that got to do with us?” Dovepaw interrupted; suddenly she felt as if she didn’t want to know the answer.

“Lionblaze and I are two of those cats,” Jayfeather mewed with a flick of his ears. “And we believe that you are the third.”

“What?” Horror and disbelief surged over Dovepaw; her voice came out like the squeak of a startled kit. “Me?” Spinning around, she fixed her gaze on her mentor. “Lionblaze, this can’t be right! Please tell me that it isn’t true!”