Firestar's Quest (25 page)

“We're kittypets too,” Boris pointed out. “Firestar can teach you all that stuff.”

“If you join us, you'll be very welcome,” Firestar told him.

The tabby tom nodded. “Okay, then. I'd miss Cherry and Boris if they went off without me.”

Firestar flicked his ears toward the one cat who so far had not spoken. “What about you, Oscar?”

The black kittypet rose slowly from the ledge where he had been crouching. “You don't think I came here to
join,
do
you? Why would I leave a couple of perfectly good housefolk who give me everything I want? I didn't spend moons training them for nothing.”

“Why are you here, then?” Boris demanded.

Oscar's jaws stretched in an insolent yawn. “I just wanted to find out what stupid ideas you'd come up with. And they are stupid. You're all mouse-brained.” With a flick of his tail he set off up the trail, back toward the cliff top.

“Mouse-brained yourself!” Cherry yowled after him.

Sky padded forward to the edge of the Rockpile and looked down at the remaining cats. “SkyClan lives again!” he announced. Raising his head to the misty half-moon, he yowled, “SkyClan! SkyClan!”

“SkyClan! SkyClan!” the cats down in the gorge replied.

Firestar shivered from ears to tail tip. What had once seemed so impossible, so far off, was now real. The cats who stood around the Rockpile, yowling to the stars, were the beginnings of a new Clan to replace the one lost so long ago.

Then cold claws seemed to grip his heart. That sense of anger and hatred he had felt in the undergrowth downstream washed over him again. He raised his head to scan the bushes on the cliff top, and was sure he could spot glittering eyes among the branches.

The following day dawned clear and
cool. Firestar stepped out onto the ledge outside the warriors' cave to see Patch and Leaf scrambling over the spur of rock on their way upstream. After the meeting, all the new Clan cats had returned to their own homes; one of the first tasks would be to collect more bedding and sort out the dens so that the caves in the gorge could become a real Clan camp.

Sandstorm joined him, yawning and giving one ear a vigorous scratch with her hind paw. “We'll have to move Clover down to the nursery,” she mewed, flicking her ears toward where the mother cat and her kits were sleeping against the far wall of the cave. “There won't be room in here once the warriors arrive.”

“We need a den for the apprentices, too,” Firestar pointed out. “And the elders, the leader, the medicine cat…”

“Well, we'll have one elder, when Sky moves in with us.” Sandstorm blinked thoughtfully. “But there's no leader yet, apart from you.”

“No! I'm leader of
ThunderClan
. StarClan will show us which cat is meant to be leader of SkyClan.”

“And a medicine cat,” Sandstorm added. “You can't have a Clan without a medicine cat.”

Firestar murmured agreement. He suspected that finding a medicine cat could be even harder than finding a leader, and he hadn't begun to tackle that problem yet. Until the night before, he hadn't been certain that there would be a Clan at all.

He had to push his worries to the back of his mind as Leaf and Patch came into view a little way down the stony trail, calling out a greeting. Patch looked nervous, but Leaf's ears were pricked with anticipation. A heartbeat or two later Firestar heard pawsteps from up above, and Cherry, Boris, and Hutch appeared from the cliff top.

“We're ready for our hunting lesson,” Boris meowed, his eyes shining.

“That's good.” Sandstorm twitched her tail approvingly. “We'll be able to take out two full patrols.”

“Can we lead them?” Cherry bounced forward to stand in front of Firestar. “
Please!
We know all the good places for prey.”

“No, you're not warriors yet.” Firestar didn't want to dampen the young cats' enthusiasm, but they had to get used to the way things were done in a Clan. “Don't worry,” he added when Cherry flattened her ears in disappointment. “You'll be leading patrols before you know it.”

“Boris and Leaf, you come with me,” Sandstorm mewed. “We'll pick up Scratch on the way, and see what we can find in the bushes downstream. Is that okay with you, Firestar?”

“Fine. The rest of us can hunt on the cliff top.”

When Sandstorm had left with her patrol, Firestar led Cherry, Hutch, and Patch up the trail and through the bushes on the edge of the cliff. The sky was bright where the sun would rise, but there was still no sign of movement from the Twolegplace.

“Let's head that way,” Firestar suggested, waving his tail toward the huge Twoleg barn. “I haven't tried hunting there yet.”

Not much later he was starting to think he had made the wrong decision. The trees and bushes near the fence of the huge nest were oddly lacking in prey. The scent of crow-food and rats from the fence made it almost impossible to taste anything else on the air.

“Sandstorm's patrol will catch much more,” Cherry muttered. “And Boris will never let me hear the end of it!”

Almost ready to give up and go somewhere else, Firestar stopped trying to track down prey to give Hutch and Patch their first lesson in the hunter's crouch and the right way to stalk. Hutch concentrated very hard, but found it difficult to get his haunches into the proper position, while Patch had it almost right the first time. Of course, the rogue cats had been hunting for themselves since they were kits; they would need to learn only the skills of hunting in a group before they were as good as any forest warrior.

“Okay,” Firestar meowed. “I want you to imagine that there's prey under that gorse bush over there.” He waved his tail to show them which bush he meant. “Let me see you stalk up to it.”

All three cats set off. Watching them critically, Firestar admired Cherry's graceful, controlled prowl; she had learned a lot since she first tracked him in the undergrowth downstream. Patch was slinking along with his belly fur brushing the ground, and even Hutch seemed to have gotten his paws under control.

“Keep going; you're doing great,” Firestar encouraged them.

Suddenly Patch sprang up with a hiss of astonishment. One paw flashed out, and Firestar spotted a small brown shape as it was tossed in the air. Patch grabbed it as it fell to the ground again. He turned back to Firestar with a mouse dangling limply from his jaws.

“Well done!” Firestar meowed. “First catch to you.”

“I think it was half-asleep,” Patch admitted, dropping the mouse. “It never had a chance.”

“Fresh-kill is fresh-kill, however you catch it.” Firestar began to scrape at the ground with his hind paws. “We'll bury it now, and take it back with us when we're ready.”

Which won't be long,
he promised himself. He didn't like this part of the territory; it was too quiet, too bare of prey, and something about the huge Twoleg barn made him uncomfortable.

“Let's see your crouches again,” he mewed.

Hutch had drawn a little way ahead of Cherry; the tabby kittypet had nearly reached the gorse bush when a squirrel started up from underneath the branches and raced for the safety of a clump of beech trees. Startled, Hutch waited a
heartbeat too long before chasing after it.

“I'll get it!” Cherry yowled, streaking past Hutch with her tail streaming out.

Hutch halted, looking bewildered.

The squirrel reached the tree with Cherry hard on its paws and swarmed up the trunk until it reached the lowest branch.

“Got you!” Cherry hurled herself into the air.

But she had misjudged the leap. A mouse-length short, her paws struck a clump of leaves and she hung there, clawing frantically, kicking her hind legs and scattering scraps of leaf everywhere, until she managed to haul herself up onto the branch. Meanwhile the squirrel had vanished among the leaves farther up the tree.

“Mouse dung!” Cherry spat.

Firestar strolled to the foot of the tree and looked up at her. Privately he thought the young tortoiseshell's failure would do her no harm—she needed to learn not to show off—but he wouldn't say anything to upset her. She looked frustrated enough.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“No! Stupid squirrel—I
should
have caught it.”

“It was my fault.” Hutch padded up beside Firestar. “I should have been a bit quicker.”

“Don't worry.” Firestar touched his shoulder with the tip of his tail. “This is only your first lesson. You're doing fine.”

Hutch looked unconvinced. “I feel like I'm letting you all down. No cat will want to hunt for me if I can't hunt for myself.”

Firestar let his tail rest on the tabby tom's shoulder for a moment longer. “That's not how a Clan works,” he explained. “You'll be allowed your share of the fresh-kill pile like any other warrior. And you
will
hunt for yourself, and the rest of us too, before very long.” Looking from Hutch's disappointed face to Cherry's frustrated one, he turned and signaled to Patch with his tail. “Fetch that mouse,” he called. “We'll see if there's more prey nearer the cliff top.”

 

Just as Firestar had hoped, there was better hunting in the bushes that edged the cliff. Before very long, the patrol was able to return to the gorge with a good haul of prey. Hutch was bursting with pride at bringing down his first sparrow, with a leap that proved the tabby kittypet bore SkyClan blood.

His jaws full of fresh-kill, Firestar led the way down into the gorge. The sun was up, and warm, honey-colored light pooled on the rocks and dazzled on the smooth curve of water where it poured out of the darkness. Firestar and Sandstorm had kept a small fresh-kill pile near the entrance to the warriors' cave, but that wouldn't do now. They would need to look for a sheltered spot near the waterside, where every cat could come and eat.

As he padded down the trail, Firestar saw that Sandstorm and her patrol had also returned. He paused, stiffening. Close to the Rockpile, Sandstorm and Scratch stood facing each other with their neck fur fluffed out, as if they were quarreling. Leaf and Boris looked on anxiously, while Clover, at the water's edge, gathered her kits to her.

Firestar bounded down the last few tail-lengths of the trail. Sandstorm had deposited her patrol's fresh-kill under an overhang at the bottom of the Rockpile; he added his own before turning to the two cats.

“And I'm telling you that's not the way it's done,” Sandstorm growled, her green eyes furious. “In a Clan, the elders and the nursing queens
always
eat first.”

Scratch lashed his tail. “That's mouse-brained! It's the warriors who catch the prey!”

“There's no need to argue,” Clover interrupted in a soft voice. “I don't mind. You can eat first. There's plenty for every cat.”

“That's not the point,” Firestar intervened.

Sandstorm's head whipped around; she had obviously been so intent on Scratch that she hadn't heard Firestar approach. When she saw him, the fur on her shoulders began to lie flat. “Thank StarClan you're here! Tell this stupid furball—”

Firestar lifted his tail to silence her. Hurling insults wasn't going to help. To Scratch he mewed, “Sandstorm's right. Just because warriors are strong enough to hunt doesn't mean they have the right to eat first.”

“That's not what I meant,” Scratch protested, his green eyes wide with indignation. “The Clan depends on its warriors. They should be fed first so that they're always strong enough to deal with unexpected trouble.” With a hostile glance at Sandstorm he added, “Some cats won't
listen
.”

To Firestar's relief, Sandstorm didn't respond. Brushing
her pelt reassuringly, he padded forward to face the ginger tom. “Yes, it's important for a Clan to have strong warriors. But the warrior code isn't just based on what is practical. Honor matters equally as much. Elders and nursing queens must be shown respect, because without them the Clan wouldn't survive.”

“SkyClan
hasn't
survived,” Scratch muttered darkly.

“True, but that's no reason to cast the warrior code aside. Whatever happened to the original SkyClan cats”—Firestar wished that he knew what had happened to SkyClan, but there was no time to think of that now—“it wasn't the fault of the elders or the nursing queens. We must continue to honor them.”

Scratch hesitated. Then his head whipped around and he glared at Clover. “Okay. Eat.”

Looking very embarrassed, Clover darted past him to the fresh-kill pile, snatched a blackbird, and carried it to where her kits were crouched by the side of the water.

Sandstorm let out a sigh, and padded off to say something quietly to Leaf, who rested her tail tip sympathetically on the ginger she-cat's shoulder. Firestar signaled to the other cats to come and take prey from the pile, though he didn't have much appetite himself. He couldn't help wondering how many more arguments there would be before Scratch and the other cats really understood the warrior code.

 

Sunhigh had come and gone while the cats, full-fed, drowsed in the sunlight or withdrew to the cool shade of the
caves. Every cat in the new Clan was there; Firestar had even spotted Sky padding quietly down the gorge and curling up in the shadow of a thorn tree.

Firestar lay beside Sandstorm, his tongue rasping over her shoulder in long, rhythmic strokes. Sandstorm's eyes were green slits, and a purr rumbled deep in her chest.

“I'm sorry I lost my temper with Scratch,” she murmured. “You handled him much better.”

Firestar gave her another lick before replying. “Scratch is going to make a fine warrior. But he has to see that the warrior code is about more than just strength. He'll learn, given time.”

Sandstorm sighed. “Just as Clover has to learn that a Clan is more than protection.” She butted Firestar's shoulder affectionately with her head. “We'll have to show them.”

“True. And I think I know how to start.”

He rose to his paws and arched his back in a long stretch. Then he bounded up to the top of the Rockpile and yowled out the familiar words: “Let all cats old enough to catch their own prey join here beneath the Rockpile for a Clan meeting!”

Sky started and sat up straight, gazing around as if he wasn't sure where the call had come from. Leaf and Patch, who had been drowsing together at the water's edge, raised their heads, then sat up to listen. Scratch popped his head out of his cave. Cherry and Boris came racing down the trail from the cliff top, while Clover's kits bundled excitedly out of the warriors' den and bounced down to the gorge, followed more slowly by their mother. Within a few heartbeats the whole
Clan had gathered and sat around the Rockpile looking up at Firestar.

“Cats of SkyClan,” Firestar began. Pride rippled through his fur as he addressed these cats by their Clan name for the first time. “Last night you committed yourselves to this Clan and the warrior code. Today the Clan will honor you with your Clan names. Scratch, Leaf, Hutch, Clover, and Patch, please come to stand at the bottom of the Rockpile.”

Exchanging bewildered glances, the five cats rose to their paws and drew closer to the bottom of the rocks. Clover's kits tried to follow her, and Sandstorm gently halted them with a sweep of her tail.

Firestar picked his way down the rocks to stand in front of the group of cats. There had never been a warrior ceremony like this before, and he had to get it right so that it had meaning with their warrior ancestors—if there were any watching.