Firestar's Quest (18 page)

“They could be Moony's!” Sandstorm exclaimed. “Or at least, a cat who might know where to find him. And they must have been made recently—since the rain stopped.”

Firestar lashed his tail. If they hadn't gone to sleep in the cave, they might have spotted the cat when it came to drink.

“Whoever it is, they might still be close by,” he meowed. “You search that side of the gorge, and I'll look on this side.”

He padded slowly along the base of the cliff, alert for any more footprints or the scent of a cat. Then Sandstorm let out
a yowl and signaled with her tail. “Over here!”

Firestar bounded across to her. Before he reached her he began to pick up a strong, fresh scent. “I'm sure that's the same scent that was in the cave where we've been sleeping,” he meowed.

Sandstorm nodded, tasting the air again. “It was stale there, but it's the same cat. It
must
be Moony who made those prints.”

Following the scent, Firestar reached a narrow path that wound behind a huge boulder. The cats could barely squeeze between the rock and the cliff face. On the other side of the boulder the path led steeply upward until it reached a gnarled tree clinging to the side of the cliff. Firestar scrabbled his way up to it, showers of pebbles pattering down under his paws. Sandstorm followed a tail-length behind.

Drawing closer to the tree, Firestar saw that its roots arched out of the reddish stone, forming a den of hard, twisted branches. Outside was a scattering of bones and scraps of fur and a bundle of soiled moss. The cat scent was stronger still.

“This is it,” he panted, glancing over his shoulder at Sandstorm. “This must be where Moony lives.”

As he began to climb farther up, a dark gray shape shot out from beneath the roots. “Get away from here!” he snarled. “Leave me alone! Haven't you tormented me enough?”

“It's all right,” Firestar meowed. “We
haven't come to harm you. We just want to talk.”

Moony glared at him from huge, pale blue eyes. He must have once been a big, powerful cat, but now he was shrunken and scrawny. His gray fur was thin and staring, his muzzle white with age. “Well, I don't want to talk to you,” he growled.

Whirling around, he stumbled back into his den. His gray pelt merged into the shadows; all Firestar could see clearly were his pale eyes, gleaming with a mixture of fear and anger. They were exactly the same color as the eyes of the SkyClan leader he had seen in his dreams. He felt so close to SkyClan, it was as if a single pawstep would lead him to that caveful of warriors.

Slowly, with his claws sheathed, he padded up to within a tail-length of the den. Sandstorm came to stand at his shoulder. “Please,” she mewed. “There's so much we want to ask you.”

Moony's reply was a defiant hiss. “Leave me alone.”

“Is that what you really want?” Sandstorm's voice was gentle. “Haven't you been alone long enough? We want to help you.”

“Go away,” growled the old cat. “I don't need your help. I don't need any other cats. This is my life now.”

Firestar knew he could have bullied the old warrior into answering his questions, but Moony had already suffered enough at the paws of the kittypets—and probably any rogues or loners who came across him, too. Besides, he looked quite capable of giving any attacker a nasty scratch. Firestar wanted to earn his respect, not his hostility. Fighting wasn't the answer.

Beckoning with his tail to Sandstorm, he withdrew a few paces down the path. “Come on; let's leave him alone,” he murmured.

Sandstorm's tail went up in surprise. “We've only just found him!”

“Yes, but we're not doing any good here. We'll never force him to talk when he's protecting his own den.”

“Then what
are
we going to do?” Sandstorm asked.

“The moon will be full in four sunrises,” Firestar explained. “We must go back to the cave and wait until he comes to the gorge. He might not be so defensive out in the open, and at the time of the Gathering he might be more willing to talk about his ancestors.”

Sandstorm blinked thoughtfully. “You're right. I'm sure he'd never break the Gathering truce.”

Firestar dipped his head to the shadows beneath the tree roots before he turned away from Moony's den. “Maybe at the full moon we'll find out what we need to know,” he murmured.

 

Firestar hauled himself into the cave with a mouthful of feathers, and carried them to where Sandstorm was lining their nests with bracken. “I found these on the cliff top,” he told her. “There was a scent of fox; I think it must have caught a bird.”

“Fox?” Sandstorm gave him a worried look from her pale green eyes. “I hoped there weren't any foxes around here.”

“There are foxes everywhere,” Firestar meowed. “Anyway, the feathers should make the nests a bit more comfortable.”

“We really need moss.” Sandstorm gave the bracken a dissatisfied prod with one paw. “Ferns alone aren't nearly as good. But there doesn't seem to be any moss at all around here.”

“Why don't we go down and search beside the river?” Firestar suggested. “I could do with a drink.”

Sandstorm looked doubtful. “It's worth a try.”

She took the lead as the two cats headed down the trail to the bottom of the gorge. The heavy rain of the day before had passed, and the sky was blue again, with a scattering of puffy white clouds. Beside the river, puddles gleamed in hollows in the rock.

Firestar made for a sandy slope where the river had scooped out a dip in the bank, and jerked back quickly as his paw sank deep into mud. “Mouse dung!” he exclaimed, shaking his paw. “Did SkyClan get their paws filthy every time they wanted a drink?”

Sandstorm let out a faint purr of amusement. “If they
weren't as impatient as you, they could find the best places—like this,” she added, waving her tail at a broad, flat rock that sloped gently down into the water. “Even kits could drink safely from here.”

“Yes, they could.” Firestar padded down the slanting rock and crouched to lap, with Sandstorm at his side.

“We still haven't found any moss.” Sandstorm sat up again, twitching droplets from her whiskers. “Let's try farther downstream.”

They hadn't explored this stretch of the river before. Before they had gone many pawsteps, they had to pick their way around huge boulders that came between them and the water. Sandstorm swiped her paw across one of them, and examined the faint greenish smear on her fur. “It's like tiny moss!” She sniffed. “But what good is that for lining a nest?”

“SkyClan would have had a hard time living here without moss,” Firestar pointed out. “It's not just important for lining nests. You need moss to carry water to kits and elders.”

Sandstorm nodded. “And medicine cats use it to wash wounds.”

That was one more mystery about the lost Clan, Firestar mused, as he and his mate padded on. Even more than before, he couldn't wait for the night of the full moon, when Moony might be able to give them some answers.

Farther downstream the river curved around a jutting spur of rock. Firestar clawed his way up it, listening to Sandstorm spitting in annoyance as she scrambled after him. “I'm wearing the skin off my pads,” she complained.

From the top of the rock Firestar could see the next stretch of water. The gorge had grown wider; there was a flat, pebbly foreshore that gave way to trees and bushes growing between the river and the cliff face.

“This looks like a better place for prey,” he meowed. “I couldn't imagine how SkyClan managed to feed themselves just from—”

“Get down!” Sandstorm interrupted, slapping him across the shoulders with her tail.

Firestar flattened himself against the rock. “What is it?” he whispered.

Sandstorm jerked her head toward the undergrowth at the edge of the river. Firestar saw the branches shaking; then a massive tomcat emerged, his fur a darker shade of ginger than Firestar's flame-colored pelt. He carried a piece of fresh-kill in his jaws.

“Sorry,” Sandstorm muttered. “I thought it might have been a fox.”

“No, just another rogue.” Firestar rose to his paws. “Maybe we should go down and talk to him.”

But the ginger tom was heading rapidly downstream, slipping along in the gap between the bushes and the cliff. Firestar wasn't sure if he had even spotted them. Soon he was out of sight.

“We'd never catch him,” Sandstorm meowed. “And if we did, he'd probably think we were trying to steal his prey. The cats around here aren't exactly desperate to make friends.”

She was right, Firestar thought, frustrated, gazing at the
spot where the ginger tom had vanished. He slid down the rock and stalked up to the bushes, tasting the air for prey. The scents were richer here than at the top of the gorge; he could distinguish mouse, vole, and squirrel, but the strongest were all from birds.

He pricked his ears at a rustling sound close by, and turned his head to see a blackbird pecking among the debris at the edge of the bushes. He dropped into the hunter's crouch, but as soon as he began to creep forward the blackbird cocked its head, its tiny bright eye fixed on him. Firestar launched himself at it, paws extended, but the blackbird shot up, calling out in alarm, and winged away over his head.

Firestar hissed, remembering the sparrow he'd lost a few days before when the brown rogue had interrupted him. Catching birds was always harder than catching prey on the ground. But here there wasn't much choice, unless he wanted to go hungry.

A few tail-lengths along the riverbank a thrush was tugging a worm out of a damp patch of earth. Sandstorm was already prowling toward it. Intent on its own prey, the thrush never noticed her; Sandstorm pounced, and her claws met in its neck.

Firestar bounded up to her. “Well done! I lost mine,” he added ruefully.

“Never mind, we can share.” Sandstorm patted the thrush toward him. “There's plenty of prey here.”

“Still no moss, though,” Firestar mewed, looking at the bare rocks beside the river.

“Then SkyClan must have managed some other way,” Sandstorm pointed out sensibly.

Firestar tried to imagine the empty riverbanks alive with cats, patrolling, hunting, training apprentices, living by the warrior code as cats in the forest had done for uncountable seasons. If Moony really was the last SkyClan warrior, what could any cat do to rebuild the lost Clan?

 

“Full moon tonight.” Firestar emerged from the warriors' cave; the dawn chill reminded him that greenleaf was drawing to an end. There was just enough light to make out the cliff at the opposite side of the river. A stiff breeze flattened his fur against his sides. “We've got to be ready to meet Moony.”

Sandstorm, still curled in her nest, answered him with a yawn. “He won't be here until moonhigh. Go back to sleep.” Her green eyes were no more than slits; as Firestar watched they closed completely, and she wrapped her tail tip over her nose.

The nest looked tempting, but Firestar felt too restless to lie down again. His paws itched to be doing something. “I'll go and find us some fresh-kill,” he meowed.

Sandstorm's ears twitched to show that she had heard.

Luck was with Firestar; when he scrambled up to the cliff top he found himself nose-to-nose with a mouse and killed it before it had the chance to run. Scratching earth over it, he prowled through the bushes, but there was no other prey about.

By the time he emerged on the other side of the thicket the sun was edging above the top of the Twolegplace, flooding the stretch of scrubland with warm light and glittering on monsters racing past the Twoleg nests in the distance. Firestar hadn't ventured far in that direction before. Without consciously deciding, he found that his paws were carrying him toward the Twolegplace. He wasn't trying to hunt anymore, just scouting this unfamiliar territory.

Darting into the shelter of a gorse bush for cover, he was met by a furious hiss and a paw swiped past his nose, the claws missing him by less than a mouse-length. Firestar reared back in astonishment. A tabby she-cat crouched in front of him, her cream-and-brown neck fur bristling and her amber eyes glaring. Her scent told Firestar she was a rogue.

“Keep your paws off me!” she spat.

“I'm sorry.” Firestar dipped his head. “I didn't see you there.”

The she-cat relaxed slightly, but her look was still unfriendly. “Stupid furball. Just be a bit more careful next time.” She turned and began to stalk off, her tail in the air.

“Hang on.” Firestar bounded forward and caught up with her. “I want to talk to you. I need to know—”

“I don't want to talk to
you
,” the she-cat interrupted, sounding just like Moony. “Go away and leave me alone.” To show she meant it, she picked up speed until she was racing across the scrubby ground toward the Twoleg nests.

Firestar stood looking after her, tail lashing in frustration. Why was every cat in this place so hostile? None of them
seemed to care about one another. There wasn't a trace of the warrior code left. Apart from the two kittypets, all the cats he had seen were rogues through and through.

A heavy stone seemed to settle in his heart. Ever since he and Sandstorm found the caves, he had clung to the hope of finding a few SkyClan cats living together, troubled and defiant, but still stubbornly surviving and clinging to the warrior code. Now he realized he was wrong. SkyClan had gone, lost seasons before he ever came to this place.

Why did you send me here?
he wailed silently, not knowing if he was speaking to StarClan or to the SkyClan cat who had haunted his pawsteps for so long.

There was no reply.

Turning back toward the gorge, Firestar spotted the two kittypets, Boris and Cherry, sitting side by side on a Twoleg fence. He thought they were watching him. He couldn't see any point in going to speak to them; they wouldn't be pleased to see him after the encounter on the cliff top. He just hoped that they had learned their lesson, and would stay away from Moony in the future.

Moony was their last hope of discovering anything about the lost Clan. He and Sandstorm would do their best to persuade him to tell them what he knew that night. Then, once they found out what had happened to SkyClan, they could go home. No cat could do more; SkyClan were lost forever.

 

Firestar leaped across the cleft and landed on the jutting rock. During the day the last wisps of cloud had disappeared
and now Silverpelt blazed down from a clear sky and glittered on the river far below. The moon, still low in the sky, covered everything with a silver sheen and cast Firestar's shadow huge behind him.

“If Moony sees us here, he might not come,” Sandstorm meowed, leaping over the gap to stand beside Firestar. “Do you think we should hide?”

“Good idea.” Firestar pointed with his tail toward a heap of boulders where the flat rock met the cliff face. “Over there.”

He padded across and slid into deep shadow; Sandstorm squeezed in beside him. Through a gap between two of the boulders they could see most of the surface of the jutting rock and the last section of the stony trail that led up from the gorge. Now there was nothing to do but wait.

The moon crawled higher in the sky and the moon shadows grew shorter. Firestar felt his legs protest with cramps; he would have given anything for a good stretch.

At last he heard the soft pad of paws, and the old gray cat rounded a bend in the trail. His movements were stiff and painful, his belly sagged toward the ground, and his tail dragged in the dust. Yet he held his head high, and the moonlight turned his pelt to dazzling silver.

“He'll never manage the leap!” Sandstorm whispered in Firestar's ear.