Эрин Хантер - Crowfeather's Trial

Crowfeather gazed down from his branch to see the other two foxes catching up and skidding to a halt. All three of them began prowling around the trees, glaring up at the cats and letting out vicious snarls between gleaming bared teeth.

“Neither do foxes,” Crowfeather responded to his son. “At least, not usually.” He had heard now and again of foxes that climbed trees, but they mostly stayed on the ground. If any of these foxes tried it, he’d just slash his claws across their muzzles as they drew close.

That would make them think twice!

Hootpaw shuddered. “What are we going to do?”

“We’ll be fine,” Crowfeather reassured him. “Look—if you walk along this branch, you can cross into the beech tree where Gorsetail is.”

Hootpaw crept forward hesitantly, but as soon as he moved, the branch gave a lurch, and he halted, trembling even harder.

“I don’t think I can.” He gave Crowfeather a scared look. “I might fall.”

“No, you won’t. I’ll be right behind you. I won’t let you fall.”

Hootpaw took a deep breath and rose to his paws, once again digging his claws into the bark. Paw step by careful paw step he crept along the branch, then briefly froze again as the branch grew thinner toward the end and began to bounce gently under the cats’ weight.

“Go on. You’re doing fine,” Crowfeather encouraged him. “Don’t look down.”

The reek of foxes was wafting up to Crowfeather from underneath the tree. He risked a quick glance down and saw that all three foxes had gathered below them, obviously hoping that one or more of them would lose their balance. But Hootpaw carried on steadily, then half leaped, half scrambled into Gorsetail’s tree. Gorsetail was waiting to grab him by the scruff and set his paws firmly on a thicker branch.

“Thanks!” Hootpaw gasped. “I’ve never been up a tree before.” Recovering his usual spirit, he added, “It’s kind of fun!”

“Tell that to Breezepelt,” Crowfeather mewed wryly; his son was right that living on the open moor, WindClan cats didn’t have much opportunity for tree climbing. But these trees had just saved them from a fox ambush.

Slowly and cautiously the three cats ventured out onto a branch on the opposite side of the beech tree and managed to jump across to the oak where Breezepelt and Heathertail had taken refuge. The foxes followed, anger and frustration clear in their glaring eyes. The old dog fox sprang up, slamming his forepaws against the tree trunk and tearing at the bark with his claws.

“We’re lucky these things don’t climb,” Breezepelt commented.

“Yes—I hope they give up and go away soon,” Heathertail mewed.

“Stupid flea-pelts!” Crowfeather hissed down at the furious creatures. “Go and find yourselves some crow-food!”

“Yeah,” Breezepelt added. “Cat isn’t on the fresh-kill pile today. Eat your own tails instead!”

Crowfeather turned to exchange an amused glance with his son. But almost at once, Breezepelt’s amusement faded. His head drooped and his ears flattened.

“We will find Nightcloud, right?” he asked, his voice not quite steady.

“Of course we will.” Crowfeather’s response came before he had given himself time to think. He remembered the monsters and the Thunderpath, and the way that Nightcloud had been wounded by the stoats. But Yew saw her alive, he added to himself. We will find her.

The cats kept going, moving from tree to tree, but the foxes still followed them on the ground. Crowfeather began to be afraid that they were tenacious enough to keep it up until some cat fell.

We can’t go on like this all night. We’re already tired; sooner or later one of us will slip, or some cat will leap a little short. . . . He tried to hide his misgivings from the others, but he could tell from their uneasy expressions that they knew the danger as well as he did.

And the trees were thinning out even more; soon they were bound to reach a place where the next tree was too far away for them to jump the gap. When a monster roared down the Thunderpath ahead, he caught glimpses of its glaring eyes. There were other lights, too, scattered and distant, but enough to tell him that they must be coming to the Twolegplace.

Foxes, monsters . . . is there anything else that can go wrong?

But the foxes didn’t like being so close to the Thunderpath, either. When a monster roared past, they would back up, half withdrawing into the undergrowth, only to creep back as the sound died away. Then, before the cats could be forced down to the ground again, an even bigger monster swept by, its bellowing seeming to fill the whole forest. The foxes halted; then, with a last flurry of furious snarls, they turned tail and disappeared back into the trees.

“Thank StarClan for that!” Gorsetail exclaimed.

She bunched her muscles to jump down from the tree, but Crowfeather stretched out his tail to stop her. “Wait,” he meowed. “They might be hiding in the undergrowth, trying to trick us.”

“Like they’ve got the brains for that,” Gorsetail grumbled, but she stayed where she was.

Crowfeather waited, his ears pricked for any sounds that would tell him the foxes were nearby. But he heard nothing, and the fox scent was beginning to fade. Finally he nodded. “Okay.”

All five cats scrambled down the tree—Hootpaw complaining that climbing down was much harder than climbing up—and padded past the few remaining trees until they reached a stretch of snow-covered grass leading up to the Thunderpath. In the moonlight it looked like a gleaming black river, edged on either side by filthy slush where the snow was beginning to melt. On the opposite side, more grass separated the Thunderpath from fences around Twoleg dens made of red stone.

“That’s a Thunderpath?” Hootpaw asked, his eyes stretched wide.

“That’s right,” Gorsetail told him. “I don’t suppose you’ve seen one before.”

“No, Nightcloud never took me that far from camp,” Hootpaw responded. He stretched out a paw to touch the surface, then jumped back with a surprised squeak. “It’s hard! And cold!”

Gorsetail gently pushed her apprentice away from the edge. “We don’t go near Thunderpaths unless we have to,” she meowed. “They’re dangerous.”

Hootpaw blinked in surprise. “Why? They don’t look dangerous.”

“Remember the cute stoats that didn’t look dangerous?” Crowfeather nudged Hootpaw’s shoulder. “They—”

He broke off at the sound of roaring, faint at first, but soon growing louder. Glaring yellow eyes cast their beams across the surface of the Thunderpath, and the cats crouched at the edge as the monster growled past on its round black paws. Their fur was buffeted by the wind of its passing as they backed away from it, almost choking on the acrid air.

“That’s a monster?” Hootpaw asked, watching the huge creature as it disappeared into the distance.

“Yes,” Gorsetail told him. “And that’s why Thunderpaths are dangerous. Monsters like that have killed cats.”

Crowfeather thought Hootpaw looked too excited to be taking his mentor’s words seriously. His eyes were wide and sparkling, and he was bouncing up and down on all four paws.

“I’ve seen a monster!” he exclaimed. “Cool! Wait till I tell Featherpaw and the others.”

Crowfeather shot the ’paw a withering glance, and Hootpaw ceased bouncing, abruptly sitting down and casting a nervous lick over his chest fur.

Crowfeather rolled his eyes. “If you’re quite finished . . . Okay, let’s assume that Nightcloud made it this far. We need to pick up her scent trail again. Let’s work along the edge of the Thunderpath in both directions. And you ,” he added to Hootpaw, “will not put one paw off the grass, or I’ll see to it that you do all the elders’ ticks for the next three moons.”