Эрин Хантер - Crowfeather's Trial

And what is Onestar going to say when we get back to camp? he asked himself. I never thought we would be away so long.

His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of high-pitched yapping.

“Dogs!” Gorsetail exclaimed.

Crowfeather spun around to see dogs pouring out of a hole in the entrance to the Twoleg den. At first sight, there seemed to be a whole Clan of them, but he quickly realized there were only five. Before any of the cats could react, they were surrounded and herded into a corner between the den and the fence.

Bushing out his fur to make himself as big as possible, Crowfeather arched his back and hissed at the dogs. “Back off, flea-pelts!”

The dogs were bounding around, their ears flopping and their tongues lolling. They kept making little rushes at the cats, trying to chew their necks and legs, and swatting at them with their huge paws.

“I think they’re playing,” Heathertail meowed. “They’re only kits—dog kits!”

“Kits?” Breezepelt echoed, disbelieving. “Look at the size of them!”

“I don’t care if they are kits,” Gorsetail snapped, pressing herself back against the fence to avoid a huge tongue swiping across her muzzle. “I’ll claw their ears off if they don’t stop!”

“No, don’t hurt them,” Heathertail protested. “Climb the fence. I’ll hold them off.”

Breezepelt instantly stepped forward to stand shoulder to shoulder with her. “I’m not leaving you.”

Heathertail gave him a shove. “Go on, mouse-brain. I’ll be fine.”

Crowfeather could see that Breezepelt was determined not to move. “I think she’s right,” he meowed. “Come on. We can jump down again if she gets into trouble.”

Muttering something under his breath, Breezepelt obeyed. Gorsetail and Hootpaw had already scrambled up the fence and were balancing precariously on the top. Breezepelt joined them, and Crowfeather followed.

Meanwhile Heathertail was bounding to and fro, weaving in front of the dog kits and dodging their pummeling paws. As soon as she saw that her Clanmates were safe, she lashed out with one forepaw, swatting the leading dog kit on the nose.

The dog kit sprang backward; its yapping changed to a high-pitched squeal. The other dog kits’ playful yaps became angry, and they advanced, growling, on Heathertail.

But Heathertail was too quick for them. She scrambled up the fence to join the others before any of the dog kits could reach her. At the same moment, the entrance to the den flew open. A Twoleg stood in the gap, yowling furiously.

Crowfeather didn’t wait to see what happened next. “Come on,” he urged the others, leading the way along the top of the fence until they had put a couple of gardens between them and the pack of dog kits.

“Now what do we do?” Gorsetail asked. “We’ve lost Nightcloud’s trail, and I’m not going back there again.”

Breezepelt opened his jaws for a sharp retort, then clearly thought better of it and closed them again, looking miserable.

“Let’s check in this garden,” Crowfeather suggested, reluctant to give up hope. “This is the direction Nightcloud was going. We might pick up her trail again.”

He jumped down from the fence and the rest of the cats followed him. But though they searched the garden from one side to the other, there was no sign of Nightcloud’s scent.

We’ll have to go back, Crowfeather thought. Maybe the Twoleg will have taken the dog kits inside.

But before he could make the suggestion, Heathertail padded up to him and tapped him on the shoulder with one paw. “Look,” she mewed, pointing upward with her tail.

Crowfeather raised his head to look where she was pointing. On a ledge a few tail-lengths up the den wall, two kittypets were sleeping. One was a plump tortoiseshell with a rumpled pelt, while the other was a black tom with a white front and paws.

“Kittypets,” he muttered. “So?”

“They might have seen Nightcloud!”

Crowfeather realized that Heathertail was right. I’m so tired, I’m getting stupid! Without hesitating he leaped up onto the ledge and prodded the plump tortoiseshell in her side. “Hey, kittypet! Wake up.”

The tortoiseshell’s eyes blinked open, and she fixed an unfriendly gaze on Crowfeather. “Whoever you are, shove off. I’m sleeping,” she responded. Her nose wrinkled as if she didn’t like Crowfeather’s unfamiliar scent.

Crowfeather prodded again, harder. “Not anymore. We need to talk.”

By now the black tom was awake too. “Who are you, and what do you want?” he asked irritably. “Don’t you know it’s very rude to wake up a sleeping cat?”

Before Crowfeather could reply, Heathertail called up from the garden. “Sorry for disturbing you, but we need your help.” To Crowfeather she added, “Politeness costs nothing,” and then in a lower voice, just loud enough for him to hear, “You daft furball!” What about politeness to your former mentor? he thought.

While he waited for the kittypets to reply, Crowfeather tasted the air and thought that he could pick up Nightcloud’s scent, stronger than the traces in the forest and beside the Thunderpath. His paws tingled with anticipation. She must be somewhere around here! Or am I just imagining things?

The tortoiseshell kittypet looked from Crowfeather to Heathertail and back again. “Okay, what can we do for you?” she muttered ungraciously.

“We’re looking for one of our friends,” Heathertail explained, while her other Clanmates, who were still searching the garden, padded up to join her and listen.

“A cat called Yew said she came this way,” Crowfeather added. “Do you know him?”

“You?” The tortoiseshell stretched her jaws in an enormous yawn. “Like ‘Hey, You’?”

“Like the tree ,” Crowfeather responded, stifling a mrrow of amusement.

“Weird name,” the tortoiseshell sniffed. “No, we don’t know him.”

“Our friend is black, and quite thin,” Crowfeather continued, looking at the tortoiseshell’s rounded figure. “And she was probably bleeding from a wound.”

“Have you seen her?” Breezepelt asked eagerly.

“Oh, yeah, we’ve seen her ,” the black-and-white tom mewed, with a glance at the tortoiseshell, who gave a brief nod.

Crowfeather felt a surge of relief, and could see it was shared by his Clanmates in the garden below. Hootpaw leaped into the air and let out a triumphant caterwaul. “Yes! We found her!” For once, no cat told him to keep quiet.

“She turned up quite some time ago, in the garden next door.” The tom angled his ears in the direction from which the Clan cats had come. “She was weird. . . . She kept meowing on about returning to her ‘Clan.’ She said her ‘Clanmates’ would be looking for her.”

“And she wouldn’t play stalking with us,” the she-cat added. “She said she was a ‘warrior,’ and that was a game for kits.”

“What’s weird about that?” Breezepelt asked, bristling. “ We’re her Clanmates, and we’re looking for her. We’ve come to take her home.”

The two kittypets exchanged a surprised glance; Crowfeather thought they were impressed to hear that Nightcloud had been telling the truth.

“We thought she must have hit her head,” the tortoiseshell admitted. “She was talking about all sorts of crazy things, like cats made of stars ! And fighting against cats who were already dead! Who would believe that?”

Crowfeather sighed. How stupid are these two? They have no idea about StarClan—living with Twolegs must make them blind. “So where is she now?” he asked brusquely.

“The housefolk next door took her in,” the tom replied. “And they’ll probably be glad to be rid of her. She’s so prickly, no gratitude at all—always trying to scratch them and escape.”