Erin Hunter - The Fourth Apprentice

“Come on.” The she-cat had halted beneath a tree a few fox-lengths ahead. “Come and look at this.”

Dovepaw bounded over to her side and stared in astonishment. The trees gave way to a strip of rough grass; beyond it water stretched out almost as far as she could see, its ridged surface silvered by the moonlight. Gentle lapping filled her ears, steady as a queen licking a kit in the nursery.

“This-this is the lake!” she stammered. “But it’s full! I’ve never seen so much water. Am I dreaming?”

“At last!” the she-cat commented sarcastically. “Are they filling the apprentices’ heads with thistledown these days? Of course you’re dreaming.”

For the first time Dovepaw noticed the faint shimmer of starlight around the she-cat’s paws. “Are you from StarClan?” she whispered.

“I am,” the she-cat replied. “And once I was your Clanmate.”

“Then can’t you do something to help ThunderClan?” Dovepaw asked; fear and excitement made her voice quiver. “We’re having such a hard time.”

“Hard times come to every Clan in every season,” the old gray cat replied. “The warrior code doesn’t offer the promise of an easy life. There will be much debate and fighting-”

“Fighting?” Dovepaw interrupted, horrified, then slapped her tail across her mouth. “Sorry,” she mumbled.

“Blood is spilled in every generation,” the she-cat went on. Her amber gaze softened, and Dovepaw became aware of an intense kindliness behind the rough exterior. “Yet there is always hope, just as the sun always rises.”

Her figure began to fade; Dovepaw could see the silver waters of the lake through her gray fur.

“Don’t go!” she begged.

The gray she-cat faded even more, until she was barely a wisp of smoke, and then entirely gone. As the last traces of her faded, Dovepaw thought that she heard her voice again, whispering gently into her ear.

After the sharp-eyed jay and the roaring lion, peace will come on dove’s gentle wing.

Dovepaw woke with a start, her heart pounding, and sprang to her paws in one swift movement. I’m here in my den! So it was a dream … Dawn light was filtering through the ferns at the entrance, and she could hear cats calling to one another in the clearing as they prepared for the new day.

Beside her, Ivypaw twitched an ear and blinked open her eyes. “What’s the matter?” she muttered, her voice blurred with sleep. “Why are you jumping around like that?”

Bumblepaw’s meow came from just behind Dovepaw, edged with annoyance. “Do you realize you just kicked moss all over me?”

“Sorry!” Dovepaw gasped. She had been sleeping in the apprentices’ den for almost a moon, but she still wasn’t used to how crowded it was in there.

Already the dream was breaking up into scraps, fluttering away like leaves in leaf-fall as she tried to recapture them. There was an old gray cat…a StarClan warrior. And the lake was full of water again . She realized that her legs were heavy with tiredness and her paws felt as sore as if she really had walked to the lake and back in the middle of the night. That’s mouse-brained! It was just a dream .

But there had been something important about the dream. The StarClan warrior had given her a message. She dug her claws deep into her mossy bedding, trying to recall the words, but they were gone. She let out a faint snort, half-amused and half-irritated. Who do you think you are? A medicine cat? Why would a StarClan warrior come to give a message to you?

Stretching her jaws in a huge yawn, she pushed the dream from her mind and wriggled out through the ferns into the clearing. The sky was growing brighter as the sun rose; the early patrols had left, and for a few heartbeats Dovepaw tracked Brackenfur and Sorreltail, who were stalking prey near the stream that marked the border with ShadowClan. Pricking her ears, she heard Sorreltail leap on a squirrel as it tried to escape up a tree, and Brackenfur padding over to touch his nose to her ear. “Great catch,” he murmured.

Better not listen anymore , Dovepaw thought, shutting out Sorreltail’s loving purr and listening instead to a couple of starlings having a noisy quarrel in the branches of the dead tree. Letting her senses range farther over the territory, she picked up a yowl of pain from the dawn patrol on the WindClan border, and then Berrynose’s voice: “I trod on a thistle!”

Dovepaw let out a little mrrow of amusement as she pictured the cream-colored warrior hopping indignantly on three paws while he tried to pull out the prickles with his teeth. If she knew Berrynose, he’d blame the thistle.

“Great StarClan!” Dustpelt sounded angry and frustrated. “Will you sit still and let some cat help you? Rosepetal, sort him out, please, or we’ll be here all day.”

“Just another day in ThunderClan,” Dovepaw whispered to herself.

And what about your dream? A voice seemed to speak in her mind.

“What about it?” Dovepaw muttered, firmly pushing the memories away again.

Slipping back into the den, she gave Ivypaw a sharp prod in the side. “Wake up, lazybones! Let’s find Cinderheart and Lionblaze and see if they’ll take us hunting.”

Pride tingled through Dovepaw from ears to tail-tip as she carried her prey-a mouse and a blackbird-over to the fresh-kill pile and dropped it in front of the warriors who were gathered close by.

“Well done,” Graystripe meowed, glancing up from the vole he was sharing with his mate, Millie. “At that rate, you’ll be one of the best hunters in the Clan.”

“And she’s been an apprentice for less than a moon,” Lionblaze added, padding up to deposit his own prey on the pile. “She seems to know what the prey is going to do even before the prey does.”

Whitewing, who was sharing tongues with Birchfall nearby, let out a purr of approval. “Good. I’m glad to hear you’re working hard.”

Dovepaw started to feel embarrassed. “I’m not that good,” she protested as she dropped her catch. She didn’t like being praised too much in front of Ivypaw, who had managed to kill only a single shrew. “I’ve just got a great mentor.”

Then she went hot all over in case any cat thought she was criticizing Cinderheart. The gray she-cat didn’t seem to have noticed anything wrong as she and Ivypaw set their own prey down, though Ivypaw cast an envious glance at her sister.

“Don’t be upset,” Dovepaw whispered. “It was just bad luck that you missed that squirrel.”

Ivypaw gave an angry shrug. “Bad luck doesn’t fill bellies.”

“You can each take a piece of prey,” Cinderheart meowed to the two apprentices. “You’ve worked hard this morning.”

“Thanks!” Dovepaw chose a vole from the pile, and after hesitating Ivypaw took her own shrew. Dovepaw could sense that however hungry she was, her sister didn’t want to take more than she’d managed to contribute.

Dovepaw’s belly was yowling too, but as she crouched down to eat she forced herself not to gulp the vole down in a couple of ravenous bites. The sun had risen over the tops of the trees, its rays beating down mercilessly, and there would be no more hunting until it set.

“I don’t know how much longer this drought can go on,” Millie sighed, finishing her share of the vole and swiping her tongue over her whiskers. “How many more days without rain?”

“Only StarClan knows,” Graystripe responded, touching his tail to his mate’s shoulder in a comforting gesture.

“Then StarClan should do something about it!” Spiderleg looked up from where he sat on the other side of the fresh-kill pile with Hazeltail and Mousewhisker. “Do they expect us to survive without water?”