Erin Hunter - The Fourth Apprentice

“Now what do we do?” Rippletail wailed. “We can’t go any farther this way.”

“Over here!” Toadfoot called from a few tail-lengths along the fence. “There’s a hole I think we can wriggle through.”

He flattened himself to the ground and pulled himself forward through a narrow gap at the bottom of the fence, standing up a few heartbeats later on the grass on the other side. “Come on, it’s easy,” he urged his companions.

Whitetail followed him through and then Dovepaw did the same, shivering at the touch of the hard Twoleg stuff against her back as she squirmed through the gap. The rest of the cats followed, with Lionblaze keeping watch until they were safely on the other side. Finally he struggled through, grunting with the effort as he pushed himself along.

Dovepaw stood still, looking around. A smooth field stretched in front of her, the grass much greener than she had seen it anywhere else since the heat and the drought began. Beyond it were Twoleg nests built of some kind of red rock. Dovepaw had never imagined that there could be so many Twoleg nests all in one place. Noise poured out from them like clap after clap of thunder; she shook as the din swept around her, flooding her senses. Twolegs were screeching and chattering, banging and roaring, in an endless surge of sound.

Desperately Dovepaw tried to block it out, to focus on the cats around her, and on what she could see directly in front of her. Only then did she realize what she couldn’t see.

“Where’s the stream?” she gasped.

Lionblaze heard panic in his apprentice’s wail and saw the fear in her eyes. Quietly he padded over to her and rested his tail on her shoulders. “Calm down,” he murmured. “It’ll be okay.”

Rippletail was looking around. “Water doesn’t run uphill,” the RiverClan cat meowed, “so the stream must be somewhere over there.” He pointed with his tail to a line of long grass at the bottom of a green slope.

“Let’s check it out,” Toadfoot suggested.

He let Rippletail take the lead as the cats trotted in single file alongside the silver fence. Before they had covered many fox-lengths, Lionblaze heard loud Twoleg voices coming from the other side of the field. A group of Twoleg kits erupted into the open, shouting noisily and kicking what looked like a smooth, round boulder with their hind paws.

“Hurry!” he called to his companions as the young Twolegs ran across the grass toward them.

Every cat picked up the pace until they were racing with their tails streaming out. Lionblaze felt the ground shake under his paws as the young Twolegs came nearer, still yowling and kicking the boulder-thing back and forth between them. With a gasp of relief he plunged into the cover of the long grass at the bottom of the slope, but his gasp changed to a screech of alarm as the ground gave way under his paws. He rolled and bumped down a shallow cliff, paws and tail thrashing, and landed with a thump on hard, pebble-strewn earth.

“It’s the stream!” Petalfur mewed.

Dazed, Lionblaze sat up and looked around. He was back in the dry streambed, with overhanging grasses almost meeting above his head. His companions were scattered beside him, picking themselves up and examining scraped pads and snagged fur.

“I’ve swallowed every piece of the grit in this stream!” Tigerheart complained, spitting.

“No, you haven’t,” Toadfoot growled, giving his pelt a shake. “It’s all over my fur!”

Lionblaze spotted Dovepaw crouching beside a jutting rock, her eyes glazed with fear. “I should have heard the Twolegs coming!” she whispered. “I should have known what was going to happen and warned you.”

Lionblaze glanced over his shoulder at the other cats, who were getting ready to move off again. “Dovepaw has some gravel in her pad,” he called. “We need to lick it out; we’ll be with you in a couple of heartbeats.”

Then he leaned over Dovepaw so that no other cat could hear what he was saying. “You’re not responsible for all of us. You’re on this mission because you were the first to sense the brown animals blocking the stream, but that doesn’t mean that the rest of us can’t hear and see things and protect ourselves.”

Dovepaw blinked up at him unhappily. “I hate it here, so close to the Twolegplace,” she murmured. “It’s too much-all the sounds and scents and images in my head. I can’t cope with it! I can only concentrate on what is close by.” Her eyes widened into huge pools of misery. “It’s like being blind!”

Lionblaze bent his head and touched his nose to her ear in a gesture of comfort. At the same time he pushed away a stab of worry that Dovepaw had needed to block out so much to cope with the stress of being in a strange territory. He realized how much he had been depending on her to tell them what was up ahead.

We’ll be fine without her powers , he reassured himself. After all, other cats have made journeys with just their ordinary senses .

“It’ll be okay,” he mewed. “At least we’ve found the stream again.” He could still hear the noise of Twolegs beyond the tall grass, their loud voices interspersed with thumps of the smooth boulder-thing.

“That can’t possibly be a rock,” Sedgewhisker observed, her ears quivering. “They would break their paws if it was.”

Just as she finished speaking, the boulder crashed into the long grass ahead of them and lodged at the very edge of the bank. Tigerheart and Sedgewhisker darted forward to take a look at it.

“Be careful!” Whitetail and Toadfoot called out in the same heartbeat, then gave each other an embarrassed glance.

The two younger warriors didn’t take any notice. Tigerheart scrambled up the side of the streambed and gave the boulder a nudge with his nose.

“It’s not a rock!” he meowed in surprise. “Look!” He gave the boulder another nudge and it bounced away from him, lighter than a twig.

“Mouse-brain!” Lionblaze hissed. He ran forward and gave the boulder a harder shove, sending it farther off. “Keep away,” he warned Tigerheart and Sedgewhisker. “It’s a Twoleg thing!”

Before the three cats could hide in the streambed again, one of the young Twolegs came blundering through the long grass, yowling to his companions. Lionblaze guessed that he was looking for the round thing.

“Hide!” he hissed. “Keep down!”

He crouched down beside Tigerheart and Sedgewhisker, feeling very exposed with only the grass stems to hide him. Tigerheart was tense with alarm, but Sedgewhisker seemed perfectly comfortable, keeping still and silent, not even blinking, as her gaze followed the young Twoleg.

That figures , Lionblaze thought. WindClan cats are used to hunting without ground cover .

Several moons seemed to pass before the Twoleg found the round thing and ran off with it. Gradually the noise from the Twolegs died away. The three cats slid down into the stream again; Toadfoot was waiting for his Clanmate with his neck fur bristling.

“Are you completely mouse-brained?” he demanded. “Do you want Twolegs to catch you?”

“Sorry,” Tigerheart mumbled.

Whitetail glared at Sedgewhisker, who ducked her head apologetically.

“Let’s get a move on,” Toadfoot meowed. “We’ve wasted enough time here.” He set off at a run, glancing back to add, “The brown animals won’t be anywhere around here, right?”

“Er…right,” Dovepaw stammered.

The stream skirted the green expanse where the Twolegs were playing, then ran between rows of Twoleg nests, with neat patches of grass that stretched down to the bank. Trees overhung the channel; Lionblaze was thankful for the shade and the cover, especially when he heard the yowls of young Twolegs coming from their nests.