Erin Hunter - The Fourth Apprentice

Gently he guided Daisy out of his den and across the clearing to the nursery. He could sense that she still wasn’t happy, but he didn’t see what more he could do.

Once she was back inside, Jayfeather headed for the rock wall to check the holes for any sign that the snake might have paid another visit. Sunhigh was just past, and the ground was scorching hot, burning his pads; the basking rock was far too hot for the elders to be sunning themselves there.

At least I don’t have to deal with Purdy this time!

As he pulled out the stones that were blocking the holes so that he could get a good sniff, Jayfeather pictured the day when Honeyfern died. Wincing, he let Berrynose’s horror flood over him as he watched the young she-cat writhing in agony from the poison. The warrior’s grief lingered at the foot of the cliff like a memory, soaking into the stones themselves.

It was enough to make Berrynose wish that he had been bitten by the snake instead of Honeyfern. If Poppyfrost knows that, she has good reason to run away .

Jayfeather paused halfway through rolling the last stone back into its hole. He suddenly had an awful suspicion about where Poppyfrost might be.

Leaving the hollow, he slipped under the forest trees, thankful for the cool shade and the air that felt so damp he could almost drink it. Poking out his parched tongue, he tried to lap it, but that only made him feel thirstier than ever.

Mouse-brain! What are you, a kit?

Giving himself a shake, Jayfeather headed through the trees up to the ridge that overlooked the lake. The air was hot and dry, sweeping across him in a scorching wind that carried the scents and sounds of cats up from the waterside. He knew what the lake looked like from his dreams; now he tried to picture it as much smaller, surrounded by dried mud and stones.

Even the underground tunnels will be dry by now.

Padding along the ridge, Jayfeather stopped every few paces to taste the air. Finally he picked up Poppyfrost’s scent on a clump of long grass. Yes! I was right . He followed the traces along the spine of the hill until he reached the WindClan border. Poppyfrost’s scent was just discernible beneath the WindClan scent markers.

Jayfeather’s heart sank as he confirmed what he had suspected all along. Poppyfrost was trying to retrace the path she had followed in her dreams, all the way to the Moonpool.

Mouse-brained cat!

Following his Clanmate’s scent, Jayfeather set off along the path to the Moonpool. But before he had taken many paw steps, he picked up another scent, slightly fresher than Poppyfrost’s and overlying it, as if the cat it belonged to was following her.

Breezepelt! What’s he doing here?

Dovepaw felt her pelt stand on end with excitement as she looked at her mentor, his eyes glimmering in the moonlight that shone through the cleft in the hollow tree.

“What can you sense?” he asked in a murmur low enough not to wake the sleeping cats, or to reach Petalfur on watch outside.

Dovepaw closed her eyes. “Scraping sounds through the ground,” she whispered. “The sound of teeth gnawing wood…and the crash of trees falling! The brown animals are dragging the trees to the stream and setting them in place, lodged tightly together like a wall.” She took a deep breath. “Oh-I can sense the water! It’s trapped behind the trees… What are these creatures?”

She opened her eyes again to see Lionblaze looking alarmed, though his expression quickly changed to a look of determination when he saw she was watching him. “How many animals are there?” he meowed.

“I’m not sure…” Dovepaw tried to concentrate on the brown animals as they moved among the fallen trees, but she couldn’t get the picture clear enough to count them all. “Fewer than our patrol, I think.”

Lionblaze touched her shoulder with the tip of his tail. “It’ll be okay,” he reassured her.

Dovepaw couldn’t share his confidence. What she hadn’t told her mentor was that these animals wouldn’t be easy to fight. They were much heavier than cats, dense and low to the ground, so it would be hard to flip them onto their bellies. They had long, sharp teeth and powerful clawed feet; she shivered at the thought of the wounds they could inflict. The fear that she could be leading the patrol into a battle they couldn’t win weighed in her belly like a stone.

Lionblaze crept out of the hollow tree to relieve Petalfur on her watch. Dovepaw had already done her shift, so she settled down to sleep, but she couldn’t block out the sounds from further upstream. She jerked back into wakefulness every time a tree crashed down, or a branch grated harshly as it was dragged across another. She was still trying to rest when pale dawn light filtered into the hollow tree and the other cats began to stir around her.

“Great StarClan!” Tigerheart exclaimed, sitting up and shaking dead leaves from his pelt. “Dovepaw, you’re wrigglier than a pile of worms!”

“Sorry,” Dovepaw muttered.

Tigerheart pushed his nose briefly into her fur to show that he hadn’t meant to be unkind, before squeezing through the cleft and out into the open. Dovepaw and the other cats followed him out, and they finished off the rest of the fresh-kill pile. Dovepaw noticed that Rippletail and Petalfur didn’t look so hollow and frail anymore.

They must be really starving in RiverClan if they’re fattening up on what we’ve managed to catch out here!

Above the trees, the sky was milky-pale. A cold wind drove gray clouds across the sky, ruffling the cats’ fur the wrong way.

“It’s moons since it’s been as cold as this,” Petalfur meowed, shivering. “Maybe the weather is changing at last.”

“We can deal with it,” Toadfoot grunted.

When the cats had finished eating, Lionblaze took the lead, waving his tail for the others to follow him. “It’s not far now,” he encouraged them. “We’re really close to the brown animals.”

“How do you know?” Toadfoot demanded, his eyes narrowing in suspicion.

“The dream from StarClan said that they were just beyond the Twolegplace,” Lionblaze explained, with a discreet nod to Dovepaw.

Even though she was worried about what other cats would say if they knew about her abilities, Dovepaw found she was annoyed by her mentor’s secrecy. He’s willing enough to use my power, so why is he treating it like it’s some sort of embarrassment for ThunderClan?

“Don’t forget to watch out for falling trees,” she warned them. “And when we get to the place, the water will be really deep, so be careful not to fall in.”

“All this was in your dream?” Toadfoot asked, sounding as if he didn’t believe her.

“That’s right.” Lionblaze paused to give his chest fur a couple of licks, as if he was thinking fast. “She saw the brown animals pushing trees over, and-and StarClan warned her about the water, isn’t that right, Dovepaw?”

Reluctantly Dovepaw nodded.

“That was some dream!” Rippletail exclaimed. “Firestar never said anything about that at the Gathering.”

“Yeah, well, he didn’t need to,” Lionblaze mewed uncomfortably, with a glare at Dovepaw.

Dovepaw met his glare innocently. You got yourself into this mess, so get yourself out of it!

As the patrol made its way along the streambed, up the gently sloping valley, the rush of the rising wind in the trees made it hard for Dovepaw to hear what was up ahead. She strained to make out the sounds of the brown animals, and she jumped when she heard Tigerheart’s voice close beside her.