Эрин Хантер - The Apprentice's Quest

“Great StarClan!” Sparkpaw squeaked. “You mean there’s more of it?”

“Much more,” Sandstorm told her. “And the sooner we get going, the sooner we’ll arrive.

Come on: I’d like to cross the Thunderpath down there before nightfall.”

Alderpaw realized she meant the black snake-thing. It was so different from the little

Thunderpath that ended at the lake, separating ShadowClan territory from RiverClan.

Glittering objects, which looked like tiny beetles at this distance, were speeding back and forth along its length.

“When we get there,” Sandstorm went on, “you will not cross before I tell you to. Is that quite clear?” she added, with a hard look at Sparkpaw.

Sparkpaw nodded, as cheerful as ever after her earlier scolding. “Sure, Sandstorm.”

With Sandstorm in the lead, the five cats headed down the slope and soon came to a wide stretch of woodland. Even though it wasn’t as thick as the forest, Alderpaw was grateful to be back under the shade of trees, enjoying the warm scents and the long grass underpaw.

Gradually he became aware of voices from somewhere up ahead. But as they grew louder, he realized they were not the voices of cats, or of any other animal he had come across before.

The hairs on his pelt began to rise.

Sandstorm halted, raising her tail as a sign for the others to do the same. “Twolegs!” she hissed.

“Really?” Sparkpaw’s eyes were alight with interest. “Can we go and see?”

Sandstorm hesitated. “It’s not a bad idea for you to get an idea of what they’re like,” she replied at last. “But we’re not here to gawk at Twolegs, and don’t you forget it.”

More cautiously she led the way forward.

Alderpaw had to admit that he was just as curious as his sister. So far he had only glimpsed Twolegs now and again, mostly near the greenleaf Twolegplaces, and always from a distance. He had never heard their raucous voices, or gotten close enough to discover what they were really like.

Skirting a bramble thicket, Sandstorm stood screened behind a clump of ferns and beckoned with her tail. “Okay, come and look, but don’t let them know you’re here.”

Alderpaw crept forward, with Sparkpaw by his side, and peered through the ferns. A group of five Twolegs, all different sizes, were sitting in a clearing. Just beyond them was a stretch of ground covered by the black Thunderpath stuff, with one of the glittering things—this one bright red—crouching under a tree.

“What’s that?” he whispered to Sandstorm.

“A monster,” Sandstorm murmured in reply.

“They’ll kill you if they catch you with those big black paws. But that one looks like it’s asleep, so it’s probably safe for now.”

“And what are the Twolegs sitting on?”

Sparkpaw asked. “They look like tree trunks, but sort of flat.”

Alderpaw thought that was a good description. There was a bigger flat trunk, too, with big leaf wraps scattered upon it. They must have held prey, because the Twolegs were stuffing something into their mouths.

Sparkpaw passed her tongue over her jaws.

“I’m hungry,” she complained. “And whatever that is, it smells good !”

Alderpaw’s pelt bristled with fear to see the Twolegs so close, to hear their harsh voices and to pick up their weird scent. But he was fascinated too.

“They have hardly any fur,” he murmured.

“Are they sick? I remember Leafpool telling me about a sickness that made cats lose their fur. But these Twolegs all seem to have it.”

Turning to Sandstorm, he asked, “Why don’t their medicine Twolegs help them?”

Sandstorm’s green eyes were gleaming with amusement. “They’re not sick,” she explained.

“That’s just what Twolegs look like.”

Then they look pretty stupid, Alderpaw thought, his pelt smoothing out as he wondered why he had been scared of them at all.

Suddenly the smallest Twoleg kit leaped up from the flat tree, letting out a loud yowl. To Alderpaw’s horror it set off at a stumbling run toward the cats, waving its forepaws in the air.

Its round face was red, and crazy sounds were coming from its mouth.

“It’s seen us!” Cherryfall gasped.

At the same moment Sandstorm snapped out a command. “Don’t run! We’ll get separated. Hide!”

Forcing himself to move, Alderpaw darted back to the bramble thicket and thrust his way into it, feeling the thorns rake through his pelt.

He could hear Sparkpaw burrowing close by.

“StarClan-forsaken thorns!” she muttered.

Molewhisker’s voice came from further away. “We should have known! Twolegs are always trouble.”

Alderpaw could hear the Twoleg kit’s voice rising to a shriek. Then the lower-pitched, adult

Twoleg voices drew closer, and the ground shook with the trampling of their huge, clumsy paws. Alderpaw crouched as small as he could and hoped that all his Clanmates were well hidden.

Finally the sounds died away and the footsteps retreated. Alderpaw worked his way backward out of the thicket and stood shaking his pelt. He felt as if every thorn in the forest were sticking into him.

Then he noticed that Sparkpaw had emerged and returned to the edge of the clearing to peer through the ferns again.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he hissed, creeping up to her side. “Do you want the Twolegs to catch you?”

“It’s okay; they’re leaving,” Sparkpaw replied. “Come and watch. It’s really interesting.”

Curious in spite of himself, Alderpaw parted the fern fronds so that he could see. The three Twoleg kits were climbing into the monster. The adult Twolegs were collecting the leaf wraps from the big flat tree trunk; then they crossed the clearing and dropped them into a Twoleg thing that looked like a rock with a tiny cave at the top.

“That’s food!” Sparkpaw whispered. “I can smell it. But why are they putting it in there?”

“Maybe that’s where Twolegs store food,” Alderpaw suggested. “I expect when they’re hungry they’ll come back for it.”

“No.” Alderpaw jumped to realize that Sandstorm had padded up beside him. “That’s just where Twolegs leave their extra food when they don’t want it anymore.”

“How could they not want it?” Sparkpaw asked. “It smells amazing!”

Alderpaw tasted the air, and his jaws began to water at the delicious scent that flooded over him. He realized how hungry he was.

“Twolegs are very strange,” Molewhisker commented, as he and Cherryfall padded up to join the others.

Alderpaw watched as the two adult Twolegs also got into the monster with their kits. He started as the monster woke up with a ferocious roar, flooding the air with an acrid scent, then swiveled around and moved off, its black paws rolling faster and faster on the black

Thunderpath stuff until it disappeared among the trees.

“Did the monster just eat them?” Sparkpaw asked, her eyes stretched wide with horror.

Sandstorm shook her head. “No, the monsters just let Twolegs ride inside them. I don’t even try to understand it.”

“I told you Twolegs are strange,” Molewhisker mewed. “And that goes for their monsters, too. Mind you,” he added after a moment, “they may be strange, but some of their food is really tasty. I’m not too keen on Twolegs, but it would be mouse-brained to let their food go to waste when it’s right there .”

He waved his tail at the open-topped rock.

The cats glanced at one another.

“I’m not sure… ,” Sandstorm murmured.

“You know that warriors don’t eat kittypet food.”

“It’s not kittypet food,” Cherryfall argued.

“It’s Twoleg food.”