Эрин Хантер - The Apprentice's Quest

And how are we going to find SkyClan now?

Needlepaw snorted. “ You need to quit worrying about the others so much and start worrying about yourself. Let them find us .

Meanwhile, we need to rest.”

Alderpaw realized that Needlepaw was right. Staggering to his paws, he gazed around, only to see monsters dashing to and fro on a

Thunderpath a few fox-lengths away, with a row of Twoleg dens on the far side. The air was filled with the reek of monsters and Twolegs.

“I don’t believe it!” he groaned. “Twolegs everywhere!”

“It’s fine,” Needlepaw responded, waving her tail toward a tangle of elder bushes growing between the water’s edge and the Thunderpath.

“We can make a nest here. The Twolegs won’t find us.”

Hoping she was right, Alderpaw followed her as she thrust her way deep into the bushes and flattened a clump of long grass for a makeshift nest. His legs aching with weariness, Alderpaw curled up beside her.

Soon Needlepaw’s snores echoed around their den. But in spite of his exhaustion, Alderpaw found it hard to sleep. The sound and stink of the monsters was too close, and the events of their desperate escape from the rogues kept flickering through his mind.

Snuggling up to Needlepaw, Alderpaw filled his nose with her scent, trying to imagine that he was back in camp, snoozing in the apprentices’ den with Sparkpaw. Finally he slept.

When Alderpaw awoke, bright sunlight was filtering through the branches of the elder bushes. Anxiety stabbed at him as he saw that Needlepaw had vanished. The sound of Twoleg voices drifted into Alderpaw’s ears, and when he crept cautiously out of the bushes he spotted several Twoleg kits playing beside the nests, tossing something brightly colored to each other.

A wave of homesickness for the lake and the forest flooded over Alderpaw. Those kits are so noisy! When will we ever get a bit of peace?

Then the grass parted to reveal Needlepaw, trotting up to him with a plump sparrow clamped in her jaws. “Fresh-kill!” she announced, dropping it at Alderpaw’s paws.

“Thank StarClan you’re back!” Alderpaw exclaimed. “I was worried about you.”

Needlepaw flicked her tail. “No need.

Come on, eat.”

“What do you think we ought to do next?”

Alderpaw asked, his jaws watering as he gulped down warm bites of the sparrow. It was good to sit in the shelter of the bushes and let the sun warm his damp fur, but he knew they shouldn’t stay there any longer.

“Look for the others, I guess,” Needlepaw replied with her mouth full.

Alderpaw was glad that he didn’t have to argue with her. He couldn’t imagine turning for home without at least trying to find his Clanmates.

When they had finished eating, he and Needlepaw headed back upstream as far as the waterfall. “I guess we have to go this way,” he muttered, gazing up at the moss-covered rocks that jutted from the cliff face beside the cascading water.

“It doesn’t look too hard,” Needlepaw meowed, springing up onto the first of the rocks.

Not sure he agreed, Alderpaw followed. The river thundered down beside him, and his legs began to shake as he remembered how he had been swept away and almost drowned. The rocks were slippery from spray, and if he sank his claws into the moss, it pulled away and almost made him lose his balance. Needlepaw was climbing determinedly ahead of him, showering him with grit and drops of water.

Alderpaw was panting hard by the time he reached the top. He would have liked to rest again, but urgency gave strength to his paws as he thought about his Clanmates.

He and Needlepaw trudged on beside the stream, now and again calling out to their friends and casting back and forth as they tried to pick up their scent. Alderpaw began to grow discouraged as they drew closer to the gorge again. Maybe the rogues recaptured them.

They could all be dead by now!

“Hey!” Needlepaw exclaimed at last, pausing to taste the air among the roots of an elm tree that grew close to the waterside. “Over here!”

Alderpaw padded over to join her and sniffed into the leaf-lined hollow made by the roots. He could discern the scents of all three of his Clanmates.

“They must have stopped here to rest,” he mewed, his voice shaking with relief.

“Sparkpaw! Molewhisker! Cherryfall!” he called, hoping that they might still be within earshot. But no cat replied.

“I’ll tell you something,” Needlepaw murmured, concentrating hard as she followed the scent away from the tree. “They were traveling downstream. I’ll bet you a moon of dawn patrols they were looking for us.”

Alderpaw’s heart began to thump with excitement. “Then did we pass them on the way?”

“I don’t see how we could have.” Needlepaw looked puzzled for a moment.

“Anyway,” Alderpaw went on, energy surging back into his paws, “all we have to do is follow their scent. Come on!”

“And climb back down that StarClan-cursed waterfall!” Needlepaw groaned as she followed him.

The scent trail led downstream, sometimes by the waterside, sometimes ranging farther away. Now and again individual scents split off from the main trail, but they always joined it again.

“They’re searching for us,” Needlepaw mewed. “I can’t think how we missed them.”

But when they reached the bushes near the Twoleg dens where they had curled up to rest, they found that the scent trail led onward, past their makeshift den and along the grass between the river and the Thunderpath.

“I don’t believe it!” Needlepaw snarled with a lash of her tail. “ They missed us ! They must have walked straight past while we were asleep.”

Alderpaw bit back a growl of frustration.

“We were so wet, the water would have washed out our scent,” he meowed. “And all these

Twoleg scents don’t help. But it’s not so bad. At least we know that they’re alive, and they haven’t been recaptured by Darktail. All we have to do is follow them.”

But when he and Needlepaw headed downstream, they found it wasn’t as easy as that. There were so many conflicting reeks of Twolegs and monsters covering the scent trail.

Finally they came to a place where Alderpaw guessed that a monster must have stopped, leaving splashes of something dark and foul-smelling on the grass. The cat scent was completely swamped, and they couldn’t pick it up again on the other side.

“We’ve lost them,” Alderpaw mewed.

“They probably think we drowned,” Needlepaw responded in a tiny voice. “Who knows where they went after this?”

“They must still be following the river,” Alderpaw pointed out. “Where else is there for them to go? There’s no way of crossing here.”

“Maybe.” Needlepaw seemed unusually despondent. “But what if we’re wrong? What if we never find them?”

Alderpaw swallowed hard. “Then we have to find our own way back to camp from here,” he stated, trying to sound confident. “If they give up looking for us, that’s where they’ll go.”

Glancing around, Alderpaw realized that he had no idea where they were. They had approached the gorge from the opposite bank, and everything looked different from where he was standing now. He wasn’t even certain if they had been swept past the point where they had first come upon the river.

“We have to cross back to the other side,” he meowed, “and then head toward the setting sun.”

“That’s a bit vague,” Needlepaw pointed out with a sniff. “We could completely miss the lake and the Clan territory. And don’t even think about swimming across the river, because I’m not going to.”

“No cat asked you to,” Alderpaw meowed mildly. “We’ll head downstream on this side to start with, and maybe there’ll be a fallen tree or something where we can cross. We might even catch up with the others, if we’re lucky.”