Эрин Хантер - The Apprentice's Quest

“Hey, Needlepaw!” he yowled. “Forget their mother for now. These kits need to eat. Catch something, right away!”

“Okay!” Needlepaw yowled back. A few heartbeats later she slid through the bars again and bounded along the tunnel again to join Alderpaw. She was gripping a fat vole in her jaws.

“That was quick!” Alderpaw mewed admiringly. “Now we chew up the meat and feed it to the kits.”

When they had chewed some of the fresh-kill into a pulp, Alderpaw gently opened the gray kit’s mouth and dropped the pulp in. The kit choked, spitting the meat out again.

“Oh, mouse dung!” Needlepaw sighed.

“They’re not used to eating this stuff yet. They need milk.”

“Well, unless you have any, we have to keep trying with the vole,” Alderpaw meowed determinedly.

He dropped more pulp into the kit’s mouth, then massaged her throat so that she would swallow. The kit began choking again, but after a moment the chewed-up vole disappeared, and she began wailing for more.

“Thank StarClan!” Alderpaw exclaimed.

Needlepaw began to feed the black-and-white kit, and soon both tiny creatures were sucking eagerly at the pulp, desperate to fill their bellies.

“They would have starved without us,” Needlepaw murmured, sounding unusually gentle as she blinked affectionately at her kit.

Unexpected warmth spread through Alderpaw. I might have failed in my quest, but at least we saved these kits.

“Now we need to get them warm,” he mewed, when finally the kits stopped eating, their little bellies distended. They were already cuddling up to him and Needlepaw, drawn by the heat of their bodies. “Ow!” Alderpaw yelped as the gray kit batted him on the nose. “Your claws are sharp!”

He began to lick the gray kit, his tongue stroking backward from tail to head, to get her blood flowing. Needlepaw did the same for the black-and-white kit. Soon both kits were purring and sinking into sleep.

“It’s a good thing we found them when we did,” Alderpaw told Needlepaw. “I don’t think they would have survived out here much longer.”

Needlepaw murmured agreement. “I wonder what happened to their mother. Do you think a monster got her on the Thunderpath?”

Alderpaw shuddered at the idea. “I’m not sure. But I think we should bring these kits back to camp, where they can be cared for.”

“Great idea,” Needlepaw meowed. “And I think we should give them names. How about Violetkit for this little one?” she continued, stroking the black-and-white kit’s head with the tip of her tail. “I’m picking up the scent of violets; I think their mother must have used some of the leaves for the nest.”

“That’s a good name,” Alderpaw purred.

“And I’m going to call this little one…

Twigkit. She’s as tiny as a twig!”

Needlepaw let out a mrrow of laughter.

“Twigkit it is!”

As they rose, preparing to pick up the sleeping kits by their scruff, Needlepaw turned to Alderpaw with a smirk on her face. “When are you going to thank me for leading you into the tunnel?” she asked.

Alderpaw, still concentrating on the kits, gave her a confused stare. “What are you talking about?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Needlepaw looked even more smug. “These kits are what you find in the shadows !”

Alderpaw stood on the ridge, a stiff breeze ruffling his fur, and looked down the slope to where the lake lay glittering in the morning sunshine. He was gripping Twigkit’s scruff in his mouth; the tiny kit was waving her paws around and letting out high-pitched squeaks.

Alderpaw gently set her down in the rough grass.

“We’re almost home!” he breathed out.

After they’d left the tunnel, he and Needlepaw had journeyed on until night fell, when they’d made a temporary den near the place where they had seen the Twolegs and eaten their food. Needlepaw had caught a couple of mice, and they had fed the kits again.

Now the woods and moorland around the lake stretched in front of them, and before sunhigh they would be back in their own camps.

Needlepaw toiled up to the ridge and stood beside him, letting Violetkit down into the grass next to her sister. “Made it!” she panted.

“I guess we ought to say good-bye,” Alderpaw began, feeling slightly awkward.

“You’ll want to go through RiverClan to get back to your territory—it’s the quickest way.”

“Yeah, I suppose so,” Needlepaw agreed.

“Uh… Needlepaw…” Feeling even more awkward, Alderpaw turned to face her. “Maybe you could keep quiet about what happened in the gorge, at least until I’ve had the chance to talk to Bramblestar. I told you, the whole

SkyClan thing is kind of a secret.”

He cringed inwardly as he spoke, knowing how unlikely it was that Needlepaw would keep a secret to oblige a ThunderClan cat. He expected her to hiss at him in anger, but she simply stared at him, her mouth clamped shut.

“Okay, then.” Alderpaw realized the best he could hope for was a quick getaway. “If you could just help me get Violetkit onto my back…”

Needlepaw’s jaws gaped open at that. “What are you talking about?” she demanded. “I’m not leaving the shadow kits here. I helped find them! And which cat says that they’re going to ThunderClan?”

Alderpaw could hardly believe what he was hearing. She has got bees in her brain! “If it weren’t for my dream, and what Sandstorm told me, we never would have found the kits!”

Needlepaw’s neck fur began to rise and she flattened her ears. “If it weren’t for me,” she pointed out, “and my idea to go through the tunnel, you would still be standing in front of that stupid Thunderpath trying to figure out what different way of thinking Sandstorm was meowing about. Are you kidding me?”

Alderpaw felt his own pelt bristling as anger swelled up inside him. “Are you kidding me ?” he hissed. Part of him knew that he was wrong to let his fury out on Needlepaw, but he felt so frustrated that he couldn’t help it. “This was my quest in the first place! Besides, do you really think I’d let you take the kits back to ShadowClan, where there aren’t any rules, and apprentices run around thinking up new ways to break the warrior code? I might as well just take them back to the rogues in the gorge.”

“Coward!” Needlepaw spat, her face full of disgust. “We never would have made it back here if we hadn’t broken the warrior code a few times at least. Alderpaw, you’re so blinded by rules that you can’t see what’s in front of your own nose!”

Alderpaw couldn’t reply; the mewling of the kits was all that broke the silence. He and Needlepaw looked down at the squirming bundles of fur, and Alderpaw found his concern for them overpowering his anger at Needlepaw.

He could see the same feeling in her green eyes.

“There’s one fair way to resolve this,” she mewed after a few moments. “We divide the kits up, and each take one back to our own

Clan.”

Alderpaw looked down at the kits, snuggled up together and mewling. An ache tugged at his heart. “We can’t do that,” he responded. “It would be wrong. Don’t you see, Needlepaw?

These kits only have each other now. It’s like me and Sparkpaw: I don’t always agree with her, but I can’t imagine life without her.”

Needlepaw was silent, gazing down at the kits. I wonder if she has any cat she cares about as much as Sparkpaw and I care for each other, Alderpaw thought.

Then, as Alderpaw kept watching Needlepaw and the kits, he was distracted by the yowling of a cat from farther down the slope. Instinctively he and Needlepaw moved in front of the kits to guard them. But when Alderpaw looked down and spotted the cat, he let out a yelp of delight.