Эрин Хантер - Fading Echoes

“This is a patrol, not an outing for kits!” he scolded. “The noise you’ve been making will have disturbed every piece of prey in the area. I don’t envy the hunting patrol!”

Dovepaw hung her head and followed Ivypaw as she slunk back up the bank and halted in front of Brambleclaw. “Sorry.” Her ears burned with shame.

“I know it’s exciting to have the lake back,” Lionblaze meowed with a hint of sympathy in his voice. “But you can play later.”

Brambleclaw’s gaze remained stern. “Have you re-marked the boundary here?” He swished his tail, indicating the scent line running three tail-lengths from the water’s edge. “Now that the lake’s full again, we need to reestablish old markers.”

“I’ll start now!” Ivypaw began to dart away. “Ow!” She skidded to a halt and lifted her paw, ears flat, eyes round with pain.

“What is it?” Cinderheart hurried to her apprentice and examined her paw.

Ivypaw winced and tried to snatch it away.

“Hold still,” Cinderheart ordered. Grasping the apprentice’s paw more tightly, she sniffed at the pad and began to pluck at the splinter with her teeth.

“Ow-ww!” Ivypaw yowled, still trying to wriggle away.

“Wait!” Cinderheart commanded through clenched teeth. “I’ve nearly got it.” Keeping a firm grip on Ivypaw’s paw, she gave one last tug and plucked out a ragged, bloody splinter.

“StarClan’s kits, that hurt!” Ivypaw hopped in a circle, cursing, then sucked at her pad.

Dovepaw weaved around her. “Are you all right?”

Ivypaw’s pelt gradually smoothed. She shook her paw, then inspected the small cut in the pad, oozing a tiny drop of blood. “That feels better.” She sighed.

Brambleclaw sniffed the splinter that Cinderheart had spat onto the ground, then glanced around the smooth grass at the top of the bank. His eyes darkened when he spotted the two halves of a broken stick buried in the long grass. “It must have come from that.”

Dovepaw recognized them at once. “I trod on that last time we were here.” She dragged one half out and laid it at Brambleclaw’s paws before dislodging the other half.

Lionblaze stared at the broken pieces with wide, startled eyes. He opened his mouth as if he were about to say something, but Brambleclaw spoke first.

“Throw them in the lake,” the ThunderClan deputy ordered. “I don’t want any more cats injured.”

Dovepaw picked up one half and dragged it to a high part of the bank where the water lapped the sandy cliff. She tossed it as far as she could, enjoying the splash when it hit the surface, and returned for the second piece. But Ivypaw was already heaving it over the edge, flinging it into the deep water.

As the last part of the stick struck the waves, Dovepaw heard the agonized yowl of a cat in pain echoing through the trees. She froze, listening. Had another cat trodden on a splinter? She glanced back at her Clanmates, but they were calmly watching the two pieces of stick bob away from the bank. None of them had made a sound.

Dovepaw frowned. She cast her senses farther, ears pricked, listening, trying to tell which cat had howled in agony. A scent drifted to her on the damp breeze, tinged with the echo of pain.

Jayfeather!

She could hear his rough tongue scraping the fur on his flank. His movements were urgent, as though he was trying to find the source of the injury.

Fear brushed Dovepaw’s pelt. When Jayfeather let out that terrible wail, it had sounded as if someone had sunk a claw into his heart. Now Lionblaze was standing beside her, his body tense as he stared at the pieces of stick floating out toward the middle of the lake. Worry clouded his gaze and, for a reason she couldn’t explain, Dovepaw shivered.

“Ouch!” Jayfeather staggered sideways as a pain, sharp as a hawk’s talon, stabbed his side. He licked at it furiously, anticipating the tang of blood. But his pelt was unharmed.

Puzzled, he sniffed the air, tasting the herbs laid out before him on the floor of the medicine cave. Reaching tentatively forward, he felt the space around him for any brambles.

Nothing.

Then what had stabbed him?

He must have imagined it. Maybe the death of Leopardstar had pierced the air as StarClan mourned. Maybe Mistyfoot’s naming ceremony had somehow touched him—the shock of new lives carried from her mind to his. He frowned. A change in a Clan’s leadership was an important event; perhaps it was inevitable that it would affect him somehow.

He padded along the row of herbs once more, the pain in his side easing to a dull ache. The leaves were drying nicely in the breeze that filtered through the brambles trailing at the den entrance, and there was enough sunshine striking into the hollow to warm the air. There was nothing left to do but wait. Enough time to check on Poppyfrost and her kits.

Springing over the leaves, Jayfeather pushed his way through the entrance, the brambles stroking satisfyingly over his spine as he headed out of the den.

Firestar was dozing on Highledge, his breath clouding in the cool morning air as he rested his chin over the edge of the jagged rock. Sandstorm lay beside him. Jayfeather could hear their fur brushing as their flanks gently rose and fell. They must have been night hunting again. Jayfeather knew that the ThunderClan leader and his mate sometimes liked to slip out of camp while their Clanmates slept and run through the woods. Images of their hunt filled Firestar’s dreams now, and Jayfeather sensed joy as the ThunderClan leader relished the freedom of the forest, his mate at his side, the worries of the Clan left behind at the barrier of thorns.

Jayfeather pulled his mind away, always uncomfortable at intruding on the thoughts of his Clanmates, though the temptation was never far away.

“Come on, Blossompaw!” Graystripe called to the apprentice. “You’re supposed to be helping, not playing.”

Blossompaw froze, her tail sweeping to a halt, leaves drifting from the stale-smelling bundle that she clutched between her paws.

“Ha!” Briarpaw’s pads brushed the earth as she skipped out of the way, and Jayfeather pictured the scene: Blossompaw had been about to send a shower of leaves over her littermate and had been caught in the act by Graystripe.

“Sorry.” Blossompaw swept her leaves toward Graystripe with her tail, and the gray warrior focused on his task once more; Jayfeather could hear his fur snagging against the prickles. “There are more holes in here than in a rabbit warren,” he fretted. “I want them stuffed with leaves before the wind turns cold.”

Berrynose was picking through the brambles on the other side of the nursery. “It’s just as bad over here,” he reported. The cream-colored tom began crunching pawfuls of leaves in between the branches. It was his kits, after all, who were in the nursery along with his mate, Poppyfrost.

Jayfeather was concentrating so hard on the two warriors working on the nursery walls that the flailing, fluffy bundle rolling into his paws made him jump.

“Sorry, Jayfeather!” Cherrykit scrambled back toward her mother, who was basking on the sandy earth outside the nursery.

“Watch where you’re going,” Poppyfrost chided.

“Jayfeather!” Molekit mewled. The tiny kit pattered toward him. “Watch what I can do!”

Jayfeather felt Poppyfrost tense at her kit’s tactless words; he flicked his tail to let her know he wasn’t offended. He liked the way kits didn’t trip over themselves trying not to say the wrong thing to him. “Show me,” he prompted Molekit.