Erin Hunter - Long Shadows

Inside the den, Leafpool and Jaypaw were already awake.

“This is the last of the tansy,” Leafpool was mewing. “You’d better see if you can find more, and take it straight to the Twoleg nest. Remember to put it on the flat stone outside the entrance.”

“Okay.” Jaypaw turned to go, then halted as he realized that Spiderleg and Lionblaze were there. “What now?” he asked.

Spiderleg answered with another fit of coughing.

“No!” For a heartbeat Lionblaze saw fear flicker in Leafpool’s eyes. Then she was the quietly efficient medicine cat again. “Spiderleg, eat this tansy. It’ll soothe your throat. Jaypaw, bring some more back here as well.”

Jaypaw gave her a brief nod, whisked past the bramble screen, and vanished.

While Spiderleg was chewing up the tansy, grumbling under his breath, Daisy poked her head into the den. “Can

I come in?” she asked Leafpool, her words muffled by the plump vole she was carrying.

Leafpool looked uncertain; the fewer cats around Spiderleg the better. Then she nodded. “Of course, Daisy. What is it?”

Daisy dropped the vole at Spiderleg’s paws. “I brought you this. I thought you could do with a good meal before you go to the Twoleg nest.”

“Well, you needn’t have bothered,” Spiderleg meowed ungraciously. “I’m not hungry.”

Daisy took a step back, her neck fur bristling. “I chose it specially!”

Spiderleg didn’t reply, just swiped his tongue round his jaws for the last of the tansy juices.

“Our kits are worried about you, too,” Daisy went on. Her voice grew sharper. “It’s a wonder they remember you, because you never come to visit them.”

Spiderleg shrugged. “It’s not that I’m not interested… I just know that you’ll do a great job of raising them without me.”

“Why?” Daisy challenged him. “Because I’ve raised kits on my own before? But that wasn’t my choice, Spiderleg, as you know very well.”

Lionblaze exchanged an embarrassed glance with Leafpool; he wished he could leave the den, but the two quarreling cats were blocking the entrance. Leafpool was listening with a strange look in her eyes that Lionblaze couldn’t interpret.

“Every kit is different,” Daisy went on. “And every kit deserves to know its father. You’re missing out, Spiderleg, and if you’re not careful it will be too late, and your own kits won’t know who you are!”

Not waiting for a reply, she spun around and stalked out of the den.

“She-cats!” Spiderleg exclaimed.

He turned to leave, but Leafpool slipped past him and blocked his way out. “Kits are a precious gift, Spiderleg,” she mewed quietly. “You should take every chance you can to be a good father. It’s even better than being a mentor.”

“How would you know?” Spiderleg demanded.

Leafpool just gazed at him, her amber eyes clear and calm.

“Sorry,” Spiderleg muttered after a heartbeat. “It’s just… I never planned to have kits with Daisy. I feel useless and clumsy around them. And I feel every cat is judging me because I’m not closer to Daisy. It didn’t work out, that’s all.”

“That’s not the point,” Leafpool replied. “Your kits still have a mother and a father, even if you and Daisy aren’t mates anymore. You’re punishing the kits by not being a better father.

They won’t judge you because they don’t know any different.

But in the end, they’re the only things that matter.”

“I don’t know what to do!” Spiderleg protested. “I can’t—”

Another outbreak of coughing cut off what he was about to say.

“Then learn!” Leafpool’s amber eyes blazed. “You’ve seen

Brambleclaw and Graystripe and Dustpelt around their kits.

I can’t believe you don’t see how important this is! You should cherish your kits with every breath you take.”

As she spoke, Lionblaze felt a surge of warmth toward Brambleclaw. He was a great father, always ready to listen or to help if his kits had a problem. He’d spent a lot of time with the three kits, because Squirrelflight went back to being a warrior so quickly. Lionblaze trusted him completely; he couldn’t imagine a better father. If Spiderleg’s not careful , he thought, he and the kits are going to end up like Crowfeather and Breezepelt. They don’t even like each other!

“Lionblaze.” Leafpool had obviously realized that he was there, listening to every word she and Spiderleg were saying.

“You can go now. Thanks for helping.”

Lionblaze dipped his head, and slipped past Spiderleg into the clearing. As he left, he heard Leafpool meow, “Before you go to the Twoleg nest, you will eat that vole. You need to keep your strength up if you’re going to get better.”

As he left Leafpool’s den, Lionblaze spotted Brambleclaw choosing a squirrel from the fresh-kill pile. Squirrelflight padded up, and her mate dropped the fresh-kill at her paws.

“This is for you,” he meowed. “I know how much you love young squirrel.”

“So do you,” Squirrelflight purred, touching her nose to his ear. “Let’s share it.”

Brambleclaw hesitated. “Okay, but you have as much as you want. The whole Clan wants you to get strong again.”

The two cats settled down side by side to share the squirrel.

A surge of warmth spread through Lionblaze as he watched them. Thank StarClan our parents are so close.

“Hey, Lionblaze!” Brambleclaw lifted his head from the squirrel. “Now that you’ve dealt with Spiderleg, what about a hunting patrol? Ashfur is waiting for you. The mice aren’t going to line up and come running into camp, you know.”

“Sure!” Lionblaze waved his tail and bounded across the clearing toward Ashfur. Yes, he loved his father, even if he was a bossy old furball!

Lionblaze padded along the old Twoleg path with a squirrel and two mice dangling from his jaws. It was his turn to take fresh-kill to the tree trunk outside the Twoleg nest. A thin drizzle was falling, misting on his pelt and turning the path to mud.

Two sunrises before, when Spiderleg had started coughing, the hopes of every cat in the Clan had plummeted, afraid that Firestar’s plan would come to nothing after all. But since then, no other cat had fallen ill. Lionblaze had begun to wonder if they had started to win the battle after all. He didn’t know much about the sick cats in the Twoleg nest except that all of them, even Millie, were still alive.

Everything was quiet as the walls of the Twoleg nest appeared through the trees. Lionblaze brushed through the wet grass to leave his prey in the hollow trunk. The trunk wasn’t empty as he had expected. A few pieces of fresh-kill, turning soggy from the rain, still lay at the bottom. The scent of cats around the tree stump was stale and faint.

Icy water, far colder than the rain, seemed to trickle down

Lionblaze’s spine. Why aren’t the sick cats eating? Are they all too weak to fetch the prey?

With one paw he scraped the old prey—rapidly turning to crow-food—out of the tree trunk, and replaced it with the fresh, pushing his catch farther back into the hollow to keep it dry. Then he hesitated, looking around. He was meant to continue hunting, but he couldn’t leave until he found out why the cats in the Twoleg nest hadn’t collected all their fresh-kill.

Slowly he padded toward the entrance to the den. Leafpool and Firestar had both forbidden the hunters to go any closer than the tree trunk, but Lionblaze told himself that this was an emergency, and both would want him to break the rules.

As he approached an eerie wailing rose from the Twoleg nest, the cry of a cat in deep distress.

Lionblaze stopped dead. “What’s happening?” he called out, hating the way his voice shook. Courage , he told himself fiercely.