Erin Hunter - Sunset

“We’ll send a patrol out,” Firestar decided. “Cloudtail, you can lead it. Pick two or three other cats and go at once.”

“Oh, no, no!” Daisy wound her tail around Cloudtail’s neck. “I need you to stay with me. What if my other kits go missing too?”

Brightheart let out a hiss of annoyance and turned away.

Brambleclaw couldn’t blame her. Hazelkit and Mousekit looked too scared to set a paw outside the nursery, let alone the camp. He could understand how upset Daisy must feel, but she didn’t have to make this amount of fuss. Cloudtail was looking embarrassed, but he didn’t try to tell Daisy that no cat countermanded the Clan leader’s orders.

“Hazelkit and Mousekit aren’t going anywhere,” Leafpool mewed calmly. “Cloudtail, take Daisy into the nursery. I’ll fetch her some poppy seed to calm her down.”

“And I’ll lead the patrol,” Brambleclaw offered.

Firestar nodded and watched as Cloudtail disengaged himself from Daisy’s tail and nudged her back to the nursery.

Brambleclaw signaled to Squirrelflight, who was standing a tail-length away with Stormfur and Brook.

“Let’s go,” he meowed. “I’ll skin the little wretch when we find him, upsetting the camp like this.”

“No, you won’t.” Squirrelflight flicked his shoulder with her tail. “You’re as worried as the rest of us that he might be frightened or hurt.”

Brambleclaw grunted. For all his fierce words, he couldn’t deny a sneaking admiration for Berrykit’s latest escapade. It took a lot of courage for a kit to venture out alone into the forest, especially after seeing the badger attack. “The sooner he’s apprenticed, the better,” he muttered, adding silently, And I’d be more than happy to be his mentor .

Squirrelflight was the first to pick up the kit’s scent a couple of tail-lengths from the end of the tunnel. “He’s gone that way,” she reported, pointing with her tail in the direction of the ShadowClan border.

“Then we’d better find him fast,” Stormfur meowed. “I don’t suppose ShadowClan will be too pleased to find a strange kit in their territory.”

Berrykit’s trail led almost directly toward the border, though occasionally the kit had made a detour to investigate the roots of a tree or a sandy hollow beneath a rock. Brook spotted tiny paw prints in the soft mud beside a pool, as if the kit had stopped to lap the water. A little farther on, there were a few shallow scrapes in the ground.

“The mighty hunter!” Squirrelflight mewed, her tail curling up in amusement. “He must have been pretending to bury his fresh-kill.”

“Like that, you mean?” Stormfur pointed with his tail toward a beetle climbing slowly up a frond of fern. If it had been Berrykit’s chosen prey, it had survived the experience.

“I don’t suppose you were any different when you were a kit,” Brook scolded him gently. “At least we know that Berrykit was okay when he got here.”

“But the ShadowClan border isn’t far away,” Squirrelflight pointed out.

Just then Brambleclaw thought he heard something up ahead. He gestured with his tail for the others to be quiet. For a moment he could hear nothing except for the rustle of wind in the trees and the piping of birds. Then the sound came again: a piercing shriek like the sound of prey under a cat’s claws.

Squirrelflight turned to him, her eyes wide with alarm.

“That could be Berrykit!”

Brambleclaw tasted the air. The kit’s scent reached him strongly, along with another that was both familiar and unwelcome.

“ShadowClan!” he exclaimed. “Come on!”

Brambleclaw raced through the trees toward the sound, the other three cats keeping pace with him. That mousebrained kit must have crossed the border and been spotted by a ShadowClan patrol. If they have laid one claw on him … Brambleclaw thought, fury raising the hair on his neck and shoulders.

He pelted around a bramble thicket and into a clearing near the dead tree on the ShadowClan border. “Berrykit!”

The thin wail of a cat in pain answered him. Brambleclaw saw Berrykit writhing on the ground in the shelter of a clump of ferns. No other cats were near him. At first Brambleclaw thought the kit must be too badly injured to get up. Then he saw a shining silver tendril wrapped around his tail. Berrykit was caught in a fox trap!

Squirrelflight let out a long hiss. Her neck fur bristled as she stared at a spot just across the border. Following her gaze, Brambleclaw made out three ShadowClan cats crouching in the shadow of a hazel bush: Russetfur, the Clan deputy; Oakfur; and Cedarheart. From the look of it, they had been there for some time, watching Berrykit struggle in agony.

“Crow-food eaters!” Squirrelflight spat at them. “Why didn’t you help him?”

Russetfur rose to her paws and paused to give her shoulder a couple of slow licks. “Every cat knows that ThunderClan ignores borders,” she meowed. “But ShadowClan sticks to the warrior code. Besides, that’s a kittypet. We have nothing to do with kittypets in this Clan.”

Squirrelflight let out another hiss; Brambleclaw could see she was too angry to speak. “Forget it,” he muttered. “We need to help Berrykit.”

Squirrelflight’s claws flexed, as if she would like nothing better than to sink them into ShadowClan fur. Instead, she spun around and followed Brambleclaw across the clearing to Berrykit’s side.

Stormfur and Brook were already bending over the kit; Brook was giving him a comforting lick around the ears, while Stormfur sniffed at the shining stuff gripping his tail.

All around Berrykit the ground was torn up with tiny, desperate scratches as if he’d tried to drag himself free. His wails had sunk to a frightened mewling.

“I’m s-sorry,” he whimpered. “I just wanted to hunt some prey and—”

“You frightened your mother and upset the whole Clan,” Brambleclaw meowed sternly. “Keep still and we’ll soon have you out of there.”

But when he examined Berrykit’s tail, he wasn’t sure it was going to be that easy. The kit’s haunches were matted with blood, his tail mangled in his struggles to free himself. The shining tendril was pulled tight around it and stretched taut to the stick buried in the ground. Brambleclaw gave it an experimental tug; it didn’t move, but Berrykit let out a shriek of pain as the tendril jerked.

“You’re hurting him,” Squirrelflight gasped. “Let me try biting through it.”

She crouched down beside Berrykit, but Brambleclaw could see that the tendril was too deeply embedded in his fur for her to get her teeth to it. Instead, Berrykit let out another wail. “You bit me!”

“Sorry.” Squirrelflight stepped back, panting, a smudge of blood on her nose.

Brambleclaw stared down at the trapped kit. Would they have to bite his tail off to free him? He was bracing himself to suggest it when Brook twitched her ears toward the stick that held the tendril.

“If we dig that up, the wire should loosen,” she pointed out.

Brambleclaw exchanged a bewildered glance with Squirrelflight.

“The stick’s holding the wire,” Brook explained. “But it can’t hold it tight if it’s not stuck in the ground.”

“Brook, you’re brilliant!” Squirrelflight flung herself at the stick and began scraping furiously. Brook joined her on the other side, tugging the stick to loosen it as Squirrelflight threw up showers of earth. Every time the stick moved Berrykit squeaked in pain. Stormfur crouched over him and licked his ears soothingly, at the same time shielding the kit’s face with his body so he couldn’t see the state of his tail.

As Squirrelflight dug deeper, Brambleclaw realized the tendril was starting to sag.