Erin Hunter - Sunset

Much closer was another, smaller building with no lights showing. Brambleclaw remembered passing it in daylight, and thinking it looked a bit like the barn where Barley and Ravenpaw lived.

“Over there, maybe?” he suggested, gesturing with his tail.

“Yes, Daisy said they lived in a barn,” Cloudtail replied.

“Let’s go.”

He flattened himself to the ground and crept under the fence. Brambleclaw followed, feeling his pelt prickle as he entered this strange Twoleg territory. He padded after the blur of Cloudtail’s white pelt in the gathering darkness, then froze as he heard the high-pitched cry of a horse. A heartbeat later the ground shook with the thudding of hooves.

Fighting panic, Brambleclaw whipped his head back and forth, trying to see where the noise was coming from. Then two horses burst out of the night almost on top of him, a whirl of glossy pelts and gleaming hooves. Their eyes were rolling back; something had spooked them into flight.

Cloudtail took off with a yowl of terror. Brambleclaw dashed after him. “No! This way! Keep together!”

He wasn’t sure where the barn was anymore. The horses had disappeared into the darkness again but he could still hear the thunder of their hooves. He and Cloudtail might run straight into them and be pounded into the grass.

Then he spotted a pale shape dashing across the field. It was Smoky, the horseplace tomcat who had fathered Daisy’s kits.

“Follow me!” Smoky gasped, skidding to a halt and spin-ning around to run back the way he had come. “Quick!”

Brambleclaw and Cloudtail raced in his paw steps.

Brambleclaw caught another glimpse of the horses, storming past with manes flying. Then they were gone, and Smoky was slowing down, leading them up to the wall of the barn.

“In here,” he meowed.

The barn was built of piled-up stone, with a door made of strips of wood. There was a narrow gap at the bottom; Smoky slipped inside, followed by Cloudtail, and Brambleclaw squeezed after them, finding it hard to fit his shoulders through the small space. He stood panting, trying to catch his breath and letting his fur lie flat again.

Inside, the barn was almost completely dark. It was smaller than Ravenpaw’s home, but Brambleclaw could just make out familiar stacks of hay and straw. Their scent filled the air, along with the smell of mice and cats. Relief swept over Brambleclaw as he distinguished the well-known scents of Daisy and all three kits; at least they had made it back safely.

“Well, I never expected to see you here,” Smoky mewed.

“What do you want?” Another cat had come up beside Smoky, gazing at the two forest cats with curious eyes. Her pelt was gray and white like Daisy’s; Brambleclaw wondered whether they might be littermates.

“This is Floss,” Smoky told them.

“I’m Cloudtail and this is Brambleclaw.” The white warrior flicked his tail at his Clanmate. “We’ve come to see Daisy.”

He broke off at the sound of heavy footsteps outside the door of the barn. Brambleclaw’s heart started to pound again as it opened. Twolegs! He and Cloudtail flashed a glance at each other, and dived for the cover of the straw bales.

As he pulled the end of his tail into a tiny space hardly big enough to contain him, Brambleclaw heard an amused mrrow coming from Smoky. “There’s no need to hide. It’s only the Nofurs.”

Brambleclaw managed to wriggle around in his cramped hiding place so that he could peer out. At first he could hardly see anything because a bright yellow light was shining straight in his eyes. Then the beam shifted, and he realized the dark shape behind it was carrying the light in its paw. In the other forepaw it held a bowl like the ones Brambleclaw had seen in a Twoleg nest on his journey to the sun-drown-place. The Twoleg shook it and something rattled inside. He heard Floss meow, “Dinner! And about time, too.”

The Twoleg put the bowl down in front of the two horseplace cats and went out again, taking the glaring light with it.

Once the door had closed, Brambleclaw crept out, feeling slightly embarrassed. Smoky turned toward them, while Floss plunged her face into the food bowl.

“You’ve come to see Daisy?” He sounded surprised. “I didn’t think you’d want to see her again, once she left.”

“We like Daisy a lot,” Cloudtail mewed.

“Yes, we wanted to make sure she and the kits are okay,” Brambleclaw added.

Before he had finished speaking, shrieks of delight erupted from the far corner of the barn. Daisy’s three kits dashed out, wild with excitement, and hurled themselves at Brambleclaw and Cloudtail.

“You came, you came!” Berrykit squealed. “I said you would.” He crouched down in front of Brambleclaw, his fur fluffed up and his teeth bared in a pretend growl. “I chased a mouse on the way here,” he boasted.

“Did you catch it?” Brambleclaw asked.

Berrykit looked downcast. “No.”

“Never mind, you will next time.”

The young kit brightened up, waving the stump of his tail.

“I’m going to catch all the mice in this barn!”

“Leave some for us!” Hazelkit protested. She had charged into Cloudtail, knocking him off his paws, and now she was scrambling over him. “We want to catch mice too. We want to be apprentices like Birchpaw and Whitepaw.”

“Are they warriors yet?” Mousekit asked.

“Warriors!” Cloudtail let out a mrrow of laughter. “Come on! You’ve only been away for a day.”

“It feels like moons!” Berrykit wailed. “It’s boring here.”

“But it’s safe.” Brambleclaw looked up at the sound of Daisy’s voice. The she-cat padded over to join them, sweeping her tail around to flick Hazelkit on the shoulder. “Get off at once! Is that any way to show respect for a warrior?”

Hazelkit bounced to the floor, allowing Cloudtail to get up and shake scraps of straw from his pelt. “Hi, Daisy,” he meowed.

Daisy halted a couple of tail-lengths away and steadily held his gaze. “I know why you’re here. Please don’t ask me to come back to the forest. I’ve made up my mind.”

“But every cat misses you, and your kits,” Cloudtail mewed. “ThunderClan needs new warriors. And you know we’ll do everything we can to make you feel at home.”

“ We want to go back,” Berrykit added, nudging his mother.

Mousekit and Hazelkit squeaked their agreement.

Daisy shook her head. “No, you don’t. You’re too young to understand.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” Brambleclaw put in. “When you brought them into the forest they were so young that they won’t be able to remember much about this place. Living in our camp is all they know. They’re almost Clanborn, like the other warriors. Of course they want to go back.”

Daisy let out a long sigh. “It can’t possibly work. I’ve always lived close to Nofurs. I’m used to regular feeding times and a roof over my head. You warriors despise that way of life.”

“We don’t despise you, Daisy,” Cloudtail promised quietly.

“But everything in the forest is so strange!” Daisy protested. “I don’t understand half of what’s in that warrior code of yours. I don’t feel like I could ever belong.”

Her eyes, fixed on Cloudtail, were huge with sorrow.

Understanding struck Brambleclaw like a flash of lightning.

She was in love with the white warrior! And she must know that there would never be any cat for him but Brightheart.

He let out a purr of sympathy. Perhaps Daisy was right to leave. It must hurt to see Cloudtail every day and know he would never be more than her friend.

Cloudtail didn’t seem to realize the strength of Daisy’s feelings. “I still think you should come,” he argued. “There’ll always be a place for you. And every cat misses you. I know Brightheart does.”