Erin Hunter - Dawn

“I agree,” meowed Stormfur from the RiverClan corner.

“Me too.” Tawnypelt stretched, arching her back. “We must carry on.”

“I think they’re right,” Leopardstar meowed unexpectedly.

“There are too many Twolegs around here. What if one of their dogs got loose? We’d be trapped in a place like this.”

Blackstar narrowed his eyes. “Very well,” he muttered.

Tallpoppy reluctantly got to her paws, nudging her kits awake. “Come on, my dears,” she whispered. “We’re leaving.”

“But it’s warm here,” mewled one.

“And there’s fresh-kill,” squeaked another.

“We must go anyway,” Tallpoppy told them. Her voice was dull with tiredness, and Squirrelpaw felt a jolt of sympathy for the brave ShadowClan queen. She padded toward the entrance, and her kits followed, their fur sticking up in clumps where they had slept on it.

“I’ll come with you to Highstones,” Ravenpaw offered, brushing his tail against Firestar’s flank.

The cats filed silently away from the shelter, heading for the crags of Highstones that towered in the distance, dark against the clearing sky. Squirrelpaw shivered as the wind ruffled her fur. Sunhigh was already past. If they slowed their pace to match the elders and kits, they would not reach Highstones until the sun had dipped below the horizon.

“So who is ThunderClan’s deputy now?” she heard Ravenpaw ask Firestar.

Squirrelpaw glanced at Brambleclaw, but he kept his eyes fixed straight ahead.

“Graystripe is,” Firestar growled.

Ravenpaw stared at his friend in surprise. “But he’s gone.”

Firestar rounded on him, his eyes glittering with pain.

“Isn’t it enough that we’ve had to leave our home? Don’t ask me to give up on my friend as well. I know he would never give up on me.” He started to trudge on again. “ThunderClan has a deputy, and there is no need to choose a new one.”

Highstones was cast in blue-black shade as the sun sank low in the sky. The cats had seemed to take forever struggling up the steep, stony slope on paws already raw from the day’s traveling. Now they lay exhausted outside Mothermouth.

Squirrelpaw stared into the great black tunnel that led to the Moonstone. The Clan leaders and their medicine cats had disappeared into it as soon as they had arrived.

“I wish you’d gone with them,” Squirrelpaw muttered to her sister. “You could have told me what StarClan said.”

“Leopardstar said this wasn’t a time for apprentices, and Firestar agreed with her,” Leafpaw mewed.

“Do you think StarClan will tell them anything?”

“Who knows?” murmured Leafpaw.

There was the sound of loose stones crunching beneath paws, and Firestar padded out of the tunnel, followed by Tallstar, Leopardstar, and Blackstar. Their faces gave nothing away as they separated to join their Clans.

“I want to know what happened!” Squirrelpaw fretted.

“They can’t tell us anything about the ceremony,” Leafpaw reminded her.

Squirrelpaw felt a prickle of frustration. It was all right for Leafpaw; she had her own special connection with StarClan.

Couldn’t she help out the cats who didn’t?

“Squirrelpaw!’ Brambleclaw called. The tabby warrior was weaving his way toward her. “We’re meeting up there!” he whispered. He nodded to the crest of the ridge. “We have to decide where we’re going next.”

Squirrelpaw put her head on one side. “I thought we were going to the sun-drown-place to find Midnight.”

“This is our last chance to be sure it’s the right thing to do,” Brambleclaw replied. “After this, we’ll be taking our Clanmates into territory where they’ve never been before.

Come on.”

Squirrelpaw followed him up the steep slope, away from the rest of the Clans. She could see Stormfur hurrying to the top of the ridge from the RiverClan cats, his gray pelt glowing in the moonlight. Tawnypelt and Crowpaw already sat on top of the jagged spine of rocks, silhouetted against the star-clad indigo sky.

The shadowy world stretched away on the other side of Highstones, a huge black expanse that made Squirrelpaw’s breath catch in her throat. Out there were snowcapped mountains, strange cats, dangerous creatures, and the sun-drown-place, that endless stretch of water where Midnight lived.

Squirrelpaw shivered. Oh, StarClan, what are we doing?

“Does everyone agree we should head for the sun-drown-place and find Midnight?” Brambleclaw asked.

Tawnypelt’s eyes were round with worry. “I can’t think of what else we should do, but what if she’s not there any more?”

“It’s a long and dangerous journey,” Stormfur agreed.

“I was so sure we were going to lead them to a safe new home,” Squirrelpaw meowed, remembering her excitement as she carried Midnight’s message back from sun-drown-place. “We were going to save them.”

“And instead we might be leading them into unnecessary danger,” Brambleclaw murmured.

“Why couldn’t StarClan have chosen different cats to carry this message?” Stormfur sighed.

Squirrelpaw’s heart ached for him. He had lost so much.

His sister had died on the first journey, and now Twolegs had taken his father. She moved closer to him, pressing her flank against his.

“Do you think our ancestors have abandoned us?”

Tawnypelt mewed, voicing the fear that nagged at them all.

“Well, they haven’t sent the sign Midnight promised,” Brambleclaw admitted. “Have any of you seen a dying warrior?”

“Perhaps it was Mudfur?” Stormfur suggested.

“He was a medicine cat,” Squirrelpaw pointed out.

“Would Midnight know the difference?” murmured Tawnypelt.

The cats looked at one another in silence.

“But Mudfur died on RiverClan territory!” A sickening pang of doubt suddenly twisted Squirrelpaw’s belly. “If Mudfur’s death was the sign, then we’ve come the wrong way!”

The five cats stared at one another, their eyes filled with dread as they imagined telling their leaders that they had to take the Clans all the way back into the heart of the forest to face the monsters once more.

Oh, StarClan, have we gotten it all wrong? Squirrelpaw lifted her face to the sky and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, a flash of movement caught her attention. She gasped, and the other cats followed her gaze. Above them, a falling star blazed a silvery trail before disappearing in a flash of light.

“The dying warrior!’ Squirrelpaw breathed. It was the sign they had been waiting for, one of StarClan’s own warriors scorching into nothingness to show them the way to go. Faint as cobweb, the star’s fiery trail hung in the sky, stretching toward the horizon where the jagged peaks of the mountains jutted into the sky.

“Now we know which way to go,” Brambleclaw murmured.

“Over the mountains,” meowed Squirrelpaw.

Leafpaw pushed closer against Cinderpelt as the chill of dawn dragged her awake. The stone beneath her seemed to have soaked all the warmth from her body, and the air was so cold that when she opened her eyes she could see her breath billowing in small clouds. She stood up and stretched. The rocks glittered with frost in the pale dawn light, and a scent drifted up toward her so delicious it made her mouth water. Ravenpaw was padding up the slope with a freshly killed rabbit dangling from his jaws.

The other ThunderClan cats were still sleeping, clustered in a dip in the rock several fox-lengths away from where each of the other Clans had settled for the night. But the scent of the rabbit woke them, and they began to raise their heads as Ravenpaw weaved among them. Firestar was already stretching, Sandstorm at his side, when Ravenpaw dropped the fresh-kill at the ThunderClan leader’s paws.