Erin Hunter - Starlight

Were there so many Twolegs here that all the prey had fled?

But at least the ground was becoming more uneven, with bushes and clumps of dead bracken where little creatures might hide.

Suddenly he picked up a tiny scuffling sound among the leaves at the foot of a tree. Squirrelflight heard it at the same moment, and streaked toward it. Her paws thudded on the ground, and the prey—a vole—shot out and vanished into a clump of brambles. Squirrelflight raced after it with her nose stretched out. Brambleclaw groaned—she should have known better than to chase something so noisily in the quiet forest.

“She won’t catch it now,” Crowfeather commented.

They watched Squirrelflight plunge into the bushes. For a heartbeat her dark ginger fur was visible among the waving branches before it disappeared. A fading yowl came out of the bushes, and then all was still.

“What happened?” exclaimed Tawnypelt.

Brambleclaw dashed toward the brambles, the vole forgotten. “Squirrelflight!” he yowled. “Squirrelflight, where are you?”

He pushed his way into the thorny branches.

“Careful!” he heard Mistyfoot warn him from behind.

Brambleclaw scarcely heard her. Springy twigs slapped him across the face, and he felt a thorn sink into his pad.

“Squirrelflight!” he called again.

“I’m down here!” The faint reply came from somewhere below.

Brambleclaw looked down and gasped. A tail-length in front of him the ground fell away sharply; another couple of pawsteps and he would have slipped over too.

Glancing back over his shoulder he saw Tawnypelt pressing up close behind him. “Stay back,” he warned. “There’s some sort of cliff here. Let me have a look first.”

Keeping his belly close to the ground, he crept forward until he could look over the edge. Remembering the gorge in the mountains where Smokepaw had fallen, he braced himself to see Squirrelflight’s broken body lying on stones far below. Instead she was standing in a clump of brambles no more than three or four fox-lengths beneath him, staring up at him with wide green eyes.

“Squirrelflight!” He gasped. “Are you all right?”

“No, I’m not!” Squirrelflight meowed crossly. “I’ve got so many thorns in me I feel like a hedgehog. And I never caught that wretched vole. But I’ve found something amazing!

Come and see.”

“Will we be able to get out again?”

Squirrelflight sighed. “Honestly, Brambleclaw, are you a mouse? Get down here. You’ve got to see this.”

Brambleclaw felt his fur prickle with excitement. He glanced back at the other members of the patrol. Tawnypelt was standing where he had left her, and Mistyfoot and Crowfeather peered anxiously around her flank.

“Is Squirrelflight hurt?” Mistyfoot called.

“No, I think she’s fine,” Brambleclaw replied. “She wants me to go down there. Will you keep watch?”

Mistyfoot nodded, and Brambleclaw turned back to the cliff. When he looked at it closely, he saw that it wasn’t as sheer as the gorge. It was steep, but there were plenty of pawholds on jutting stones and tussocks of grass. Half slipping, half scrambling, he made his way down until he reached Squirrelflight, who was standing among the brambles looking rather disheveled.

“There!” She spun around, impatiently twitching her tail.

“See?”

Brambleclaw followed her gaze more slowly. They were standing on the edge of a bramble thicket; a wide, grassy space stretched in front of them, surrounded by walls of stone. Where he and Squirrelflight had come down, the walls were fairly low, but on the opposite side of the clearing they stretched above their heads for many fox-lengths.

“It’s a good thing you didn’t fall down on that side,” he meowed.

“Yes, I know, but don’t you see, Brambleclaw?” Squirrelflight demanded. “This is ThunderClan’s new camp!”

“What?”

“ Look at it,” she insisted. “It’s perfect.”

Brambleclaw unhooked a bramble from his fur and padded into the center of the clearing. The stone walls rose all around him except for a gap not far away, which was choked with dead ferns and grass with whiskery, seedy stems.

There were more bramble thickets all around him, and he could see one or two cracks that might lead to caves in the highest part of the wall. He could see what Squirrelflight meant. The place could make a good camp, but something about it spooked him all the same.

“I don’t know…” he began, not wanting to crush Squirrelflight’s excitement but unable to ignore the disquiet that made his paws itch. “Look at the surface of the stone, how smoothly it’s been cut. Only Twolegs could have done that, and we can’t camp anywhere near Twolegs.”

“But that must have been ages ago,” Squirrelflight argued, coming to join him in the center of the clearing. “Look at the grass and bushes growing up the walls. They didn’t spring up overnight, did they? And there’s no scent of Twolegs.”

Brambleclaw tasted the air. Squirrelflight was right. No Twolegs had been there for a long time. She was right about the bushes, too. Twolegs must have cut out the stone—maybe to build their nests—and then gone away and left the hollow in the middle of the forest. In a way, it reminded him of the ravine that had sheltered the old ThunderClan camp.

Perhaps that would make it feel like home to the Clan.

He forced himself to be calm. His Clanmates needed him to be strong, and not see danger in every shadow and stirring leaf. “It might do, I suppose.”

Squirrelflight flicked her ears. “Don’t get too enthusiastic, will you?” she mewed.

“I’m just wondering what it would be like to defend. That part over there would be fine”—he gestured with his tail to the highest, steepest wall—“but it’s pretty low where we came in. And what about that gap?”

“Well, it’s an easier way in and out than the one we took just now! We can fill it in with thorns or something to keep out uninvited visitors.”

She bounded over and prowled through the long grass, sniffing here and there. Watching her, Brambleclaw felt a wave of homesickness sweep over him, and he closed his eyes.

The feeling seemed to pick him up and swamp him like the waves at sun-drown-place, and for a few heartbeats he thought he would drown in it. He wanted the old ThunderClan camp with its strong thorn walls and the gorse tunnel that was so easy to defend. He wanted to lie down in the warriors’ den under the thornbush, or visit Cinderpelt in her den among the soft green ferns. He wanted to eat fresh-kill by the nettle patch while the apprentices scuffled by their favorite tree stump, their fighting moves carefully imitated by the kits outside the nursery.

The pain of knowing he could never go back was almost too much for Brambleclaw to bear. The Twoleg monsters would have torn up every part of the camp by now, all the places that were so deep in his heart. It wasn’t fair! Why had StarClan let this happen?

The wind picked up, rattling the branches of the trees that surrounded the hollow and jolting Brambleclaw back to his surroundings. Taking a deep breath, he padded over to Squirrelflight, who was still nosing about in the gap between the walls.

“Are you okay?” she asked. “You’re limping.”

“Oh—there’s a thorn in my pad.” Brambleclaw had almost forgotten about it.

“Lie down and let me look.”

When Brambleclaw obeyed, she licked experimentally at his pad and managed to get the end of the thorn between her teeth. With a sharp tug it came away.

“There,” Squirrelflight meowed. “Now give it a good lick.”

“Thanks. You’re nearly good enough to be a medicine cat!”

Squirrelflight gave a little mrrow of amusement. Then the laughter died from her eyes and she looked closely at him.