Erin Hunter - Starlight

Feathertail shook her head. “I walk in two skies now, with the Tribe’s ancestors as well as my own. But wherever I am, I shall never forget the Clans.” She hesitated for a moment, then added, “Especially Crowfeather.”

“He misses you very much. He chose his warrior name for you.”

“Yes, I was watching,” Feathertail purred. “I was so proud.

He will make a great warrior.” She bent close to Leafpaw again, her warm breath stirring the apprentice’s fur. “Tell him not to grieve. I will always love him, but there will be many, many moons before we meet again. For now, he must live with his Clanmates in their new home. He cannot be blind to the cats who are around him for all that time.”

“I’ll tell him,” Leafpaw promised.

Feathertail dipped her head and turned away, starlight dappling her silver pelt. The warriors began to fade until they were little more than a starry sheen around the slopes of the hollow, and then they were gone. Leafpaw caught one more breath of Spottedleaf’s scent before that faded too.

She looked up and saw that the sky was growing brighter.

Sorreltail was standing at the top of the hollow, looking down at her.

Leafpaw ran up the path to join her. “Did you see them?” she asked excitedly.

Sorreltail tipped her head on one side. “See who?”

“StarClan! They were here, all around the hollow! I spoke to Bluestar, and Feathertail!” Leafpaw trailed off when she saw that Sorreltail was looking bewildered, and a little wary.

“I saw a bright mist rising from the pool,” she mewed hesitantly.

“That must have been them,” Leafpaw told her. She gazed around the hollow with the sound of tumbling starlit water filling her ears. “This is the place.”

“Are you sure?”

At that moment the rays of the moon caught the surface of the water, and a pure white light flooded the hollow.

“Yes, I’m sure,” Leafpaw mewed. “We no longer have the Moonstone—but we have the Moonpool. This is the place where StarClan will share tongues with us.” She turned to Sorreltail, feeling her fur glitter with starlight.

“We’ve found it! This is where the Clans are meant to be.”

Brambleclaw kept his ears pricked for the sound of prey as he slipped through the undergrowth. He could hear Thornclaw and Dustpelt padding close behind him, their bellies close to the ground as they ducked under the bracken. Brambleclaw tried to tell himself he didn’t mind that Squirrelflight was not with them. Feeding the Clan and exploring the new territory was more important right now. If Squirrelflight was determined to fight with him, that was her problem. She had never worried about his connection with Tawnypelt, so why was she getting so worked up about Hawkfrost?

The patrol emerged from the bracken and padded along the edge of a broad Twoleg path. This was the farthest a patrol had been from the camp. Until now, they had been busy organizing the dens and barriers in the hollow, and they had found enough prey close by to feed every cat. Now they were beginning to range farther, cautiously exploring the more distant parts of the territory.

Something about the path made Brambleclaw uneasy. “I’m not sure I like this,” he muttered. “It’s too much like a Thunderpath.” His belly clenched as he remembered how the Twoleg monsters had torn through the forest, leaving a swath of devastation wider than this, but just as straight.

Thornclaw carefully tasted the air. “I don’t think it can be,” he meowed after a moment. “There’s no scent of Twolegs or monsters.”

Brambleclaw drew in a long breath and realized that the golden-brown warrior was right. There was no sign of Twolegs, not even stale scent. But there was still something very familiar about the path. “It might be an old Thunderpath,” he guessed. “Maybe the Twolegs let the grass grow over it.”

“Why would they do that?” Thornclaw wondered.

“Because they’re mousebrained,” Dustpelt retorted sourly.

“All Twolegs are mousebrained.” He spotted a vole beneath the nearest bush and began to creep toward it.

Watching him, Brambleclaw went on puzzling about the path. If Twolegs had cut rock from the stone hollow, perhaps they had needed a Thunderpath to take it away. He twitched his ears. It wasn’t important, as long as there were no Twolegs here now.

When Dustpelt had killed his vole and scraped earth over it, they went on, still keeping to the side of the path.

Brambleclaw was reluctant to set paw on something made by Twolegs, even so long ago, and he guessed his Clanmates felt the same.

Suddenly Dustpelt let out a hiss. Brambleclaw froze, his fur bristling as he followed the brown warrior’s gaze through the trees. He could just make out the stone walls of a Twoleg nest.

“There’s still no scent,” Thornclaw mewed. He looked at Brambleclaw. “What do you want to do?”

Part of Brambleclaw wanted to turn and run back to the hollow as fast as he could. He thought of the nest they had discovered in ShadowClan’s territory when they made the first patrol around the lake, and the two ferocious kittypets they had disturbed. But the Clan needed to know everything about their new territory. “Let’s take a look,” he decided.

Another, narrower path led to the nest from the path they were traveling along, but Brambleclaw took a more direct course through the trees, creeping up on the nest with his belly flattened to the ground.

It was very different from the nests in Twolegplace. There was a door made from flat wooden strips, but they were broken and rotten and hung crookedly from one side. The big square holes in the walls were empty, so wind and rain could blow straight in. The nest looked dark and silent, full of shadows and confusing scents.

A shiver went through Brambleclaw, raising every hair on his pelt. He wanted to leave without going one pawstep nearer, but he knew what Squirrelflight would say: You never went inside! Are you a mouse or what?

“Wait here,” he ordered his companions, and stalked up to the doorway.

Thornclaw and Dustpelt did not obey his order: No reason why they should, thought Brambleclaw, reminding himself that he wasn’t deputy yet. They were hard on his paws as he climbed the steps and slipped inside the Twoleg nest.

The weak shaft of light slanting through the door revealed rough gray walls and floors made from splintered strips of wood, with weeds pushing up through the gaps. Straight ahead, a slope of jutting blocks led up to another level.

There was no Twoleg scent, just a powerful aroma of prey.

The cracks in the stone walls and the spaces under the floor-boards would make good hiding places for mice and voles.

Brambleclaw heard Thornclaw’s paws thump on the wood, and glanced back to see his Clanmate with a mouse dangling from his jaws.

“Well done!” he whispered.

Dustpelt looked impressed. “This could be a useful place,” he meowed. “Provided the Twolegs don’t come back.”

Brambleclaw agreed—the prey was certainly plentiful and easy to catch—but he didn’t like the feeling the place gave him. It was as desolate and hollow as an empty den, and he wondered why the Twolegs had abandoned it.

“Do you want to go up there?” Thornclaw twitched his ears toward the steeply sloping blocks.

“Not if StarClan themselves came and begged me,” Dustpelt mewed. “That doesn’t look safe at all.”

“I’ll take a quick look,” Brambleclaw meowed, Squirrelflight’s imagined scorn ringing in his ears.