Эрин Хантер - Moonrise

Squirrelpaw was trapped in a small, dark space that rocked violently from side to side. Her head spun, and she swallowed the bile that rose in her stomach. Her paws scraped frantically on something smooth and solid. She let out a terrified yowl: “Leafpaw!” Then her eyes flew open and she found herself scrambling in a shallow dip in the ground.

“What’s the matter? Yowling like that, you’ll scare all the prey.”

Tawnypelt was standing over her; she had dropped a plump, fresh-caught vole so that she could speak. The five Clan cats had left the mountains last night and were traveling across open moorland. The rising sun, relentlessly showing them the way they must go, had just cleared the horizon.

Squirrelpaw heaved herself out of her nest and shook scraps of grass from her pelt. “Nothing. It was just a dream.”

She gave her chest fur a few licks to try to hide how shaken she was. Her sister was in terrible danger; she knew that the dream had taken her to wherever Leafpaw was, and shown her the terror she was feeling, but Squirrelpaw guessed that the practical Tawnypelt wouldn’t understand her fears.

Tawnypelt was looking faintly interested. “Was it a sign from StarClan?”

“No.” Squirrelpaw knew she could share some of the details of her dream, without telling Tawnypelt it had connected her with Leafpaw. “I… I felt like I was trapped somewhere dark. I didn’t know where I was, and I couldn’t escape.”

Awkwardly, Tawnypelt stepped forward and pressed her muzzle against Squirrelpaw’s side. “I think we’ve all had bad dreams,” she meowed. “Ever since Feathertail…”

Squirrelpaw nodded. Like all of them, she found it hard to believe that they would never see Feathertail again. The Tribe cats had helped them to bury her, beside the pool where the waterfall fell endlessly, churning up spray that made the ground soft enough to dig.

“She has a place of honor here,” Stoneteller had meowed.

“We will keep her memory alive for as long as our Tribe survives.”

That had been small comfort for the Clan cats. Crowpaw in particular was shattered by grief, spending all the next day crouched beside Feathertail’s grave. Stormfur kept vigil with him, racked by guilt that he had done nothing to save Feathertail, and had not even imagined that she might be the chosen cat. Her silver fur had been slicked black with water when they first emerged from the waterfall, which was why the tribe cats hadn’t paid any attention to her. At last Brambleclaw had ordered them both inside the cave to rest.

“We’re leaving at dawn,” the ThunderClan warrior had told them. “You’ll need all your strength. Our Clans need us.”

The journey had begun again. The Tribe cats had escorted them part of the way through the mountains, and they soon came to easier country with flat green grass and hedgerows to provide prey. But they felt no sense of hope or relief that they would soon be home. Their hearts stayed with Feathertail, in the land of rocks and water.

Squirrelpaw soon recovered enough from her nightmare to help with the hunting so that they could get going and make the most of the rapidly shortening days. Though no cat wanted to eat, they forced themselves to gulp down the fresh-kill. Once or twice Stormfur caught himself looking around to ask Feathertail something, before he remembered that he would never speak to her again.

All that day and the next they traveled on, until their paws were cracked and bleeding. It was as if the horrors they had seen had numbed them to everyday pain. The sun was going down behind them again as they came to the top of a rise.

Their shadows streamed out ahead of them, pointing toward a hill with a jagged crest. It seemed to smolder in scarlet fire from the rays of the setting sun.

“Look!” Tawnypelt’s voice was an exhausted croak.

For a few heartbeats no cat spoke. Then Squirrelpaw’s green eyes flashed with a fire that had seemed dimmed forever by Feathertail’s death.

“Highstones!” she exclaimed. “We’re almost home.”