Erin Hunter - Midnight

Mistyfoot inclined her head. “Yes, everything’s fine, except…” She paused and then went on: “Have you seen anything of Stormfur and Feathertail? They disappeared from our territory four dawns ago. No cat has seen them since.”

“We tracked them as far as Fourtrees, but of course we couldn’t search on other Clans’ territories,” Hawkfrost added, coming up in time to hear what his deputy was saying.

The black warrior stayed where he was, keeping watch beside the riverbank.

Hawkfrost dipped his head courteously to Leafpaw and Sorreltail. He was a powerful tabby with a glossy dark pelt, and for a heartbeat Leafpaw thought he reminded her of some cat she had seen before—but no other cat in the forest had such icy, piercing blue eyes.

“What do you mean?” she asked. “Feathertail and Stormfur have left RiverClan?”

“Yes.” Mistyfoot’s eyes were troubled. “We thought they must have decided to go to ThunderClan to be with their father.”

Leafpaw shook her head. “We haven’t seen them.”

“But we’ve lost cats too!” Sorreltail exclaimed, lashing her tail eagerly. “And… yes, that was four dawns ago.”

“What?” Mistyfoot stared at her in disbelief. “Which cats?”

“Brambleclaw and Squirrelpaw,” Leafpaw replied, wincing.

She wished Sorreltail hadn’t blurted that out; her instinct had been to keep their disappearance secret from other Clans, but there was no taking the words back now.

“Is something taking them away?” Mistyfoot spoke almost to herself. “Some predator?” She shuddered. “I remember those dogs…”

“No, I’m sure that’s not what has happened.” Leafpaw wanted to reassure her without giving away the secret that only she knew. “If it was a fox or a badger, there would be traces. Scent, droppings… something.”

The RiverClan deputy still looked doubtful, but Sorreltail’s eyes brightened.

“If they all decided to leave the forest, perhaps they’ve gone together,” she suggested.

Mistyfoot looked even more confused. “I know Feathertail and Stormfur sometimes felt the Clan still blamed them for having a father in RiverClan,” she meowed. “And Brambleclaw has to bear the burden of being Tigerstar’s son.

But Squirrelpaw… What reason could there be for her to leave her home?”

Only the fire-and-tiger prophecy , Leafpaw thought, and then remembered that Squirrelpaw herself had no knowledge of it—only what must have seemed to be unfair criticism from their father. It was the prophecy in Brambleclaw’s dream that had sent Squirrelpaw on her journey. But for now Leafpaw could say nothing about either prophecy.

“Perhaps other Clans have lost cats too,” Hawkfrost meowed. “We should try to find out. They might know more than we do.”

“True,” Mistyfoot agreed. Casting a grim look back toward the bank where the WindClan cats had gathered to drink, she added, “It will be easy enough to ask WindClan. But no cat will be able to speak to ShadowClan until the Gathering.”

“That’s not long now,” Leafpaw remarked.

“Are you sure it will be easy to speak with WindClan?”

Sorreltail ventured boldly, as if she were challenging Mistyfoot to admit that WindClan still drank freely inside RiverClan borders.

Mistyfoot drew back a pace, suddenly taller and with eyes like cold fire. From anxiously sharing her worries with Leafpaw, she had become the RiverClan deputy again, guarding her Clan’s weaknesses. “I suppose you saw what happened,” she hissed. “Tallstar has broken the spirit of his agreement with Leopardstar. She allowed them to come down to the river only because they had no water in their own territory, and he knows it.”

“We should drive them off!” Hawkfrost’s voice was hard, and his pale blue eyes stared stonily in the direction where the WindClan cats had disappeared.

“You know Leopardstar has forbidden that.” Mistyfoot’s tone suggested she had gone over this argument before. “She says that she’ll keep her word no matter what Tallstar does.”

Hawkfrost bowed his head in agreement, but Leafpaw noticed that his claws flexed in and out as if he itched to rake them over the pelts of the cats who had invaded his Clan’s territory. Forest-born or not, he was growing into a formidable warrior, she reflected, as exceptional in his way as his sister, Mothwing.

“Say hi to Mothwing for me,” she mewed to him, and with a sudden thought darted back to the clumps of celandine.

Grabbing up a few of the stems she had bitten off, she hurried back and dropped them at Hawkfrost’s paws. “She might like to have those,” she told him. “Cinderpelt uses it to help cats with weak eyes. I think it grows much better on our side of the border.”

“Thank you,” Hawkfrost replied with a nod of gratitude.

“We’d better be on our way,” meowed Mistyfoot. “Leafpaw, tell your father about Stormfur and Feathertail, and ask him to let us know if he hears anything.”

“Yes, Mistyfoot, I will.”

Guilt swept over Leafpaw yet again as she watched the RiverClan patrol pad away upriver. She felt again the burden of being the only cat to know about both prophecies—one that had sent Brambleclaw and Squirrelpaw on a journey who knew where, and one that left Firestar convinced they would be involved in the destruction of his Clan—and yet her knowledge was not enough. StarClan had not chosen to tell her about the destiny of the forest, and Leafpaw did not feel that even the full moon, shining down on the next Gathering, would shed much light on her dark questions.

By the time Leafpaw and Sorreltail returned to camp, loaded with celandine, it was almost sunhigh.

“We’d better report to Firestar,” Sorreltail meowed when they had taken the herbs to Cinderpelt. “He’ll want to know about those missing RiverClan cats.”

Leafpaw nodded and led the way to her father’s den beneath the Highrock. The clearing was full of cats enjoying the last heat of early leaf-fall. Spiderpaw and Whitepaw were sprawled in the shade of the ferns that sheltered their den, while Cloudtail and Brightheart shared tongues in a patch of sunlight. Ferncloud was sitting outside the nursery with Dustpelt beside her, watching their kits as they played together.

A wave of sadness swept over Leafpaw. It was almost as if Brambleclaw and Squirrelpaw had never been part of ThunderClan, as if they had sunk out of sight as a drowning cat might sink in the river, the waters closing over its head.

The feeling ebbed a little when they reached Firestar’s den and called out to him. Leafpaw heard his voice telling them to enter, and she brushed past the curtain of lichen to see him curled up in his nest; Graystripe was sitting next to him, and the anxiety in the eyes of both cats was enough to reassure Leafpaw that her sister and Brambleclaw had not been forgotten.

“We’ve brought news,” Sorreltail meowed immediately, and poured out what Mistyfoot had told them about Feathertail and Stormfur going missing.

Firestar’s and Graystripe’s eyes narrowed, and the deputy sprang to his paws as if he wanted to dash out and look for his missing children right away.

“If a fox has taken them I’ll track it down and flay its skin!” he snarled.

Firestar remained in his nest, but he unsheathed his claws as if he were sinking them into the pelt of whatever had stolen his daughter. “Surely the dogs can’t have come back?” he muttered. “We couldn’t have to deal with them more than once in a lifetime?”

“No, there’s no sign of that,” Leafpaw reassured him.

“Feathertail and Stormfur must have gone with Brambleclaw and Squirrelpaw, and that… that suggests they had a reason for leaving.” She tried desperately to think how much information she could give to the anxious fathers without revealing that she knew more than she was supposed to. So far she had kept her Moonstone vision of the traveling cats even from her mentor, Cinderpelt, but now she knew she would have to reveal it. She was not breaking her promise, she told herself; she would not betray anything of what Brambleclaw and Squirrelpaw had told her when they met in the forest.