Erin Hunter - Midnight

A moment later Squirrelpaw arrived with Tawnypelt.

“What’s going on?” asked the ThunderClan apprentice.

“Where’s Purdy?”

Brambleclaw realized that the old cat had vanished. He wasn’t sure whether to feel relieved or angry.

“Good riddance,” growled Crowpaw.

The words had hardly left his mouth when Purdy’s head reappeared, poking through a gap beside the wall that Brambleclaw had not noticed until now.

“Well?” the old cat meowed. “You comin’ or not?”

He withdrew again; Brambleclaw padded over to the broken fence panel and looked out. He was ready for yet more Twoleg nests, and gaped in astonishment. Across a narrow, dusty track was a grass-covered slope dotted with clumps of gorse, and beyond that—trees! Trees as far as Brambleclaw could see, with not a Twoleg nest in sight.

“What is it?” Squirrelpaw called impatiently from behind him.

“A forest!” Brambleclaw’s voice squeaked like a kit. “A real forest at last. Come on, all of you.”

He slid through the gap to stand beside Purdy. The old tabby was looking at him with a knowing gleam in his eye.

“Satisfied now?” he purred. “You wanted out; I’ve brought you out.”

“Er… yes. Thanks, Purdy, this is great.”

“Not so much of the ‘stupid furball’ now, hey?” Purdy asked, with a meaningful look at Crowpaw as the WindClan apprentice slipped through the gap.

Brambleclaw and Crowpaw exchanged a glance. Brambleclaw suspected that Purdy had been as surprised as the rest of them to find the way out of the Twolegplace, but the old cat would never admit it. Anyway, it didn’t matter now.

Twolegplace was behind them, and they could start looking for the sun-drown place again.

They crossed the track and began to climb the slope.

Brambleclaw reveled in the feel of fresh grass on his pads, and the forest scents wafting toward him on the faint breeze.

When they stood underneath the trees, it was almost like coming home.

“This is more like it!” Stormfur meowed, gazing around at the clumps of bracken and the long, cool grass. “I vote we stay here for the rest of today and tonight. Tawnypelt can get a good sleep, and the rest of us can hunt.”

Brambleclaw bit back a protest; his compulsion to make for the sun-drown place was growing stronger as time slipped away, but he knew they would make better progress if they stopped to recover their strength.

The other cats murmured agreement, except for Tawnypelt. “You don’t have to stop for me.”

“It’s not just for you, mouse-brain.” Squirrelpaw pushed her nose affectionately into the ShadowClan cat’s fur. “We all need to rest and eat.”

Slowly the cats began to move deeper into the wood, clustered together and alert for danger as they looked for a good place to rest. Brambleclaw stopped every few paces to taste the air, but he could not scent fox, or badger, or other cats—nothing that was likely to give them trouble. But the air was full of prey-scent; his mouth began to water at the thought of sinking his teeth into a plump mouse, or better still, a rabbit.

Before long, they came to a spot where the ground fell away toward a thin trickle of water beneath dense hawthorn bushes.

“Couldn’t be better,” Crowpaw meowed. “There’s water and shelter, and if there are predators about they won’t find it easy to sneak up on us.”

Tawnypelt, who was limping badly again, half slid, half scrambled down the slope and dragged herself into a mossy nest between two twisted roots. Her green eyes were clouded with pain and exhaustion. Feathertail settled down beside her and began to lick her wound again. Purdy flopped down on her other side and immediately curled up and went to sleep.

“Right, you three stay here,” Crowpaw mewed, “and the rest of us will hunt.”

Brambleclaw opened his mouth to challenge him for ordering everyone else around, then decided it wasn’t worth it.

Besides, it made a nice change not to be expected to make all the decisions for once. Instead, he padded over to Squirrelpaw.

“Fancy hunting with me?” he asked.

Squirrelpaw just nodded, as if half her mind were on something else. She followed Brambleclaw up the stream, and they were hardly out of sight of their temporary camp when Brambleclaw spotted a mouse scuffling among the grass near the water’s edge. In one smooth movement he dropped into the hunter’s crouch and sprang, killing his prey with a swift blow. Turning to show Squirrelpaw, he saw her standing with her head lifted and her jaws parted to drink in the forest scents.

“Squirrelpaw, are you okay?”

The apprentice jumped. “What? Oh, yes, fine, thanks.

There’s something I can’t quite…” Her voice trailed off and she licked her lips again.

Guessing that he wouldn’t get any more sense out of her, Brambleclaw scraped earth over his fresh-kill to keep it safe until he came to collect it, and padded farther into the wood.

The whole place was rich in prey, and they hardly seemed to know what a predator was. It was one of the easiest hunts he had ever known.

Squirrelpaw helped, but it was clear her mind wasn’t on the task. Usually she was a skillful hunter, but today she let a black-bird escape by hesitating too long, and completely missed a squirrel that was nibbling a nut barely a foxlength away.

Then as Brambleclaw was stealthily creeping up on a rabbit, she cried out, “That’s it! Over there!”

At once the rabbit shot upright in the grass, and a heartbeat later all Brambleclaw could see of it was its white tail bobbing up and down as it fled.

“Hey!” he exclaimed indignantly. “What did you do that for?”

Squirrelpaw wasn’t listening. She had darted down toward the waterside, where clumps of tall plants with dark green leaves were growing. As Brambleclaw stared, mystified, she began to scrape vigorously at the base of the stems.

“Squirrelpaw, what are you doing?” he asked.

The apprentice paused long enough to give him a glance from green eyes that glowed with triumph. “Burdock!” She panted, attacking the stems again. “It’s what Tawnypelt needs for her rat bite. Help me to dig up the roots.”

“How do you know?” Brambleclaw asked as he began to dig.

“You know that taste I told you about? I’ve been trying to think of it all morning. Leafpaw must have mentioned it when she was saying good-bye to us.”

Brambleclaw paused and looked at her. Leafpaw had certainly told them about several herbs that she thought they might need, but he couldn’t remember burdock root being one of them. Then he shrugged and dug harder. There was no other way that Squirrelpaw could have found out about it.

Once they had dug up three or four of the roots, Squirrelpaw pushed them into the water to wash off the earth and then gripped them in her teeth to carry them back to the camp. Brambleclaw followed more slowly, collecting as much of their prey as he could carry.

When he reached their resting place again he found that Squirrelpaw had already chewed up some of the root and was gently pressing the pulp onto Tawnypelt’s injured shoulder.

The ShadowClan warrior lay still, watching, but as the juice from the root seeped into her wound she relaxed and let out a long sigh.

“That’s better,” she mewed. “It’s going numb. I can’t feel the pain anymore.”

“That’s brilliant,” Brambleclaw meowed.

“I think you must be a secret medicine cat,” Tawnypelt said to Squirrelpaw, settling herself more comfortably into the moss. “Perhaps you’re carrying a bit of your sister’s spirit.”

Blinking drowsily, she sank back into sleep.

Squirrelpaw was watching Tawnypelt with shining eyes, and Brambleclaw felt his fur prickle. Had Leafpaw really mentioned the burdock root back in the forest, or was there something more mysterious going on between her and her sister?