Эрин Хантер - Bluestar's Prophecy

Good-bye, Mosskit. Snowfur will look after you now .

“Ow!” Beneath Bluefur, Stonekit crashed forward onto his nose. “This ground is hard !” he yowled.

They had reached the edge of Sunningrocks. Paw steps crunched toward them.

“Are they okay?” Oakheart asked quietly.

Bluefur nodded without looking up at him. His scent wreathed around her, warm and comforting. For a fleeting moment Bluefur longed to go with him. She wanted to walk the rest of her days at Oakheart’s side. Never have to leave him or her kits.

But she couldn’t.

She had to save her Clan.

The kits were staring up at the stranger with their heads on one side.

“This is Stonekit,” Bluefur trembled as she touched the light gray kit with her nose. “And this is Mistykit.” Her throat grew tight. She began to back away, her eyes blurring. I can’t say good-bye to them! “Please take care of them.”

“Where’s the other one?” Oakheart called.

“Dead.” Bluefur stumbled but didn’t look around, not wanting to take her eyes from her kits.

“Bluefur, come back!”

“Where are you going?”

“Are you coming back to get us?”

Unable to bear their desperate cries, she turned and fled into the trees.

She stopped by the clump of ferns. The snow-hole had vanished, but Bluefur dug down, ignoring the pain in her frozen paws, until she reached the tiny body. She carefully lifted Mosskit out—she didn’t even smell like the nursery anymore—and kept digging. There was no way Bluefur was leaving her daughter for foxes when the snow thawed. The ground ripped at her claws and rubbed her pads raw but she kept scraping the frozen earth until the hole was deep enough to protect her kit. Numb, she laid Mosskit’s body in the hole and covered it over.

She limped back to camp on throbbing, stumbling paws. There was one more thing she had to do. One more lie to tell my Clanmates . She slipped in through the dirtplace tunnel and quietly clawed a fox-sized hole in the back of the nursery.

Then she squeezed through the den entrance, checked that White-eye, Mousekit, and Runningkit were asleep, climbed into her nest, and deliberately, loudly called an alarm to her Clan.

“My kits! My kits are gone!”

Adderfang spoke gently. “Bluefur, would you like to join a hunting patrol today?”

Bluefur gazed at him, trying to focus.

A moon had passed since she’d left her kits with Oakheart. The nursery walls had been fortified with extra brambles. Two warriors sat guard through each freezing night to make sure that no fox or badger would ever steal into the nursery again. The Clan had believed Bluefur’s story—that she’d awoken to find her kits gone. Every cat believed that they had been stolen by an animal that had clawed a hole in the back of the nursery, driven by starvation to venture into the camp for the first time.

They’d searched the forest for days, not knowing where to look, the scent trail killed by freezing snow. Bluefur had scoured the woods with her Clanmates, numb with guilt, reminding herself over and over that she’d done it for her Clan. Meanwhile hunger and sorrow gripped the Clan. They spoke in low voices and huddled in knots, eyeing Bluefur with pity that stabbed her like thorns. She was sick of telling lies. She hardly noticed how empty the fresh-kill pile was these days. She was too miserable to eat, wishing only to hide in sleep. She felt as though the shard of ice piercing her heart would never melt.

They’ll be safe with Oakheart .

The thought wasn’t enough to ease her grief.

Was Mosskit watching from StarClan, hating Bluefur for stealing her life? Had Snowfur explained that her life had been sacrificed for the good of her Clan?

“Bluefur.” Adderfang rested his tail on her shoulder and repeated his question. “Do you feel up to hunting?”

“I’ll hunt with you, if you like.” Thrushpelt hurried to join her. Sadness shadowed his gaze. He was grieving as a father would grieve. He’d worked harder than any other cat to reinforce the nursery, and his pelt was still tufted and scratched from the brambles he’d woven tightly into the branches. Bluefur wished she could tell him that two kits lived on, safe and cherished, across the river.

She shrugged off Adderfang’s tail. “I’d rather hunt alone.”

Adderfang nodded. “As you wish.”

Thrushpelt turned away, his eyes clouding.

“Bluefur!” Rosetail caught up to her, pressing close as she padded toward the tunnel. “Are you going to be all right?”

No! Nothing will ever be all right ever again . Bluefur longed to curl up against her friend’s warm fur and go to sleep for a moon. “I’ll be fine,” she replied, feeling hollow.

She scrambled up the side of the ravine and headed into the forest. As the Owl Tree came into view, a squirrel darted across her path. She froze, her paws burning with cold on the ice-hardened forest floor. The squirrel had a nut in its jaws and was scrabbling among the roots of an oak. Bluefur dropped into a hunting crouch, tail straight, belly lifted from the forest floor.

Stonekit . Did he still remember his ThunderClan hunting crouch?

Pushing away the thought, she thrust down with her hind paws and sprang, landing squarely and killing the squirrel with a single bite.

“Nice catch.”

Goosefeather’s rasping mew made her whip around. The squirrel swung from her jaws.

She dropped it. “What are you doing here?” The elders rarely made it up the ravine.

“I still have legs, you know,” he snapped.

It was jarring to hear a Clanmate speak to her in a voice that wasn’t honeyed with sympathy. She straightened and met his gaze. “What do you want?” Did he have another stupid prophecy to ruin her life?

“You did the right thing.”

His words made her bristle. “For whom?”

“For your Clan.” Goosefeather narrowed his eyes. “The prophecy left no room for kits. You must blaze alone at the head of your Clan.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” she hissed. She hated the prophecy and hated Goosefeather for telling her about it.

Goosefeather blinked. “It is not your destiny to feel better, it’s your destiny to save your Clan.”

“And I will,” she growled, her mew as hard as flint. “But I will always regret what I’ve done.”

“The kits were your choice,” Goosefeather pointed out. “StarClan made no provision for them.”

“StarClan made me sacrifice everything I loved.” Bitterness rose like bile in her throat. “My kits—”

Goosefeather cut her off. “They’re alive, aren’t they?”

“Not Mosskit.”

“StarClan will honor her loss.”

“What about my loss?”

“It is small compared with the fate of your Clan.”

Bluefur shook her head, trying to clear it. Was she just being selfish? What was one broken heart compared to the safety of her Clanmates? Where was her loyalty? She dipped her head. “I’ll serve my Clan,” she promised.

“Good.” Goosefeather nodded. “Sunstar wants to talk to you.”

He padded away into the trees.

Bluefur met the ThunderClan leader as he was climbing over the top of the ravine.

“Bluefur.” Sunstar greeted her. “I wanted to talk to you away from the camp.” He headed into the forest. “Walk with me.”

Bluefur fell in beside her old mentor, remembering how he had spoken to her after the death of Moonflower and again when she’d been grieving for Snowfur. “Is this another lecture to tell me to leave the past behind?” she growled.

He shook his head. “It seems you are destined to suffer,” he sighed. Bluefur looked into his eyes and saw how the ThunderClan leader had aged in the last few seasons. Making ThunderClan strong and feared among the other Clans had cost him three lives in battle; sickness had taken another two. Goosefeather had told her to aspire to leadership, but was this how she wanted to spend her days? Fretting and fighting and tired from the weight of responsibility?