Эрин Хантер - The Ultimate Guide

Hollyleaf dedicated herself to becoming the most skilled warrior ThunderClan had known, training harder and longer than the other apprentices, even her brother, Lionblaze.

When she learned that she and her littermates might one day be more powerful than StarClan, Hollyleaf began searching for the way she would fulfill her destiny. Lionblaze had his unconquerable fighting ability, Jayfeather had the gift of sight in his dreams and the ability to walk in StarClan whenever he chose. Hollyleaf found her strength in her absolute faith in the warrior code, and her courage to defend it to her dying breath.

Hollyleaf was utterly broken by Squirrelflight’s revelation that she and her brothers had been born to different cats. Was Hollyleaf nothing but a sordid secret, hidden from her own Clanmates?

She was terrified that Ashfur would tell the rest of the Clan and that she’d be driven out for being an aberration, a demonstration of what happened when the warrior code was trampled over. Hollyleaf knew she had to make Ashfur keep the dreadful secret, whatever it took. She didn’t mean to kill him—she struck, he slipped, and when he fell into the stream with blood streaming from the wounds in his throat, she knew he was beyond saving. There seemed no point in telling Firestar what had happened. She was being punished enough by her conscience—the warrior code said no cat must kill another—and by her fear that the truth would emerge anyway.

When she and her brothers discovered that Leafpool was their mother, and Crowfeather, a

WindClan warrior, was their father, Hollyleaf was overwhelmed by the size of the secret she was trying to keep. The only way she could master it was by revealing everything herself, announcing the truth to a startled Gathering of the Clans, and disgracing Leafpool forever.

Then came her escape into a tunnel that collapsed behind her, leaving her dead to her Clan and everything she had ever known. But the silence of the underground caverns, the quiet, undemanding friendship of Fallen Leaves, and her endless concern for her former Clanmates sent Hollyleaf back to the hollow, to the place where she had been born. The place where she belonged. She fought to the death saving her Clan from the cats of the Dark Forest, her last desperate plea for a forgiveness that had already been granted.

DESPITE BEING BORN BLIND, able to see only in his dreams, Jayfeather was confident in his ability to also navigate his world when awake. He shared his littermates’ courage and curiosity, which led to an adventure with fox cubs that nearly took all of them to StarClan prematurely. Jaypaw saw no reason why he couldn’t train to be a warrior alongside them, and he was bitter and angry when Firestar insisted on apprenticing him to Brightheart, the one-eyed warrior, in the hope that she could help the blind apprentice become a warrior too. After his disastrous first battle and a dream visit from Spottedleaf, ThunderClan’s former medicine cat, Jaypaw realized that it was his destiny to become a medicine cat and was apprenticed to Leafpool. His memory for herbs and his connection with StarClan made him unusually gifted from the beginning, but Jaypaw still chafed at what he saw as a second-best future, limited to the confines to the territory.

He found freedom by walking in other cats’ dreams, which is how he learned about the prophecy

Firestar had received so many moons ago.

The discovery that he was expected to have more power than StarClan gave Jaypaw the confidence to challenge his ancestors and also to interfere with the destiny of the Tribe of Rushing Water in the mountains. Jaypaw learned from their ancestors, the Tribe of Endless Hunting, that something dark and terrible loomed for all of the Clans—and that the chance of survival depended on him and his littermates.

After receiving his medicine cat name, Jayfeather’s destiny became entangled with that of the mountain cats when he walked with the Ancient Clan cats, who had once lived beside the lake, as a long-ago sharpclaw named Jay’s Wing. He fell in love with Half Moon and helped guide the cats to the mountains when their home by the lake was threatened. Knowing that he had to return to his own

Clan, many seasons and fox-lengths away, Jayfeather made Half Moon the first ever Teller of the Pointed Stones for the mountain cats and gave to her the seeds of a faith in something more than what the cats could see around them—a faith that would be passed on for every generation to come.

CINDERHEART WAS BORN TO Sorreltail at the exact moment a badger took the life of Cinderpelt.

Perhaps in recognition of Cinderpelt’s thwarted destiny and of her unceasing loyalty to her Clan as their medicine cat, StarClan allowed her spirit to return in the body of tiny Cinderheart.

Cinderheart became a warrior apprentice alongside her brothers, training hard to learn how to hunt and fight—and never knowing about her connection to the former medicine cat.

Following an accident in which she fell from a tree while saving another apprentice, Cinderheart’s peace began to be disturbed by vivid dreams where she walked through a forest she didn’t recognize—and yet it was completely familiar. She knew the names of the cats who lived there and could identify the scents of herbs that clung to her pelt. The images felt as real as memories, but she tried to ignore them until Jayfeather walked with her in the dreams and gently showed her that they were memories—from her former life as ThunderClan’s medicine cat. Cinderheart was torn between her ambition to be a warrior and serve her Clan by hunting and fighting, and her responsibility to make use of the medicine skills she had somehow been born with. She felt trapped by the destiny that seemed to have been forced upon her.

Only Lionblaze could convince Cinderheart that she could choose her own path. Cinderpelt had lived one life, but this was Cinderheart’s life now. And when Cinderheart chose to spend that life as a warrior, alongside Lionblaze, she felt the spirit of the medicine cat lift softly away from her and take its place in StarClan.

KIN TO FlRESTAR THROUGH her mother’s father, Cloudtail, Dovewing was the third cat of the prophecy, in place of Hollyleaf. From the time she was a tiny kit, she could hear sounds from far, far away, even beyond the lake, and could picture what was happening in other territories. Dovepaw assumed that every cat was the same, so it was a shock when she first learned she was the only one after she helped her Clan by realizing that the shortage of water in the lake was caused by big, brown animals—beavers—building a dam of wood to block a stream much farther up. Jayfeather instantly recognized the potential of Dovewing’s gift, but he told her to pretend she had dreamed what was happening, which was something Firestar would understand.