Bluestar's Prophecy

Bluepaw fought to catch her breath as they pelted onward. At least she wasn’t soaked to the skin. Poor Snowpaw looked like a drowned rat bounding alongside her. The cold wind was beginning to fluff up her fur, but even the running hadn’t stopped the snowy-white apprentice’s teeth from chattering.

At last they spotted their Clanmates ahead. They had slowed and were trekking in single file. The trees had thinned out, and beyond them Bluepaw saw a smooth, wide path snaking through the woods, glimmering with shining shadows.

The river!

They caught up and tagged onto the end of the patrol. The river was huge, as wide as the ThunderClan camp, stretching endlessly in each direction. So much water, rolling and tumbling, almost black as it swirled between the banks.

Moonflower and Snowpaw padded a few paw steps ahead. Bluepaw stayed beside her mentor.

“That’s RiverClan territory.” Stonepelt nodded across the water.

Bluepaw sniffed and smelled a fishy stench, familiar from the Gathering. It clung like fog to the bushes.

“That smell is their marker,” Stonepelt whispered. “This bank is RiverClan territory, too, though they rarely cross it when the water’s this cold.”

Cross it? “They swim in that?” Bluepaw had heard that RiverClan cats could swim, but she couldn’t imagine any cat being mouse-brained enough to try waters that churned so darkly and relentlessly through the forest.

Stonepelt nodded. “Like fish.”

Bluepaw shivered and peered into the trees on the far bank. “Is this the only way to WindClan territory?” she breathed.

“If we want to stay hidden,” Stonepelt explained. “If we went through Fourtrees, we’d be spotted easily.”

Bluepaw’s heart quickened. “What about RiverClan patrols?” She glanced at the river, expecting a cat to crawl out from the dark water at any moment.

“Too early.” Stonepelt sounded confident, but he didn’t look at her and she wondered if he was just trying to calm her.

She felt a glimmer of relief as the path veered deeper into the forest, away from the water’s edge. But her relief didn’t last long. The trail climbed steeply, rocks jutting between bushes, trees clinging to the slope with roots wound through stony soil. Before long, Bluepaw heard a roaring even more thunderous than the wind. She tensed. “What’s that?”

“The gorge,” Stonepelt told her.

The noise grew as their path seemed to take them straight toward it.

“What’s the gorge?” Bluepaw whispered, hardly wanting to know.

“Where the river falls down from the moorland and cuts between two cliffs of rock. The path into WindClan territory runs beside it.”

Oh, StarClan!

Ahead she could see a gap in the trees where the forest floor seemed split in two as though a giant claw had scraped a furrow. Bluepaw unsheathed her claws and gripped the earth with each step, as Pinestar led his Clanmates along a perilous trail at the edge of the gorge. Hardly daring to breathe, she peered over the cliff and saw a torrent of white water, churning and boiling beneath it. She wrenched her gaze away and focused on Moonflower’s familiar pelt, following her paw steps and trying to ignore the sucking water below.

At last the sheer cliffs eased into muddy banks, and the river flowed smoothly, winding unhurriedly between thin trees and low, spiky bushes. The ThunderClan cats fell out of single file and bunched together, their pelts moving as one, like the shadow of a cloud passing over the land. All around them, dawn washed the moor with soft yellow light. Barren, gorse-specked hills rose in the distance.

Bluepaw tasted the air. RiverClan tang was being replaced by an earthier smell. “Is that where we’re going?”

Stonepelt nodded. “We’ve crossed the border into WindClan territory.” He flicked his tail toward a dip in the land where the billowing bushes gave way to heather as the ground rose and rolled up into moorland.

As the soft grass turned to springy, rough-coated peat, Pinestar turned and signaled with his tail, whipping it across his muzzle. Bluepaw understood that from now on, they must stay silent. She smelled markers so strong that she could taste the musky, peat-tainted stench.

WindClan.

As they climbed the hillside, the grass streamed like water in the wind and Bluepaw pictured again the vole’s fur, flat and splayed. Her breath caught in her throat as the storm howled around them. Her Clanmates seemed suddenly small and frail against the wide moorland that rolled away on every side. Ears flat, they padded onward, disappearing and reappearing among the swaths of quivering heather.

“I stick out like a blossom in a mud puddle,” Snowpaw whispered. She was right. Her white pelt looked strange among the earthy colors of the moorland.

“Hush!” Sparrowpelt hissed back at them, and Snowpaw flattened her ears.