Firestar’s Quest

“Firestar, are there bees in your brain?” Bluestar’s tail lashed. “You are ThunderClan’s leader, and your Clan needs you. There’s nothing in the warrior code that says you have to help a Clan that has been missing for so long, no living cat remembers them.”

Firestar narrowed his eyes. Bluestar was right about his responsibility toward ThunderClan, but he couldn’t forget the wailing of the cats on the moor. How could he ignore them, if there was anything he could do to help? It wasn’t Bluestar’s dreams that were filled with the shrieks of terrified, fleeing cats; she didn’t see a pleading, haunted face in every pool of water.

And yet the only reason he had found the courage to lead the forest Clans into battle against BloodClan was because he had believed his warrior ancestors when they told him there had always been four Clans in the forest. The fifth Clan was StarClan, forever protecting the four below. Had StarClan lied?

Bluestar rested her tail tip on his shoulder and spoke more calmly. “Your warrior ancestors are watching over you now, just as they have always done. Nothing has changed. Your duty is to your own Clan now.”

“But SkyClan—”

“Has gone. There is no gap where they used to be, no prey or territory waiting for them to return. The forest is perfectly divided between the four Clans who remain.”

“Then it’s the will of StarClan that I just ignore these cats?” Firestar challenged her. “Don’t you care that they are suffering?”

Bluestar blinked. “There are cats who would argue that there should never have been a fifth Clan in the forest at all.

Why are there four oaks at Fourtrees, if not to stand for the four Clans?”

Firestar gazed up at the massive oak trees, then back at Bluestar. Fury pure as a lightning flash rushed through his body. “Are you mouse-brained?” he snarled. “Are you telling me SkyClan had to leave because there weren’t enough trees?”

A look of shock and dismay filled Bluestar’s eyes. Not waiting for her reply, Firestar whipped around and raced to the edge of the hollow. Brambles tore at his fur as he plunged through the bushes, but the pain meant nothing. Ever since he came to the forest he had trusted his warrior ancestors.

But they had been lying to him all along. He felt as if he had taken a step on ground he thought was solid, only to fall into deep and bitter water.

He fought his way through the last of the bushes, but instead of reaching the rim of the hollow, he found himself blinking awake in the cavern of the Moonstone. His breath was coming in harsh rasps. His fur felt torn and rumpled. His paws stung, and when he licked them he tasted the salty tang of blood, as if he had been running a long way over stony ground.

Far above, through the hole in the roof, clouds covered the moon and stars. The cave was utterly dark. Firestar rose to his paws and limped across the cave floor, close to panic until he stumbled into the entrance to the tunnel. When he emerged onto the side of the hill a stiff breeze was shredding the clouds like wet cobweb. Firestar caught only fitful glimpses of the moon, but stars were shining overhead once more.

He crawled onto the flat rock where he had waited earlier and collapsed there, gazing upward. He could not see the kindly eyes of his warrior ancestors in the starlight any longer. The desperate cries of the lost and tortured SkyClan echoed through his mind. How am I meant to help them?

All those cats must be dead by now. They had fled so long ago that no cat remembered them. But where were their descendants, the living SkyClan?

Firestar lay on the rock until the sky grew milk-pale with dawn. Then he made his way, pawstep by painful pawstep, down the hill and into the fields, leaving the jagged peak of Highstones behind him. A feeling of betrayal still swirled through him like a flooding river. He had always respected StarClan, trusting them to want what was best for all the Clans. Now he had discovered that they could make mistakes, just like any living cat. If he couldn’t trust them, would he ever come here to share tongues with his warrior ancestors again?

His belly felt hollow with hunger. Passing Ravenpaw’s barn, he fought the temptation to go in to see his friends, to feast on their prey and rest in the soft heap of hay. But Ravenpaw was bound to ask him what StarClan had said about the strange cats, and he could not think what he would answer. Ravenpaw still clung to his faith in StarClan, even though he had left the forest; could Firestar shatter that faith by revealing how their warrior ancestors had lied to all the cats in the forest, over and over again?

Once he had left the Twoleg farm behind, Firestar stopped to hunt, swiping an unsuspecting mouse as it nibbled seeds in the shelter of a hedge. It scarcely took the edge off his hunger, but he was too exhausted to go looking for more. He curled up under a hawthornbush and fell headlong into sleep.