Firestar’s Quest

“At least she has one good eye,” Longtail hissed. “You might as well leave me in the forest for the foxes.”

“That will never happen, not while I’m leader of this Clan,” Firestar hissed back. Fury shook him, not against Longtail, but against himself for not having enough power to protect his warrior from the consequences of his injury.

Trying to sound calmer, he added, “Besides, you haven’t lost your sight yet. Cinderpelt will do her best to find an herb that works.”

“I’ll keep trying,” Cinderpelt vowed. Beckoning Firestar with her tail, she led him over to the fern tunnel. “You’d better leave Longtail alone for now,” she advised quietly. “He’s badly shocked, and he needs a while to get used to the idea that his eyes might not get better.”

Firestar nodded. “Okay.” Raising his voice, he added, “Don’t worry about a thing, Longtail. You’ll always have a place in ThunderClan. I’ll come and see you again soon.”

Returning through the tunnel to the twilit clearing, Firestar still felt choked by pity—and fury, too, that this should happen to one of his warriors. He remembered the life that Brindleface had given him when he became Clan leader—a life for protection, the care of a mother for her kits.

He had expected that life to be warm and gentle, but instead it had entered him with the shock of fire and ice together. He had felt the raw, ravenous urge to fight and kill, to spill rivers of blood to protect young, helpless cats. Now, thinking of Longtail as he struggled to cope with losing his sight, Firestar understood more clearly what that instinct meant. As Clan leader, he would rip out all his claws to protect any one of his Clanmates.

His den under the Highrock was cool and quiet.

Sandstorm had left a rabbit for him, and Firestar settled down to eat. Now that he was alone, he felt as limp as a drooping leaf. Yet he was beginning to see a way forward, a way to care for his Clan even though his trust in StarClan had been shattered.

He was curling up comfortably when a shadow fell across the den entrance. He looked up to see Cinderpelt, her head and shoulders thrusting back the screen of lichen. “Longtail’s asleep now,” she explained. “So I thought I’d take the chance to come and ask what happened at the Moonstone. Did you find the answers you were seeking?”

“Yes, but they weren’t the answers that I wanted to hear.”

He felt it was still too soon to tell what had happened, even to his medicine cat.

To his relief, Cinderpelt didn’t press him. Coming into his den, she bent her head to give his ear a comforting lick. “Have faith,” she urged him. “StarClan are watching over us, and everything will be all right.”

A claw of anger pierced Firestar. He longed to tell her that StarClan had lied to them, that their ancestors had allowed a Clan to leave the forest in spite of everything in the warrior code.

But he could not bring himself to poison Cinderpelt’s faith, to spill bile onto everything she believed. Somehow he knew that this was his problem, and his alone. Without the help of StarClan, without any remnant of faith in his warrior ancestors, he must find a way of dealing with it.

Chapter 6

Wind swept across the moorland, shredding the mist, and Firestar saw the fleeing cats clearly for the first time. They were following a river; the familiar tang of water in the air told him this was the forest river he knew, though here, beyond WindClan territory, it flowed more swiftly through the hills.

“Wait!” Firestar called to them. “Cats of SkyClan, wait for me! I’ve come to help you.”

He raced across the springy turf, but the SkyClan cats sped away from him as if they had not heard his cries.

Suddenly a kit tumbled into the river, its mother letting out a yowl of dismay as the current swept it away. Then a young apprentice, straying away from the main group, was picked off by a fox. Firestar heard its squeals of terror cut off abruptly as the fox bounded away, outpacing a couple of warriors who tried to chase it. An elder lagged farther and farther behind; she kept limping after her Clan, though her paws left smears of blood on the grass. Another staggered to a halt, then fell on one side and didn’t get up again.

At the head of the journeying Clan Firestar spotted the gray-and-white cat. Thin, hungry-looking warriors clustered around him. Even though Firestar still couldn’t catch up to them, their voices came clearly to him.

“Where are we going?” one of them meowed. “We can’t live here… there’s no prey, and nowhere to camp.”

“I don’t know where we’re going,” the gray-and-white cat replied. “We just have to keep on until we find somewhere.”

“But how long?” one of the other warriors asked. No cat replied.

Firestar saw a small, light brown tabby she-cat shouldering her way through the warriors until she reached the gray-and-white cat. “Let me speak to StarClan,” she begged. “They might know of a place for us.”