Firestar’s Quest

The anxiety in her green eyes told Firestar that she wasn’t sure she was telling her kits the truth. He followed her gaze over the cats sprawled on the bank until he spotted the gray-and-white cat he had seen so many times, who had spoken to him in Smudge’s garden. He stood commandingly on the brink of the river, his head turned upstream.

“Is this the right way?” he meowed quietly.

A small tabby she-cat, sitting on the bank beside him, replied, “You’re our leader, so you have to decide. I’ve had no signs from StarClan since we left the forest.”

“StarClan don’t care about us, Fawnstep,” growled the gray-and-white cat. “If they did, they would never have let the other Clans drive us out of the forest.” He bowed his head. “All we can do is keep going until we find a place to live.”

Movement in the corner of his eye distracted Firestar. He froze as a long-furred tabby kit darted straight at him. He waited for it to spot him and raise the alarm, but it bundled past him, so close that their pelts almost brushed, and never noticed him.

Suddenly realizing that none of the cats could see him, Firestar began to pad among them. He was horrified by how thin they were, their ribs visible through dull, ungroomed pelts.

A black-and-white elder was lying on his side, his breath coming in short gasps. “I can’t go any farther,” he rasped.

“You’ll have to go on without me.”

“Rubbish,” a ginger warrior growled. “No cat is staying behind.”

The elder closed his eyes. “We should never have left the forest.”

A brown tabby she-cat came to stand beside the ginger tom. “We’ll find a good place to stay; I promise.”

“Better than the one we left,” the ginger warrior agreed, lashing his tail. “Without the other Clans to bother us. No more border raids, no more prey stealing. And especially no more Twolegs. We’ll have it all to ourselves.”

The black-and-white elder let out a faint hiss.

“Buzzardtail, there have always been five Clans in the forest.”

“Not anymore,” the ginger tom muttered.

“We’ll find you some fresh-kill,” the tabby meowed, “and you’ll soon feel better.” Glancing at the tom, she added, “Let’s hunt.”

The two cats left their Clanmates and began to prowl up the hedge. A squirrel sat chittering in a tree that spread its branches over the riverbank; the tabby she-cat gave an enormous leap and grabbed it in strong jaws, falling back to the ground with her prey between her paws.

Firestar stared in amazement. What a catch! He had never seen a cat jump so high. At first he was surprised that the ginger tom didn’t congratulate her. Then he noticed that both cats had strong, muscular back legs; jumping must have been SkyClan’s special skill, just as RiverClan cats could swim well and WindClan cats could run fast after rabbits.

The hunters took their fresh-kill back to the rest of their Clan. A couple of other warriors had killed voles, but it still wasn’t enough. He saw the fresh-kill being shared among the elders and mothers with kits first, just as he would expect from cats who followed the warrior code.

When the Clan had devoured the prey in a few ravenous bites, the gray-and-white leader padded into their midst. “It’s time to go on,” he meowed.

The whole Clan rose to their paws. The gray-and-white cat took the lead, heading upriver. The ginger tom and the tabby supported the black-and-white elder. As they limped past Firestar, he realized he could see river and grass through each pelt. The SkyClan cats seemed to walk one by one into a bank of pale mist, and Firestar found himself blinking awake in the sunlight under the hedge.

“I must help them,” he murmured aloud. “Whatever happens, SkyClan must be found.”

For the next three sunrises Firestar and Sandstorm journeyed on. The river grew steadily narrower, foaming around sharp gray rocks. Everywhere Firestar could see traces of the huge wave that had swept Sandstorm away: scattered branches, debris caught in the hedge, drying puddles left on the path. In the shallows under the bank, moorhens called miserably for lost chicks.

“Do you think it’s much farther?” Sandstorm meowed. “If the river gets much narrower, it’ll vanish altogether.”

“You’re right. We should start looking for signs of SkyClan,” Firestar replied.

“What sort of signs? Border scent markings?”

Firestar shook his head. “I doubt it. That would mean there’s still a Clan protecting its territory. The SkyClan cat I spoke to said the Clan had been scattered.”

“But there must be some SkyClan cats left,” Sandstorm pointed out. “Otherwise what are we doing here?”

“Maybe there’ll be just a few cats, trying to live by the warrior code,” Firestar suggested.

Sandstorm nodded, then sighed. “I wonder. Or maybe they don’t remember who they are anymore.”

Looking ahead, Firestar saw the jagged tops of a range of hills. They didn’t look as sharp and bleak as Highstones, but they were higher than WindClan’s moorland. It might have looked like a refuge to a fleeing Clan who wanted to be far away from other cats and Twolegs.