Firestar’s Quest

Firestar glanced back at the entrance; a boulder blocked most of it, hiding it from hostile eyes and keeping it cool even in blazing sunlight. “The kits and their mothers would have been safe here.”

Sandstorm padded farther into the cave, her pale ginger pelt a blur in the shadows. “There are bigger scrapes in the floor, too,” she reported. “Just the right size for a queen and her litter.”

Further down the cliff face they found smaller caves that might have been dens for the apprentices, the medicine cat, and the Clan leader. Finally they returned to the first cave.

“I guess this was the warriors’ den,” Firestar meowed, not wanting to bring up his dream. “There’s plenty of space, and it’s near the top of the cliff. They’d be able to protect the rest of the Clan if foxes or Twolegs tried to get down.”

Sandstorm thoughtfully tasted the air. “There’s cat scent here,” she announced. “Not fresh, but it’s all we’ve smelled so far. I think at least one cat was here in the last moon or so.”

Firestar padded slowly around the cave and spotted something white glimmering in a crevice between a boulder and the wall. He poked one paw into the gap and drew out a heap of tiny white bones. “A mouse or a vole,” he commented to Sandstorm, who had come to have a look. “You’re right; cats have been here, but it doesn’t look as if they live here permanently. If they did, the scent would be fresh.”

“I wonder why they come?” Sandstorm didn’t sound as if she expected an answer, and Firestar couldn’t give her one.

By now the sun had gone down and the gorge was filled with shadows. They climbed the last few tail-lengths to the cliff top and hunted among the bushes along the edge. When they had eaten, they returned to the warriors’ den for the night.

“I’m so exhausted, I could sleep for a moon.” Sandstorm sighed, turning around in one of the shallow scrapes and curling up with her tail over her nose.

Her steady breathing soon told Firestar that she was asleep. He sat beside her, gazing around the cave and picturing the way it had been in his dream: warm, breathing bodies in nests of moss and bracken, and one cat, awake as he was, on watch.

He blinked, and the cats vanished. Pale silver light from the half-moon washed into the cave, lapping at his fur. But there was no sound, no flicker of a pale pelt to disturb the shadows.

Did SkyClan scatter too long ago? he wondered. Is there any hope of finding their descendants? Or have I come too late?

Chapter 16

The sound of rustling and faint voices woke Firestar. Stretching his jaws in a yawn, he thought it must be time to get up and make sure the dawn patrol had left. When he blinked his eyes open he saw the unfamiliar cave with its sandy walls and bare scrapes in the rock, and the memory of where he was flooded back into his mind. For a moment he had thought that he was back in his old den under the Highrock, sleeping in warm moss and bracken with sunlight filtering through the curtain of lichen at the entrance. Instead he was in a deserted cave that had once been part of the SkyClan camp, with Sandstorm stirring at his side.

Sandstorm raised her head. “I thought I heard something.”

“So did I.” Firestar sprang to his paws. He could still hear movement from the cliff top, and when he tasted the air he picked up a strong, fresh scent of cat.

Raising his tail to warn Sandstorm to stay still and quiet, he padded toward the entrance. Daylight slanted into the cave from a pale sky; the sun hadn’t yet risen above the gorge, and the air was cool. He peered out of the cave mouth.

Looking up, he was just in time to see a dark tabby tail whisk-1 9 9

ing out of sight into the bushes that grew on the cliff top.

“Is he there?” a cat meowed nervously.

“I think so!”

Stretching his neck out further, Firestar took a breath to call out, but before he could make a sound a pebble flew down from the cliff top, skimming past less than a mouse-length from his nose, and pattered down into the gorge.

More sounds of scrabbling came from above, and a half-stifled mrrow of laughter.

The first voice called out, “Did you find what you were looking for in the sky, stupid old furball?”

“I’m not surprised you don’t have any friends, dog-breath!” the second voice added. “Bet you can’t catch us!”

Another stone came bouncing down the cliff, barely missing Firestar, and he heard the sound of two cats scrambling through the bushes with loud, triumphant meows.

Furious, he launched himself upward. But by the time he clawed his way over the cliff and thrust his way through the undergrowth, the two cats were too far away to be worth chasing. He spotted them, a dark tabby and a tortoiseshell, racing toward the distant Twolegplace.

“Mouse dung!” he exclaimed.

Rustling in the bushes behind him announced the arrival of Sandstorm. “What was all that about?”