Firestar’s Quest

Carefully setting down his paws in a straight line, Firestar ventured onto the ledge. The rock was slick with water, and his claws skidded when he tried to cling to it. The river lapped less than a tail-length below his paws. “I must be mouse-brained!” he muttered.

To his relief, after a while the ledge grew wider and opened out into a shallow cave. The river slid silently out of the shadows ahead and past them to the cave entrance, now a ragged gap of light behind them.

Sky was standing at the edge of the shadows. Pale dappled light shone on his gray fur. “All the moss you could want,” he announced, sweeping his tail around.

Firestar stared in amazement. Behind the old cat, the walls of the cave were covered with thick hanging clumps of moss.

But what really astonished Firestar was the eerie glow that came from it.

“Shining moss!” Sandstorm gasped.

“It’s perfectly safe,” Sky assured her. “You can use it for carrying water as well as for bedding. No cat knows why it glows like that. This was called the Shining Cave,” he went on. “No cat lived here, but the SkyClan medicine cats came to share tongues with their ancestors at each quarter moon.”

Firestar felt humbled that Sky had brought them to such an important place. He was glad, too, that he and Sandstorm hadn’t discovered it on their own. They might have taken the moss without realizing how special the cave was.

“Thank you for showing us,” he murmured to Sky. The softly spoken words seemed to echo around the cave like a whole Clan of voices answering, and Firestar was relieved when the old cat led the way back to the sunlight.

Once they were all on the bank again, opposite the cave dens, Sky led them downstream until they reached the trees.

Firestar noticed that Sky’s stiffness seemed to be wearing off; he moved like a younger cat, as if exploring his ancestors’ territory with visitors had given him another life. His tail held erect, he followed a twisting path through the undergrowth, farther than Firestar and Sandstorm had explored, until he reached a fallen tree that bridged the stream. Most of its branches had rotted away, and its trunk had been scoured to a silvery gray.

Sky leaped onto it and trotted confidently across to the far bank. Firestar and Sandstorm followed more cautiously, Firestar glancing down at the river bubbling underneath and digging his claws in as he crossed.

“This was the edge of SkyClan’s territory,” Sky announced as they joined him on the bank. “And that’s where I was born.”

He waved his tail toward a small cave at the bottom of the cliff, its entrance sheltered by a straggling bush. The sandy floor was littered with sharp little stones; Firestar tried to imagine what it would be like with a warm nest of moss and bracken, and a mother cat caring for her kits.

“What was your mother’s name?” Sandstorm asked.

“Lowbranch,” the old cat replied. “I never knew my father—another rogue, I suppose. I had a littermate called Twig.”

“Does he still live here too?”

Sky stiffened, glaring briefly at Sandstorm. Instead of answering, he muttered, “This way,” and swung around to pad off upstream.

“Sorry,” Sandstorm whispered to Firestar. “I’ve obviously upset him. I wasn’t trying to be nosy.”

“I know.” Firestar touched her ear with his muzzle. “I suppose Twig must be dead.”

Instead of returning to the caves, Sky began to climb the cliff again. This time there were no trails to follow; Firestar and Sandstorm had a hard scramble over tumbled rocks and along narrow ledges before they reached the top, panting and limping on paws scraped by sharp stones.

Sky was waiting for them, his tail tip twitching impatiently. His pale blue gaze raked across them, but he said nothing, only turned to lead the way through the strip of bushes and into the scrubland. Firestar and Sandstorm plunged into the undergrowth after him, and caught up to him a few tail-lengths into the open.

“Are we still in SkyClan territory?” Firestar panted.

Sky angled his ears toward a tree stump that poked up out of a bramble thicket. “That marks the border. My mother said her mother remembered when it was a tree. And that thicket is where I caught my first mouse.” His voice grew softer and he paused, as if he were looking back through long seasons to the young cat he had once been. Then a gleam of amusement appeared in his eyes. “Pricklenose was impressed,” he added. “I never told her that the bramble thorns slowed the mouse down. It was an easy kill.”

“Pricklenose? Who—” Sandstorm broke off, in case this was another painful question. “Didn’t Lowbranch teach you to hunt?”

“Pricklenose was my mother’s friend. It was the custom for a mother cat to give her kits to another to be trained. Pricklenose trained me and Twig, and my mother took her kits.”

Firestar’s ears pricked. “Why did they do that?”

Sky shrugged. “I don’t know. It was the custom. Maybe they thought that a mother would be too soft on her own kits, or that she would be tempted to hunt for them instead of teaching them to do it for themselves.”