Firestar’s Quest

They returned to the warriors’ cave at sunhigh, laden with fresh-kill. The gorge basked in the heat like a huge, sandy-furred animal. Firestar winced as he set down his pads on the hot rock, but Cherry ran ahead without seeming to notice.

Sandstorm and Boris had already returned. They sat beside a small pile of fresh-kill; Boris was gulping down a sparrow.

Cherry pattered across the cave and dropped her prey on the pile. “Guess what, Boris? We’re not kittypets at all! We’re from SkyClan! They came from the forest where Firestar and Sandstorm live, all the way down the river, and they made their camp here. They—”

“Sandstorm told me too,” Boris interrupted. His amber eyes shone with excitement. “She says we can be SkyClan warriors if we want.”

“You’d make good warriors,” Sandstorm put in, with an approving glance at the young tabby tom. “Boris hunted really well today.”

“So did Cherry.” Firestar twitched his ears toward the fresh-kill pile. “Go on; help yourself.”

Cherry seized a mouse and began to devour it ravenously.

Both cats seemed to have forgotten their worries about not being able to manage their Twoleg food as well.

“That tasted great!” Boris finished his sparrow and cleaned his whiskers with one paw. “Can we come again tomorrow?”

“Of course,” Sandstorm replied. “You’ll have to, if you want to learn about the warrior code.”

“We do!” Cherry meowed enthusiastically.

“Just a moment.” Firestar padded across the cave and sat down in front of the two young cats. “You do realize that the warrior code isn’t just about having fun? It’s a way of life. You can’t live with your housefolk and pop to the gorge whenever you feel like it. If you want to be warriors, this has to be your home.”

“Leave our housefolk?” Boris looked up from his sparrow, his eyes huge and serious. “I don’t know… they’re kind and they feed us, and they’d worry about us if we went away.”

“But if we’re really SkyClan cats, then this is where we need to live,” Cherry argued. She gave her brother a nudge.

“Come on! Don’t you want to stay out as long as we want, even when it’s dark? Wouldn’t you rather eat mice and squirrels than that stupid kittypet food?”

Firestar exchanged a glance with Sandstorm. Cherry couldn’t understand yet what it truly meant to be a warrior.

In leaf-bare, with prey scarce and snow on the ground, she might have second thoughts.

“You don’t have to make your minds up yet,” he went on; he felt he had to warn her, even though he didn’t want to dampen her enthusiasm. “Living by the warrior code can be hard.”

“But you said we’ve got the right sort of bodies.” Cherry gave her brother another vigorous nudge, so he almost top-pled over. “You know you want to do this, don’t you?”

“I guess…” Boris was still thoughtful. Then he rose to his paws, a determined look in his eyes. “Well, I’ll give it a try.”

“Me too!” Cherry sprang up, gulping down the last mouthful of prey. “Come on, Boris. We can practice stalking in our garden.”

Both young cats charged out of the cave. A heartbeat later, Cherry whisked back to mew, “Thanks! Bye!” and vanished again.

Sandstorm’s green eyes glinted with amusement. “It looks as if we’ve found our first two apprentices.”

Firestar and Sandstorm slept through the heat of the day.

When the shadows were gathering, they set off to explore farther up the gorge.

“Sky showed us the downstream borders of the territory,” Firestar meowed, “but he never told us how far it stretches in this direction.”

“We could ask him.”

Firestar glanced across to the other side of the gorge. They were just passing the huge boulder that hid the twisting path to Sky’s den among the roots of the thorn tree. There was no sign of the old cat, and Firestar didn’t want to go looking for him. He wanted more to report than a couple of possible apprentices before he talked to Sky again.

“Let’s see what we can find for ourselves,” he mewed.

The gorge grew narrower until a cat could almost have leaped from one side to the other. The sky above their heads was still bright, but little sunlight penetrated between the soaring cliffs on either side. The ground beneath their paws was dry and sandy, and the air was still.

Suddenly Sandstorm checked. “Fox!”

At the same instant the reek flooded over Firestar, and he heard a drawn-out snarling from the shadows ahead. It was followed by the screech of a cat.

“Come on!” Firestar’s paws flew over the ground, his sore pads forgotten.

Sandstorm raced beside him. Around the next curve in the gorge, they saw the fox. It stood stiff-legged, its lips drawn back to bare sharp fangs. Firestar guessed it was starving; its ribs stuck out from a thin, ragged pelt.

In front of the fox crouched a pale brown she-cat; her fur bristled defiantly, but her eyes were wide with fear. Behind her was a pile of sandy rocks surrounded by thick thornbushes. Firestar spotted a dark opening in the rocks, and heard the mewling of terrified kits.

“She’s protecting her kits!” Sandstorm gasped.