Long Shadows

Jaypaw pricked his ears, keeping his eyes shut so it would look as if he was asleep. These cats were debating whether to stay here by the lake, or to find a new home. Is that why we didn’t find any cats here when the Clans came to the lake? Fish Leap padded away, still muttering, with Half Moon arguing more and more heatedly. When he could no longer hear what they were saying, Jaypaw let the blackness of exhaustion fill his mind.

During the night he woke briefly to find Dove’s Wing curled up close beside him. He hadn’t slept so near another cat since he became Leafpool’s apprentice; her warmth was comforting, and her scent was already becoming familiar. He let out a faint purr as sleep washed over him again.

Gray light was filtering through the ivy tendrils when Jaypaw next opened his eyes. Dove’s Wing had disappeared, but two other cats were gazing down at him. One of them was Fish Leap; the other was an older tortoiseshell she-cat that Jaypaw remembered seeing when he came out of the tunnel the day before. Her amber eyes were the exact same shade as Fish Leap’s; Jaypaw guessed that she was his mother.

“Hey, Jay’s Wing! Come hunting!” Fish Leap exclaimed when he saw that Jaypaw was awake.

That seemed like a good chance to explore their—ThunderClan’s—territory. Jaypaw scrambled out of his nest and stretched. “Are we going on a patrol?” he asked.

To his dismay, Fish Leap and the tortoiseshell exchanged a baffled glance. “What’s a patrol?” the tortoiseshell meowed.

Mouse-dung! They don’t have patrols, either.

“Dawn River, I think Jay’s Wing banged his head when he was down in the tunnels.” Fish Leap shrugged. “He keeps talking nonsense.”

Jaypaw hid his awkwardness by licking a tufty piece of fur on his chest. “Never mind,” he mumbled.

“Let’s go,” Dawn River urged. “Remember to watch out for badgers.”

She took the lead as the three cats set off into the woods.

Jaypaw shivered from ears to tail-tip when he saw how different the forest was from the territory he knew in the time of the Clans. It wasn’t just that the trees were smaller and there was so little undergrowth. The biggest difference was that now he could see.

“Watch it!” Fish Leap warned him.

The exclamation came just too late. Jaypaw was so busy gazing around at the trees, their leaves taking on colors of scarlet and gold at the beginning of leaf-fall, that he hadn’t noticed the rabbit hole right in front of his paws. He stumbled into it, paws flailing.

“Fox dung!” he spat.

He heard Fish Leap let out a mrrow of laughter, and felt the tabby tom’s teeth sink into his scruff as he hauled him out.

“Are you okay?” Dawn River checked.

Jaypaw shook loose earth out of his pelt. “I’m fine.”

As they padded on he made a determined effort to watch where he was putting his paws, but it was difficult. Light dazzled him, and he was distracted by the flickering of leaves and trees looming up in front of him. The senses of smell and hearing, and his awareness of nearby objects, that were usually so acute had grown dull, so that he felt as if he was blundering through a fog.

I’m never as clumsy as this, he thought crossly as he tripped over a branch.

“You’ll scare all the prey away if you go on like that,” Fish

Leap pointed out. “Are you sure you’re okay?” he added. “Do you want to go back to your den?”

“I’m fine,” Jaypaw repeated through gritted teeth. But Fish

Leap was right: Stumbling around like a blind badger would scare off all the prey. Jaypaw closed his eyes, and instantly felt more comfortable. His other senses grew sharp again, telling him which way to go. Scents and sounds swirled around him, calling up a far clearer picture of his surroundings than he could gain from his eyes.

“Jay’s Wing?” Dawn River sounded puzzled and concerned.

“Have you gone to sleep on your paws?”

Startled, Jaypaw veered away from the sound of her voice.

His eyes flicked open just in time to see the rough bark of a tree in front of his nose. There was no chance to stop before he crashed right into it.

“Wow!” Fish Leap exclaimed, his voice trembling with amusement. “You caught a tree!”

Jaypaw was relieved when Dawn River and Fish Leap set off alone, each of them sniffing for prey, and left him to recover. Grooming bits of bark out of his coat, he wondered what he was going to do. If he was a sharpclaw, these cats would expect him to know how to hunt. But back in his own

Clan, he had never been trained for that. He had never caught his own prey.

I’ll just have to try. How hard can it be?

He began prowling through the trees with his eyes closed so that he could pick out the scents more clearly, and soon detected a trace of mouse. Pausing to listen, he heard the scuffling of tiny paws, and leaped in the direction of the sound.

His paws thumped down on grass; there was no sign of his mouse.