Long Shadows

Fawn, it isn’t our home if we can’t live here,” Stone Song mewed quietly.

Shy Fawn’s tail lashed once. “You seem to have forgotten it’s not your decision to make. You know what has to happen: the casting of stones.”

“See, stones again!” Stone Song meowed. “We are linked always to stones; why shouldn’t we live among them, and feed from the sky?”

Shy Fawn glared at him. “I came to tell you Furled Bracken wants to have a meeting.”

“Then we can cast the stones now,” Dark Whiskers announced.

With an annoyed hiss, Shy Fawn headed down the slope toward the trees. Stone Song and Dark Whiskers followed; Jaypaw and Half Moon picked up their pieces of blackbird and brought up the rear.

Jaypaw could feel his companion’s nervousness and wasn’t surprised when she paused halfway down the slope and dropped her prey. “It’s really going to happen!” she exclaimed.

“We’re going to cast the stones to decide whether to leave our home!”

Confusion eddied through Jaypaw. It sounded as if the cats used omens from stones to make their decisions. There was a moonfull of questions he wanted to ask, but he knew enough by now to keep his jaws shut and his ears open.

Is this happening because of me? How can I influence what happened all those seasons ago? He couldn’t even think straight because of the feelings that were crackling between him and Half Moon like lightning in greenleaf.

As they continued on down the slope, Dove’s Wing and Fish Leap came running out to meet them, their eyes alight and their tails waving.

“Is there going to be a meeting?” Dove’s Wing asked excitedly. “Will there be a casting of stones?”

Jaypaw nodded.

“About leaving?” his sister gasped, her neck fur beginning to rise.

“We’ll never leave,” Fish Leap declared. “This is our home.

What about the Pool of Stars? And the tunnels where we become sharpclaws? How can we lose all that?”

Dove’s Wing’s excitement faded, but her voice was determined as she replied, “If it’s a choice between water and caves, and saving our own lives, then we have to go.”

Fish Leap led the way down the hill to a glade where the undergrowth grew more thickly than anywhere else Jaypaw had seen. He spotted a row of dens under a fallen tree and behind dense ferns. Several other cats were already there.

Half Moon beckoned him with a flick of her tail and led him behind a clump of spiny thistles to where a dark gap yawned at the foot of an oak tree. From inside Jaypaw could hear tiny sounds of mewling.

Half Moon poked her head inside the hollow tree. “Hi, Owl Feather. We brought you some prey.”

As Jaypaw stepped forward to drop his piece of blackbird inside the hollow, he saw a skinny she-cat with pale speckled brown fur, suckling three squirming kits. She looks just like Kestrelpaw, he thought.

“Thanks,” Owl Feather purred. “The kits are ready to try fresh-kill. Hey…” She nudged her kits gently. “Come have some of this blackbird. It’s really good.”

While the kits tasted blackbird for the first time, Half

Moon told Owl Feather about the meeting.

“Not before time,” Owl Feather meowed.

“You mean you’d go?” Half Moon gasped. “With the kits?”

“Of course.” Owl Feather spoke as if her decision had been made for moons.

“But what about Jagged Lightning?” Half Moon blurted out, then looked as if she wished she hadn’t asked that.

“My kits will come with me,” Owl Feather replied in a tone that warned no cat should argue with her.

Half Moon gave her an embarrassed nod, and she and Jaypaw backed away from the hollow tree into the glade. By now more cats had arrived. Jaypaw spotted two whose graying muzzles and scant fur showed their age. One of them was a dark brown tom with long legs and knobbly joints; Jaypaw guessed he was Running Horse, who knew so much about herbs. He wondered whether Rising Moon had asked the elder about the horsetail yet; Jaypaw had meant to look for some in the forest, but he had been distracted by finding the Twoleg path and the stone hollow. The other elder was a pale ginger she-cat with green eyes; Jaypaw could see she had once been beautiful, but she was frail now, every rib showing through her pelt.

Opposite Jaypaw, Rising Moon padded into the clearing, nudging along Broken Shadow, who looked so dazed with grief that she didn’t know where she was. A large gray-and-white tom flanked her on the other side; he looked enough like Half Moon that Jaypaw guessed he must be her father, Chasing Clouds.

Furled Bracken was sitting in the center of the glade, waiting for the rest of the cats to appear. Jaypaw thought he looked patient and respectful, not at all like a Clan leader who had just summoned his cats to a meeting. Furled Bracken hadn’t even called to announce it; the news had spread from cat to cat, and they all seemed to be strolling in whenever they felt like it.