Long Shadows

Thunder rumbled above them, but now it was farther off, as if the storm was moving away. Mercifully rain began to fall again, hissing onto the flames. The wind was dying down; there would be no more danger from falling trees. Jayfeather heard yowls from down in the hollow, as if the cats were returning to the camp, and had spotted the cats on the top of the cliff. But he and his littermates ignored them.

“Squirrelflight?” Hollyleaf’s voice quivered; Jayfeather could sense her disbelief warring with fear. “That’s not true, is it? We are your kits, aren’t we?”

There was a long pause, but Jayfeather already knew the answer. His mind was filled with Squirrelflight’s desperate sorrow and regret—and overwhelming love, the love of a mother for her kits. That much had been a lie among what she had told Ashfur; Squirrelflight did love them. But she was not their mother.

“I’m so sorry,” Squirrelflight whispered. “I should have told you the truth a long time ago.”

“What do you mean?” Lionblaze demanded. Jayfeather reeled from the blast of his brother’s growing outrage.

“We thought it was for the best,” Squirrelflight pleaded. “I promise you, it was the hardest thing we’ve ever done.”

“We? Who’s we?” Lionblaze snapped.

Squirrelflight didn’t reply, and her mind was such a chaos of love and regret that Jayfeather couldn’t pick the answer out of it.

“Does Brambleclaw know?” Hollyleaf whimpered; Jayfeather heard her claws tearing at the ground.

“He has never lied to you,” Squirrelflight meowed. “He… he doesn’t know.”

“You let him believe that we were his?” Hollyleaf’s voice rose to a shrill squeak. “So you lied to him as well. But… if you’re not our mother and father, who is?”

Jayfeather reached out to Squirrelflight’s mind again, searching for memories, but all he could sense was a blur of snow, a long journey, brambles clawing at her pelt and the guilt of her terrible secret already weighing her down. He was aware of another cat with her, but so shadowy that he couldn’t make out who it was.

“I can’t tell you.” Squirrelflight’s murmur was barely loud enough to hear.

“You can, but you won’t!” Pain and anger filled Lionblaze’s voice. Jayfeather sensed the same feelings in Hollyleaf, too, but something inside him stayed icily calm, as if he had always known this would happen. If they were the three, with the power of the stars in their paws, then it made sense that there would be something extraordinary about where they came from. This was just one more truth to be discovered, something done long ago that had cast a shadow over all the moons since.

“I’m sorry.” Squirrelflight’s voice had grown stronger. “I know it won’t help, but I couldn’t have loved you more if you had really been mine. I’m so proud of all three of you.”

“Go away and leave us alone!” Hollyleaf hissed. “You have no right to be proud of us, no right to feel anything toward us! You let us believe you were our mother, and you’re not!”

“Please…” Squirrelflight begged.

Lionblaze’s voice was hard. “Just go.”

Misery rolled off Squirrelflight like a choking cloud, almost carrying Jayfeather off his paws. He heard her turn and go blundering through the undergrowth as if she didn’t care whether she burned her pads on still-smoldering leaves.

Left behind at the edge of the charred bushes, none of the three spoke. Jayfeather was numb with shock, and could sense that his littermates felt the same. They had almost died, and they had confronted Ashfur in his destructive madness, but most devastating of all was the secret that Squirrelflight had revealed.

“If they’re not our mother and father, then who are our real parents?” Hollyleaf quavered at last.

“We can worry about that later.” Cold anger still vibrated in Lionblaze’s voice. “First we have to decide what we’ll do when Ashfur tells the Clan.”

“Do you really think he will?” Hollyleaf asked.

“Do you think he won’t?” Lionblaze countered. “He doesn’t care what he does so long as he can hurt Squirrelflight, and that will hurt her more than anything.”

Jayfeather was strangely detached from his littermates’ anxious questions. The secret was out, and no cat could stop the consequences. All he felt was a mild curiosity to see what would happen next.

“We mustn’t say anything to our Clanmates,” Hollyleaf mewed worriedly. “What if they punish us, too? They might think we knew all along. We’ll have to go on just as usual.

Maybe Ashfur won’t say anything after all.”

“And hedgehogs might fly,” Lionblaze retorted. “But I agree we shouldn’t tell any cat. Not until we find out the truth. If the Clan learns what happened, we need to be able to defend ourselves so they know we had nothing to do with this. Okay, Jayfeather?”

Jayfeather nodded. “Okay.”

“Then let’s get back to the camp,” Hollyleaf meowed.

“There’ll be a lot to do there.”

The stone hollow smelled charred and bitter when Jayfeather scrambled over the remains of the thorn barrier. He started at the sound of his father’s—no, Brambleclaw’s—voice.

“Are you all right?”