Lost Stars

Before his mentor could see that he had been eavesdropping, Shadowpaw headed back to his den, but as he passed the pool in the center of the camp, he spotted his sister Lightleap waving her tail at him.

“Hey, Shadowpaw! Come and play with us,” she called.

Intrigued, Shadowpaw trotted over. Pouncestep was there, too; both his littermates sprang to their paws as he joined them.

“We thought we’d have a play fight,” Pouncestep meowed. “It’ll keep us warm.”

“Do you think I’m mouse-brained?” Shadowpaw asked, his tail curling up in amusement. “I’m not trained like you. You’d claw my fur off.”

“No, we’ll go easy on you, promise,” Lightleap assured him. “Come on! It’ll be fun.”

“I’ll be a badger, invading the camp,” Pouncestep suggested. “And you two can be warriors trying to drive me out.”

“Okay!” Lightleap reared up onto her hind paws and swiped at her sister’s muzzle, her claws sheathed. “Get out of here, filthy badger!”

Pouncestep let out a fearsome growl. “I’m a huge, scary badger, and I’m going to eat you!”

Trying to get into the spirit of the fight, Shadowpaw leaped forward and butted his head into his sister’s shoulder. Pouncestep whipped around, lashing out at him with one paw, but Shadowpaw dodged to one side, and the blow never landed. Shadowpaw felt pride shimmering from his pelt. Did I just dodge a trained warrior?

While she was distracted, Lightleap jumped in and rolled her sister over, battering at her belly with all four paws. Shadowpaw watched Pouncestep trying to shove her off, then crept up from behind Pouncestep’s head and slammed both paws down on her shoulders.

“I think we’ve trapped this badger,” he mewed to Lightleap. “What should we do with it?”

“Shove it out of camp,” Lightleap replied, beginning to push her sister across the ground toward the camp entrance.

Pouncestep let out yowls of protest, her paws and tail flailing, then managed to struggle free and scramble to her paws. “Wow, that was a good fight!” she exclaimed, shaking her pelt to get rid of the debris that clung to it. “And you did well, Shadowpaw,” she added. “You could have been a warrior if you’d wanted.”

“Thanks, but I’m happy being . . . ,” Shadowpaw began to mew, then let his voice trail off as a fierce shiver ran all through his body, shaking him from ears to tail-tip. Between one heartbeat and the next, the camp vanished, and he found himself standing once again beside the Moonpool.

The half-moon hung in the sky, as though this were an ordinary Moonpool meeting, but this time Shadowpaw was alone. The pool wasn’t frozen, but when he looked around him, the shapes of his warrior ancestors were still blurred like mist, glowing with an eerie cold light that gradually faded away.

“Don’t go!” Shadowpaw cried out. “Tell me what’s happening!”

There was no reply. Instead Shadowpaw’s nose twitched as the smell of smoke drifted over him. His pelt began to prickle as he felt the heat of a fire burning close by, though he couldn’t see it or hear the crackle of flames. Ash fluttered in the sky, swirling around him and settling in tiny gray flakes on his pelt.

Then the screech of a furious cat split the silence. Shadowpaw spun around to see the ThunderClan leader, Bramblestar. He had some other cat on the ground and was slashing his claws across its belly. Shadowpaw couldn’t see who the other cat was, until it threw off Bramblestar and stood up.

Shadowpaw let out a gasp. “Tigerstar!”

His father’s dark brown tabby fur was ruffled, and blood was streaming from gashes along his side, but he sprang back undaunted into the fight, cuffing Bramblestar around the ears with both forepaws.

Staring in horror, Shadowpaw couldn’t begin to understand why the two Clan leaders—and they were kin, too, he remembered—would be fighting. But before he could spring forward to intervene, or even ask what they were doing, the vision vanished and he found himself in the camp once more, lying on his side and drawing in long, gasping breaths.

Raising his head, he saw his mother and father gazing down at him anxiously, while Lightleap and Pouncestep looked on from a tail-length away, their eyes wide with fear. Tigerstar’s fur was sleek and neatly groomed, with no sign of any wounds.

“You’ve had another seizure,” Dovewing mewed, bending her head to give Shadowpaw’s ears a worried lick. “I thought you were growing out of them.”

So did I, Shadowpaw thought with dismay. I guess training isn’t making me normal after all.

“You’d better go to your den and let Puddleshine have a look at you,” Tigerstar added.

Shadowpaw’s legs felt as though they would give way like thawing ice as he scrambled to his paws, leaning heavily on his father’s shoulder. He was desperately trying to cling on to the memory of what he had seen. Even though it had been upsetting, the swell of dread in his belly gave him the feeling that somehow his vision might be very important.

Chapter 5