Outcast

His heart had begun to pound again. After believing that both Hollypaw and Lionpaw had come back safe, was his brother’s life to be snatched away from him after all?

Reaching the pool, he nosed at Lionpaw’s fur. Shock clawed at him as he realized how thickly it was clotted with drying blood. “We’ve got to get this off him,” he mewed crossly, trying to hide his fear. “How can I tell what’s underneath all that?”

“Come closer to the waterfall,” Hollypaw suggested. “The spray will help us clean off the blood.”

All three cats moved around the edge of the pool until Jaypaw could feel the spray soaking into his fur.

“I wish you wouldn’t fuss,” Lionpaw protested, raising his voice to make himself heard above the thunder of the falls. “I keep telling you, I’m perfectly all right.”

His voice sent another shiver of fear through Jaypaw. His brother sounded distant, stunned, as if the battle had affected not only his body but his mind. “You’re all right when I say you are,” he snapped.

“I’m not hurt…” Lionpaw sounded almost puzzled. “No cat could touch me.”

“Shut up and let me lick,” Hollypaw scolded him.

As he and Hollypaw cleaned the blood from Lionpaw’s fur, Jaypaw began to realize that his brother was right. He wasn’t hurt, except for a bitten ear and sore pads.

“I don’t think you need any herbs,” Jaypaw mewed, trying to hide that his paws were shaking with relief. “Just keep that ear clean. I’ll give it a sniff every day until it heals.”

“You’re really okay!” Hollypaw’s voice was unsteady. “All that blood came from other cats! Jaypaw, I wish you could have been there. Lionpaw fought like a whole Clan of cats!”

“We won the battle.” Lionpaw was beginning to sound more like his usual self, as if the licking of his brother and sister had brought him back from some distant place.

“For what it’s worth”—Hollypaw sounded troubled—“I don’t trust the trespassers. And I don’t know if the Tribe will be able to defend its new borders.”

Jaypaw’s belly lurched to hear his sister echoing the warning that Rock had given him in the Cave of Pointed Stones.

“I don’t know why we came here if we weren’t going to succeed,” she continued, sounding a little desolate. “Did the Tribe of Endless Hunting get it wrong?”

Jaypaw reached out with his tail to touch her shoulder.

“The Tribe’s ancestors didn’t want us here,” he mewed. “And StarClan did not send us. We came so that we could win the battle, and because we needed answers to our questions.”

When neither Hollypaw nor Lionpaw responded, he added, “We all wanted to come to the mountains, didn’t we?” There was a murmur of agreement from his brother and sister.

“Then don’t you understand? That’s why things happened so that we came. This is all about us, the three of us. Without us the Tribe might survive, or it might not, but that doesn’t matter now. They’ve all been waiting for us—StarClan, the Tribe of Endless Hunting, Rock—”

“Who?” Hollypaw asked.

“What are you talking about?” Lionpaw meowed. “Have you got bees in your brain?”

Jaypaw crouched on the edge of the pool and motioned with his tail for his brother and sister to draw closer. “Listen,” he murmured. “There’s something I have to tell you…”