Outcast

Lionpaw stepped away from her and she bounced to her paws, shaking scraps of moss from her fur. “Will you teach me how to do that?”

“Sure. When a cat leaps at you, you need to flatten yourself, but keep moving forward.”

“Like this?” Poppypaw tried to imitate the move.

“Yes, but a bit faster.”

While the young tortoiseshell she-cat practiced, Lionpaw glanced toward the edge of the clearing again. But the ghostly presence of Tigerstar was gone.

Lionpaw maneuvered a long tendril of bramble through the tunnel into the stone hollow, tugging hard as it snagged on the thorns. His paws were aching with tiredness. First the dawn patrol, then the training session, then, after a short break for a few mouthfuls of fresh-kill, Ashfur had set him to repairing the elders’ den. And it was only just past sunhigh!

As he dragged the bramble across the clearing, something heavy landed on the other end of it, bringing him up short and making him stumble. Dropping his end, Lionpaw glanced back to see Foxkit. The reddish tabby tom had sunk his teeth into the other end of the tendril and was battering it with his paws. A low growl came from his throat.

“ShadowClan are invading!” Icekit squealed, dashing up beside her brother and leaping onto the bramble. “Get out of our camp!”

Whitewing halted on her way across the clearing, her neck fur beginning to bristle, then carried on with a flick of her tail. Cloudtail thrust his head out of the warriors’ den, blue eyes wide with alarm. When he spotted the two kits he twitched his ears in disgust and disappeared.

“Hey, you’re disturbing every cat,” Lionpaw meowed. “And I need this to patch the elders’ den.”

“Can we help?” Icekit asked.

“Yes, we’ll be apprentices soon,” Foxkit added, letting go of the bramble.

“Okay, but be careful you don’t get thorns in your pads.”

Lionpaw went on dragging the tendril across the clearing.

The two kits tried to help him tug it along, but they mostly got under his paws and made the task harder.

When they drew closer to the elders’ den, Foxkit and Icekit seemed to forget about helping. Instead they dashed across to Mousefur and Longtail, who were sunning themselves at the entrance to the den.

“Tell us a story!” Foxkit demanded. “Tell us about the Great Journey. Tell us how the Twolegs—”

“No, I want to hear about the old forest,” Icekit interrupted.

Mousefur yawned. “You tell them something,” she mewed to Longtail. “Then maybe they’ll settle down and some cats can get a bit of sleep.” She closed her eyes and wrapped her tail over her nose.

Longtail sighed, then settled into a comfortable crouch with his paws tucked under his chest. He turned his face toward the kits, even though he couldn’t see them. “Okay, what do you want to hear about?”

“Tigerstar!” Foxkit’s fur bristled with excitement.

“Yes, Tigerstar!” Icekit added. “Tell us how he tried to take over the forest.”

Lionpaw saw Longtail’s tail tip flick as the blind cat hesitated. Curiosity clawed at him as he began weaving the length of bramble to block up a hole in the honeysuckle fronds that sheltered the den. He wanted to hear about Tigerstar as much as the kits did.

“Tigerstar was a great warrior,” Longtail began at last. “He was the strongest cat in the forest and the best fighter. When I was a young cat, I thought he would be the next leader of ThunderClan. I wanted to be just like him,” the pale tabby added awkwardly.

“But he was evil!” Foxkit burst out, round-eyed.

“We didn’t know that back then,” Longtail explained. “He killed Redtail, the ThunderClan deputy, but every cat believed that Redtail had died in battle…”

Lionpaw’s belly churned as he listened to the tale of blood and conspiracy. It was hard to keep his paws moving, fixing the bramble into place, and to pretend that this was just a story to him, no more than it was to the kits. This was the cat who padded beside him through the forest, teaching him how to be a warrior!

“It was Tigerstar’s ambition that destroyed him,” Longtail concluded. “If he’d been willing to wait for power to come to him, he would have been the greatest leader in the forest.”

Lionpaw relaxed. There was no reason for him to avoid Tigerstar. The dark tabby couldn’t be ambitious now. He was dead; there was nothing left to plan for.

And he had never suggested that Lionpaw should break the warrior code. He had been angry when he discovered the meetings with Heatherpaw in the cave. All he wanted was to make Lionpaw a really good warrior. Perhaps Tigerstar was sorry for what he had done and was trying to make up for it by helping ThunderClan.

Lionpaw left the kits pestering Longtail with questions and padded thoughtfully out of the camp to fetch more brambles.

Chapter 3

Hollypaw pushed through the brambles into the nursery and set down a blackbird in front of Daisy. Rosekit and Toadkit lay in the curve of their mother’s belly, suckling with their tiny tails stretched out behind them.