Sign Of The Moon

Raising her head, she saw that her three Clanmates were already asleep; Jayfeather was twitching uneasily, as if he walked in some ominous dream with the cats of StarClan…or in the Dark Forest. Farther away in the cave, she could hear the Tribe cats as they settled down for the night.

“Close your eyes, Lark.” Brook’s voice. “Or you’ll be too tired to play tomorrow.”

“Good night, Bird.” That was the old tom, Talon.

“Good night,” an unfamiliar she-cat’s voice replied. “Dream well.”

“Snow, if you don’t take your paw out of my ear, I’ll scratch you!” Dovewing stifled a mrrow of amusement at Dark’s indignant mutter.

Gradually the voices died away to silence. Dovewing cautiously pulled herself out of her nest and padded across to the cave toward the waterfall. Her paws tingled and she kept casting glances over her shoulder, aware that if any of the Tribe cats spotted her they might think she was spying. But no cat called out to her as she reached the path that led behind the waterfall and slipped along it. The falling water glittered in the moonlight, and as Dovewing emerged onto the rocks beside the pool the spray filled the air with a mist of silver.

It’s beautiful, she realized, catching for the first time a glimpse of what kept the Tribe in their inhospitable home.

Climbing with extra care in the darkness, Dovewing hauled herself up the rocks beside the waterfall until she reached the cliff top. She gave herself a good shake to dry her pelt before sitting down and looking around. Her breath snagged in her throat. She was surrounded by mountain peaks streaked with snow, rolling away into the distance as far as she could see. The waterfall was below her now, its roar still louder than thunder, but not making her feel trapped in the way it had when she was inside the cave.

Dovewing cast her senses out over the snowy landscape, her sight and hearing sharpened in the clear air. She could hear the stir of huge birds—eagles?—in their twiggy nests on the bare precipices; ice thawing on small streams hidden among the rocks; white-furred hares scuffling among snow and pebbles to find blades of grass. The mountains that seemed so barren were full of tiny lives.

Then Dovewing realized she could hear cats, too. They were too heavy-footed to be Tribe cats; they sprang arrogantly over the rocks, padding up to a Tribe scent marker, and giving it a sniff.

“Ooh, this is the Tribe’s border.” A mocking mew reached Dovewing’s ears. “Should we cross it? I’m shaking in my fur!”

“These cats have bees in their brain,” another voice responded. “They think they can keep us out with a barrier of air!”

Dovewing listened, anger growing in her belly as first one cat, then the second, jumped across the border, then back again, and for a third time, ending up inside the Tribe’s territory.

“Where are you?” the first cat yowled. “Where’s your patrol to drive us out?”

“Hiding like scared rabbits,” the second cat meowed. “Let’s hunt.”

Dovewing heard them padding off in search of prey—prey that belonged to the Tribe. She slid out her claws, scraping them against the rock. Jayfeather and Lionblaze had told her about their previous visit, how they had established the border and made the intruding cats promise to respect it.

What’s the point? she wondered angrily. The other cats don’t have any kind of code, so how can we expect them to stay on their side of the boundary?

A soft paw step sounded behind her; expecting to see a Tribe cat, she rose to her paws and turned. To her surprise, it was Jayfeather.

“How did you get up the rocks?” she asked, her belly twisting as she realized how easily a blind cat could slip and fall into the pool.

“With difficulty,” Jayfeather growled, giving himself a shake and sending a mist of spray into the air. With a long sigh he sat down beside Dovewing and waved his tail at the peaks that encircled them. “Amazing, isn’t it?” he puffed.

“How do you know?” Dovewing meowed, startled. The words were hardly out before she answered her own question, guessing that he had walked here in his dreams. “Why are we here?” she added.

“The Tribe has ancestors, too,” Jayfeather replied as he wrapped his tail around his paws. “The Tribe of Endless Hunting. I think they have something to tell me—something to do with the prophecy.”

“If we truly have the power of the stars in our paws,” Dovewing mused aloud, “then maybe we have power over the Tribe, too.”

Jayfeather twitched his ears. “I don’t think it’s as straightforward as that. Remember that Stoneteller has a lot of power—more than a Clan leader or a medicine cat alone. But I’m convinced that our destiny has something to do with the Tribe.”

“We’ve helped them so much before,” Dovewing meowed. “Maybe now it’s their turn to help us.”

“Maybe,” Jayfeather agreed.

As he spoke, Dovewing picked up the sound of another cat scrambling up the rocks, and a broad-shouldered gray tom hauled himself onto the plateau. He padded over to Jayfeather and dipped his head. “Greetings. It’s good to see Clan cats again.”