Sign Of The Moon

Outside, the storm was still raging. Shiny gray ice held the mountains prisoner and the wind whined around the peaks, flinging ice crystals against the cats’ faces. Shards of it flew into their eyes and clung to their fur. Keeping his head down against the stinging blast, Jayfeather followed Chasing Clouds as he scrambled up a steep slope of loose pebbles opposite the waterfall. There was a terrifying moment as they crossed the ridge when Jayfeather was sure that the wind would carry him off his paws; he scrambled thankfully into the shelter of a rock, and the rest of the patrol huddled around him to catch their breath.

Jayfeather tried to remember what he could about the way the Tribe hunted. “What do they catch?” he muttered to himself. “Do they use regular hunting skills?”

“What?” Half Moon turned toward him, backing up a pace so that she could look into his eyes.

“Oh, I…I was just wondering what to do,” Jayfeather stammered.

Half Moon opened her jaws to reply, but a gust of wind caught her and sent her sliding across the icy rock. She let out a wail of alarm as she slipped over the edge and clung by her forepaws, trying vainly to dig her claws into the hard surface.

“Hold on!” Jayfeather meowed, darting forward to help her. He fastened his teeth into her shoulder and heaved, closing his eyes so that he didn’t have to see the sheer drop below Half Moon’s hindquarters. Terror on her behalf gave strength to his paws as he backed away from the edge, aware of Chasing Clouds pressing up beside him and grabbing Half Moon’s other shoulder.

Half Moon scrabbled frantically with her hind legs; with the others’ help she managed to drag herself back onto the rock, where she lay for a moment, trembling.

“Are you okay?” Chasing Clouds asked anxiously, leaning toward her so that she could use his shoulder to haul herself to her paws again. His blue eyes were sharp with fear; Jayfeather remembered that he was Half Moon’s father.

“Thanks, both of you,” Half Moon panted, blinking gratefully. “I’m fine. But let’s get off this ridge, before we’re all blown off.”

Chasing Clouds nodded and took the lead again, down into a steep valley where jagged rocks poked through the snow. Jayfeather followed, and realized that Stone Song was padding at his side.

“Maybe we’ve made a mistake,” the dark tabby tom confided, gazing at Jayfeather with worry in his blue eyes. “How can cats live somewhere when even the wind is our enemy?”

“We didn’t make a mistake!” Jayfeather insisted. “We are supposed to be here.”

But Stone Song didn’t look convinced.

Jayfeather’s belly felt hollow with anxiety as he struggled down into the valley through the snow and icy wind. Somehow I have to make them stay! I have to show them how the Tribe hunts. Inside his head he seemed to hear a derisive little voice. You’re going to teach these cats how to hunt? Are you completely mouse-brained? Jayfeather let out a growl deep in his throat. Who will do it if I don’t?

Peering through the swirling ice, he spotted a narrow gully leading away from the main valley. Steep rocky sides sheltered it from the worst of the wind, and farther down he could just make out a dark, bushy mass of thorns.

“Hey!” he called out to the patrol who had drawn a few tail-lengths ahead of him. “This looks like a good place to start.”

The other three cats slogged back to his side and followed his lead as he trudged down into the gully. Jayfeather felt a vast relief to be out of the wind, though the ground was covered with deep, powdery drifts of snow that clung to their fur as they thrust their way through.

“There might be small creatures sheltering under there,” he meowed, waving his tail toward the thorn thicket. “It’s worth a try, at least.”

“True,” Stone Song grunted. “Well spotted.”

Cautiously approaching the bushes, Jayfeather pricked his ears to listen for prey, and opened his jaws to taste the air. Though the wind still blustered among the rocks above his head, he thought he could pick up the tiny scratching sounds that meant mice or shrews might be moving around inside the thicket.

“Let’s hunt as a team,” he suggested, trying to remember what Lionblaze and Hollyleaf had told him about hunting with the Tribe on their last visit. “Two of us could go into the bushes and chase the prey out, and two of us stay here to catch it.”

“Good idea!” Half Moon mewed, flexing her claws with excitement. “I’m the smallest, so I get to go in!” Crouching down until her belly fur brushed the snow, she crept underneath the outermost branches. But as she tried to pull herself farther in, thorns snagged in the fur on her back, and however much she tugged, she couldn’t free herself.

“I’m stuck!” she wailed.

“Be quiet or you’ll scare the prey,” Stone Song told her.

“I thought that was the idea,” Half Moon muttered.

Chasing Clouds clawed at the branch with a raised forepaw. “Keep still,” he mewed, “and I’ll soon have you out of there.”