Sign Of The Moon

Yowls of horror broke out from the cats in the cave as Jayfeather and Stone Song struggled back through the entrance, practically carrying Chasing Clouds between them while Half Moon limped behind.

“What happened?” Jagged Lightning demanded. “Were you attacked by a fox?”

“No, a bird,” Stone Song replied.

“A bird?” Whispering Leaves pressed up behind Jagged Lightning, gazing at Chasing Clouds’s injuries with horrified blue eyes. “A bird did that to you?”

“It was a really big bird,” Chasing Clouds muttered.

More of the cats were gathering around, jostling one another to get a good look, letting out exclamations of fear and despair. Owl Feather’s kits came bouncing up, sniffing curiously at Chasing Clouds, then shrank back close to their mother as they caught the tang of blood.

“I told you so!” Running Horse muttered. “We should never have come here.”

Rising Moon turned her head away as if she couldn’t bear to look. Jayfeather remembered that back in the forest he had learned that she and Chasing Clouds were mates. “This place will kill us all,” she whispered.

Annoyance prickled Jayfeather’s pelt and set his tail-tip twitching. Are they all going to stand around and moan and do nothing? Back among the Clans, he would have taken an injured cat straight to the medicine cat’s den, but here there was no medicine cat. It looks as if it’s up to me.

Stone Song let Chasing Clouds sink gently to the ground, and pushed his way into the midst of the panicking cats. “That’s enough!” he called out. “Calm down. Chasing Clouds is going to be fine. Let’s all concentrate on what we can do to help.”

But in spite of their leader’s words, there was barely a pause in the horrified exclamations. Jayfeather spotted Half Moon in the middle of the crush. Angling his ears, he gestured to her to meet him at the edge of the crowd. “We need cobwebs to stop the bleeding,” he meowed, when they had both fought their way out of the press of cats. “There might be some in the little caves back there.”

Half Moon nodded and pattered behind Jayfeather as he headed for the caves. She slipped into the one that would become Stoneteller’s den, while Jayfeather padded down the tunnel that led to the Cave of Pointed Stones. The cavern looked just the same to Jayfeather as when he had seen it in visions in his own time: the sharp spikes of rock rising from the floor to meet other spikes hanging from the roof; the puddles of water dotted here and there, reflecting a pale light from the moon that shone down through the hole in the roof. His pelt stood on end and he shivered.

How long has this place been here? How many seasons, lying as thick as leaves on the forest floor?

Then he gave himself a shake. Padding forward, he searched around the edges of the cave and in cracks in the rock. There weren’t any cobwebs, but beside one of the pools he found some stubbly moss. Clawing up a pawful, he dipped it in the water; it would be the next best thing to cobwebs for dressing Chasing Clouds’s wounds. Carrying a mouthful of dripping moss, Jayfeather returned to the main cave.

Half Moon was emerging from the other tunnel. “I couldn’t find anything in there,” she meowed. “It’s so dark!”

The crowd of cats by the entrance had begun to disperse, and Chasing Clouds was staggering into the center of the cavern, supported by Stone Song. Jayfeather looked around. There was nowhere to make a proper medicine cat’s den, but he spotted a sandy stretch of ground in the shelter of a boulder; that would have to do. “Bring him over here,” he mumbled around the moss, beckoning to Stone Song with his tail.

Some of the other cats were still following, but Half Moon stepped forward to intercept them. “He needs quiet now,” she mewed. “You can see him later.”

Rising Moon looked as if she was about to object, but Whispering Breeze laid her tail over her shoulders and led her away. Jayfeather and Stone Song settled Chasing Clouds on the sandy floor and Jayfeather dabbed the soaking moss on his shoulder where the bird had torn away his fur.

“That feels good!” Chasing Clouds grunted.

When the wound was clean, Jayfeather pressed more moss over it, patting it down at the edges to make sure it would stick. “Keep still so you don’t dislodge it,” he told Chasing Clouds. “Sleep if you can.”

He thought he detected a flicker of surprise in Stone Song’s eyes at his tone of authority, but he shrugged it off. I don’t know how much Jay’s Wing knew about healing, but this is me. I’m doing what I have to.

“You next,” he meowed to Half Moon.

As he cleaned up the white she-cat’s scratches, Jayfeather spotted Furled Bracken in the center of the cavern, with most of the other cats clustered around him.

Trouble? Jayfeather wondered, though he said nothing, and didn’t pause in his careful cleaning of Half Moon’s wounds.