Squirrelflight's Hope

“I guess,” Leafstar conceded, her gaze flitting over the Sisters. “They don’t look like they know what hunger is.”

Squirrelflight saw Moonlight watching her and lifted her muzzle. “What’s the hunting like here?” she asked the queen loudly.

“You can see for yourself.” Moonlight nodded toward the tabby.

Tempest dragged two fat mice from a hole beneath the juniper. She lifted them in her teeth and shook the earth from them with a sharp toss of her head. Then she padded across the grass and dropped the mice at Squirrelflight’s paws.

The mice smelled good, and Squirrelflight realized that she was hungry. She nodded to the tabby. “Thanks.”

Moonlight stood up and flicked her tail toward the young toms. One darted toward the prey-hole and began fishing for more food. Another ducked behind a bush at the edge of the camp and dragged out a dead rabbit. The other cats slipped away and came back with more prey. Squirrelflight guessed that the group had been returning from a hunting patrol and dropped their catch outside the camp when they’d smelled intruders. The prey-hole must be where they stored prey left over from one day for the next. She wondered how the cats decided who ate yesterday’s prey and who ate fresh. A tortoiseshell carried two voles to Moonlight and laid them on the ground in front of her. She padded away as Moonlight nodded her thanks, and settled on the grass between two young ginger she-cats.

Squirrelflight lowered herself onto her belly and pulled one of the mice close. “Eat,” she whispered to Leafstar.

Leafstar ignored her, sitting straighter and staring at her captors.

She hoped that the SkyClan leader wouldn’t start a fight. Didn’t she realize they only had to play along until they had the chance to slip away, or until their Clanmates came to free them? Why risk hurting another cat or getting hurt themselves?

As she bit into her mouse, she watched the Sisters relax. They shared prey and tongues like Clanmates. Moonlight swallowed a mouthful of vole. Beside her, Snow was eating a shrew. With a sigh, the queen shifted onto her side to ease the weight away from her swollen belly. She blinked calmly at Squirrelflight. “I hope you will find your stay with us comfortable. It seems better to enjoy the company of others rather than resist it. The Sisters don’t like violence, and we avoid it when we can.”

“The Clans avoid violence too, when possible,” Squirrelflight told her. “Peace is better for every cat.”

Tempest had settled beside the young toms. She looked up from the mouse she was eating. “How long will it be before your Clan wonders where you are?”

“A quarter moon at least,” Squirrelflight told her. She guessed that Bramblestar would send a patrol sooner, but rescue would be easier if the Sisters weren’t expecting it.

Leafstar huffed beside her. “My Clan will be missing me already,” she meowed pointedly. “They’ll send out a search party. It won’t take long for them to find me.”

As Squirrelflight swallowed back frustration, Tempest glanced at Moonlight, alarmed. “Perhaps we should let them go. We don’t want trouble.”

Moonlight hooked up another vole with her claw. “There won’t be trouble. Keeping these cats will send an important message to their Clans.”

The tabby-and-white tom beside Tempest frowned. “What message?”

“That we don’t fight easily, but we don’t scare easily either,” Moonlight told him. “And they’re less likely to start anything if it might endanger their Clanmates’ safety.”

The tom scowled at Squirrelflight. “If they hurt us, we hurt you!”

Moonlight blinked at him coolly. “Keep your claws sheathed, Stone.” She glanced at Tempest. “Your kit reminds me of his father.”

Tempest’s tail twitched self-consciously. “He’s young, that’s all.”

The tom looked like an apprentice, not yet fully grown, but old enough to be a skillful hunter and fighter. The tom beside him looked the same age. He was white with tabby splotches on his legs.

“Are you brothers?” Squirrelflight asked. Stone nodded.

“I’m Grass,” his brother added.

Squirrelflight looked at the only other tom in the group. He was moons younger than the other two—barely more than a kit—and ginger, like the she-cat beside him. The she-cat nodded to her. “I’m Furze,” she said, “and this is my kit, Creek.”

Squirrelflight greeted her, then leaned toward Leafstar. “Have you noticed that there are no grown males here, only youngsters?”

“Now that you mention it …” Leafstar narrowed her eyes. “I wonder what happened to their fathers.”

“Maybe they ate them.” Squirrelflight glanced at Leafstar, joking, yet she couldn’t help feeling that the absence of adult toms was strange.

Moonlight pointed to a yellow she-cat crouching beside the juniper. “That’s Sunrise.” Sunrise nodded as Moonlight’s gaze flicked past her, toward two young ginger-and-white she-cats sharing a thrush a tail-length away. “They’re Flurry and Sparrow. Hawk’s their mother.”