Sunrise

It was all for nothing! I did it to save us all, but it was no use! Everything has been ruined….

CHAPTER 22

Jayfeather struggled through snow that reached up to his belly fur. Frozen lumps of it stuck between his pads, making every step painful. Just ahead of him was another cat; he recognized her tabby-and-white pelt, and wailed for her to come back and help him, but she never turned her head. Then the snowy ground gave way beneath his paws, and he was falling, falling….

He woke in his own nest, the bedding tossed about by his thrashing limbs. Sitting up, heart still racing from his dream, he heard Leafpool scrabbling about in the depths of the store. A throbbing tide of anguish came from her, so strong that for a heartbeat he thought she was shrieking aloud.

Jayfeather sprang to his paws and padded over to the cave entrance. A flame of desperation burned inside him, to ask the medicine cat if she really was his mother, but he couldn’t ignore such deep distress. “Leafpool?” he meowed. “What’s the matter?”

Leafpool backed out of the store. “I…I told Hollyleaf something I shouldn’t have,” she confessed.

Jayfeather understood at once; now all the secrets were gushing out like water breaking through a dam. He raised his chin in a challenge. “You told her that you’re our mother, didn’t you?”

He heard Leafpool’s gasp of shock. “How long have you known?”

“I didn’t know, until just now. But I’ve been putting things together, and last night everything fell into place. Squirrelflight’s loyalty to the cat who gave birth to us. The vague memories I have of that journey through the snow. The way you behave toward the three of us. And the fact that Mousefur remembers parsley accidentally mixed with her tansy about that time. Parsley is used to stop the milk in nursing mothers. You would have needed to take it to stop your own milk.”

There was a long silence after he had finished speaking, in which Jayfeather almost thought he could hear his own heart beating.

“If you know so much,” Leafpool mewed at last, “then do you know what happens next?”

“No.” Jayfeather felt a strong sensation that there was something else Leafpool wanted to say to him, but she kept silent. He thought about entering her mind to find out what it was, but he didn’t quite dare. He didn’t like the idea of what he might discover.

“You have to help your littermates,” Leafpool told him, her voice sharp and urgent. “You must learn to live with this, for the sake of the Clan.”

You’ve got no right to tell us what we must do. But Jayfeather did not speak the thought aloud. Part of what the medicine cat said was true. Sooner or later, they all had to find a way forward.

“Please,” Leafpool mewed, and there was a note of desperation in her voice. “Find Lionblaze and Hollyleaf, before anything else happens.”

Is there anything else that could go wrong? Jayfeather wondered. But he nodded and backed out of the den. Leafpool was scared for her kits—all three of them—just as she had always been when trouble came to the Clan.

He scanned the clearing until he located Lionblaze approaching the fresh-kill pile with a mouthful of prey. Jayfeather bounded over to him. “Leave that and come with me,” he meowed, jerking his head. “We have to talk.”

Jayfeather could feel Lionblaze’s confusion, but his brother didn’t protest, just dropped his prey on the pile and padded beside him toward the camp entrance.

“Where’s Hollyleaf?” Jayfeather asked. The sense of approaching disaster loomed even closer as he realized that this new knowledge would hurt her hardest of all. The warrior code means so much to her!

“I’ve no idea,” Lionblaze replied. “I think she left camp, but I haven’t seen her since the end of the vigil.”

“We have to find her,” Jayfeather mewed as they emerged from the tunnel into the forest. “She…she’s found out something that could upset her.”

“What?”

“I’ll tell you when we find Hollyleaf.” Jayfeather lifted his head to taste the air, searching for a trace of their sister’s scent.

“Tell me now,” Lionblaze insisted. “Haven’t there been enough secrets? Even the three of us hardly seem to talk anymore.”

Jayfeather turned to face him. “Leafpool is our mother.”

He sensed shock like a bolt of lightning flashing through his brother. “I don’t believe it!” Lionblaze gasped. “She’s a medicine cat. It’s impossible!”

“You’d better start believing it,” Jayfeather mewed bleakly. “She told me so herself. And we have to decide what we’re going to do about it.”