Thunder And Shadow

Alderpaw blinked at her, wishing she could. She hadn’t seen her sister since they’d been separated, half a moon ago. He wondered for a m om ent whether to ask Leafpool or Bramblestar for permission. Then he im agined Jayfeather scowling. Take a kit to treat a dying cat? What nonsense! He would never allow it.

“Can I?” Twigkit asked again, lifting her front paws hopefully.

“No,” Alderpaw told her regretfully. “You’re too young to leave camp.”

Sadness glistened in Twigkit’s green eyes.

“I’m sorry —” Alderpaw began. But before he could finish, Twigkit hared toward the nursery.

“Wait there!” she called to him. “I won’t be long!”

He watched her go, wondering what she was up to.

Beside the honey suckle wall of the elders’ den, in a dip that caught the m orning sun, Graystripe was washing com frey pulp into Millie’s fur. Millie’s eyes were half-closed, pleasure showing in the slits as he worked the herb into her spine. Alderpaw dipped his head as he caught Graystripe’s eye.

Graystripe lifted his m uzzle, green pulp staining his jaws. “Let m e know if you need help gathering more com frey before the frosts come,” he meowed. “I m ay not be fast enough for m ice these day s, but I can stalk herbs.”

Millie purred. “You can hunt m ice as well as any warrior,” she told him.

“Why bother,” Graystripe asked, “when I can let the youngsters catch them for m e?”

Twigkit squeezed out of the narrow entrance of the bramble nursery. Alderpaw could see that she was carry ing a red feather between her jaws.

She trotted toward him and laid it carefully at his paws. “Will you give this to Violetkit?”

“A feather?” Alderpaw looked at it, a pang in his heart. It seem ed a sm all offering, but Twigkit was staring at it excitedly.

“Violetkit found one before they took her away,” she told Alderpaw. “She kept it in our nest because she thought it was so pretty. This isn’t the sam e one. Lily heart threw the other one away when she was clearing out the old bedding. But I found this one at the edge of the camp the other day, and I knew Violetkit would like it.” She stared at Alderpaw eagerly. “You’ll take it to her, won’t you? And tell her it’s from m e?”

Guilt prickled through Alderpaw’s pelt. If it weren’t for the prophecy StarClan had shared with him, the Clans wouldn’t have squabbled over the kits. They’d still be together, not in different

Clans. They could play together instead of sending feathers by m essenger. At least they’re alive.

Alderpaw shook out his pelt. If it weren’t for the prophecy, he and Needlepaw might never have found them, and they’d have died, alone in the wild.

He licked Twigkit fondly on the head. “Of course I’ll give it to her. And I’ll tell her that you’re thinking of her.” As Twigkit nuzzled his cheek, purring, he picked up the feather and headed toward the medicine den.

ShadowClan scent, tinged with the sharp sm ell of pinesap, filled Alderpaw’s nose. The bundle of herbs between his jaws was m aking his tongue tingle.

A ShadowClan patrol, led by Tawny pelt, m et them as he and Leafpool crossed the border.

Alderpaw recognized his father’s coloring am ong the splotches in the tortoiseshell’s m ottled pelt.

She was Bramblestar’s sister, and for the first time Alderpaw realized how strange it felt to have kin in another Clan. He thought of Twigkit. How much stranger it must feel when that kin was a littermate.

Tawny pelt greeted them warm ly. “Thank you for coming,” she meowed, signaling with her tail to a white tom at her side. “Help carry their herbs, Stonewing.”

Leafpool laid down the parcel of herbs she had been carry ing and let him take it. “Thank you.”

Alderpaw recognized Sleekpaw standing beside them. He remembered the feisty she-cat from his first Gathering. Twigkit’s feather was tickling his nose, sticking out from the wad of rolled leaves he was carry ing between his jaws, and he looked hopefully at the y ellow apprentice, wondering if she might offer to help carry his bundle.

Sleekpaw glanced at him haughtily and headed away between the pines.

Alderpaw sneezed.

“Let m e help.” Tawny pelt took the leaves from him gently, tugging them with her teeth. The feather fluttered to the ground, and Alderpaw snatched it up quickly.

Tawny pelt and Stonewing followed Sleekpaw between the trunks. Alderpaw hesitated, glancing at the straight, evenly spaced pines. This was the first time he’d been in ShadowClan territory, and he was surprised how different it was from ThunderClan’s forest, where twisting trunks and low branches covered dips and rises, their leaves already browning and falling. In

ShadowClan, the forest floor was sm ooth, dotted here and there with brambles and rutted occasionally with ditches, and there seem ed to be no leaf-fall at all. Pines stretched into the distance, their thick canopy blocking out the sun. Countless moons’ worth of fallen needles m ade the ground feel springy beneath his paws.