Veil Of Shadows

Then through the trees he spotted what at first he thought was a particularly large bramble thicket. As he drew closer, he saw that it was made out of thorn branches and the whippy shoots of saplings, interlaced with vines and bramble tendrils.

It’s like a den. . . . Is this where the Dark Forest cats live?

Shadowsight’s immediate instinct was to stay far away from the den or mound or whatever it was. It reeked of danger. But then he realized that this might be what he had been sent to find. At the very least, he needed to investigate it.

To begin with, keeping a safe distance, he padded all around the thing in a wide circle. “It can’t be a den,” he murmured. “There’s no entrance.”

Venturing closer, he tried to peer through the branches to see if there was anything inside. To his amazement, he spotted the glint of water. There’s a pool in there! Why would any cat build this thing over a pool?

The chinks in the interwoven branches at ground level were too small to give Shadowsight a good view. Padding around the outside again, he noticed a larger gap a few tail-lengths farther up; letting his spirit form float upward, he hooked his claws onto the branch below the gap and tried to peer through.

An ivy tendril was blocking his view, and without thinking Shadowsight raised a paw to brush it aside. To his surprise, the tendril moved easily, and he was able to drape it over a nearby jutting twig.

Interesting, he thought. So even though I’m a spirit, I can move things here.

With the obstacle out of the way, Shadowsight could see the surface of the pool, and he let out a gasp of wonder and amazement. From side to side the whole of the water was glittering with innumerable stars. For a moment he thought it was reflecting a cloudless starry night, but there were no stars above, only the dark tangle of interwoven branches.

“What is that?” Shadowsight meowed aloud. “Is it StarClan?”

Then he realized that if he could truly see StarClan shining from the pool, then the mound he was clinging to must be a barrier.

And if it is . . . is this what is keeping StarClan away from the living Clans? Did a cat build this?

He pushed his paws against the woven branches, then braced himself and heaved at them with his shoulder, but they wouldn’t move, and the gap was far too small for him to climb through. At last, exhausted, he gave up, resting his head against the branches that framed the gap. For a few heartbeats more Shadowsight let his gaze rest on the beauty of StarClan. “I will release you,” he promised. “I don’t know how, yet, but I will do it.”

Then he let himself drop from the side of the barrier and turned back to the forest, eager now to find a way out.

With no idea which direction he should follow, Shadowsight let his paws take him where they wanted, weaving aimlessly through the trees. He tried not to look too deeply into the shadows, or try to imagine what might be waiting to drop onto him from the branches above.

He had lost count of how long he had been wandering in the pallid light of the fungi when he thought he heard a faint cry coming from somewhere ahead. He halted, angling his ears forward to listen.

The cry came again, and now Shadowsight could distinguish the words. “Help! Help me!”

Bramblestar was calling me from the Moonpool, he thought with quickening excitement. That could be his voice!

Without hesitating, Shadowsight set off toward the sound, picking up the pace until he was racing along with his tail streaming out behind him and his belly fur brushing the grass. The cries grew louder, and at last he could work out where they were coming from: a vast oak tree covered in fungus and lichen, with vines hanging from its branches like the tails of crouching predators.

Shadowsight halted, his chest heaving for breath as he stared at the tree. His first thought had been that he must free any cat in danger under this starless sky, but now he wondered whether the voice was a trap.

How could Bramblestar’s spirit have ended up here? he asked himself.

More cautiously now, he prowled forward, encircling the tree from a few fox-lengths away. On the far side he spotted a wide gash in the trunk, blocked by branches crisscrossing from one side to the other, with brambles, twigs, and debris shoved into the gaps. The voice was coming from behind the barrier.

“Help me!”

I was right—I know that voice! Shadowsight realized, a thrill of excitement pulsing through him from his ears to the ends of his claws. “Bramblestar?”