Long Shadows

by Erin Hunter

  As he left Leafpool’s den, Lionblaze spotted Brambleclaw choosing a squirrel from the fresh-kill pile. Squirrelflight padded up, and her mate dropped the fresh-kill at her paws.

  “This is for you,” he meowed. “I know how much you love young squirrel.”

  “So do you,” Squirrelflight purred, touching her nose to his ear. “Let’s share it.”

  Brambleclaw hesitated. “Okay, but you have as much as you want. The whole Clan wants you to get strong again.”

  The two cats settled down side by side to share the squirrel.

  A surge of warmth spread through Lionblaze as he watched them. Thank StarClan our parents are so close.

  “Hey, Lionblaze!” Brambleclaw lifted his head from the squirrel. “Now that you’ve dealt with Spiderleg, what about a hunting patrol? Ashfur is waiting for you. The mice aren’t going to line up and come running into camp, you know.”

  “Sure!” Lionblaze waved his tail and bounded across the clearing toward Ashfur. Yes, he loved his father, even if he was a bossy old furball!

  Lionblaze padded along the old Twoleg path with a squirrel and two mice dangling from his jaws. It was his turn to take fresh-kill to the tree trunk outside the Twoleg nest. A thin drizzle was falling, misting on his pelt and turning the path to mud.

  Two sunrises before, when Spiderleg had started coughing, the hopes of every cat in the Clan had plummeted, afraid that Firestar’s plan would come to nothing after all. But since then, no other cat had fallen ill. Lionblaze had begun to wonder if they had started to win the battle after all. He didn’t know much about the sick cats in the Twoleg nest except that all of them, even Millie, were still alive.

  Everything was quiet as the walls of the Twoleg nest appeared through the trees. Lionblaze brushed through the wet grass to leave his prey in the hollow trunk. The trunk wasn’t empty as he had expected. A few pieces of fresh-kill, turning soggy from the rain, still lay at the bottom. The scent of cats around the tree stump was stale and faint.

  Icy water, far colder than the rain, seemed to trickle down Lionblaze’s spine. Why aren’t the sick cats eating? Are they all too weak to fetch the prey?

  With one paw he scraped the old prey—rapidly turning to crow-food—out of the tree trunk, and replaced it with the fresh, pushing his catch farther back into the hollow to keep it dry. Then he hesitated, looking around. He was meant to continue hunting, but he couldn’t leave until he found out why the cats in the Twoleg nest hadn’t collected all their fresh-kill.

  Slowly he padded toward the entrance to the den. Leafpool and Firestar had both forbidden the hunters to go any closer than the tree trunk, but Lionblaze told himself that this was an emergency, and both would want him to break the rules. As he approached an eerie wailing rose from the Twoleg nest, the cry of a cat in deep distress.

  Lionblaze stopped dead. “What’s happening?” he called out, hating the way his voice shook. Courage, he told himself fiercely.

  For a heartbeat there was no response. Then Lionblaze leaped back as Cloudtail’s face loomed in front of him in the entrance, his white fur startling in the gloom.

  “Firestar is dying,” the warrior rasped.

  Lionblaze clenched his teeth on a wail of despair. Forgetting to be wary of the sickness, he brushed past Cloudtail and entered the nest.

  Firestar was lying in a den on the far side. Most of the sick cats were sitting around him in a ragged circle; Brightheart and Honeyfern were bending over him, holding scraps of soaked moss to his lips. Lionblaze pushed through the line of cats and looked down at his Clan leader. Firestar’s breath was coming in hoarse gasps, his sides heaving with the effort of sucking in air. A stench of something more than sickness hung in the air.

  As Lionblaze gazed at him, horrified, Brightheart looked up. “Firestar is losing a life,” she mewed gently.

  Taking a step back, Lionblaze stood alongside the other sick cats and watched in silence as their leader struggled to breathe. Gradually the heaving of Firestar’s flanks slowed down; his breathing grew shallower, then stopped. His eyes closed and he lay still.

  Lionblaze saw the faintest outline of a flame-colored cat rise from Firestar’s body and pad away, to be lost in the shadows in one corner of the den.

  Is that what it’s like to lose a life? he wondered. How many does Firestar have left? What if that was his last one?

  It seemed as if he stood beside his leader’s body for countless moons, or perhaps it was no more than a heartbeat. Then he saw Firestar’s sides give a convulsive heave. Bright green eyes blinked open, struggling to focus.

  “Firestar.” Brightheart’s tone was soft as she bent over him again. “You’re back with us.”

  Lionblaze felt his mouth drop open. Firestar really had died and come back!

  Cloudtail padded up with a fresh bundle of soaked moss, which he gave to his mate. Brightheart held the moss to Firestar’s lips. “Drink this,” she murmured. “And then get some rest.”

  “Go and fetch him some fresh-kill,” Cloudtail ordered Lionblaze. “He needs to keep his strength up.”

  Lionblaze ran outside again, and came back with one of the freshly killed mice. By the time he returned, Firestar was sitting up, a confused look in his eyes that gradually died away.

  “Thanks,” he murmured as Lionblaze dropped the mouse beside him. “But you shouldn’t be in here. You could catch the sickness.”

  Lionblaze’s pelt stood on end. Firestar had come back, but he needed to leave the nest right away. If he stayed, how long would it be before the dreadful sickness killed him again?

  Firestar took a bite of the mouse, glancing around while he chewed and swallowed it. “It’s okay,” he meowed, meeting the worried gazes of his Clanmates. “Everything’s fine now.”

  “No, it’s not,” Brightheart mewed sharply. “You’re still weak, even if you haven’t got greencough anymore. What if you lose another life? You should go back to the camp and let Leafpool look after you.”

  Firestar shook his head. “There’s nothing that Leafpool can do for me there that she can’t do while I’m here. I’ll stay with you all.”

  A murmur of respect rose from the cats around him. Rosekit padded forward to the edge of Firestar’s nest. “Are you going to keep dying and coming back again?” she asked curiously.

  “I hope not,” Firestar replied, while Honeyfern shooed Rosekit back into the nursery area.

  “I knew you’d insist on staying,” Brightheart murmured, touching her nose to Firestar’s ear.

  Firestar blinked at her. “I am not the cat with the most to lose,” he replied, his green gaze drifting toward the nest where Millie lay.

  Lionblaze turned to look at the gray she-cat. She looked even thinner and more pitiful than when she had left the camp three sunrises before. She was lying sprawled on one side, her sides barely rising and falling with each faint breath.

  Briarkit nuzzled into her belly, trying to feed and letting out pitiful mewling noises when she couldn’t find any milk. Honeyfern bent over her, gently nudging her away with one paw. “Come on,” she comforted the tiny kit. “I’ll find you a mouse to eat. They’re very tasty.”

  “Don’t want mouse.” Briarkit’s voice was hoarse. “I want milk.” Her voice rose to a feeble wail. “I want my mother!”

  Lionblaze turned away, unable to watch. Around him, the sick cats were stumbling back to their own nests, heads and tails drooping in defeat.

  How long before they’re all dead like Firestar? And none of them have nine lives.

  Guilt swamped him. He knew that he had the power to help his Clanmates—the power to do anything, he reminded himself—but he had refused to use it.

  “I’m going,” he told Cloudtail roughly, desperate to get out of the nest and as far from the sickness as possible. “I’ll tell Brambleclaw about Firestar losing a life, and I’ll be back soon with more fresh-kill.”

  “It’s not fresh-kill we need,” Cloudtail pointed out. “It’s catmint.”

  “A
nd the will of StarClan that we survive,” Brightheart added.

  Their words echoed in Lionblaze’s ears as he ran back to the hollow, hardly feeling the stone path under his paws. StarClan did want the sick cats to survive. Otherwise they wouldn’t have sent Jaypaw the dream where he found the catmint.

  “Even if it wasn’t StarClan who sent him the dream,” Lionblaze argued with himself, “the three of us have been given our powers for a reason. Perhaps this is it. Perhaps this is the start of the prophecy.”

  When he pushed through the tunnel into the camp, he couldn’t see Brambleclaw. Checking the warriors’ den, he found it empty, but as he emerged he spotted the Clan deputy coming out of the tunnel with his jaws full of fresh-kill. Sandstorm and Berrynose followed him; Lionblaze met them by the fresh-kill pile where they dropped their prey.

  “There’s news,” he meowed abruptly. “Firestar has lost a life.”

  “No!” Sandstorm’s green eyes widened. She spun around as if she was going to dash out of the camp, but Brambleclaw laid his tail gently over her shoulders.

  “You can’t help him,” he murmured.

  Sandstorm sat down, her head bowed. “I know.” Her voice was so low Lionblaze could scarcely hear it. “But it’s hard.”

  “Did you see Firestar die?” Berrynose meowed, his eyes wide. “What was it like?”

  Lionblaze glared at him, and didn’t bother to answer. As he padded away, he heard Brambleclaw’s voice raised scathingly. “I might expect a question like that from a kit, Berrynose, but not from a warrior, especially one that I mentored.”

  Forgetting the annoying cream-colored warrior, Lionblaze brushed past the brambles into the medicine cats’ den. To his relief, Leafpool wasn’t there, only Jaypaw, pawing through a pitiful collection of thin, shriveled herbs.

  Jaypaw whipped around. “What do you want?”

  Lionblaze bowed his head. “I’m sorry,” he meowed. “I will go to WindClan.”

  CHAPTER 20

  As soon as Lionblaze had caught more prey, he headed back toward the old Twoleg nest. Dropping the fresh-kill in the tree trunk, he noticed that the rest of the catch he had brought earlier had disappeared, and some cat had scratched earth over the soggy leavings. Slightly reassured that the sick cats were back to their normal routine, he doubled back and headed deeper into the forest toward the entrance to the tunnel.

  Fear raised every hair on his pelt, but Lionblaze quickened his pace until he was racing through the trees. He felt sick at the thought of going through the tunnels in the dark. He wanted to do it while there was still some chance of daylight.

  He halted a few fox-lengths away from the tunnel mouth, glancing around warily with his ears pricked and his mouth open to pick up any trace of his Clanmates. No cat must know what he was about to do. This was his and Jaypaw’s secret, because the tunnels between the Clans represented nothing but invasion and bloodshed. To his relief, the only ThunderClan scent was stale; he guessed that the dawn patrol had passed this spot earlier in the day.

  Flattening himself to the ground until his belly fur brushed the grass, Lionblaze crept through the undergrowth and into the tunnel. A couple of tail-lengths down he encountered the thorn barrier he and his Clanmates had put there after the battle, to stop WindClan coming back that way. By the time he had scrabbled his way through the obstacle he had scratched shoulders and pricked pads, and left tufts of golden fur on the thorns behind him.

  StarClan, please don’t let any cat come here to check before I get back.

  Darkness closed around Lionblaze as he walked along the passage. There was no sound except for his soft paw steps and rapid breathing, but his heart seemed to be thudding loudly enough to be heard in the WindClan camp. It wasn’t the WindClan warriors he was afraid of, though. If he met any of them, he would fight and take the consequences afterward when Onestar complained to Firestar. The vision of his dream was what scared him, and he seemed to smell the reek of Heatherpaw’s blood already.

  At last Lionblaze realized that the darkness was giving way to a gray light. Ahead of him he could hear the sound of rushing water. Moments later he stepped out into the cave where the river flowed, its surface faintly reflecting the light from the gap in the roof. He glanced up at the ledge where Heatherpaw used to sit when she was Heatherstar, leader of DarkClan, but it was empty now.

  Lionblaze felt a stabbing pain in his heart as if an enemy had sunk teeth into it. He couldn’t wish for those days to come back again, when he was lying to his Clan and losing so much sleep that he couldn’t train properly. He didn’t want to remember them, either, not after Heatherpaw had betrayed him.

  He shook himself vigorously as if he was scattering raindrops from his pelt, then headed for the tunnel that led up into WindClan territory. Soon he saw the crack ahead of him, a shaft of daylight breaking through it. Beyond he could see more rock and tough moorland grass.

  Lionblaze paused, alert again, this time for the sound or scent of WindClan. But all he could hear was the faint whine of the wind as it brushed through the grass, and there was no scent of WindClan cats at all. Padding forward, he dared to poke his head out of the tunnel.

  The place was just as Jaypaw had described it: a tumble of rough, lichen-covered rocks, with wiry moorland grass growing between them. A spring of water welling up between two rocks…Lionblaze’s ears pricked, and he made out the sound of a tiny trickle.

  Checking once again for scent, he picked up a new trace of WindClan, but couldn’t see or hear any cats. Warily he emerged from the tunnel and crept toward the sound, pressing himself flat to the ground and taking advantage of all the cover the rocks offered him. Every hair on his pelt was bristling; he imagined his scent spreading all over WindClan territory, drawing every cat toward him, and the faint brush of his paws through the grass sounded as loud as an owl’s screech.

  Lionblaze felt as if several moons had passed, but it was only a few moments before he crawled around the base of a rock and spotted the stream that Jaypaw had told him about. It welled up from a crack into a tiny pool; huge clumps of catmint grew around it. He felt a pang of envy that another Clan had so much, when ThunderClan cats were dying for need of it.

  Padding forward, Lionblaze buried his nose in one of the clumps, resisting the temptation to roll in the herb and soak his pelt in the clean, sharp scent. That wasn’t why he had come. Working quickly, he bit off the stems until he had a massive bundle, as much as he could carry.

  Gathering the herbs into his jaws, Lionblaze headed back to the tunnel. The catmint drowned any other scent, but he kept his ears pricked, and his gaze flickered all around him, alert for rival warriors.

  He saw no cat. Slipping back through the crack into the tunnel, he relaxed, thankful to be away from the risk of the accusing gaze of WindClan cats.

  Quickening his pace, Lionblaze bounded along as the tunnel grew wider, to halt abruptly when he burst into the cave. Standing in front of him, her light brown tabby pelt bristling and her blue eyes blazing, was Heatherpaw.

  “Thief!”

  Lionblaze’s jaws dropped open, letting the catmint fall. “Heatherpaw!”

  “Heathertail,” the she-cat snarled. “You thought you’d got away with it,” she went on, her voice scathing. “But I spotted you, creeping among the rocks. I guessed you would use the tunnels to get back to your own territory.”

  “Then…then why didn’t you call for a patrol?” Lionblaze stammered.

  Heathertail’s eyes flashed and her lip curled. “You’re not worth it. You may think that you’re the best fighter in all the Clans, but you don’t scare me.”

  The red glare of blood surged through Lionblaze’s mind, filling his eyes. “Traitor!” he yowled, leaping for Heathertail with his paws outstretched. He could feel his claws slicing through her throat, and the blood pouring out, soaking her fur and his own, pooling out on the cave floor. A rasping sound of horror came from his throat. The blood was hot and thick on his fur, the reek of it choking his nose.

>   Then as the red tide ebbed he saw Heathertail watching him, her fur unruffled and her gaze icy. Lionblaze shuddered. The vision had been so real, and yet he hadn’t moved a paw.

  Heathertail padded past him and paused in the mouth of the tunnel that led up into WindClan. “Go, and don’t come back,” she hissed. “You can take the catmint. I’ve no quarrel with ThunderClan; I don’t want to see cats suffer, whatever you might think. Just be careful you don’t end up a bully like your kin, Tigerstar.”

  Flicking her tail disdainfully, she vanished into the tunnel.

  As he gathered up the scattered stems of catmint, her parting words echoed in Lionblaze’s mind, and his belly churned with fear that they might be true. His dream had nearly come true—he had nearly killed her—and Heathertail had known. The difference between him and Tigerstar was fading, and Lionblaze was more scared than he had ever been in his life.

  CHAPTER 21

  Jaypaw delivered more tansy to the flat rock outside the Twoleg nest, then picked up Lionblaze’s scent and followed it to the mouth of the tunnel. Not many heartbeats had passed before he heard scrabbling sounds from inside, where the ThunderClan cats had built the thorn barrier. Lionblaze’s scent grew stronger, mingled with the smell of catmint.

  “You found it!” Jaypaw exclaimed as his brother emerged into the open. “Did any WindClan cats spot you?”

  Lionblaze hesitated; Jaypaw was aware of mingled fear and anger coming from him. “Would I be here if they had?” he demanded. “Can you smell any wounds on me?”

  Jaypaw shrugged. He didn’t have time to figure out why Lionblaze sounded as if he had ants in his fur. “You’d better fix that barrier,” he mewed. “We don’t want any cat guessing what we did.”

  Lionblaze retreated into the tunnel without a word, while Jaypaw picked up the bundle of catmint and headed for the Twoleg nest.

  “Where did you get that?”

  Jaypaw stiffened as he heard Leafpool’s voice. He hadn’t decided what story to tell her, and he’d hoped for time to treat the sick cats before she found out.