by Erin Hunter
“You don’t understand.” Ashfur looked at her as if he was seeing her for the first time; his voice was puzzled and petulant. “This is the only way to make you feel the same pain that you caused me. You tore my heart out when you chose Brambleclaw over me. Anything I did to you would never hurt as much. But your kits…” He looked through the flames at Hollyleaf and her brothers, his eyes narrowing to dark blue slits. “If you watch them die, then you’ll know the pain I felt.”
The flames crackled threateningly closer; Hollyleaf felt as if the heat was about to sear her pelt into ashes. She edged backward, only to feel the edge of the hollow give way under her hind paws. The three of them were pressed tightly together, so close that if one of them lost their balance, all three would be dragged off the cliff. Hollyleaf couldn’t control the trembling that shook her whole body as her glance flickered between the cliff and the fire.
Jayfeather was crouched close to the ground, looking tinier than ever with his pelt slicked flat by the rain. Lionblaze’s claws were unsheathed, glinting as the lightning flashed out again, but the tension in his haunches didn’t come from preparing to leap at Ashfur; it came from the effort of keeping himself on the top of the cliff.
Squirrelflight raised her head, her gaze locked on Ashfur’s crazed eyes. “Kill them, then,” she meowed. “You won’t hurt me that way.”
Ashfur opened his jaws to reply, but said nothing. Hollyleaf and her brothers stared at their mother. What was Squirrelflight saying?
Squirrelflight took a step away from them, and glanced carelessly over her shoulder. Her green eyes were fiercer than Hollyleaf had ever seen them, with an expression she couldn’t read.
“If you really want to hurt me, you’ll have to find a better way than that,” Squirrelflight snarled. “They are not my kits.”
CHAPTER 23
The noise of the storm and the fire faded and the only sound Jayfeather could hear was the blood roaring in his ears. He shook his head, straining to hear what Squirrelflight and Ashfur said next, cursing the blindness that hid their expressions from him.
“You’re lying.” Ashfur’s voice was choked with disbelief.
“No, I’m not.” Squirrelflight spoke softly, but her intensity pierced through the crackle of the flames. “Did you see me give birth? Did I nurse them? Stay in the nursery until they were apprenticed? No.”
“But—I” Ashfur began, then fell silent. Jayfeather could almost hear the paws of memory racing through his mind.
“I fooled all of you, even Brambleclaw,” Squirrelflight went on scornfully. “They are not mine.”
“And no cat in the Clan knows?” Ashfur’s disbelief was changing to uncertainty.
“No. They’re all as blind as you are to the truth.”
Jayfeather sensed a shift in Ashfur’s thoughts, reaching out toward power once more. “What do you think will happen when I tell them?” he challenged. “Will your Clanmates let you stay in ThunderClan, knowing you have lied to them—to Firestar, to your sister, to Brambleclaw?”
“You’ll tell them?” Squirrelflight’s voice was sharp with pain.
“Do you really think I won’t? I can still make you lose what you love most. Brambleclaw will want nothing to do with you. You were a fool to think I would keep your secret. But you have always been a fool, Squirrelflight. I’ll let these cats—whomever they belong to—live. But your suffering has only just begun.”
There was a rustling in the undergrowth, and Ashfur’s scent faded as he stalked away.
“Jayfeather, here’s the branch.” Lionblaze’s voice was tense. Jayfeather felt his brother’s teeth sink into his scruff and lift him bodily until his paws felt the rough bark of the branch underneath them. Lionblaze kept hold of him until he had got his balance. “Straight ahead,” he ordered. “Hurry.”
Jayfeather forced his paws to move, trusting Lionblaze as he stumbled forward with the heat and roaring of the fire on either side. He let out a hiss as pain stabbed one of his pads, as if he had trodden on a burning twig. Then the worst of the heat died away behind him, and he half fell, half leaped off the branch. The ground beneath his paws was hot, but not burning. He was safe!
Heartbeats later he heard Hollyleaf and Lionblaze leap down beside him.
Thunder rumbled above them, but now it was farther off, as if the storm was moving away. Mercifully rain began to fall again, hissing onto the flames. The wind was dying down; there would be no more danger from falling trees. Jayfeather heard yowls from down in the hollow, as if the cats were returning to the camp, and had spotted the cats on the top of the cliff. But he and his littermates ignored them.
“Squirrelflight?” Hollyleaf’s voice quivered; Jayfeather could sense her disbelief warring with fear. “That’s not true, is it? We are your kits, aren’t we?”
There was a long pause, but Jayfeather already knew the answer. His mind was filled with Squirrelflight’s desperate sorrow and regret—and overwhelming love, the love of a mother for her kits. That much had been a lie among what she had told Ashfur; Squirrelflight did love them. But she was not their mother.
“I’m so sorry,” Squirrelflight whispered. “I should have told you the truth a long time ago.”
“What do you mean?” Lionblaze demanded. Jayfeather reeled from the blast of his brother’s growing outrage.
“We thought it was for the best,” Squirrelflight pleaded. “I promise you, it was the hardest thing we’ve ever done.”
“We? Who’s we?” Lionblaze snapped.
Squirrelflight didn’t reply, and her mind was such a chaos of love and regret that Jayfeather couldn’t pick the answer out of it.
“Does Brambleclaw know?” Hollyleaf whimpered; Jayfeather heard her claws tearing at the ground.
“He has never lied to you,” Squirrelflight meowed. “He…he doesn’t know.”
“You let him believe that we were his?” Hollyleaf’s voice rose to a shrill squeak. “So you lied to him as well. But…if you’re not our mother and father, who is?”
Jayfeather reached out to Squirrelflight’s mind again, searching for memories, but all he could sense was a blur of snow, a long journey, brambles clawing at her pelt and the guilt of her terrible secret already weighing her down. He was aware of another cat with her, but so shadowy that he couldn’t make out who it was.
“I can’t tell you.” Squirrelflight’s murmur was barely loud enough to hear.
“You can, but you won’t!” Pain and anger filled Lionblaze’s voice. Jayfeather sensed the same feelings in Hollyleaf, too, but something inside him stayed icily calm, as if he had always known this would happen. If they were the three, with the power of the stars in their paws, then it made sense that there would be something extraordinary about where they came from. This was just one more truth to be discovered, something done long ago that had cast a shadow over all the moons since.
“I’m sorry.” Squirrelflight’s voice had grown stronger. “I know it won’t help, but I couldn’t have loved you more if you had really been mine. I’m so proud of all three of you.”
“Go away and leave us alone!” Hollyleaf hissed. “You have no right to be proud of us, no right to feel anything toward us! You let us believe you were our mother, and you’re not!”
“Please…” Squirrelflight begged.
Lionblaze’s voice was hard. “Just go.”
Misery rolled off Squirrelflight like a choking cloud, almost carrying Jayfeather off his paws. He heard her turn and go blundering through the undergrowth as if she didn’t care whether she burned her pads on still-smoldering leaves.
Left behind at the edge of the charred bushes, none of the three spoke. Jayfeather was numb with shock, and could sense that his littermates felt the same. They had almost died, and they had confronted Ashfur in his destructive madness, but most devastating of all was the secret that Squirrelflight had revealed.
“If they’re not our mother and father, then who are our real parents?” Hollyleaf quavered at last.
“We can worry about that later.” Cold anger still vibrated in Lionblaze’s voice. “First we have to decide what we’ll do when Ashfur tells the Clan.”
“Do you really think he will?” Hollyleaf asked.
“Do you think he won’t?” Lionblaze countered. “He doesn’t care what he does so long as he can hurt Squirrelflight, and that will hurt her more than anything.”
Jayfeather was strangely detached from his littermates’ anxious questions. The secret was out, and no cat could stop the consequences. All he felt was a mild curiosity to see what would happen next.
“We mustn’t say anything to our Clanmates,” Hollyleaf mewed worriedly. “What if they punish us, too? They might think we knew all along. We’ll have to go on just as usual. Maybe Ashfur won’t say anything after all.”
“And hedgehogs might fly,” Lionblaze retorted. “But I agree we shouldn’t tell any cat. Not until we find out the truth. If the Clan learns what happened, we need to be able to defend ourselves so they know we had nothing to do with this. Okay, Jayfeather?”
Jayfeather nodded. “Okay.”
“Then let’s get back to the camp,” Hollyleaf meowed. “There’ll be a lot to do there.”
The stone hollow smelled charred and bitter when Jayfeather scrambled over the remains of the thorn barrier. He started at the sound of his father’s—no, Brambleclaw’s—voice. “Are you all right?”
“We’re fine, thanks,” Lionblaze replied tightly.
“Then can you help Brackenfur patch up the nursery? You too, Hollyleaf. You’ll need to bring more brambles from the forest. And Jayfeather, I think Leafpool wants you. Spiderleg’s paws are burned and Longtail had a nasty bang on the head from a falling branch. And there may be others I don’t know about.”
“Okay, fine,” Jayfeather meowed. As he heard Brambleclaw bounding away, he turned to his littermates. “Don’t forget, we say nothing.”
But as he padded across to the medicine cats’ den, limping a little from his scorched pad, Jayfeather was aware of Ashfur standing at the edge of the clearing. He knew that the gray warrior’s eyes were fixed on him as clearly as if he could see the burning blue gaze.
Midnight said knowledge isn’t always power, he recalled. But some times it is. And Ashfur has the power to destroy us all.
CHAPTER 24
On the morning after the storm, Lionblaze was chosen for the dawn patrol with Brackenfur, Sorreltail, and Cinderheart. Strengthening daylight shone down through the trees as they padded away from the stone hollow. There was scarcely a breeze to disturb the leaves that still remained on the trees. Lionblaze could almost pretend that he had dreamed the storm, if it wasn’t for the litter of twigs and branches on the forest floor, and the blackened husks of the trees struck by lightning.
His pelt itched all the time he was away from the stone hollow, as he wondered what he would find when he returned, what accusations and gasps of shock would greet him. But the camp was peaceful, with Brambleclaw directing the repairs to the dens. Thornclaw and Mousewhisker were busy patching the last gaps in the brambles around the nursery; Foxpaw and Icepaw were carrying in huge bundles of fresh bedding. Cloudtail and Brightheart worked together, dragging burnt branches away from the warriors’ den, while Whitewing, Birchfall, and Berrynose cleared debris from the floor of the clearing. Lionblaze overheard Berrynose grumbling that this wasn’t a job for a warrior.
Nothing’s changed! he thought. He couldn’t spot Ashfur among the cats in the clearing, but obviously the gray warrior hadn’t revealed the secret yet.
Lionblaze tried to believe that the storm of the discovery had passed away like the rain and thunder, leaving calm behind, but he knew in his heart that the damage from Squirrelflight’s revelation would last for moons and moons.
“We need to talk about this,” Hollyleaf muttered in his ear while they helped Dustpelt drag thorn branches into place to make a new barrier at the entrance to the camp. “Meet me in the forest. I’ll fetch Jayfeather.”
She bounded across to the medicine cats’ den and emerged a moment later with Jayfeather following her. Lionblaze watched them go out at the edge of the barrier where the dirtplace tunnel used to be. He waited for a few moments, then padded over to Dustpelt.
“I think I’ll go hunt,” he meowed. “The fresh-kill pile needs restocking.”
“There are hunting patrols out already,” Dustpelt grumbled. “Is fetching branches a bit boring for you? Oh, go on then,” he added, flicking his tail at Lionblaze. “But you’d better bring back something worth eating.”
Lionblaze headed out at a fast trot, before the senior warrior could change his mind. He picked up his littermates’ scent trail, and followed them into the forest.
Pausing at the edge of a clearing, he looked around, tasting the air. An urgent hiss sounded from under the trees. “Lionblaze! Over here!”
Lionblaze spotted Hollyleaf peering out from a clump of bracken. “What took you so long?” she demanded.
“I thought it best to wait a bit,” Lionblaze explained as he padded over to her and slid in among the bracken stalks. “I didn’t want any cat suspecting we were meeting in secret.”
Behind the bracken, the ground fell away into a shallow scoop where Jayfeather was sitting; he raised his head as Lionblaze scrambled down to join him. “Okay,” he meowed. “Now we’re all here, we have to decide what we’re going to do.”
“There’s only one thing we can do.” Hollyleaf’s claws worked furiously in the soft earth. “We have to find out who our real parents are. Squirrelflight won’t tell us, but we need to know!”
“No, I don’t agree,” Lionblaze argued.
“What? But you said—”
Lionblaze raised his tail to silence her. “I want to know who our mother and father are, just as much as you do. But that’s not the most important thing right now. Our biggest problem is what to do about Ashfur.”
“I hate Ashfur!” Hollyleaf lashed her tail; she was working herself up into another storm of fear and frustration.
Lionblaze laid his tail across her shoulders. “He’s madder than a fox in a fit, but that’s not the point.” Suddenly he remembered the fight he had once had with Ashfur when the gray warrior was his mentor. Ashfur’s blue eyes had blazed with battle fury. Was he trying to kill me then, to hurt Squirrelflight? “Somehow we have to come up with a plan to keep him quiet. Squirrelflight will be in big trouble if this gets out.”
Hollyleaf flicked her ears dismissively. “That’s Squirrelflight’s problem, not ours.”
“It’s a problem for all of us.” Lionblaze couldn’t help a pang of sympathy for Squirrelflight. True, she had lied to them, but she had always done her best for them, as if she really was their mother. “As long as Ashfur knows our secret, he has power over all of us.” Every hair on his pelt tingled as he tried to imagine what that might mean.
“You don’t get it, do you?” Hollyleaf snapped. Her gaze burned with green fire. “Don’t you realize—we might not be Clan cats!”
Lionblaze opened his jaws to reply, but said nothing, too taken aback by what Hollyleaf was implying.
“We might have been born outside the Clan—outside the warrior code.” She sounded as if she couldn’t think of anything worse. “What if Squirrelflight took pity on a passing loner or a kittypet?”
“But—but we’re the three,” Lionblaze stammered. “The prophecy is about us. We have the power to be greater than the stars. How can we not be Clan cats?”
“I think you’re both forgetting something,” Jayfeather broke in, speaking for the first time; his voice was cool and detached. “The prophecy told Firestar that ‘There will be three, kin of your kin…’ If Squirrelflight isn’t our mother, then we’re not Firestar’s kin, are we?”
Lionblaze and Hollyleaf stared at their brother. The small tabby was sitting calmly with his tail wrapped around his paws. “Well, are we?” he repeated.
“Cloudtail’s Firestar’s kin…” Lionblaze began confusedly, but
Hollyleaf’s shriek drowned his words.
“I knew it! There’s nothing special about us! You’re just really good at fighting, and as for Jayfeather—well, he’s a medicine cat, of course he’s going to have dreams!”
Lionblaze felt the blood chill and slow in his veins. Could it be true? But what about the way I feel in battle? I know I can never be hurt. I know I could take on a whole Clan of enemies single-pawed! He couldn’t even consider the thought that he might not be part of the prophecy. Because if I’m not, then I owe my fighting skills to Tigerstar, and he was right all along about my stupid dreams.
Then another thought invaded his mind, even more worrying than the first. If Brambleclaw isn’t my father, then I’m no kin to Tigerstar. What will he do to me if he ever finds out?
Days slipped by. The repairs to the camp were finished and at last Millie and Briarkit returned from the Twoleg nest, with Graystripe pacing proudly alongside them. Briarkit bounced ahead; Lionblaze could hardly believe she was the same kit who had been carried out of the camp, so limp that she looked as if she were dead. Millie was still thin and shaky on her paws, but her tail twined lovingly with Graystripe’s and her eyes shone with returning health. Daisy welcomed her back into the nursery while the other kits leaped on Briarkit and wrestled with her joyfully.
Winds swept the forest, carrying the bite of approaching leaf-bare. The last of the leaves spiraled down from the trees. Prey became harder to catch, but the Clan was back to full strength again, able to keep the fresh-kill pile well-stocked. Squirrelflight returned to light warrior duties, and even the warriors who had been injured in the storm left the medicine cats’ den.
Lionblaze noticed that Whitewing was growing plump, and Birchfall went around with a proud expression on his face. So there would be more kits for ThunderClan! Outwardly, everything was going well.
But Lionblaze no longer enjoyed patroling with his Clanmates. Ashfur’s knowledge hung over him like a storm cloud. While Hollyleaf still fretted over who their true parents were, Lionblaze worried constantly about how they could persuade Ashfur not to reveal the secret. Often he caught Ashfur looking at him, a dark promise in his blue eyes. What was the gray warrior waiting for? Lionblaze couldn’t believe that he had thought better of his threat to tell every cat what Squirrelflight had done.