A Warrior's Spirit

by Erin Hunter

  WINDCLAN

  LEADER TALLSTAR—elderly black-and-white tom with a very long tail

  DEPUTY MUDCLAW—mottled dark brown tom

  APPRENTICE, CROWPAW (dark gray tom with blue eyes)

  MEDICINE CAT BARKFACE—short-tailed brown tom

  WARRIORS ONEWHISKER—brown tabby tom

  WEBFOOT—dark gray tabby tom

  TORNEAR—tabby tom

  WHITETAIL—small white she-cat

  ELDERS MORNINGFLOWER—tortoiseshell she-cat

  Maps

  Chapter 1

  Mothwing rolled onto her back and stared up at the branches at the top of the warriors’ den. In the darkness she could just make out the shapes of the feathers and sweet-smelling grasses that had been woven among them.

  “I can’t sleep,” she whispered. Her tail twitched nervously.

  Beside her, her brother Hawkfrost sighed. “Just shut your eyes,” he said. “You’ll fall asleep eventually.”

  “I feel . . .” Bad, Mothwing thought somberly. Before she could finish, a yowl came from the opposite side of the den.

  “None of us will be able to sleep if you two don’t settle down,” Blackclaw said fiercely, and other warriors growled in agreement.

  “You’re warriors now,” Mosspelt added firmly from her nest. “Be sensible and let the rest of the den sleep.”

  “Sorry,” Mothwing said. She turned onto her belly again and tucked her tail tightly around herself. Closing her eyes, she thought, I’m a warrior now, not an apprentice. I can look after myself. Despite the soft fresh moss in her nest, she couldn’t get comfortable, and she shifted onto her side. I miss Sasha.

  When their mother had left RiverClan and returned to life as a rogue, she’d invited Mothpaw and Hawkpaw to come with her. Mothpaw had loved being a RiverClan apprentice—she’d learned to hunt and fight and, for the first time, trust cats who weren’t her kin—but she loved her mother more. If it had been up to her, she would have left with Sasha.

  But Hawkpaw had wanted to stay. He’d dug his claws into the dirt as if he could force them to stay in RiverClan by clinging to the camp.

  So they had stayed. Mothpaw wouldn’t go without Hawkpaw. He was her littermate, her only littermate now. They belonged with each other.

  I made my choice, she thought. I decided to become a RiverClan warrior. She rolled onto her other side. I just hope I can be a good one.

  Hawkfrost groaned. “Settle down!” he hissed softly. “I can’t sleep if you’re awake!”

  “Sorry,” Mothwing whispered. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut, resolving to stay still. Part of her wanted to explain to Hawkfrost why it was so hard to fall asleep. After all, he’d been there when it had happened. He’d understand why she never liked to sleep . . . why she was afraid to dream. But the effort it took to stay awake was exhausting.

  Despite herself, her breaths grew deep and steady, and soon she drifted off. The dream always came, and the terrible thing always happened, just like it had in real life. She could never stop it.

  “We’ll never find Ken,” Hawk complained, hurrying to keep up with Tadpole. “We don’t know which Twoleg nest was his.”

  Tadpole flicked his tail dismissively. “Sasha told us lots about where she used to live. I’m sure we’ll recognize it. She’ll be so happy we found him.” Sasha was always worried, but her sad eyes lit up when she told them about the long-ago days when she had been a kittypet and lived with an old Twoleg named Ken.

  Moth walked closer to Hawk, her fur brushing his, and they exchanged a doubtful look. She didn’t believe it would be that easy, no matter what Tadpole thought.

  As they came to the edge of the Twolegplace, Moth’s paws slowed in dismay. There were so many nests! She had never realized how big the Twolegplace was. Suddenly she wanted to run right back to their cozy den and curl up in a tiny ball. How could they ever find one Twoleg in such a huge, confusing place?

  “Come on!” Tadpole called cheerfully. “We’ve never had such a big adventure!”

  An adventure, Moth thought, heartened, and took a step forward. She was with her littermates on their biggest adventure yet. They would take care of one another.

  The Twoleg path was strangely rough underfoot, and Moth placed her paws hesitantly, while Hawk sat down and licked his front paws, as if trying to wash away the sensation. A breeze ruffled Moth’s fur. Somewhere among the Twoleg nests a dog barked, and all three kits flinched.

  Moth spotted a tree up ahead with branches low enough to the ground that even a kit could climb them. “Doesn’t that look like the tree Sasha told us about?” she asked, her tail lifting with excitement. “The one she climbed every day when she was a kittypet?”

  Tadpole tilted his head and looked at the tree thoughtfully. “I bet you’re right,” he replied. “Good work, Moth!”

  “Let’s look over the fence.” Hawk rushed forward, the other kits on his heels. It was easy to hop up onto the lowest branches of the tree, and Moth dug her claws into its rough gray bark and clambered up ahead of her brothers. Peering over the fence, she saw a Twoleg kit running through the grass outside its nest, kicking at a ball with its pale, furless legs.

  “Did Ken have kits?” she asked.

  Tadpole peered over her shoulder. “I don’t think so,” he mewed doubtfully. “He was an elder, wasn’t he?”

  At a sudden rapping noise, the kits looked up. There was an opening in the nest covered with clearstone, and a female Twoleg stood behind it, knocking on the clearstone and glaring at them.

  “She looks angry!” Hawk yowled.

  “We’d better get out of here,” Tadpole added.

  Moth nodded, backing up on the branch. “That’s not Ken.”

  Safely on the ground again, the kits searched the area. A pair of Twolegs, their heads close together in conversation, was coming down the path, and Moth crouched instinctively, her belly fur brushing the earth. Don’t notice me! With a loud whirring noise, another Twoleg approached, riding on the back of a skinny monster that had two narrow round paws, one behind the other. As it sped past, the Twoleg turned its head to look at the kits, and Moth panicked.

  “Run!” she screeched, and raced down the path, heading for a narrow opening between the Twoleg nests. She could hear her brothers running after her.

  By the time she stopped, her breath ragged and her heart pounding, they had traveled a long way.

  “How will we get back home now?” Hawk panted, looking around.

  Tadpole’s ears twitched. “We just ran in a straight line,” he told Hawk. “If we go back, we’ll get to the nest that wasn’t Ken’s again. And then we can find our way home from there.”

  “Sasha will be mad if we’re not there when she gets back from hunting,” Moth mewed in a small voice. “I don’t want to get in trouble.”

  “We won’t be in trouble,” Tadpole told her. “We’re doing something nice for Sasha. We’re finding Ken.” Hawk and Moth exchanged a glance, and Moth saw her own doubt reflected in her brother’s blue eyes.

  “Maybe we should—” Hawk began, but another, harsher voice interrupted.

  “What do you kits think you’re doing?” A big gray cat, his ears notched with scars, padded out of the shadows. “Strangers aren’t welcome here.”

  Tadpole stepped in front of his littermates. “We’re not doing anything wrong.”

  The stranger sniffed and wrinkled his nose. “Is that the forest I smell on you? Three little scraps, straight out of the woods. You’d better tell me why you’re sneaking around here.”

  Another tom, black-and-white and just as large as the first, slunk out of the shadows behind him, followed by a third, a tabby even bigger than the others.

  “Um, we were just . . .” Tadpole was getting rattled. The gray cat narrowed his eyes as the other two cats circled around, coming up behind the kits. Hawk and Moth crowded closer to Tadpole. Moth could feel both her brothers trembling. Were these really the kind of cats who lived in a Twolegplace? From what Sasha
had said, cats who lived with Twolegs should be nicer.

  “Little cat skins, just walking around,” the black-and-white cat growled. “They think they belong here.”

  “Let’s show them what we do to outsiders,” the tabby sneered, baring her claws.

  Moth’s nerve broke. “Run!” she yowled, and took off, barreling past the gray cat. He let her go, purring with laughter, and her brothers raced after her.

  They dashed down the path and cut across a patch of grass beside a Twoleg nest, then, dropping to their bellies, wiggled under a fence. A dog lunged at them, barking, and, with a squeak of terror, Moth scrambled over another fence. Everything was a blur: her heart pounded as she ran first one way and then another, crossing Twoleg paths and leaping over ditches.

  At last, out of breath, they halted at the base of a tree.

  “I think we lost them,” Tadpole panted.

  Moth glanced back with a shiver.

  “We’d better hide for a while,” Tadpole decided.

  “Where?” Hawk asked. The three kits looked up at the Twoleg nest ahead of them. It didn’t look neat and solid like the other nests they’d seen, but lifeless and run-down. There were holes in the walls, and its colored skin was peeling off in long strips.

  Moth shifted her paws. “I think it’s empty.”

  “Look!” Tadpole yowled, gesturing with his tail toward an opening in the nest’s wall. “We can hide in there!”

  Moth hesitated.

  In RiverClan, older and dreaming, Mothwing half woke and murmured, “No. Don’t.” But she couldn’t change the dream, couldn’t change what her younger self had done.

  “Okay,” she mewed finally. “Do you think it’s safe?”

  “It’ll be an adventure,” Hawk answered cheerfully, and the three kits slunk through the overgrown grass. The hole was supposed to have clearstone over it, Moth saw, like the one the Twoleg had glared at them through, but the clearstone was propped open, a stick holding it up.

  There was a drop below the opening, and they clambered down a pile of Twoleg stuff into a cold, gray place where objects rose around them like a strange forest. As Hawk passed through the hole, he knocked the stick away, and the clearstone closed with a heavy thud behind them.

  “Uh-oh,” he meowed, looking up at it.

  “Don’t worry—we’ll figure out how to escape when we’re ready,” Tadpole told him confidently. Big drops of rain had begun to spatter on the clearstone, and he added, “It’s raining out there, and we’re safe and dry in here.”

  The kits explored. Sniffing, Moth smelled dry dust and the faint scent of mouse. There were tiny scratching noises coming from the corner, and she crouched, narrowing her eyes like Sasha did when she hunted.

  Hawk gave a mrrow of laughter. “Your tail’s too high! You’ll lose your balance!” Moth glanced back, then guiltily lowered it.

  Tadpole dashed past them both, and the scratching noises got louder and then abruptly stopped. He padded back to them. “Sorry. It got away.”

  “If you’d just let me—” Moth began, irritated, but a loud gurgling interrupted.

  All three kits whipped around to stare at the tall silver tube, like a branchless tree, that ran up the corner of the room from the floor to the ceiling. It had been silent and uninteresting, but now it was making terrible watery noises, as if a whole river were running through it.

  “What’s that?” Hawk asked. All three kits backed away.

  “It can’t hurt us,” Tadpole mewed uneasily.

  The gurgling intensified. Then, with a sharp crack, the tube broke open. Water poured out, rushing across the floor. In moments, the kits were knee-deep. It was freezing.

  “We have to get out of here!” Hawk yowled. Dashing to the pile of Twoleg junk beneath the clearstone, he began to scramble up.

  “That’s closed, remember?” Moth wailed, but she followed him. A dusty round wooden thing slipped beneath her paw, and she fell a tail-length, landing in a tangle of soft pelts with a grunt. “Help me!” she yelped, struggling as the Twoleg stuff wrapped around her. Water lapped at her belly.

  “Hold still, Moth!” Tadpole helped her untangle herself. “Come on!”

  Together they began to scale the Twoleg junk again. Moth’s claws caught on another pelt, and she slipped with a squeal of terror.

  “You can do it, Moth!” Tadpole called out. With his shoulder he pushed her forward, and she began to clamber up again. The water was rising fast. A wave lapped at her hind paws, and she looked back to see it washing over Tadpole’s shoulders.

  “Hurry!” she meowed.

  Hawk had climbed onto the narrow ledge where they had first come in. “I—can’t—get it—open,” he gasped, pounding his paws against the clearstone.

  Moth was panting. Suddenly the ledge seemed so far away. Her paws slowed.

  “Come on!” Tadpole yowled, and shoved at Moth’s hindquarters. Hawk leaned down, gently biting the scruff of Moth’s neck and tugging, urging her to rise. With a heave, she grabbed hold of the ledge and scrambled up beside Hawk. A familiar tawny form appeared outside the clearstone, looking in at them with frantic blue eyes.

  “Sasha!” Moth cried, relief surging through her.

  She turned to stretch out a paw for her littermate, just in time to see the rising water wash Tadpole away.

  Mothwing woke from the familiar dream with a gasp, still reaching out for her lost littermate. One paw brushed against Hawkfrost, who woke with a grunt. “Stop,” he muttered, and then, more quietly, asked, “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” Mothwing told him. She could see his eyes glittering in the darkness of the den, watching her, so she rolled over and turned her back to him. She didn’t want to talk about what she’d seen, even though Hawkfrost was the only one who would understand.

  The dream was over, but the rest of the memory played out in her mind. Sasha managing to open the window, and Hawk and Moth tumbling out into the freedom of the grass. Their mother howling Tadpole’s name. Peering past her, Moth had seen Tadpole surface, his paws outstretched toward Sasha, then sink again.

  The rain had beaten down on Moth’s head as she strained toward the ledge, expecting at any moment to see Tadpole’s small, determined black face, but he hadn’t appeared again. Tadpole had been the strongest of them, the bravest. She couldn’t believe he wouldn’t survive, not when she and Hawk had. But Tadpole had drowned.

  Moth hadn’t been able to stop shivering. Hawk had clawed at their mother, trying to jump into the water and pull Tadpole out, but Sasha had held him back. Her eyes shining with grief, she had said it was too late. Hawk had collapsed onto the ground, wailing, and Moth had lain down next to him, pressing her side to his, shaking hard.

  One thought had cut through her sorrow like a claw: from that point on, she and Hawk would have to stick together. Without Tadpole, they would need each other more than ever.

  At last, Sasha had shepherded them back to their den in the woods and dried them with short, rough licks, then curled up and fallen asleep without a word. Hawk had slept, too, an uneasy, whimpering sleep. But Moth had stayed awake, her eyes on her brother’s tabby form.

  “We’ll both be as brave and strong as he was,” she’d whispered. “I’ll never leave you, I promise.”

  Now Mothwing rolled over and looked at her brother again. Dawn light, chilly and clear, had begun to spread through the den. “We’ll stay together,” she whispered, her chest aching with love and sorrow. Whether she belonged in RiverClan or not didn’t matter. Her home would always be where Hawkfrost was.

  They belonged with each other. Without Tadpole, without Sasha, that was all they had.

  Later that morning, Mothwing brought up the rear of a fishing patrol as they returned to camp, a minnow dangling from her mouth. Her paws felt heavy and her eyelids were drooping—the little sleep she had gotten hadn’t been restful.

  “Hi,” Hawkfrost greeted her, coming up to her as she dropped the minnow onto the fresh-kill pile. “Did you catc
h that?”

  Mothwing yawned. “No, it’s Stormfur’s. I was helping him carry some of his catch.”

  Hawkfrost’s tail twitched. “He’s good,” he admitted. “But you should be better.”

  “I am good at fishing,” Mothwing argued, offended. “I’m just tired today.”

  “I know.” Hawkfrost glanced around and then led her toward the edge of camp, where they couldn’t be overheard. “Listen,” he mewed urgently. “We have to do our best all the time. Not every cat wants us here.”

  Mothwing sighed. She knew. Because they hadn’t been born in the Clan, because their mother had been a rogue, some cats would always see them as outsiders. And if they ever find out that Tigerstar, who almost destroyed the Clans, was our father, things will be much worse. “But what can we do?” she asked, helpless.

  Hawkfrost crowded closer, his pale eyes intent on hers. “Some cats don’t want us. But I heard Leopardstar telling Mistyfoot what strong cats we are and what good additions we are to the Clan. Our leader and deputy believe in us.”

  “That’s good.” Warmth curled through Mothwing. Mistyfoot had been her mentor, and Leopardstar had startled the whole Clan by taking Hawkfrost as her apprentice. The leaders of RiverClan wanted them to belong.

  “If we both do our best, all the time,” Hawkfrost told her, his ears pricked with excitement, “every single one of the RiverClan cats will have to accept us. Maybe we’ll be the leader and the deputy one day.”

  “Maybe,” Mothwing mewed. She couldn’t see herself leading RiverClan. But she could be a good warrior. And maybe Hawkfrost would rise to be leader, someday. If he’s determined to be the best warrior he can, I’ll be right by his side.

  Chapter 2

  A few days later, Mothwing picked her way over the muddy ground at the edge of the river, her tail drooping. I can’t wait to get back to camp and rest, she thought. Her dreams of Tadpole’s death had been more frequent lately, keeping her awake in her nest until it got so late that sleep pulled her under despite her racing thoughts.