by Erin Hunter
“Hollypaw!” It was the RiverClan medicine cat apprentice, her bright green eyes flashing in the moonlight.
“Hi, Willowpaw!” Hollypaw stopped to greet her.
Willowpaw skidded to a halt and stared at her in delight.
“Mothwing told me that you’re Leafpool’s apprentice now.”
Hollypaw dipped her head. “That’s right.”
“Great!” Willowpaw mewed. “Have you had your first dream from StarClan yet?”
“No, not yet.”
“I bet you do soon,” Willowpaw assured her. “Come on!”
She swept her tail around Hollypaw. “I’ll introduce you to the other medicine cats.”
Willowpaw led Hollypaw toward where Leafpool was sharing tongues with a group of cats. Lionpaw felt a flash of envy. As a medicine cat apprentice, his sister would have a special connection with all the Clans. He shuffled his paws nervously as he gazed at the strange faces around him. Then he remembered that the truce lasted for only one night.
These cats were his enemies. There was no point making friends. His duty was to get to know them so that he knew their strengths—and their weaknesses—when he met them in battle.
“I’m going to talk to Harepaw,” Berrypaw announced.
“I’m coming too,” Hazelpaw mewed.
Lionpaw, alone now with Mousepaw, glanced around the clearing. He spotted a tightly clustered group of cats watching from the foot of the Great Oak. The shadows disguised the color of their pelts, and something about the way their eyes shone in the gloom made him shudder.
“Are they ShadowClan?” he whispered to Mousepaw.
Mousepaw nodded. “Don’t let them scare you. They like to look like they’re enemies with all the world. But once you start talking to them, they’re okay.”
“Are you sure?” Lionpaw wasn’t entirely convinced.
But Mousepaw didn’t hear him. “Minnowpaw!” he mewed.
He was staring at a young gray-and-white RiverClan she-cat whose pelt looked as downy as kit fur.
“She looks barely out of the nursery,” Lionpaw remarked.
Mousepaw’s ears twitched. “She’s a whole moon older than me,” he corrected. “Come and talk to her,” he went on. “You’ll see she’s not as soft as she looks.”
Lionpaw followed Mousepaw over to where Minnowpaw sat with two more RiverClan apprentices, one gray and one brown tabby. His nose twitched as he scented them. He knew the stench of ShadowClan and WindClan from their border markers, but RiverClan’s fresh, fish-tinged scent smelled strange.
Minnowpaw nodded to them in welcome. Though she was slighter and softer in looks than her Clanmates, her amber
eyes were sharp and intelligent. “Who’s your friend?” she asked Mousepaw.
Mousepaw was staring at her with a wistful look in his eyes. “This is Lionpaw.”
“Hello, Lionpaw,” mewed Minnowpaw. “This is
Pouncepaw”—she nodded toward the brown tabby she-cat beside her—“and Pebblepaw.” She flicked her tail toward the gray tom.
“What do you think of the island?” Pouncepaw asked.
“It’s great,” Lionpaw replied.
“We can show you around, if you like,” Minnowpaw offered.
Mousepaw’s eyes lit up. Clearly he liked the idea of a starlit stroll with the pretty apprentice. But Lionpaw would rather explore the place for himself, especially if Mousepaw was going to be round-eyed and moony over Minnowpaw the whole time.
“Thanks for the offer,” he mewed. “But Mousepaw’s promised to introduce me to some of the other cats.”
Mousepaw gazed at him blankly. “Huh? Have I?”
“Come on!” Lionpaw prompted before Mousepaw could object. He padded away from the group and Mousepaw sighed, but followed him across the clearing.
Suddenly a soft voice sounded in his ear. “Are you Jaypaw’s brother?”
He swung around to find a light brown tabby she-cat gazing at him with eyes the color of a late-afternoon sky.
“Y-yes,” he stammered. “How did you know?”
“Berrypaw told me. I’m Heatherpaw, by the way.”
Because your eyes are the color of heather . . .
“Jaypaw might have mentioned me,” Heatherpaw went on.
“I was there when Crowfeather saved him from drowning.
Has he recovered?”
Lionpaw forced himself to stop gaping like a startled rabbit. “Jaypaw?” he echoed. “Oh, he’s fine now.”
“Is he here?” Heatherpaw inquired.
Lionpaw was having trouble remembering where any of his littermates were right now.
“Not this time,” Mousepaw answered for him, sounding impatient.
“I still can’t believe he was out alone when he’s blind,”
Heatherpaw breathed. “He must be so brave!”
Lionpaw felt a twinge of envy. “Most of the time he’s just grumpy,” he told her. “Especially now that he’s been confined to the camp for a quarter moon.”
“Poor Jaypaw,” Heatherpaw sympathized. “I’d be miserable if I were stuck in camp.”
“Me too,” Lionpaw agreed.
“How long have you been an apprentice?” Heatherpaw asked.
“Since quarter moon. What about you?”
“For a moon and a half now,” she replied. “This is my second Gathering.”
“Have you met Mousepaw before?” Lionpaw asked, sens-ing that his Clanmate was growing restless and casting long
ing glances back to the RiverClan apprentices.
“We’ve never spoken,” Heatherpaw confessed. “But I saw him last time talking to Russetfur.” She looked at Mousepaw.
“Did Russetfur get any information out of you? She tried to from me, but fortunately Crowfeather had warned me not to give anything away.”
Before Mousepaw could answer, a black tom with amber eyes trotted up to them. “We ought to join our Clan,” he told Heatherpaw gruffly, ignoring the ThunderClan apprentices.
“The meeting’s about to begin.”
“This is Breezepaw,” Heatherpaw told Mousepaw and Lionpaw. “He’s our newest apprentice.” Her whiskers twitched. “Though you couldn’t tell it from his manner. He’s been trying to boss the other apprentices from the moment he went from a ’kit to a ’paw.”
Breezepaw stared furiously at her, and the tip of his tail flicked from side to side.
“Don’t worry, Breezepaw,” Heatherpaw went on. “You’ll be a warrior before you know it, and then you can boss all the apprentices around.”
Breezepaw narrowed his eyes, clearly unsure whether she was being serious or not.
Heatherpaw glanced at Lionpaw, then whispered loud enough for Breezepaw to hear, “He thinks that I have to do what he says because his father, Crowfeather, is my mentor.”
“You know Crowfeather would never—” Breezepaw started to object.
“Oh, come on, Breezepaw!” Heatherpaw pleaded. “Lighten up!” She gave his flank a nudge with her muzzle, then turned back to Lionpaw. “It’s hard to believe, but Breezepaw can be great fun on a good day.”
A commanding meow sounded from the Great Oak. “We meet beneath Silverpelt—”
“That’s Onestar calling for the meeting to start!” Heatherpaw gasped.
Lionpaw swung around and saw the four Clan leaders sitting like owls in the lowest branch of the tree. Onestar, the lithe brown tabby who led WindClan, was speaking.
“. . . commanded by the truce of the full moon.”
Breezepaw flashed Heatherpaw a look that said, I told you so, and hurried away to join the rest of his Clan. Heatherpaw rolled her eyes at Lionpaw, then followed her Clanmate.
Feeling more confident now, Lionpaw joined the cats gathering around the base of the oak. He weaved among his Clanmates till he found a space between Hollypaw and Spiderleg.
Firestar sat beside Onestar on the branch. A sleek, spotted tabby she-cat sat next to him. Lionpaw guessed that was Leopardstar of RiverClan. Beyond her was a huge w
hite tom with jet-black paws—ShadowClan’s leader, Blackstar.
“WindClan has one new apprentice this moon,” Onestar announced. “Breezepaw.” The black-pelted apprentice lifted his chin, apparently quite undaunted by having cats from all four Clans turning to stare at him. Lionpaw’s heart began to
race. He hoped he could act so coolly when it was his turn to be named.
“Leaf-bare has been kind to us this last moon,” Onestar went on. “The rabbits are running, but not too fast to catch, and the windy weather has made hunting hard for the buz-zards and hawks, which leaves more prey for us.”
An alarming thought struck Lionpaw. Would Onestar mention Jaypaw’s intrusion into WindClan territory? He leaned forward, ears pricked.
“Other than that,” Onestar went on, “WindClan has nothing important to report.”
Lionpaw glanced, relieved, at Hollypaw. She leaned against him. “Thank StarClan he didn’t say anything about Jaypaw,”
she whispered.
Onestar turned to Blackstar, nodding for him to speak next.
“ShadowClan has one new apprentice too,” Blackstar began. He looked down at a wiry brown she-cat sitting among the ShadowClan warriors. “Ivypaw.”
Ivypaw nodded, her eyes narrowed. She didn’t look pleased or proud to be announced as a new apprentice, as Breezepaw had.
Do ShadowClan cats ever show their feelings? Lionpaw wondered.
He felt Hollypaw fidgeting beside him. Her eyes were shining with excitement. “Our turn next!” she breathed.
But Blackstar had not finished. “Hunting has been good for ShadowClan since we enlarged our territory.”
Lionpaw stiffened as he heard a gasp from the ThunderClan warriors around him. Was Blackstar really going to make out that they had seized the land by the river from ThunderClan?
“Our new stretch of territory is a great source of prey,”
Blackstar meowed.
Liar!
Spiderleg muttered under his breath, “Firestar would never have given it up if it were!”
“ShadowClan would like to thank Firestar for his generos-ity in granting it to us,” Blackstar finished with poisonous gratitude.
Firestar stared levelly at him. “I am pleased to hear that you are getting so much out of a piece of land prey-poor by ThunderClan standards,” he meowed.
“Yes!” Hollypaw hissed. A subdued ripple of approval passed through the ThunderClan cats.
Then Firestar turned his green gaze on the crowd.
“ThunderClan are fortunate to have more than one”—he lingered over the word—“new apprentice this moon.”
Lionpaw’s ears twitched. Pride and anxiety churned in his belly.
“Jaypaw couldn’t come tonight.” Murmurs of surprise rose from the other Clans, but the ThunderClan leader carried on. “But Hollypaw is here.” Hollypaw’s green eyes shone like stars, her black pelt almost invisible in the gloom. Then Firestar’s gaze flicked to Lionpaw. “And Lionpaw.”
Lionpaw could hardly hear anything for the blood rushing
in his ears. He puffed his chest out and held up his chin, feeling his pelt burn under the stares from the other cats. In a moment that was at once too short and too long, it was over, and Firestar was carrying on with his report.
“We have been lucky this leaf-bare,” he meowed. “There has been frost but little snow, and the prey has continued to run.”
Lionpaw’s pelt prickled. There was a new scent in the air, something he hadn’t smelled before. Some of the other cats clearly scented it too—he could see their heads turning, searching the edge of the clearing.
There was a rustle in the bracken close to where the WindClan cats were gathered and in the shadows Lionpaw saw movement.
Firestar fell silent and watched with the other cats as two lithe shapes emerged from the undergrowth.
“Intruders!” The alert spread through the Clans like wild-fire. All around Lionpaw felt pelts bristling in alarm and battle-hungry muscles tensing, ready to spring.
The WindClan warriors who were nearest lunged at the strangers. Yowling and hissing, they wrestled the trespassers to the ground.
Are they going to kill them? Lionpaw turned back to the Great Oak, wondering what the leaders would do.
Firestar’s fur was standing on end. His tail was stiff with shock, and his ears were pricked as he sniffed the air and sniffed again.
“Stop!”
The WindClan cats froze and drew back, leaving the two strangers standing alone on the edge of the Clans. Lionpaw strained to see over the heads of the other cats.
In a voice that was taut with shock and disbelief, Firestar called a name Lionpaw had only ever heard mentioned in nursery stories.
“Graystripe!”
Chapter 11
Hollypaw stared in amazement. Graystripe?
“But he’s dead!” she hissed to Lionpaw.
Her brother did not reply. He was too busy trying to balance on his hind legs to get a better view.
Hollypaw ducked down and weaved among the legs of the Clan cats until she reached the edge and peeped out between the pelts of Crowfeather and Breezepaw.
A gray tom with a stripe of darker fur along his spine stood in front of the bracken. His pelt clung to bone and wasted muscle, the fur matted and dull. His left ear was torn, and there were whiskers missing from his scratched and filthy muzzle. Beside him shivered a light gray tabby she-cat. Her short fur stuck out in clumps, and her tail hung limp and bedraggled.
But Graystripe’s dead!
“You’re alive!” Firestar burst out from between Onestar and Tornear. He faced Graystripe round-eyed, his fur on end.
Graystripe stared back. His companion flattened her ears and lifted her front paw defensively. She was trembling, her eyes bright with fear as she tried to look at all the cats at once.
“Easy now, Millie,” Graystripe cautioned.
Firestar stretched his muzzle forward, sniffing tentatively, as though he could hardly believe what he saw. “The Twolegs didn’t kill you. . . .” He lifted his face to the moon. “Thank StarClan,” he whispered.
Startled mews erupted among the watching cats.
“Graystripe’s come back!”
“He must have escaped from the Twolegs!”
“How did he survive?”
“What about Brambleclaw?”
What about Brambleclaw? Hollypaw looked at her father.
Firestar had held a vigil for Graystripe as he would for any dead Clanmate, and made Brambleclaw his deputy instead.
But Graystripe was alive, and now he had come back. . . .
The ThunderClan deputy was staring at Graystripe. “I can hardly believe that you found us.” His voice was filled with admiration, but his gaze glittered uneasily as he stepped forward and brushed muzzles with the gray warrior.
Firestar flicked his tail. “Where did they take you?”
Graystripe didn’t answer. He was staring at Firestar. “So you didn’t wait for me.”
Pain flashed in Firestar’s eyes. “I couldn’t.”
Graystripe dipped his head. “You could not risk the Clan by keeping them in the forest.”
Firestar leaned forward. “If it had been only my life at stake”—he glanced around the Clans, then lowered his voice—“I would have waited.”
Hollypaw felt a rustling behind her. The other ThunderClan warriors were pushing their way forward to greet their old denmate.
“Graystripe!” Dustpelt dashed over. “You’re alive!”
Berrypaw, Hazelpaw, Ashfur, and Spiderleg crowded excitedly around, sniffing his fur, poking him with their muzzles.
Graystripe flinched away.
“Give him some space,” Leafpool warned. “He’s exhausted.”
“But he’s a legend!” Hazelpaw complained as Leafpool shooed her and the others away with her tail.
Squirrelflight was staring at Graystripe’s companion.
“Who are you?”
“This is Millie,”
Graystripe meowed. “I met her in Twolegplace.”
Squirrelflight gasped. “A kittypet made the journey with you?”
“I couldn’t have managed it alone,” Graystripe meowed.
Brambleclaw narrowed his eyes. “Did you follow our trail?”
“No,” Graystripe told him. “We found our own way.”
“We searched for Graystripe’s home first,” Millie explained. Her voice had a hard edge that surprised Hollypaw. She thought all kittypets would speak with the same soft mew as Daisy.
Graystripe’s ragged pelt bristled. “The whole forest was devastated when we got there. No cats, no prey, nothing but
torn-up trees and monsters.”
“How did you know which way we had gone?” Leafpool asked.
“We saw Ravenpaw.”
Firestar’s eyes glowed. “How is he?”
“He’s well, but concerned for you all.” Graystripe stopped for breath before going on. “He said he’d seen you pass and that you were heading toward the setting sun. So we carried on over Highstones—” He broke off, his tail quivering.
Leafpool darted forward. “Are you okay?”
“Just tired.”
Leopardstar shouldered her way through the ThunderClan cats. A loud purr was rumbling in her throat. “It’s good to see you again, Graystripe.”
As she spoke the warriors from every Clan raised their voices.
“Welcome back, Graystripe!”
“How did he find us?”
“StarClan must have been watching over him!”
Cats from all four Clans surged around Graystripe until he was almost lost in a forest of pelts, brown, white, ginger, and tabby. Purrs blended, rumbling like thunder, louder than the sound of the wind in the branches.
Hollypaw watched in disbelief. She knew there was a truce at the Gathering, but this was not how it was supposed to be.
There were meant to be four Clans, yet the warriors were acting like they belonged to the same one. She wriggled through the crush of pelts to where Lionpaw was watching with round eyes.
“It’s not natural,” she whispered in his ear. “Graystripe is ThunderClan. Why are the other Clans making such a fuss over him?”