Fading Echoes, Page 3

  “Hey!” Ivypaw shook the leaves from her pelt and sent another bundle showering over Dovepaw. Then she turned tail and ran.

  Dovepaw pelted after her sister as Ivypaw bounded onto a fallen tree, her claws scattering bark shreds that caught in Dovepaw’s whiskers. Leaping up beside Ivypaw, Dovepaw nudged her sister off balance and yowled with amusement as she watched Ivypaw wobble, then dive dramatically down the other side.

  Ivypaw squeaked, staggering into a thick clump of ferns and disappearing behind the fronds.

  “Ivypaw?” Dovepaw sniffed at the ferns, her tail stiffening as she detected no movement. “Are you okay?”

  The ferns shivered and exploded as Ivypaw hurtled out and rolled Dovepaw onto her back. Triumphant, Ivypaw pinned her littermate to the ground. “Even Cherrykit wouldn’t fall for the play-dead trick!” she purred.

  Dovepaw pushed with her hind paws, knocking Ivypaw away easily, aware of how strong she’d grown from the long journey to find the beavers. Ivypaw scrambled to her paws, scooting out of the way as Dovepaw leaped at her.

  “Ha! Missed!” Ivypaw crowed before scrambling down the slope that led lakeward.

  Dovepaw raced after her, bounding down to where the trees began to thin. She nearly bundled straight into Ivypaw, who had skidded to a halt.

  “Wow!” The silver-and-white apprentice was staring open-mouthed at the lake.

  The vast, dried-out lakebed, which had been dotted with shallow muddy pools where fish had huddled while the Clans paced jealously, had vanished.

  Shining silver water rippled in its place, gleaming in the dawn sunshine. The lake was brimful, shivering beneath overhanging trees and bushes, lapping lazily at the shores. It heaved and swirled, and the taste of it bathed Dovepaw’s tongue, as fresh and rich with the promise of life as the damp forest.

  “Come on!” Ivypaw was already dashing out from the trees.

  Dovepaw gave chase, her paws slipping on the damp grass so that she nearly toppled over the short sandy bank at the top of the shore. Pebbles clacked as she landed at the water’s edge and sprinted after Ivypaw.

  “I’ve never seen so much water!” Waves were lapping at Ivypaw’s claws.

  Dovepaw hung back, remembering the torrent released from the beavers’ dam that had toppled trees, uprooted bushes, swirled like a storm around her as it carried her back to the forest. Then the water had been terrifying, a foaming beast roaring with fury at being pent up behind the dam for so long. Now the lake lay peacefully, like a plump silver tabby, curled beneath the blue sky.

  “Where did all the water come from?” Ivypaw pressed. “The sky? The stream?”

  Dovepaw cocked her head, listening. She could hear streams splashing and tumbling all around the lake, refreshed by the recent rains. “The streams are back,” she told Ivypaw. “Not just ours, but all of them, thanks to the rainstorms.”

  “Good.” Ivypaw nodded. “I hope the lake never goes away again.” She bent her head to lap from the sparkling water, then leaped away as a tiny wave splashed her muzzle.

  An angry yowl sounded from behind them. Dovepaw spun around and saw Brambleclaw bounding toward them, with Cinderheart and Lionblaze on his tail.

  “This is a patrol, not an outing for kits!” he scolded. “The noise you’ve been making will have disturbed every piece of prey in the area. I don’t envy the hunting patrol!”

  Dovepaw hung her head and followed Ivypaw as she slunk back up the bank and halted in front of Brambleclaw. “Sorry.” Her ears burned with shame.

  “I know it’s exciting to have the lake back,” Lionblaze meowed with a hint of sympathy in his voice. “But you can play later.”

  Brambleclaw’s gaze remained stern. “Have you re-marked the boundary here?” He swished his tail, indicating the scent line running three tail-lengths from the water’s edge. “Now that the lake’s full again, we need to reestablish old markers.”

  “I’ll start now!” Ivypaw began to dart away. “Ow!” She skidded to a halt and lifted her paw, ears flat, eyes round with pain.

  “What is it?” Cinderheart hurried to her apprentice and examined her paw.

  Ivypaw winced and tried to snatch it away.

  “Hold still,” Cinderheart ordered. Grasping the apprentice’s paw more tightly, she sniffed at the pad and began to pluck at the splinter with her teeth.

  “Ow-ww!” Ivypaw yowled, still trying to wriggle away.

  “Wait!” Cinderheart commanded through clenched teeth. “I’ve nearly got it.” Keeping a firm grip on Ivypaw’s paw, she gave one last tug and plucked out a ragged, bloody splinter.

  “StarClan’s kits, that hurt!” Ivypaw hopped in a circle, cursing, then sucked at her pad.

  Dovepaw weaved around her. “Are you all right?”

  Ivypaw’s pelt gradually smoothed. She shook her paw, then inspected the small cut in the pad, oozing a tiny drop of blood. “That feels better.” She sighed.

  Brambleclaw sniffed the splinter that Cinderheart had spat onto the ground, then glanced around the smooth grass at the top of the bank. His eyes darkened when he spotted the two halves of a broken stick buried in the long grass. “It must have come from that.”

  Dovepaw recognized them at once. “I trod on that last time we were here.” She dragged one half out and laid it at Brambleclaw’s paws before dislodging the other half.

  Lionblaze stared at the broken pieces with wide, startled eyes. He opened his mouth as if he were about to say something, but Brambleclaw spoke first.

  “Throw them in the lake,” the ThunderClan deputy ordered. “I don’t want any more cats injured.”

  Dovepaw picked up one half and dragged it to a high part of the bank where the water lapped the sandy cliff. She tossed it as far as she could, enjoying the splash when it hit the surface, and returned for the second piece. But Ivypaw was already heaving it over the edge, flinging it into the deep water.

  As the last part of the stick struck the waves, Dovepaw heard the agonized yowl of a cat in pain echoing through the trees. She froze, listening. Had another cat trodden on a splinter? She glanced back at her Clanmates, but they were calmly watching the two pieces of stick bob away from the bank. None of them had made a sound.

  Dovepaw frowned. She cast her senses farther, ears pricked, listening, trying to tell which cat had howled in agony. A scent drifted to her on the damp breeze, tinged with the echo of pain.

  Jayfeather!

  She could hear his rough tongue scraping the fur on his flank. His movements were urgent, as though he was trying to find the source of the injury.

  Fear brushed Dovepaw’s pelt. When Jayfeather let out that terrible wail, it had sounded as if someone had sunk a claw into his heart. Now Lionblaze was standing beside her, his body tense as he stared at the pieces of stick floating out toward the middle of the lake. Worry clouded his gaze and, for a reason she couldn’t explain, Dovepaw shivered.

  CHAPTER 2

  “Ouch!” Jayfeather staggered sideways as a pain, sharp as a hawk’s talon, stabbed his side. He licked at it furiously, anticipating the tang of blood. But his pelt was unharmed.

  Puzzled, he sniffed the air, tasting the herbs laid out before him on the floor of the medicine cave. Reaching tentatively forward, he felt the space around him for any brambles.

  Nothing.

  Then what had stabbed him?

  He must have imagined it. Maybe the death of Leopardstar had pierced the air as StarClan mourned. Maybe Mistyfoot’s naming ceremony had somehow touched him—the shock of new lives carried from her mind to his. He frowned. A change in a Clan’s leadership was an important event; perhaps it was inevitable that it would affect him somehow.

  He padded along the row of herbs once more, the pain in his side easing to a dull ache. The leaves were drying nicely in the breeze that filtered through the brambles trailing at the den entrance, and there was enough sunshine striking into the hollow to warm the air. There was nothing left to do but wait. Enough time to check on Poppyfrost and her kits.r />
  Springing over the leaves, Jayfeather pushed his way through the entrance, the brambles stroking satisfyingly over his spine as he headed out of the den.

  Firestar was dozing on Highledge, his breath clouding in the cool morning air as he rested his chin over the edge of the jagged rock. Sandstorm lay beside him. Jayfeather could hear their fur brushing as their flanks gently rose and fell. They must have been night hunting again. Jayfeather knew that the ThunderClan leader and his mate sometimes liked to slip out of camp while their Clanmates slept and run through the woods. Images of their hunt filled Firestar’s dreams now, and Jayfeather sensed joy as the ThunderClan leader relished the freedom of the forest, his mate at his side, the worries of the Clan left behind at the barrier of thorns.

  Jayfeather pulled his mind away, always uncomfortable at intruding on the thoughts of his Clanmates, though the temptation was never far away.

  “Come on, Blossompaw!” Graystripe called to the apprentice. “You’re supposed to be helping, not playing.”

  Blossompaw froze, her tail sweeping to a halt, leaves drifting from the stale-smelling bundle that she clutched between her paws.

  “Ha!” Briarpaw’s pads brushed the earth as she skipped out of the way, and Jayfeather pictured the scene: Blossompaw had been about to send a shower of leaves over her littermate and had been caught in the act by Graystripe.

  “Sorry.” Blossompaw swept her leaves toward Graystripe with her tail, and the gray warrior focused on his task once more; Jayfeather could hear his fur snagging against the prickles. “There are more holes in here than in a rabbit warren,” he fretted. “I want them stuffed with leaves before the wind turns cold.”

  Berrynose was picking through the brambles on the other side of the nursery. “It’s just as bad over here,” he reported. The cream-colored tom began crunching pawfuls of leaves in between the branches. It was his kits, after all, who were in the nursery along with his mate, Poppyfrost.

  Jayfeather was concentrating so hard on the two warriors working on the nursery walls that the flailing, fluffy bundle rolling into his paws made him jump.

  “Sorry, Jayfeather!” Cherrykit scrambled back toward her mother, who was basking on the sandy earth outside the nursery.

  “Watch where you’re going,” Poppyfrost chided.

  “Jayfeather!” Molekit mewled. The tiny kit pattered toward him. “Watch what I can do!”

  Jayfeather felt Poppyfrost tense at her kit’s tactless words; he flicked his tail to let her know he wasn’t offended. He liked the way kits didn’t trip over themselves trying not to say the wrong thing to him. “Show me,” he prompted Molekit.

  A scuffle of paws and a sudden “Oof!” were followed by purrs of amusement from Cherrykit.

  “That was the worst pounce I’ve ever seen,” Cherrykit squeaked.

  “You do better, then!” Molekit challenged.

  Jayfeather heard her short, stumpy tail brush the ground as she crouched and prepared for her jump. As she leaped forward, a falling leaf brushed her pelt. Her paws skidded clumsily as surprise flashed through her.

  Molekit yowled with amusement. “Nice landing!”

  “Shut up!” Cherrykit huffed.

  “You’re scared of a leaf!”

  “Am not!”

  “Are so!”

  “Molekit!” Poppyfrost’s mew was stern. “Cherrykit’s your sister. You must encourage her, not tease! True warriors help their Clanmates.”

  Molekit scuffed his paws on the ground. “Okay,” he muttered.

  The nursery entrance trembled as Ferncloud slid out. Though she had no kits of her own, she preferred to stay in the nursery, along with Daisy, helping the queens as they came and went with the seasons. The two she-cats had helped raise so many kits that, these days, cats were as likely to see young apprentices visit the nursery for advice as the elders’ den. Especially now that Purdy had moved into the honeysuckle bush. Once the old loner started one of his stories, it could be sunset before a young cat got a word in edgewise.

  “How are you feeling?” Jayfeather asked Poppyfrost. He sensed the queen’s weariness and felt a pang of sympathy. “The kits are doing well.” He could hear Molekit scampering after Cherrykit.

  “Look out!” Graystripe warned, staggering on his hind paws as the kits raced past him.

  Poppyfrost purred. Jayfeather stifled an urge to ask exactly what it was about squirming, querulous, hungry kits that made queens so forgiving of the exhaustion, the endless demands, and the squabbles that flared up with every second heartbeat.

  “Are you eating and drinking plenty?” he checked.

  “I’m fine,” Poppyfrost assured him.

  He could smell moss soaked in water lying beside Poppyfrost. It carried Berrynose’s scent. Her mate was obviously making sure she had everything she needed. And judging from the contented aura swirling around the tortoiseshell queen, all the fears she’d had that Berrynose still pined for her sister, Honeyfern, had disappeared.

  The memory of Honeyfern, killed by an adder, was still strong in the Clan. Jayfeather sensed it like a lingering scent. But life moved on and Berrynose seemed happy with his new mate. Indeed, the whole Clan seemed content, the camp buzzing with soft mews. It was almost as though the drought had never happened.

  Leafpool and Squirrelflight padded through the camp entrance, the fragrant scent of prey clouding around them. Jayfeather snorted, fury rushing anew through his paws. Some things could never be forgotten. Or forgiven. The lies and betrayals that his mother and her littermate had woven around his and Lionblaze’s birth left a taste foul as crow-food in his mouth. If they hadn’t hidden the truth, conspiring like vixens, his sister, Hollyleaf, might never have disappeared behind the mudslide that blocked the tunnels.

  Bitterness rose in Jayfeather’s throat. Despite what he and his littermates had been raised to believe, Crowfeather was their father, not Brambleclaw. And it was Leafpool who had kitted them. Squirrelflight had never been their mother.

  Mother! As far as Jayfeather was concerned, he had no mother now.

  The second hunting patrol returned just before sunhigh. Sorreltail, dozing below Highledge, scrambled to her paws as Cloudtail, Brightheart, and Whitewing dropped their catches on the fresh-kill pile. Thornclaw stretched beside her, purring hungrily at the scent of fresh prey.

  But it was a different scent that brought Jayfeather from his den. He’d been half expecting it all morning, ever since Dovepaw had woken him with the news about Mistyfoot.

  “RiverClan!” Ferncloud’s alarm set the whole camp stirring, and Firestar bounded down from Highledge as Mistyfoot padded through the thorn tunnel with Mothwing at her heels.

  Jayfeather heard Ferncloud’s tail swish the earth as she shooed Molekit and Cherrykit back toward their mother. Hostility prickled from Thornclaw and Dustpelt. Graystripe stopped work on the nursery wall and dropped onto four paws, curiosity pulsing from his pelt.

  Firestar crossed the clearing to greet the RiverClan cats. “Is everything all right?”

  Mistyfoot halted. “Leopardstar’s dead.”

  Jayfeather found himself caught in a flood of memories swirling through Firestar’s mind: a forest fire; a kit rescued from a river; mountains, snowcapped and scented with danger; courage and stubbornness flashing in Leopardstar’s amber gaze. Jayfeather caught his breath as the ThunderClan leader’s grief pierced his own heart.

  Mothwing sighed. “We’ve just come from the Moonpool,” she murmured. “Mistystar has received her nine lives.”

  Firestar’s whiskers brushed the ground as he dipped his head low. “Mistystar,” he greeted the new RiverClan leader.

  “Mistystar,” Graystripe echoed the name respectfully.

  “Mistystar, Mistystar.” The RiverClan leader’s new name rippled through the watching Clan. Hostility faded like the morning dew.

  Firestar touched noses with the gray she-cat. “How’s RiverClan?” he asked.

  “Greenleaf was harsh,” Mistystar admitted. “We re
ly too much on the lake to survive without it.”

  Longtail padded stiffly from the elders’ den, his whiskers twitching with curiosity. Mousefur’s tail rested on his shoulder, guiding him forward as Mistystar went on.

  “We lost three elders from thirst and hunger.”

  Mousefur tensed. “Who?”

  “Blackclaw, Voletooth, and Dawnflower.”

  Jayfeather heard Mousefur’s pelt brush Longtail’s as the old she-cat pressed closer to her denmate.

  Firestar sat beside Mistystar. “Take some strengthening herbs with you,” he offered.

  “Thank you, we will, if you can spare them.”

  Jayfeather wondered if Leopardstar would have accepted help so easily.

  “Mothwing.” Firestar addressed the RiverClan medicine cat. “Go with Jayfeather. He’ll give you the herbs.”

  Jayfeather beckoned Mothwing with his tail. He relished the chance to be alone with her, intrigued about how she had managed Mistystar’s naming ceremony when she didn’t believe in StarClan. He held aside the brambles at the entrance to the den, unable to resist probing Mothwing’s thoughts as she passed. But her mind was empty of everything except the ache in her paws.

  “Rest there.” Jayfeather slipped into the medicine store and bundled together some of the newly dried leaves. Carrying the wad in his jaws, he placed it gently at her paws. “I can give you some ointment to soothe your pads,” he offered.

  “No, thank you.” Mothwing shifted her weight. “It’s not much farther.”

  “But the shore is stony.”

  “I’ll treat my paws when I get home,” Mothwing insisted. “I’m already depriving you of enough supplies.”

  “We can spare them.” But only just. The parched forest had yielded few herbs over greenleaf, and leaf-bare waited like a fox in the shadows.

  “Longtail seems to be stiffer than ever,” Mothwing observed. “Have you tried crushing poppy seed and combining it with marigold and comfrey in a poultice?”