Leafpaw wrinkled her nose at the foul scent and tried not to hiss in disgust. Shaking her head, she parted Sorreltail’s tortoiseshell fur with one paw and dabbed the wad of bile-soaked moss on the tick clinging to her shoulder.
Sorreltail wriggled as she felt the bile soak through her fur. “That’s better!” she meowed. “Has it gone yet?”
Leafpaw opened her mouth and dropped the twig that held the moss. “Give it time.”
“There’s only one good thing about ticks,” Sorreltail mewed. “They hate mouse bile just as much as we do.” Springing to her paws, she gave herself a vigorous shake and flicked the tick off her shoulder. “There! Thanks, Leafpaw.”
A breeze rustled through the trees that surrounded the medicine cat’s den. A few leaves drifted down; there was a chill in the morning air that warned Leafpaw of how few moons there were before leaf-bare. This time there would be more than the cold and shortage of prey to face. Leafpaw closed her eyes and shuddered as she remembered what she had seen the day before on patrol with her father, Firestar.
The biggest monster the cats had ever seen had been forging a dreadful path through the forest, scoring deep ruts into the earth and tearing up trees by their roots. The huge, shiny monster had rolled inexorably through the bracken, roaring and belching smoke while the cats scattered helplessly before it. For the first time, Leafpaw began to understand the danger to the forest, which had been prophesied twice now, once in Brambleclaw’s dream that had sent him on the journey with Squirrelpaw, and once in Cinderpelt’s vision of fire and tiger. The doom that had been foretold was coming upon the forest, and Leafpaw did not know what any cat could do to stop it.
“Are you ok, Leafpaw?” meowed Sorreltail.
Leafpaw blinked. The vision of smoke, splintered trees, and shrieking cats faded away, to be replaced by soft green ferns and the smooth grey rock where Cinderpelt made her den. She was safe, ThunderClan was still here—but for how long? “Yes, I’m fine,” she replied. Firestar had ordered the patrol to keep quiet about what they had seen until he had decided how to break the news to the Clan. “I’ve got to go and wash this mouse bile off my paws.”
“I’ll come with you,” Sorreltail offered. “Then we could go along the ravine and pick up some fresh-kill.”
Leafpaw led the way into the main clearing. Whitepaw and Shrewpaw were scuffling outside the apprentices’ den in warm shafts of early morning sunlight, while Ferncloud’s three kits watched them with huge admiring eyes. Their mother sat at the entrance to the nursery, washing herself while keeping one eye on her litter. The dawn patrol—Dustpelt, Mousefur, and Spiderpaw—were just pushing their way into the clearing through the gorse tunnel, Dustpelt’s eyes narrowing with pleasure as he caught sight of Ferncloud and his kits. Leafpaw gazed at the busy, peaceful camp, and could hardly keep back a wail of despair.
As soon as the apprentices spotted Leafpaw, they stopped their practice fight and stared at her, then started whispering urgently together. Even the cats in the returning patrol gave her an uneasy look as they padded over to the fresh-kill pile. Leafpaw knew that rumours about yesterday’s patrol were starting to fly around the camp. At daybreak Firestar had called his deputy, Greystripe; Leafpaw’s mother, Sandstorm; and Cinderpelt into a meeting in his den, and every cat had begun to suspect that something unusual had happened the day before.
Before she and Sorreltail could reach the gorse tunnel, Firestar appeared from his den at the foot of the Highrock. Greystripe and Sandstorm followed him out into the clearing with Cinderpelt limping after them. Firestar leaped to the top of the rock, leaving the other three cats to find comfortable places to sit at its base. In the slanting leaf-fall sun, his flame-coloured pelt blazed like the fire that gave him his name.
“Let all those cats old enough to catch their own prey join here beneath the Highrock for a Clan meeting,” he called.
Leafpaw felt her belly lurch as Sorreltail nudged her gently towards the front of the gathering cats. “You know what he’s going to say, don’t you?” the tortoiseshell warrior murmured.
Leafpaw nodded bleakly.
“I knew something weird happened yesterday,” Sorreltail went on. “You all came back looking as if the whole of ShadowClan were clawing at your tails.”
“I wish it were just that,” Leafpaw muttered.
“Cats of ThunderClan,” Firestar began, then paused to take a deep breath. “I . . . I don’t know if any Clan leader has ever had to take his Clan into the darkness that I see ahead.” His voice faltered and his eyes met Sandstorm’s, seeming to draw strength from the she-cat’s steady gaze. “Some time ago, Ravenpaw warned me about more Twoleg activity on the Thunderpath. Back then, I didn’t think it was important, and there was nothing we could do anyway because that is not our territory. But yesterday . . .”
A tense silence had fallen in the clearing. Firestar did not often sound so serious; Leafpaw could see how reluctant he was to go on, how he had to force himself to speak.
“My patrol was not far from Snakerocks when we saw a Twoleg monster leave the Thunderpath. It tore into the earth and pushed trees over. It—”
“But that’s ridiculous!” Sootfur interrupted. “Monsters never leave the Thunderpath.”
“This isn’t another of his dreams, is it?” Dustpelt’s question was too low for Firestar to hear, though Leafpaw caught the muttered words. “A tough bit of fresh-kill too late at night?”
“Shut up and listen.” Cloudtail, Firestar’s kin, glared at Dustpelt.
“I saw it too,” Greystripe confirmed from his place at the foot of the rock.
Dead silence followed his words. Leafpaw watched the cats glance at one another with uncertainty and fear in their eyes. Sorreltail turned to Leafpaw. “Is that really what you saw?”
Leafpaw nodded. “You can’t imagine what it was like.”
“What does Cinderpelt have to say?” Speckletail called from where she sat among the elders. “Has StarClan shown you anything?”
The medicine cat rose to her paws and faced the Clan, her blue eyes steady. Of all the cats, even Firestar, she seemed the calmest.
Before she replied, she looked up to meet Firestar’s gaze; Leafpaw could almost see flashing between them the memory of the prophecy of fire and tiger that Cinderpelt had seen in a clump of blazing bracken. She wondered how much they had decided to tell the Clan, in the meeting that had just ended. Then Firestar nodded as if he was giving Cinderpelt permission to speak; she acknowledged his signal with a brief dip of her head.
“The signs from StarClan are not clear,” she admitted. “I see a time of great danger and change for the forest. A terrible doom hangs over us all.”
“Then you have had warnings about this! Why haven’t you told us before?” Mousefur challenged with a lash of her tail.
“Don’t be mouse-brained!” Cloudtail growled. “What good would it have done? What could we do? Leave the forest—and go where? Wandering around in strange country with leaf-bare coming on? You might fancy that, Mousefur, but I don’t.”
“If you ask me, Brambleclaw and Squirrelpaw had the right idea,” Sootfur muttered to his brother Rainwhisker. “Getting out when they did.”
Leafpaw wanted to leap to the missing cats’ defense, but she made herself sit still and keep quiet. She was the only cat in the Clan who knew that Squirrelpaw and Brambleclaw had left on a mission from StarClan to try to save the forest from this terrible danger. Stormfur and Feathertail, Greystripe’s RiverClan children, had gone with them, and cats from WindClan and ShadowClan too. However much their Clanmates missed them, Leafpaw knew it was for the good of all the Clans that they had gone.
Yet