Clear Sky frowned. “You want us back in the mountains?”
“Not your old home!”
“Then where?”
“We can’t make every paw step for you. That will weaken you all! We have told you all you need to know.” Fluttering Bird’s gaze scorched into his. “Now you must start thinking for yourselves.”
Clear Sky stared past her, his gaze lighting on Tall Shadow as she shared words with Moon Shadow, Hawk Swoop, and Jackdaw’s Cry. Wind Runner was with her lost kits. She nuzzled them, and he could hear her urgent purr throbbing through the cold night air. Her mew was sharp with grief.
“My dear kits. Come closer. We won’t be together for long.”
Thunder paced to and fro, lifting his head eagerly as Storm padded to join them. Fox, Petal, and Frost crowded around River Ripple, their soft mews lost in the breeze. Gray Wing was several tail-lengths away, speaking with Shaded Moss and Turtle Tail. How separate they seemed. “We traveled here together,” Clear Sky murmured, half to himself, “but now we don’t even share prey.” Sadness tugged in his belly.
“And who’s to blame for that?” Fluttering Bird growled. “You turned against your own.”
“That’s not true!” he snapped back. “I’ve always done what I thought was best! I tried to take care of my own.”
“Then why do you stand here alone?” Fluttering Bird demanded. “Who do you have to care for you?”
Clear Sky swallowed, unable to answer her. Gray Wing seemed suddenly far away, the clearing stretching like a deep gorge between them. Thunder had not even met his eye since arriving in the hollow. Clear Sky knew they still silently blamed him for the battle and for taking One Eye into his group and nurturing him until he became a threat to all the cats. There was a time when they wanted to be near him. But he had driven them away. And now? Would any of them come now if he needed them?
He stared at Fluttering Bird. Was she trying to hurt him? “Why are you saying this?”
“You have followed your head, not your heart, Clear Sky.” She flicked her tail. “Each cat here has a home waiting. Even you. But you have to find it for yourselves, and you must find it soon.”
“How?” Where was home? How would they know when they found it?
“Follow your hearts.” Fluttering Bird began to fade before his eyes. He stiffened. Not yet! The other cats were fading too, growing transparent as the dream began to disappear. The stars blurred above his head and the hollow grew hazy.
“Fluttering Bird!” Clear Sky struggled to see her. “Where should our hearts lead?”
Who do you have to care for you? Her words rang in his mind. Did she want him to be close to his kin once more? Perhaps the only way to spread and grow like the Blazing Star was to join forces—be like a Tribe once more.
Darkness swamped him, and he blinked open his eyes.
He was back in his nest again. He gazed across the moonlit hollow where the forest cats had made their camp. His hackles smoothed as calm enfolded him. I understand! Fluttering Bird was trying to tell him how foolish he’d been to split from the others and mark out his own territory.
Determination surged through him. Wide awake now, he stood and crossed the clearing. He slipped past the brambles that shielded the camp, then bounded out into the forest. Starlight sparkled on his pelt as he glanced up at the sky. I understand now, Fluttering Bird! I must draw the cats close—together once more—so that we can grow strong and spread like the Blazing Star.
Chapter 1
Clear Sky yawned and stretched his forepaws until they trembled. He looked over the edge of his nest. A biting wind sliced beneath the arching root, which usually shielded him as he slept. It nipped his ears, and he narrowed his eyes against its sting as he gazed over the clearing.
Quick Water was crossing the camp, her fur fluffed up against the cold. A shriveled mouse hung from her jaws. Birch and Alder peeked out from beneath the low, spreading yew. Petal had made their nest beneath its dark green branches after she’d adopted them. Their own mother had been killed, and they hardly remembered her scent. Now Petal was dead too, taken by the sickness that had swept the forest before leaf-bare had come. Birch and Alder had nearly died, but the Blazing Star had saved them.
The Blazing Star. Clear Sky felt a pang of grief. If only Star Flower had told them about it sooner.
It was the only healing herb that could cure the sickness. Now it shaped their future. He stood and shook out his fur as Alder and Birch hurried out to meet Quick Water.
“Is that for us?” Birch’s eyes were hopeful.
His sister, Alder, dipped her head to Quick Water. “If you tell us where you found it, we could go and catch our own.” The littermates were almost fully grown, lithe and fast and always eager to hunt.
Clear Sky felt proud of the cats they’d become, and was pleased that he’d decided to let Petal take them in.
“Don’t be squirrel-brained.” Quick Water dropped the mouse at their paws. “We can share this one and hunt together later.”
Alder and Birch blinked at her gratefully.
Clear Sky felt a prickle of worry as he watched them crouch close to Quick Water, taking turns to snatch a bite of the skinny prey. Prey was scarce. The sickness had killed much of it, and the forest was eerily silent, even for leaf-bare.
He shook the chill from his fur and hopped out of his nest. He’d wandered in the forest until dawn and had returned to rest, weary from the cold. The memory of the dream had followed him into sleep.
Fluttering Bird wanted the cats to join together. They must be like the Blazing Star and gather like petals around the heart of a flower. He was sure of it. It made sense. If the cold had reached this deep into the forest, it would be bitter on the high moor. And with prey so scarce, the moor cats would surely freeze or starve if they stayed in their hollow. They’d be safer here, sheltered by the trees, hunting together, as Fluttering Bird had ordered.
He must tell them.
Perhaps they already know? For the first time he wondered what the spirit cats had shared with the others. Hope flickered in his belly. Perhaps they were ready to unite.
He slid out from beneath the root, its gnarled bark scraping his spine, and padded across the frozen earth.
Pink Eyes was crouching in the shelter of the spreading holly, squinting against the wind. Tiny flecks of snow swirled in the air and clung to his fur. Pink Eyes’s tail twitched with annoyance and he drew his paws tighter under him.
Clear Sky nodded to him. “Where’s Blossom?” he asked.
The old tom had arrived at the border with the tortoiseshell-and-white she-cat when the moon was only a scratch of silver in the sky, not long after the battle with One Eye.
“Still asleep,” Pink Eyes answered, flicking his muzzle toward the holly bush. In the shadows beneath, Clear Sky could make out Blossom’s pelt. When she was awake, the young she-cat hardly stood still. She was skittish and full of energy.
When Clear Sky had first met her, she’d been leaping for a dead leaf as it fluttered toward the forest floor while Pink Eyes sat a few tail-lengths away, his thin white tail curled neatly over two dead mice. He’d stood when Clear Sky had approached and had spoken before Clear Sky had a chance to challenge them for loitering near his border. “May we join your group?”
There had been a time when Clear Sky would have driven the two strays from his border—especially Pink Eyes, whose sight was so poor he couldn’t see a bird in a tree—but these cats had respected his scent line and kept their hackles soft, and Clear Sky had learned that friends were better than enemies. So they’d joined the group, and Clear Sky was soon glad that they had. Pink Eyes’s weak eyesight had strengthened his other senses. The white tom could hear a mouse in the next glade and smell a rabbit through a patch of wild garlic.