No, just this gaping wound in my belly, Slate thought. Aloud, she replied, “No, I don’t have the sickness. My name is Slate,” she added.
The brown she-cat whisked her tail. “I’m Wind Runner.”
“And the kits?” Slate asked.
Wind Runner eyed her warily. “You don’t need to know their names.”
Lovely, Slate thought. What a delightful cat to share my dying moments with. She cast a disdainful look toward Wind Runner. The brown she-cat was ignoring Slate now, instead clawing up moss. When she had a mouthful, she trotted off with it in her jaws. A few heartbeats later she returned, with the moss dripping wet.
“Here,” she growled, dumping the moss beside Slate’s head. “Drink.”
Slate stretched out her tongue and lapped at the moss. The water was cool and fresh, and Slate thought she had never tasted anything so delicious in her entire life.
While she was drinking, Wind Runner scraped together a bundle of grass, leaves, and more moss, and tucked it under Slate’s head to prop her up.
“What happened?” she asked brusquely.
Slate was bewildered by the contrast between Wind Runner’s kind actions and the roughness of her speech. “It was a fox,” she replied at last. “It attacked me and my brother, Cricket.” Her voice shook as she added, “Cricket was killed.”
Wind Runner looked stricken at the news. “I’ve noticed that fox lurking around the edges of our camp,” she meowed. She turned toward her kits, who were play wrestling a little way away on the moor, and beckoned them with her tail. “Come closer!” she yowled.
The kits broke apart and scrambled to their paws. “You told us to get away from that sick cat,” the white she-kit reminded her mother.
Wind Runner twitched her tail-tip in exasperation. “Come a little closer, then, but not too close,” she meowed. “Do you have kits?” she asked, turning back to Slate as the kits scampered up.
“I’ve never seemed to have the time,” Slate replied. She hadn’t met a tom she wanted to have kits with, either, but she didn’t feel like telling Wind Runner that.
She expected Wind Runner to say something comforting about how Slate would have kits someday, but instead the brown she-cat just snorted.
“You’re lucky in a way,” she continued after a moment. “Kits are exhausting. I haven’t slept a single night through since they were born.”
“They must be very needy, then,” Slate mewed.
Wind Runner shook her head, her hard yellow gaze growing soft and affectionate. “No, it’s my problem,” she admitted. “I love them too much.”
She’s not unkind at all, Slate thought, rapidly revising her opinion of the she-cat. Just tough on the outside—but there’s more to her than meets the eye.
Before she could say any more, the gray tabby tom reappeared, followed by a long-furred black tom with white on his ears, chest, and paws. He was carrying a bundle of leaves in his jaws.
“Oh, you’ve kept her awake,” the gray tom meowed, bounding up to Wind Runner and pressing his muzzle to her shoulder. “That’s great.” Turning back to Slate, he added, “I’m Gorse Fur. Wind Runner’s my mate. And this”—he waved his tail at the long-furred tom—“is Cloud Spots. He knows a lot about herbs and treating wounds, and he’s come to help you.”
Slate closed her eyes as Cloud Spots padded up and began to examine her. She was vaguely aware of him sniffing at her wound and touching her belly with gentle paws, but she kept drifting away into unconsciousness. This time, though, the darkness wasn’t as alluring. Perhaps she wasn’t going to join her brother in death yet after all.
Finally Slate came back to full consciousness to hear Wind Runner, Gorse Fur, and Cloud Spots talking together, the sharp tones of an argument in their voices. She opened her eyes and turned her head toward them, struggling to make out what they were saying.
“What did you expect?” Cloud Spots was asking Wind Runner. “That you’d just leave her lying here in the grass? She’s lost a lot of blood. I’ve patched her wound with cobweb and put on a poultice of chervil to fight infection, but she’s very weak. She needs watching.”
“Then you should take her back to the hollow,” Wind Runner snapped.
The hollow? What does she mean? Slate wondered, confused.
“I can’t move her that far,” Cloud Spots retorted. “Her wound would break open again. Wind Runner, your camp is just the other side of that gorse thicket.”
Gorse Fur looked at his mate. “We could take her in,” he suggested. “Just for a moon or so.”
The fur on Wind Runner’s shoulders bristled with annoyance. “We left the hollow to get away from other cats,” she pointed out. “To protect our kits. And now you want to take in some flea-bitten rogue?”
“Excuse me!” Slate struggled to sit up, all her early dislike of Wind Runner rushing back. “I don’t want to come to your camp. I’ve no interest in joining a group like yours.”
“Why not?” Gorse Fur asked, his ears pricking up curiously.
“Because all you do is fight,” Slate retorted, repeating what Cricket had said so often. “And you take prey from the cats who were born here.”
“We were born here, thank you very much,” Wind Runner put in.
Cloud Spots waved his tail, gesturing for silence. “Then what do you want to do?” he asked Slate.
“Do you have kin who could look after you?”
An overpowering pang of grief for Cricket shook Slate from her ears to her tail-tip, but she did her best to hide it. She shook her head. “I’ll look after myself,” she responded, putting out all her strength to draw herself to her paws.
She tried to stalk off casually, but after a single step she felt as if her legs had turned to water. She collapsed, her head spinning. “Oh…” she murmured.
Gorse Fur bounded to her side. “We’ll take her in,” he meowed with a pointed look at Wind Runner. “We have to. Remember, she’s some cat’s kit.”
Slate looked up at Wind Runner, who let out an annoyed growl, then shrugged in resignation. “All right,” she told Slate. “But you cannot stay too long. We’re not looking for more cats.”
Slate glared at her. “I’m not looking to become one of your cats.”
Cloud Spots’s whiskers twitched in amusement. “Very well,” he meowed. “Something tells me you two will have lots to talk about.”
Chapter Two
Slate crouched in a patch of sunlight, her paws tucked under her and her eyes slitted as she basked in the warmth. A half moon had passed since her fight with the fox, and the wound in her belly was healing well. But she didn’t think that the wound in her heart, from the loss of Cricket, would ever heal. She still missed her brother every day.
A patter of small paws roused Slate and she opened her eyes to see the white she-kit, Moth Flight, scampering up to her. The little kit cast an approving glance over the rabbit bones scattered beside
Slate’s nest.
“You’re eating better,” she mewed.
“Yes,” Slate agreed. “I’m feeling much stronger now.”
Moth Flight’s whiskers drooped sadly at her words. “That means you’ll have to leave soon. My mother says you can only stay in our camp until you’re strong again.”
“I know,” Slate responded.
Moth Flight lifted her voice in a wail. “But I’ll miss you so much!”