They were colder than the snow, and their pelts crunched with frost.
“Can we go home yet?” Mosskit’s mew was little more than a whimper.
“You can sleep for a while here,” Bluefur told her.
Mosskit’s eyes were already closed. Mistykit snuggled closer.
“It’s been a good adventure.” Stonekit yawned and tucked his nose beneath his paw. “Did we win?”
Bluefur bent down and pressed her muzzle against the top of his head. “Oh, yes, little one. You won.”
Curling her tail around them, she pulled them tight into her belly. They were too tired to feed. She doubted she had any milk left for them anyway.
I will love you forever, my precious kits. Thank you for spending this moon with me.
She began to lap their pelts with her tongue, hoping to warm their cold, tired bodies.
Stonekit fidgeted. “Get off, I want to sleep.”
Mistykit was too tired to complain, her breath coming in tiny billows.
“Mosskit?”
The gray-and-white kit wasn’t fidgeting. Bluefur lapped her pelt again. “Mosskit!” Panic started to grip her. She stared at the little bundle of fur, looking for the rise of her flank, a puff of frozen breath.
The kit was perfectly still.
Bluefur licked harder. “Mosskit, please wake up. Please. There’s warmth and safety just on the other side of the river. Your father will look after you, I promise. Just a little bit farther, my tiny, brave daughter.”
Bluefur stopped licking and looking down at the small, snow-damp body. Wake up!
Bluefur. Snowfur’s breath stirred her whiskers. Bluefur smelled the scent of her sister drifting around the walls of the snow-hole. Let her go. I’ll look after her.
“No! Don’t take her, please.”
She’s already gone. There’s nothing you can do.
Bluefur gathered Mosskit between her paws. Mistykit and Stonekit stirred at her belly but didn’t wake. She wasn’t supposed to die!
It was her time. Snowfur’s mew echoed in her ears. I’ll take care of her in StarClan.
Snowfur’s scent faded and the icy tang of leaf-bare filled the snow-hole once more. Mosskit didn’t move.
“Bluefur?” Oakheart’s muzzle appeared at the mouth of the hole, sending warm fishy breath billowing inside.
Stonekit woke up and twitched his tail. “Yuck! What’s that stench?”
“Nothing, little one. Don’t be rude.” Bluefur forced herself to concentrate. She could still save two of her kits. “Go back to the rocks,” she told Oakheart. “I’ll bring them to you.”
“But I could carry one,” Oakheart offered.
Bluefur glared at him. “I haven’t told them who you are yet. Go back!”
As Oakheart disappeared, she roused Mistykit. “We have to get moving.”
“But I was just getting warm.”
“You’ll be even warmer soon,” Bluefur promised.
“Where are we going?” Stonekit demanded.
“I’m taking you to meet your father.”
Stonekit looked confused. “Do you mean Thrushpelt? Runningkit told me that’s who White-eye said was our father.”
“Your real father. Oakheart. From RiverClan.”
“From RiverClan?” Stonekit echoed in disbelief.
“Hurry up,” Bluefur ordered, nudging them out into the snow.
Mistykit glanced back into the hole. “What about Mosskit?”
“I’ll come back for her.”
“But you said we were ThunderClan,” Stonekit wailed. “How can we be RiverClan as well?”
Bluefur didn’t answer. She let the kits stumble along underneath her belly, sheltered from the snow that had started to fall. She glanced back, as if Mosskit might be struggling after them, wailing at them to let her catch up. To her horror, the snow-hole was starting to fill up. No! I might lose her! She looked around wildly for somewhere to leave Stonekit and Mistykit while she went back to rescue their sister. Farther along the riverbank, two shapes were padding steadily away. Had Oakheart brought another cat with him? No—these cats were unhindered by the snow, gliding over the surface. Behind them, the snow was white and unmarked. These cats left no paw prints behind. One was full-grown, with a thick pelt of white fur that made her almost invisible. The other was patched with gray, and barely as high as her companion’s belly. The kit was looking up eagerly at Snowfur as they walked, as if she was telling her something exciting.
Good-bye, Mosskit. Snowfur will look after you now.
“Ow!” Beneath Bluefur, Stonekit crashed forward onto his nose. “This ground is hard!” he yowled.
They had reached the edge of Sunningrocks. Paw steps crunched toward them.
“Are they okay?” Oakheart asked quietly.
Bluefur nodded without looking up at him. His scent wreathed around her, warm and comforting. For a fleeting moment Bluefur longed to go with him. She wanted to walk the rest of her days at Oakheart’s side. Never have to leave him or her kits.
But she couldn’t.
She had to save her Clan.
The kits were staring up at the stranger with their heads on one side.
“This is Stonekit,” Bluefur trembled as she touched the light gray kit with her nose. “And this is Mistykit.” Her throat grew tight. She began to back away, her eyes blurring. I can’t say good-bye to them! “Please take care of them.”
“Where’s the other one?” Oakheart called.
“Dead.” Bluefur stumbled but didn’t look around, not wanting to take her eyes from her kits.
“Bluefur, come back!”
“Where are you going?”
“Are you coming back to get us?”
Unable to bear their desperate cries, she turned and fled into the trees.
She stopped by the clump of ferns. The snow-hole had vanished, but Bluefur dug down, ignoring the pain in her frozen paws, until she reached the tiny body. She carefully lifted Mosskit out—she didn’t even smell like the nursery anymore—and kept digging. There was no way Bluefur was leaving her daughter for foxes when the snow thawed. The ground ripped at her claws and rubbed her pads raw but she kept scraping the frozen earth until the hole was deep enough to protect her kit. Numb, she laid Mosskit’s body in the hole and covered it over.
She limped back to camp on throbbing, stumbling paws. There was one more thing she had to do. One more lie to tell my Clanmates. She slipped in through the dirtplace tunnel and quietly clawed a fox-sized hole in the back of the nursery.
Then she squeezed through the den entrance, checked that White-eye, Mousekit, and Runningkit were asleep, climbed into her nest, and deliberately, loudly called an alarm to her Clan.
“My kits! My kits are gone!”
Chapter 42
Adderfang spoke gently. “Bluefur, would you like to join a hunting patrol today?”
Bluefur gazed at him, trying to focus.
A moon had passed since she’d left her kits with Oakheart. The nursery walls had been fortified with extra brambles. Two warriors sat guard through each freezing night to make sure that no fox or badger would ever steal into the nursery again. The Clan had believed Bluefur’s story—that she’d awoken to find her kits gone. Every cat believed that they had been stolen by an animal that had clawed a hole in the back of the nursery, driven by starvation to venture into the camp for the first time.
They’d searched the forest for days, not knowing where to look, the scent trail killed by freezing snow. Bluefur had scoured the woods with her Clanmates, numb with guilt, reminding herself over and over that she’d done it for her Clan. Meanwhile hunger and sorrow gripped the Clan. They spoke in low voices and huddled in knots, eyeing Bluefur with pity that stabbed her like thorns. She was sick of telling lies. She hardly noticed how empty the fresh-kill pile was these days. She was too miserable to eat, wishing only to hide in sleep. She felt as though the shard of ice piercing her heart would never melt.