“What a surprise!” he hissed. “SkyClan cats lurking on the border again. What’s wrong with your own territory?”
Poppycloud felt her hackles raise. “Nothing!” she retorted.
“We have every right to go anywhere inside our borders.”
“Which your apprentice isn’t,” the ThunderClan warrior growled.
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Mottlepaw pulled back from the clump of grass and stood with his head down, trembling.
“Mottlepaw, come over here,” Poppycloud ordered. The black-and-white apprentice shot toward her, swerving around the ThunderClan tom, who hissed as he went past.
“It was a mistake,” Poppycloud pointed out. “We weren’t trying to steal your prey.”
Ferns parted and another cat joined the brown warrior. She fixed her startlingly green gaze on Poppycloud. “Why are there always SkyClan cats snooping around here? Is your own Clan so bad that you want to join ours?”
“Never!” Poppycloud retorted. “We prefer not to chew through mouthfuls of fur when we’re eating our prey!”
The brown tom tipped his head to one side. “Oh, and feathers are so much tastier, are they?”
“Come on, Oatwhisker,” urged the she-cat. “We’re wasting our time. If these dumb cats want to spy on us, they won’t learn much from the bushes around here. I don’t think I’ve even been to this part of the territory before.”
Oatwhisker narrowed his eyes at Poppycloud. “Don’t think this is over. I’m going to tell Lionstar I caught SkyClan cats hanging around the border yet again, and I wouldn’t want to be in your pelts if he thinks you’re planning an attack.”
He stalked out of the clearing with his green-eyed Clanmate.
As soon as they had vanished, Poppycloud turned to Mottlepaw.
“How many times do I have to tell you? You can’t go into another Clan’s territory!”
Mottlepaw sniffed. “I wasn’t doing anything wrong,” he complained. “Anyway, it’s so hard to tell where our territory turns into ThunderClan’s. It’s not like there’s a river in the way!”
Poppycloud opened her jaws to taste the air. Mottlepaw was right: The scents of the different Clans were very faint here, so she couldn’t blame her apprentice for straying too far. “Come on,” she meowed. “We’d better go and tell Rowanstar what happened, in case ThunderClan makes a fuss.”
“He won’t be angry with me, will he?” Mottlepaw whimpered.
“I already had to put mouse bile on the elders’ ticks after I scared Morningmist’s kits with my tiger roar.”
“I’ll tell him it was an honest mistake,” Poppycloud promised.
“Just try not to get into any more trouble on the way back.”
“Tell Rowanstar that we wish to speak with him.”
A buzz of curiosity ran through the camp.
“Who’s that?”
“ThunderClan cats!”
“What do they want?”
“Have they come to get me?”
Poppycloud looked down at Mottlepaw, who was staring at her with his blue eyes stretched wide. “I’m sure they haven’t come to get you,” she meowed. “But I’m glad we told Rowanstar what happened on the border.”
Oddfoot, a brown tabby who was born with one of his paws twisted inward, led the visitors into the clearing. A massive tom with long ginger hair padded beside him, flanked by the green-eyed gray tabby Poppycloud had met on the border and a dark brown tom who looked as if he expected to be jumped on at any moment. Poppycloud drew in her breath sharply: This must be serious if Lionstar had come himself.
Nightmask, the SkyClan deputy, met them in the center of the camp. “Lionstar, Greeneyes,” he greeted them with a nod of his head.
Poppycloud stared at the gray tabby with new interest; she hadn’t realized this was the recently appointed ThunderClan deputy.
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“You are, of course, welcome to speak with Rowanstar. Will he know what this is about?”
Greeneyes curled her lip. “It’s about your warriors spying on us!” she hissed.
Lionstar flicked his tail, warning her to stay quiet. “I am concerned that there are always SkyClan cats on the edge of our territory, and I want to know what they’re doing there.”
“I think you’ll find they’re on the edge of our territory,” came a deep voice. Rowanstar, his black-and-brown coat gleaming in the weak sunlight, padded out of his den. “So there shouldn’t be any problem.”
“But there’s nothing there!” Lionstar argued. “Nothing but the start of ThunderClan’s territory.”
Rowanstar glanced at Poppycloud. “From what I hear, it’s not always easy to tell where your territory begins. Perhaps if you visited your border more often, your scent would be clearer.”
Lionstar’s hackles raised, swelling him to nearly twice his size.
Mottlepaw shrank behind Poppycloud with a whimper.
“ThunderClan should not have to patrol its boundaries to make sure SkyClan isn’t trespassing!” Lionstar growled.
“If you patrolled more often, there would be less danger of us crossing the border!” Rowanstar flashed back.
Greeneyes stepped forward. “The warrior code says nothing about it being a Clan’s responsibility to keep cats out! It should be obvious that other Clans aren’t allowed across the border.”
“Well, maybe the code should say something!”
All eyes turned on Poppycloud. She snapped her mouth shut, feeling as if her pelt were on fire. Did I real y just say that in front of the leaders of two Clans?
“Yay! Go, Poppycloud!” Mottlepaw cheered behind her.
Poppycloud silenced him with a glare.
Rowanstar put his head to one side. “That’s an interesting theory, Poppycloud. Go on.”
Poppycloud felt a small nose nudge her from behind.
She shot a fierce glance at her apprentice before padding into the clearing. Every cat watched her. Greeneyes looked scornful; this made Poppycloud square her shoulders and tilt her chin defiantly toward the ThunderClan deputy.
“I… I just think all the quarreling about SkyClan being on the ThunderClan border would be cleared up if every Clan did the same as Rowanstar wants us to do: have regular patrols around the entire territory. That way, the scents of each Clan would be left behind more frequently, not just in the places where the cats hunt most often, and boundaries would be more clearly marked.
Any cats that crossed over the border could be punished, because it wouldn’t be a mistake.”
Rowanstar nodded. “And if both ThunderClan and SkyClan patrols regularly went along our shared border, then neither Clan could be accused of spying or trying to trespass.” He flicked his tail at Poppycloud. “That’s a great idea.”
Lionstar hissed. “So you think the warrior code should tell us how to defend our territories, do you? What kind of leader would be mouse-brained enough to need instructions like that?”
“The kind of leader who thinks that a patrol walking along their own boundaries is planning an attack,” Rowanstar meowed smoothly.
“Well, I think it’s a ridiculous idea,” sniffed Greeneyes. “The 105
Clans have lived in these territories for more moons than any cat can remember, and we’ve never needed the warrior code to tell us how to protect our borders. Clearly some cats are more mouse-brained than others.”
Slanting her eyes at Poppycloud, she turned away with a huff.
Lionstar started to turn and follow his deputy, but Rowanstar called out, “Wait!” When Lionstar faced him again, the SkyClan leader announced, “I shall put forward Poppycloud’s idea at the next Gathering. We should let the other leaders decide—not because I think any Clan cat needs to be reminded that their territories should be well defended, but because it will stop needless suspicion over border patrols.”