How will Sandstorm cross now?
As he looked across to the opposite bank a cold claw sank into his heart. Sandstorm was gone.
Chapter 12
“No!” Firestar yowled. “Sandstorm! Sandstorm, where are you?”
There was no reply. Firestar ran up and down the bank, yowling his mate’s name over and over. He couldn’t see any sign of her, no trace of ginger fur among the debris thrown up on the far bank.
He raced downriver, scrambling over rocks slick with water. Desperately he scanned the banks and the surging water, convinced that every scrap of tossing debris might be his beloved mate.
He had to stop at last, sides heaving, his paws scraped and bleeding. Standing on a boulder, he stared down at the black, gurgling water a tail-length below. If Sandstorm was dead, he would never, ever forgive himself.
You stupid excuse for a cat!
Bluestar’s face in the cloud had clearly been a warning, but he had ignored it. He had been so wrapped up in his quest for SkyClan that he had forgotten what he owed to Sandstorm.
Whatever had happened to her, if she was drowned or lying injured somewhere, it was his fault. He let out a whimper of grief. How could he have let Sandstorm believe that he would 1 4 5
rather have been with Spottedleaf? It was Sandstorm he loved, and he would do anything to live the time over again and send her across the tree trunk first.
Rain still fell, but more gently now, hissing into the river, and the thunder had rolled away into the distance. The gloom of day was fading to twilight. Firestar wanted to go on, but he knew he couldn’t search properly in the dark. He could easily miss Sandstorm if she was lying unconscious.
Every pawstep painful, he crept underneath the jutting boulder and curled up. Exhaustion surged over him like the black water of the river, dragging him into a cold, dreamless sleep.
Pale light reflected from the surface of the water and woke Firestar. He crawled into the open, shivering in the wind.
Clouds raced above his head, tearing away to show blue sky behind them, and the sun was already climbing toward sunhigh. The storm was over. His pelt was almost dry, the fur sticking together in clumps.
For a heartbeat Firestar drew in the clear air, gathering himself for the next stage of his journey. Then memory struck him like the blow from a badger’s paw. Sandstorm was gone.
All that mattered was to find his mate. He couldn’t go on without her; he had to retrace his pawsteps downstream.
Firestar stood on the edge of the river and looked across at the other bank, measuring the distance. His instincts told him to plunge in and swim, but he held back. The river was still full, and too fast-flowing for even a RiverClan cat to cross safely. With a sigh, he began to pad along the bank.
Soon more boulders reared up in front of him, too steep for Firestar to climb. He was forced away from the edge of the river. Climbing a steep bank, he picked his way through long grass at the edge of a field. The stems were weighted down by raindrops, soaking his pelt afresh as he brushed through them. With every pawstep he peered down at the river through the thin line of trees, scanning for any sign of a familiar ginger pelt.
The clouds began to clear away and the sun shone more strongly, soaking into Firestar’s drenched fur. The scent of prey drifted to him from the field, but he ignored it. As he limped onward he spotted another tree fallen slantwise across the river, but several tail-lengths separated its upper branches from the far bank, and Firestar didn’t dare risk using it to cross. He picked up his pace when he spotted a narrow wooden Twoleg bridge, only to halt in frustration as he realized that the middle section was broken away, leaving a gap too wide to leap.
The sun was already going down when he came to another bridge. His paws itched to cross, but Twolegs blocked his path: two adults and a kit. A dog padded beside them.
Firestar’s neck fur bristled and he crouched down in the grass; then he noticed that the dog was old and plump, and tethered to the Twoleg kit by some sort of tendril. That meant it was much less of a risk, as long as he ran fast enough.
Taking a deep breath, Firestar streaked down the bank and across the bridge, darting between the legs of the Twolegs.
He heard a bark of surprise from the dog. One of the Twolegs called out, but Firestar didn’t look back. He skidded off the far end of the bridge and plunged into the shelter of the bushes, his heart thudding.
When he dared to peer out, he saw the Twolegs staring after him, the old dog straining on its tendril, but after a moment they carried on, turning downstream on the far bank. Firestar let out a sigh of relief. Once they were out of sight he emerged and set out down the path.
The ground beneath his paws was covered in sticky mud, with debris scattered over it. The enormous wave must have washed right up to the bushes; Sandstorm couldn’t possibly have escaped it.
Firestar looked and looked for her, dreading the sight of lifeless ginger fur caught up in a branch or rammed against a boulder. The sun had already disappeared when he came to the abandoned Twoleg nest. In the twilight he padded up the path, hope flickering in his heart. Sandstorm had wanted to shelter here; if she had survived the wave she might have spent the night inside. But when he reached the door Firestar could pick up only a faint, stale trace of her scent, along with his own.
Unable to give up without a search, he slipped inside the nest. The dust rose under his paws, stinging his nose.
“Sandstorm?” he called.
There was no reply. Staggering with exhaustion, Firestar dragged himself up the uneven slope and explored the dens above, but there too, the only scent of Sandstorm was stale.
Grief and fear overwhelmed him; he curled up on the bare wooden floor and closed his eyes, but sleep was hard to come by. When unconsciousness overwhelmed him at last, his sleep was disturbed by broken memories of his life with his Twolegs, as if he had never left them to become a warrior, or known the joy of leading his Clan.
He woke shivering in the gray light of dawn. As he padded down the slope again, his heart lurched when he heard movement coming from the Twoleg kitchen. Without pausing to scent, he rushed through the opening. “Sandstorm?”
He was halted in his tracks by a fierce snarling. A fox raised its red-streaked muzzle from a meal of pigeon, its white teeth bared among the blood and feathers.
Firestar backed slowly away until he reached the outer door. Then he turned and fled, racing down the path with his belly fur brushing the ground and his tail streaming behind him. He was braced to feel the hot breath of the fox on his neck and its teeth meeting in his scruff, but he reached the riverbank safely. Panting, he looked back. The fox hadn’t pursued him.
Firestar trotted along the bank until he reached the other Twoleg nest where the monster had almost caught them.
Rounding a bend in the river, he halted in surprise. Where the Twolegs and their kits had been was a vast stretch of water, flat and silver-gray, spilling out from the river and pooling around the nest. A few Twoleg things bobbed forlornly in the middle of it. Close to the nest two or three Twolegs were standing, staring out at the water and wailing.
Keeping an eye on the Twolegs in case any of them spotted him, Firestar skirted the edge of the water, hoping to cross the Thunderpath behind the nest, as he and Sandstorm had done before. But the flood stretched much farther than he had thought. The Thunderpath itself was underwater.