“Come over!” he called to Sandstorm. “It’s wonderful!”
Sandstorm paused, her tail flicking. Then she seemed to make her mind up, gathered herself for the leap, and landed neatly beside Firestar. “Do you want us to get our necks broken?” she asked crossly.
“Just look!” Firestar swept his tail around. “A cat on watch here could see danger coming from anywhere.”
As Sandstorm scanned the gorge, her annoyed look vanished and the fur on her shoulders lay flat again. “You’re right,” she admitted. With a sudden change of mood she lay on her side and dabbed one paw playfully toward Firestar.
“It’s great up here. Why don’t we rest for a bit?”
Firestar settled down beside her on the sun-warmed stone, feeling the heat soak into his fur. Drowsily sharing tongues with his mate, he found his mind drifting back to Sunningrocks and the forest. There would be a Gathering soon, and the other Clans would discover that he had left.
What would they do then? Firestar felt his paws itching to carry him home, and had to remind himself that SkyClan still needed him. If he ever found them…
As the sun sank they hunted again and ate their prey before they returned to the warriors’ cave.
“Where are all the cats we scented?” Firestar wondered.
“We haven’t seen a single one, not since those rude kittypets first thing this morning.”
Sandstorm limped inside the cave and rasped her tongue over one paw. “I’m not surprised they don’t come here. This isn’t a good place for cats. Okay, there’s water and shelter, but prey is hard to come by. My paws are rubbed sore from scrambling up and down rocks all day. I can’t even find any dock to rub on them. And my claws are nearly wrenched out from hauling myself into caves.”
Firestar’s paws were sore too, with dust and grit stuck between the pads. He longed for the cool touch of lush grass and fern. For a couple of heartbeats he was tempted to climb down and soothe his paws by wading in the shallows at the edge of the river, but he would only have the long climb back afterward.
“SkyClan must have had paws made of stone if they lived here,” Sandstorm added as she finished cleaning one paw and started on another.
Firestar was about to agree with her when he remembered his dream of SkyClan beside the river, and how one cat had jumped up powerfully into a tree. That skill would come in useful here, too, to leap from boulders and into caves without scraping their pads and claws on the rough stone.
Suddenly curious, he padded to the cave entrance and examined the rocks outside. There were fresh scratch marks that he and Sandstorm had made, but hardly any old markings that might have been made by SkyClan. They would have jumped up and down the cliff face instead of having to scramble; even the leap to the flat rock would have been easy for them.
“It wouldn’t suit us here,” he meowed slowly to Sandstorm. “But it suited SkyClan. They knew how to jump. They already had the skills they needed. This was their home—but where are they now?”
Mist lay thick in the gorge and pressed against the cliff face when Firestar woke the next morning. He looked out cautiously, half expecting another stone to be hurled at him by the kittypets. But everything was silent, even the sound of the river deadened by the fog.
He roused Sandstorm, and they climbed to the cliff top to hunt. Prey scent was harder to pick up in the cool, damp air; Firestar prowled through the thickets without success. “Not even a mouse tail!” he muttered.
Frustrated, he emerged from the bushes and stared across the open ground toward Twolegplace, wondering what the chances would be of tracking down a rabbit. Then he heard a fluttering of wings; glancing to one side, he spotted a sparrow pecking at the ground underneath a bush.
As silently as he could he glided forward, one paw after another, gradually closing the distance between himself and his prey. He was readying himself to pounce when there was a commotion in the bushes and another cat burst out, front paws extended toward the sparrow.
The bird let out a loud alarm call and took off; the newcomer sprang up at once in a tremendous leap. His claws just grazed the sparrow’s wings as it fluttered to safety in a tree. A couple of feathers spiraled down. The cat, a dark brown rogue, stood panting, gazing up at the bird and lashing his tail.
Stiff-legged with fury, Firestar stalked up to him until the two cats were standing nose-to-nose. “That was my prey,” Firestar hissed. His frustration spilled over; he was hungry, he and Sandstorm had traveled all this way to find nothing but empty caves, and now this mangy, crow-food-eating tom had just frightened away his first chance of food that day.
“Rubbish,” the rogue retorted. “It was mine.”
Firestar let out a snort of disgust. “I would have caught it if you hadn’t come crashing through the bushes like that. Has no cat ever taught you to hunt?”
The rogue’s neck fur bristled and he peeled back his lips in a snarl. Firestar arched his back, hissing in anger and flashing out a paw with claws extended. For a heartbeat both cats stood frozen, glaring angrily at each other. Firestar braced himself to spring, but then the rogue flattened his ears and took a couple of paces back. Letting out a last snarl, he whipped around and slunk off down the line of bushes.
“Oh, great!” At the sound of Sandstorm’s voice Firestar turned to see her poking her head out from behind a bramble bush. “We’re supposed to be talking to the local cats, not scaring them off.”
Firestar’s fur grew hot with embarrassment. He glanced after the rogue, only to see the stocky brown shape bounding away along the edge of the gorge.
“Sorry,” he meowed. “I suppose I was a bit hasty. But it should have been obvious that the sparrow was mine.” He gave his chest fur a few quick licks to help himself calm down.
“I’m not used to sharing territory with cats who’ve never heard of the warrior code.”
“Well, you’ll have to get used to it.” Sandstorm emerged from the bush and padded over to him. “You can’t expect the cats here to live by the rules we have at home. I don’t suppose they even know about StarClan.”
Her words chilled Firestar. She was right; they couldn’t expect that StarClan had followed them so far. How could he carry out his mission without his warrior ancestors to protect and guide him? He couldn’t even be sure that SkyClan’s warrior ancestors walked these skies. He glanced up, wondering if the gray-and-white leader was watching him, but nothing broke the white blanket of fog.
Eventually they managed to catch a couple of mice, and headed back toward the cave. As they were weaving their way among the bushes, Firestar heard rustling ahead of them, and picked up a familiar kittypet scent. He flipped the end of his tail across Sandstorm’s mouth for silence, and slipped into the shelter of a gorse bush.
Before many heartbeats had gone by, two cats came into view, thrusting their way through the bushes from the direction of the cliff edge. One was a dark tabby tom, the other a smaller tortoiseshell. Firestar was certain that they were the same two cats who had taunted him the day before.
His paws itched to confront them, but he was too far away to surprise them and he didn’t want to make a fool of himself. Besides, if he did speak to them they would probably just deny they had done anything wrong. He let them go back toward the Twolegplace.
“What’s the matter?” Sandstorm batted irritably at his tail.
“I think they’re the cats who threw stones at me yesterday,” Firestar explained. “I need to talk to them, but I want to figure out what to say first.”
He headed for the cave, hoping to settle down and think, but as they scrambled down the steep, slippery trail to the entrance a foul smell rolled out to meet them.