Sandstorm nodded. “And medicine cats use it to wash wounds.”
That was one more mystery about the lost Clan, Firestar mused, as he and his mate padded on. Even more than before, he couldn’t wait for the night of the full moon, when Moony might be able to give them some answers.
Farther downstream the river curved around a jutting spur of rock. Firestar clawed his way up it, listening to Sandstorm spitting in annoyance as she scrambled after him. “I’m wearing the skin off my pads,” she complained.
From the top of the rock Firestar could see the next stretch of water. The gorge had grown wider; there was a flat, pebbly foreshore that gave way to trees and bushes growing between the river and the cliff face.
“This looks like a better place for prey,” he meowed. “I couldn’t imagine how SkyClan managed to feed themselves just from—”
“Get down!” Sandstorm interrupted, slapping him across the shoulders with her tail.
Firestar flattened himself against the rock. “What is it?” he whispered.
Sandstorm jerked her head toward the undergrowth at the edge of the river. Firestar saw the branches shaking; then a massive tomcat emerged, his fur a darker shade of ginger than Firestar’s flame-colored pelt. He carried a piece of fresh-kill in his jaws.
“Sorry,” Sandstorm muttered. “I thought it might have been a fox.”
“No, just another rogue.” Firestar rose to his paws. “Maybe we should go down and talk to him.”
But the ginger tom was heading rapidly downstream, slipping along in the gap between the bushes and the cliff.
Firestar wasn’t sure if he had even spotted them. Soon he was out of sight.
“We’d never catch him,” Sandstorm meowed. “And if we did, he’d probably think we were trying to steal his prey. The cats around here aren’t exactly desperate to make friends.”
She was right, Firestar thought, frustrated, gazing at the spot where the ginger tom had vanished. He slid down the rock and stalked up to the bushes, tasting the air for prey. The scents were richer here than at the top of the gorge; he could distinguish mouse, vole, and squirrel, but the strongest were all from birds.
He pricked his ears at a rustling sound close by, and turned his head to see a blackbird pecking among the debris at the edge of the bushes. He dropped into the hunter’s crouch, but as soon as he began to creep forward the blackbird cocked its head, its tiny bright eye fixed on him. Firestar launched himself at it, paws extended, but the blackbird shot up, calling out in alarm, and winged away over his head.
Firestar hissed, remembering the sparrow he’d lost a few days before when the brown rogue had interrupted him.
Catching birds was always harder than catching prey on the ground. But here there wasn’t much choice, unless he wanted to go hungry.
A few tail-lengths along the riverbank a thrush was tugging a worm out of a damp patch of earth. Sandstorm was already prowling toward it. Intent on its own prey, the thrush never noticed her; Sandstorm pounced, and her claws met in its neck.
Firestar bounded up to her. “Well done! I lost mine,” he added ruefully.
“Never mind, we can share.” Sandstorm patted the thrush toward him. “There’s plenty of prey here.”
“Still no moss, though,” Firestar mewed, looking at the bare rocks beside the river.
“Then SkyClan must have managed some other way,” Sandstorm pointed out sensibly.
Firestar tried to imagine the empty riverbanks alive with cats, patrolling, hunting, training apprentices, living by the warrior code as cats in the forest had done for uncountable seasons. If Moony really was the last SkyClan warrior, what could any cat do to rebuild the lost Clan?
“Full moon tonight.” Firestar emerged from the warriors’ cave; the dawn chill reminded him that greenleaf was drawing to an end. There was just enough light to make out the cliff at the opposite side of the river. A stiff breeze flattened his fur against his sides. “We’ve got to be ready to meet Moony.”
Sandstorm, still curled in her nest, answered him with a yawn. “He won’t be here until moonhigh. Go back to sleep.”
Her green eyes were no more than slits; as Firestar watched they closed completely, and she wrapped her tail tip over her nose.
The nest looked tempting, but Firestar felt too restless to lie down again. His paws itched to be doing something. “I’ll go and find us some fresh-kill,” he meowed.
Sandstorm’s ears twitched to show that she had heard.
Luck was with Firestar; when he scrambled up to the cliff top he found himself nose-to-nose with a mouse and killed it before it had the chance to run. Scratching earth over it, he prowled through the bushes, but there was no other prey about.
By the time he emerged on the other side of the thicket the sun was edging above the top of the Twolegplace, flooding the stretch of scrubland with warm light and glittering on monsters racing past the Twoleg nests in the distance.
Firestar hadn’t ventured far in that direction before. Without consciously deciding, he found that his paws were carrying him toward the Twolegplace. He wasn’t trying to hunt anymore, just scouting this unfamiliar territory.
Darting into the shelter of a gorse bush for cover, he was met by a furious hiss and a paw swiped past his nose, the claws missing him by less than a mouse-length. Firestar reared back in astonishment. A tabby she-cat crouched in front of him, her cream-and-brown neck fur bristling and her amber eyes glaring. Her scent told Firestar she was a rogue.
“Keep your paws off me!” she spat.
“I’m sorry.” Firestar dipped his head. “I didn’t see you there.”
The she-cat relaxed slightly, but her look was still unfriendly. “Stupid furball. Just be a bit more careful next time.” She turned and began to stalk off, her tail in the air.
“Hang on.” Firestar bounded forward and caught up with her. “I want to talk to you. I need to know—”
“I don’t want to talk to you,” the she-cat interrupted, sounding just like Moony. “Go away and leave me alone.” To show she meant it, she picked up speed until she was racing across the scrubby ground toward the Twoleg nests.
Firestar stood looking after her, tail lashing in frustration.
Why was every cat in this place so hostile? None of them seemed to care about one another. There wasn’t a trace of the warrior code left. Apart from the two kittypets, all the cats he had seen were rogues through and through.
A heavy stone seemed to settle in his heart. Ever since he and Sandstorm found the caves, he had clung to the hope of finding a few SkyClan cats living together, troubled and defiant, but still stubbornly surviving and clinging to the warrior code. Now he realized he was wrong. SkyClan had gone, lost seasons before he ever came to this place.
Why did you send me here? he wailed silently, not knowing if he was speaking to StarClan or to the SkyClan cat who had haunted his pawsteps for so long.
There was no reply.
Turning back toward the gorge, Firestar spotted the two kittypets, Boris and Cherry, sitting side by side on a Twoleg fence. He thought they were watching him. He couldn’t see any point in going to speak to them; they wouldn’t be pleased to see him after the encounter on the cliff top. He just hoped that they had learned their lesson, and would stay away from Moony in the future.
Moony was their last hope of discovering anything about the lost Clan. He and Sandstorm would do their best to persuade him to tell them what he knew that night. Then, once they found out what had happened to SkyClan, they could go home. No cat could do more; SkyClan were lost forever.
Firestar leaped across the cleft and landed on the jutting rock. During the day the last wisps of cloud had disappeared and now Silverpelt blazed down from a clear sky and glittered on the river far below. The moon, still low in the sky, covered everything with a silver sheen and cast Firestar’s shadow huge behind him.