“Well, you can’t.” Sandstorm rasped her tongue over his ear. “But don’t worry. You’ll find a way. You defeated Scourge, and you’ll defeat these rats.”
Firestar wished he shared her confidence. “At least
Spottedleaf told us what to do for Patchfoot.”
“True,” Sandstorm replied, “but it just goes to show how much we need a medicine cat.”
“Medicine cats are born, not made. And I’ve yet to see any SkyClan cat show any connection with their warrior ancestors. None of them heard anything when they went into the Whispering Cave.”
“We should have a cat who knows about herbs and can treat injuries, at least,” Sandstorm pointed out, with an impatient twitch of her tail. “I could teach one of them what I know. It would be a start.”
Firestar paused on the trail just below the entrance to the medicine cat’s den. “Sharpclaw wouldn’t do,” he mused. “He’s far too good a warrior. Clovertail has kits… What about Shortwhisker?”
Sandstorm shook her head. “He froze at the sight of blood when Patchfoot was injured.”
“Leafdapple, then?”
“Maybe…” Sandstorm mused. “She cares about weaker cats.”
“I know,” Firestar decided. “If Spottedleaf visits me, I can ask her.”
Sandstorm glanced away for a moment, then faced him again. “Yes, that’s a good idea,” she murmured.
Firestar curled up in the warriors’ den, his legs aching and his head spinning with tiredness. Three days had passed since he had organized the new schedule of patrols and training, and every cat had been on their paws from dawn to sunset.
That morning he had led a patrol to the Twoleg barn, then spent the rest of the day hunting. The moon was already climbing the sky before he had the chance to sleep, and he would have to wake later to take his turn watching on the Skyrock.
How long can we keep this up?
No sooner had Firestar closed his eyes than he found himself standing on the Skyrock. The moon floated high above his head and Silverpelt glittered across the sky. The night was silent except for the rushing of the river far below.
It’s not time for my watch yet! Firestar thought confusedly.
“Greetings.” A voice spoke behind him, and Firestar spun around to see a cat standing on the very edge of the Skyrock.
His thick gray fur was turned to silver by the moonlight, and his eyes shone like pale flames. Frosty starlight glimmered around his paws.
Something about the cat was familiar; Firestar’s first thought was that he was the SkyClan ancestor who had been haunting him. Then he caught his breath as he picked up a trace of familiar scent. “Skywatcher!”
The StarClan cat dipped his head. “It’s good to see you again, Firestar. Come on,” Skywatcher went on, proving that he had lost none of his sharp tongue. “Don’t stand there with your mouth open. We haven’t got all night.”
Firestar made an effort to pull himself together. “Why have you come?”
“SkyClan stands at a fork in the path,” Skywatcher replied.
“Danger is very near.”
“You mean the rats? They’re what destroyed the first
SkyClan, aren’t they? Why didn’t you tell me about them?”
Skywatcher sat down and steadily met Firestar’s gaze.
“What good would that have done? It would have been wrong to tell you if it made you give up. And how would it have helped you to know about SkyClan’s old enemies before they attacked? Now you have a Clan of strong warriors to stand against them.”
“But are they strong enough?” Firestar murmured.
“They must be ready to defend themselves,” Skywatcher replied. “Perhaps you should see these rats as the first challenge for the Clan to overcome. They will be even stronger afterward.”
Firestar nodded; the StarClan cat was right, and yet he wondered how the Clan could be stronger if all its warriors were dead. Thinking about death reminded him that so far the Clan had no way of making contact with their warrior ancestors.
“Can you tell me if SkyClan has a medicine cat yet?” he asked. “No Clan can survive long without one. What about Leafdapple?”
Skywatcher twitched his ears. “No, that is not Leafdapple’s destiny.”
“But we must have a medicine cat!”
“Even now your medicine cat’s paws are on the path that will lead her to you,” Skywatcher told him. “But you must look farther than the cats of SkyClan. There is a cat who dreams of her warrior ancestors, but she has not heard of the new Clan.”
“So I have to go and find her?” Firestar felt a tingle of excitement in his paws. “Where is she?”
But Skywatcher did not reply. Rising to his paws, he swept his tail around in a gesture of farewell and leaped from the edge of the rock into the sky. Firestar bit back a yowl of alarm; any living cat who tried that would have crashed down onto the rocks below. Instead Skywatcher’s body dissolved midleap, leaving behind a faint glittering dust that faded as Firestar watched. A heartbeat later he opened his eyes inside the warriors’ den, with Shortwhisker prodding him to wake up and go to the Skyrock.
“Sparrowpaw, you can be excused from battle training this morning,” Firestar announced. “I want you for a special mission.”
The young tabby tom’s eyes gleamed with excitement.
“What mission?”
“I have to go to the Twolegplace, and I need a cat who knows his way around.” Quickly he explained to Sparrowpaw what Skywatcher had told him in his dream.
Though Skywatcher hadn’t said that the new medicine cat lived among Twolegs, Firestar thought it was most likely.
Sharpclaw and Leafdapple hadn’t told him about any other rogues living in the forest, and he couldn’t look farther afield because that would mean leaving SkyClan to face the rats without him.
Not long ago they would have raced across the scrubland toward the Twolegplace; now they crept along, slinking from one patch of cover to the next, all their senses alert for any trace of rats. Firestar remembered how he had felt when the dog pack roamed the forest; it went against everything in the warrior code when cats were forced to behave like prey.
Clouds scudded across the sky, driven by a cold wind.
Leaves whirled in the air; the warmth of greenleaf would soon be no more than a memory. How would the Clan cope, Firestar wondered, through the harsh days of leaf-bare if they still had to guard against invasion from the rats?
“I hate this,” Sparrowpaw hissed as they crouched behind a gorse bush, spying out the next stage of their journey. “This waiting… it spooks me. Why don’t the rats just attack and get it over with? What are they waiting for?”
“I can’t be sure.” Firestar flexed his claws. “But I’d guess the rats know exactly how unsettled we are by waiting. They think they’re going to win whenever they attack, so they’ve nothing to lose by making us suffer.”
He didn’t add that the longer they waited, the more tired the Clan would become. Any cat could see that. The rats probably knew it too; they more were clever than any rats he had ever known. Firestar’s respect for them was growing every day, but that only made him hate them all the more. He would have led a patrol to fight the rats on their own territory, to attack them first and win the advantage of surprise, but for one thing: SkyClan didn’t have a medicine cat to heal their wounds or read the signs from StarClan.
“Let’s keep going,” he muttered.
As they paused in the shelter of the fence that surrounded the first Twoleg gardens, Sparrowpaw peered through a gap with a trace of sadness in his eyes. “That’s where Cherrypaw and I used to live,” he murmured. Defensively he added, “It’s not that I want to go back—”