The two cats squeezed under one of the thornbushes and scrabbled among the dead leaves to make comfortable nests while they waited. Fireheart had caught a mouse on the way and brought it as a gift for Graypool. He dropped it where the leaves were driest, trying to forget his own hunger, and settled down with his paws tucked under him. He knew he was putting himself and his friends in danger with this meeting, not to mention the fact that he was breaking the warrior code and lying to his Clan—yet he believed that this was all for the sake of his Clan. Fireheart only wished he could be sure that the path he had chosen was the right one.
The weak leaf-bare sunlight glittered on the snow in the hollow. Sunhigh had come and gone, and Fireheart was beginning to think the other cats weren’t coming when he caught a RiverClan scent and heard a thin, elderly voice raised in complaint from the direction of the river.
“This is too far for my old bones. I’m going to freeze to death.”
“Nonsense, Graypool, it’s a beautiful day.” That was Silverstream. “The exercise will do you good.”
Fireheart heard a snort of contempt in response. Three cats came into view, picking their way down the side of the hollow. Two of them were Silverstream and Mistyfoot. The third was an elder he had never seen before, a skinny she-cat with patchy fur and a scarred muzzle turning white with age.
Halfway down the hollow she paused, stiffening as she sniffed the air. “There are ThunderClan cats here!” she hissed.
Fireheart saw Silverstream and Mistyfoot exchange a worried glance. “Yes, I know,” Mistyfoot soothed the elderly she-cat. “It’s all right.”
Graypool gave her a suspicious look. “What do you mean, all right? What are they doing here?”
“They just want to talk to you,” Mistyfoot said gently. “Trust me.”
For a heartbeat Fireheart was afraid the elder would turn back, yowling, to raise the alarm, but to his relief Graypool’s curiosity was too much for her. She padded after Mistyfoot, shaking her paws with disgust as they sank into the soft snow.
“Graystripe?” Silverstream mewed warily.
Graystripe stuck his head out of the bush. “We’re here.”
The three RiverClan cats pushed their way into the prickly shelter. Graypool tensed as she came face to face with Fireheart and Graystripe, and her yellow eyes flared with hostility.
“This is Fireheart, and this is Graystripe,” meowed Silverstream. “They—”
“Two of them,” Graypool interrupted. “There had better be a good explanation for this.”
“There is,” Mistyfoot assured her. “They’re decent cats—for ThunderClan, anyway. Give them a chance to explain.”
Both she and Silverstream looked expectantly at Fireheart.
“We need to talk to you,” Fireheart began, feeling his whiskers twitch nervously. He pushed the piece of fresh-kill toward her with one paw. “Here, I brought you this.”
Graypool eyed the mouse. “Well, at least you remember your manners, ThunderClan or not.” She crouched down and began to crunch the fresh-kill, showing teeth broken with age. “Stringy, but it’ll do,” she rasped, gulping.
While she was still eating, Fireheart tried to find the right words for what he needed to say. “I want to ask you about something Oakheart said before he died,” he ventured.
Graypool’s ears twitched.
“I heard what happened in the battle at the Sunningrocks,” Fireheart continued. “Before he died, Oakheart told one of our warriors that no ThunderClan cat should ever harm Stonefur. Do you know what he might have meant?”
Graypool did not reply until she had swallowed the last morsel of mouse and swiped a remarkably pink tongue around her muzzle. Then she sat up and curled her tail around her paws. She fixed a thoughtful gaze on Fireheart for several long moments, until he felt that she could see everything that was in his mind.
“I think you should go,” she mewed at last to the two young RiverClan cats. “Go on, out. You too,” she added to Graystripe. “I’ll talk to Fireheart alone. I can see he’s the one who needs to know.”
Fireheart bit back a protest. If he insisted that Graystripe should stay, the RiverClan elder might refuse to talk at all. He looked at his friend and saw his own puzzled expression reflected in Graystripe’s yellow eyes. What did Graypool have to say that she didn’t want her own Clan to hear? Fireheart shivered, and not from the cold. Some instinct told him there was a secret here, dark as the shadow of a crow’s wing. But if it was a RiverClan secret, he couldn’t imagine what it could have to do with ThunderClan.
From the glances they exchanged, Silverstream and Mistyfoot were just as confused, but they started to back out from the bush without protest.
“We’ll wait for you near the Twoleg bridge,” Silverstream mewed.
“There’s no need,” Graypool hissed impatiently. “I may be old, but I’m not helpless. I’ll find my own way back.”
Silverstream shrugged and the two RiverClan cats withdrew, with Graystripe following them.
Graypool sat in silence until the scents of the cats who had left began to fade. “Now,” she began, “Mistyfoot has told you that I’m her mother, and Stonefur’s?”
“Yes.” Fireheart’s initial nervousness was ebbing away, to be replaced with respect for this ancient enemy queen, as he sensed the wisdom beneath her apparent short temper.
“Well,” growled the old cat, “I’m not.” As Fireheart opened his mouth to speak, she went on. “I brought the pair of them up as kits, but I didn’t give birth to them. Oakheart brought them to me in the middle of leaf-bare, when they were just a few days old.”
“But where did Oakheart get the kits?” Fireheart blurted out.
Graypool’s eyes narrowed. “He told me he found them in the forest, as if they’d been abandoned by rogue cats or Twolegs,” she meowed. “But I’m not stupid, and my nose has always worked just fine. The kits smelled of the forest all right, but there was another scent underneath. The scent of ThunderClan.”
Chapter 6
“What?” Fireheart was so astonished he could hardly speak. “Are you saying that Mistyfoot and Stonefur came from ThunderClan?”
“Yes.” Graypool gave her chest fur a couple of licks. “That’s exactly what I’m telling you.”
Fireheart was stunned. “Did Oakheart steal them?” he asked.
Graypool’s fur bristled, and she drew her lips back in a snarl. “Oakheart was a noble warrior. He would never stoop to stealing kits!”
“I’m sorry.” Alarmed, Fireheart crouched and flattened his ears. “I didn’t mean…It’s just so hard to believe!”
Graypool sniffed, and her fur gradually lay flat again. Fireheart was still struggling with what she had just told him. If Oakheart hadn’t stolen the kits, perhaps rogue cats had taken them from the ThunderClan camp—but why? And why abandon them so quickly, when the scent of their Clan was still on their fur?
“Then…if they were ThunderClan kits, why did you look after them?” he stammered. What Clan would willingly take in enemy kits, and in a season when prey was already scarce?
Graypool shrugged. “Because Oakheart asked me to. He may not have been deputy back then, but he was a fine young warrior. I’d recently given birth to kits of my own, but all except one died in the bitter cold. I had plenty of milk to spare, and the poor little scraps would never have lived to see the sunrise if some cat hadn’t cared for them. Their ThunderClan scent soon faded,” she went on. “And even if Oakheart hadn’t told the truth about where they came from, I respected him enough not to ask any more questions. Thanks to Oakheart, and to me, they grew into strong kits, and now they’re good warriors—a credit to their Clan.”