Half Moon took a pace toward Jaypaw, who found himself taking a step back. We can’t do this! I’m a medicine cat! he wanted to wail aloud. I don’t belong here. You think I’m some other cat!
To his relief, whatever Half Moon wanted to say was interrupted by a big black tom who leaped up to the top of the ridge and halted beside Stone Song. “What’s going on?” he demanded.
Stone Song turned toward him, blinking as if he had to drag himself back from some distant place. “Oh, it’s you, Dark
Whiskers. Jay’s Wing has had a dream about stone hills and falling water, where there are huge birds to be plucked from the sky, and where Twolegs cannot go. It sounds like a place where we could live safely, with prey and shelter and nothing to harm us.”
Dark Whiskers’s ears flicked up. “Do you believe him?”
Stone Song nodded.
“Then we must go!” Dark Whiskers exclaimed.
Rising to his paws, Stone Song turned to Jaypaw. “If we leave, will you guide us to this place? Will your dreams show you the way?”
Jaypaw was bewildered by how quickly everything was happening. How long had they been planning to move? Surely they couldn’t leave just like that? What about Furled Bracken?
A decision like this was for their leader to make.
Before he could reply, a small, dusty-brown she-cat appeared on the ridge, padding in Dark Whiskers’s paw steps.
“You aren’t talking about leaving again, are you?” she spat.
“But this is our home! Why can’t you understand that?”
Stone Song and Dark Whiskers exchanged a glance. “Shy
Fawn, it isn’t our home if we can’t live here,” Stone Song mewed quietly.
Shy Fawn’s tail lashed once. “You seem to have forgotten it’s not your decision to make. You know what has to happen: the casting of stones.”
“See, stones again!” Stone Song meowed. “We are linked always to stones; why shouldn’t we live among them, and feed from the sky?”
Shy Fawn glared at him. “I came to tell you Furled Bracken wants to have a meeting.”
“Then we can cast the stones now,” Dark Whiskers announced.
With an annoyed hiss, Shy Fawn headed down the slope toward the trees. Stone Song and Dark Whiskers followed; Jaypaw and Half Moon picked up their pieces of blackbird and brought up the rear.
Jaypaw could feel his companion’s nervousness and wasn’t surprised when she paused halfway down the slope and dropped her prey. “It’s really going to happen!” she exclaimed.
“We’re going to cast the stones to decide whether to leave our home!”
Confusion eddied through Jaypaw. It sounded as if the cats used omens from stones to make their decisions. There was a moonfull of questions he wanted to ask, but he knew enough by now to keep his jaws shut and his ears open.
Is this happening because of me? How can I influence what happened all those seasons ago? He couldn’t even think straight because of the feelings that were crackling between him and Half Moon like lightning in greenleaf.
As they continued on down the slope, Dove’s Wing and Fish Leap came running out to meet them, their eyes alight and their tails waving.
“Is there going to be a meeting?” Dove’s Wing asked excitedly. “Will there be a casting of stones?”
Jaypaw nodded.
“About leaving?” his sister gasped, her neck fur beginning to rise.
“We’ll never leave,” Fish Leap declared. “This is our home.
What about the Pool of Stars? And the tunnels where we become sharpclaws? How can we lose all that?”
Dove’s Wing’s excitement faded, but her voice was determined as she replied, “If it’s a choice between water and caves, and saving our own lives, then we have to go.”
Fish Leap led the way down the hill to a glade where the undergrowth grew more thickly than anywhere else Jaypaw had seen. He spotted a row of dens under a fallen tree and behind dense ferns. Several other cats were already there.
Half Moon beckoned him with a flick of her tail and led him behind a clump of spiny thistles to where a dark gap yawned at the foot of an oak tree. From inside Jaypaw could hear tiny sounds of mewling.
Half Moon poked her head inside the hollow tree. “Hi, Owl Feather. We brought you some prey.”
As Jaypaw stepped forward to drop his piece of blackbird inside the hollow, he saw a skinny she-cat with pale speckled brown fur, suckling three squirming kits. She looks just like Kestrelpaw, he thought.
“Thanks,” Owl Feather purred. “The kits are ready to try fresh-kill. Hey…” She nudged her kits gently. “Come have some of this blackbird. It’s really good.”
While the kits tasted blackbird for the first time, Half
Moon told Owl Feather about the meeting.
“Not before time,” Owl Feather meowed.
“You mean you’d go?” Half Moon gasped. “With the kits?”
“Of course.” Owl Feather spoke as if her decision had been made for moons.
“But what about Jagged Lightning?” Half Moon blurted out, then looked as if she wished she hadn’t asked that.
“My kits will come with me,” Owl Feather replied in a tone that warned no cat should argue with her.
Half Moon gave her an embarrassed nod, and she and Jaypaw backed away from the hollow tree into the glade. By now more cats had arrived. Jaypaw spotted two whose graying muzzles and scant fur showed their age. One of them was a dark brown tom with long legs and knobbly joints; Jaypaw guessed he was Running Horse, who knew so much about herbs. He wondered whether Rising Moon had asked the elder about the horsetail yet; Jaypaw had meant to look for some in the forest, but he had been distracted by finding the Twoleg path and the stone hollow. The other elder was a pale ginger she-cat with green eyes; Jaypaw could see she had once been beautiful, but she was frail now, every rib showing through her pelt.
Opposite Jaypaw, Rising Moon padded into the clearing, nudging along Broken Shadow, who looked so dazed with grief that she didn’t know where she was. A large gray-and-white tom flanked her on the other side; he looked enough like Half Moon that Jaypaw guessed he must be her father, Chasing Clouds.
Furled Bracken was sitting in the center of the glade, waiting for the rest of the cats to appear. Jaypaw thought he looked patient and respectful, not at all like a Clan leader who had just summoned his cats to a meeting. Furled Bracken hadn’t even called to announce it; the news had spread from cat to cat, and they all seemed to be strolling in whenever they felt like it.
At last Stone Song stepped forward from where he had been standing at the side of the clearing beside Dark Whiskers. “We wish to cast the stones,” he meowed.
“About leaving?” Furled Bracken asked.
Stone Song nodded. “Yes.”
With a resigned look, Furled Bracken rose to his paws. “I wish it hadn’t come to this,” he sighed, “but I know there is only one way to decide. Before we cast the stones, I want to remind you all that this has been our home for as long as any cat can remember.”
Any living cat, Jaypaw corrected him. But where have all the dead cats gone? Are they here now, watching us without being able to speak?
“Yes,” Furled Bracken went on with a sad glance around the clearing, “prey is scarcer this greenleaf than it has ever been before, and yes, the Twolegs are coming closer. But are we really going to turn and flee like mice? We have found a way to survive alongside the badgers, and they have caused us far more trouble in the past than Twolegs. We should stay together and accept that we have to share the lake.”
Jaypaw was almost convinced by the deep emotion behind
Furled Bracken’s speech. Several other cats were nodding in agreement, including Rising Moon and the frail old she-cat.