He hesitated outside the entrance for a heartbeat, then couldn’t resist squeezing through it and crawling along the tunnel until he came to the avalanche of mud left behind when the tunnels flooded. He opened his mouth, but all he could taste was wet soil and worms.
“Lionpaw! I know you’re in there!” Berrynose called.
“Come out now!”
For a moment Lionpaw felt like ignoring him, but he realized how stupid that would be. He didn’t want to stay in this damp, stifling hole. Slowly he wriggled backward until he could stand up and shake the mud out of his fur.
Berrynose was standing in front of him, cream-colored fur bristling. Ashfur was a couple of tail-lengths away; his blue eyes were calm and unreadable.
“What do you think you’re doing, exploring in a dangerous place like that?” Berrynose demanded. “What if the roof had fallen in? You’d expect us to dig you out, I suppose, like last time.”
Lionpaw had almost suffocated when he fell into an old badger set during the daylight Gathering. But that was completely different. And anyway, Berrynose hadn’t been the one to dig him out.
“Stop ordering me around,” he snapped. “You’re not my mentor.”
“Then stop behaving like a stupid kit!”
Lionpaw dug his claws into the ground to stop himself from taking a swipe at the arrogant tom. “Don’t call me a kit,” he growled. “Your scent hasn’t faded out of the apprentice den, and you’re already—”
“That’s enough,” Ashfur interrupted. “Berrynose, I’ll do the mentoring, thanks. But he’s right, Lionpaw. There’s no point in sticking your nose down every hole between here and WindClan. Unless there were any suspicious scents down there.”
“No. But there might have been!” Lionpaw defended himself.
Ashfur made no comment, except for an impatient twitch of the tail. “Let’s get moving.”
Lionpaw gave Berrynose a final glare and padded after his mentor. He could still feel a tug of longing for Heatherpaw, drawing him down into the caves. But he knew he would never walk there again—and not just because mud had blocked the tunnels.
He wanted to be the greatest ThunderClan warrior ever.
And he couldn’t be that if his best friend was a cat from another Clan.
“Jump! High as you can—now!”
Lionpaw leaped into the air, twisting as he landed so that he was facing his opponent. He managed to land a blow on Poppypaw’s haunches before she scrambled around to face him. Flashing a glance toward the edge of the clearing, he could just make out the shadow of a tabby-striped pelt and the gleam of amber eyes.
Thanks, Tigerstar!
Poppypaw sprang at him, and Lionpaw launched himself forward, slipping underneath her with his belly brushing the moss. Hooking her hind legs out from under her, he planted his forepaws on her belly as she rolled over.
“Well done, Lionpaw.” Ashfur gave him a nod of approval, though there was no warmth in his blue eyes.
What am I doing wrong now? Lionpaw wondered. He had understood Ashfur’s annoyance with him when he was spending every night in the caves with Heatherpaw. Then he’d been almost too tired to put one paw in front of another during the day. But I’m training well now. I’m working really hard!
“I’ve never seen that last move before.” Thornclaw, Poppypaw’s mentor, padded up to the two apprentices. “Where did you learn it?”
“Er… I just figured it out, I suppose,” Lionpaw mumbled.
He had learned the move from Tigerstar, during a training bout with Hawkfrost. The two shadowy cats visited him so often, he felt as if he always had voices in his ears, telling him to jump higher, strike harder, twist out of the way. The constant practice had made his muscles harder and stronger. He knew without any cat telling him that his battle skills had improved faster than any other apprentice’s. But it was difficult sometimes to explain where the skills came from.
“You can let me up now,” Poppypaw mewed.
“Oh, sorry.”
Lionpaw stepped away from her and she bounced to her paws, shaking scraps of moss from her fur. “Will you teach me how to do that?”
“Sure. When a cat leaps at you, you need to flatten yourself, but keep moving forward.”
“Like this?” Poppypaw tried to imitate the move.
“Yes, but a bit faster.”
While the young tortoiseshell she-cat practiced, Lionpaw glanced toward the edge of the clearing again. But the ghostly presence of Tigerstar was gone.
Lionpaw maneuvered a long tendril of bramble through the tunnel into the stone hollow, tugging hard as it snagged on the thorns. His paws were aching with tiredness. First the dawn patrol, then the training session, then, after a short break for a few mouthfuls of fresh-kill, Ashfur had set him to repairing the elders’ den. And it was only just past sunhigh!
As he dragged the bramble across the clearing, something heavy landed on the other end of it, bringing him up short and making him stumble. Dropping his end, Lionpaw glanced back to see Foxkit. The reddish tabby tom had sunk his teeth into the other end of the tendril and was battering it with his paws. A low growl came from his throat.
“ShadowClan are invading!” Icekit squealed, dashing up beside her brother and leaping onto the bramble. “Get out of our camp!”
Whitewing halted on her way across the clearing, her neck fur beginning to bristle, then carried on with a flick of her tail. Cloudtail thrust his head out of the warriors’ den, blue eyes wide with alarm. When he spotted the two kits he twitched his ears in disgust and disappeared.
“Hey, you’re disturbing every cat,” Lionpaw meowed. “And I need this to patch the elders’ den.”
“Can we help?” Icekit asked.
“Yes, we’ll be apprentices soon,” Foxkit added, letting go of the bramble.
“Okay, but be careful you don’t get thorns in your pads.”
Lionpaw went on dragging the tendril across the clearing.
The two kits tried to help him tug it along, but they mostly got under his paws and made the task harder.
When they drew closer to the elders’ den, Foxkit and Icekit seemed to forget about helping. Instead they dashed across to Mousefur and Longtail, who were sunning themselves at the entrance to the den.
“Tell us a story!” Foxkit demanded. “Tell us about the Great Journey. Tell us how the Twolegs—”
“No, I want to hear about the old forest,” Icekit interrupted.
Mousefur yawned. “You tell them something,” she mewed to Longtail. “Then maybe they’ll settle down and some cats can get a bit of sleep.” She closed her eyes and wrapped her tail over her nose.
Longtail sighed, then settled into a comfortable crouch with his paws tucked under his chest. He turned his face toward the kits, even though he couldn’t see them. “Okay, what do you want to hear about?”
“Tigerstar!” Foxkit’s fur bristled with excitement.
“Yes, Tigerstar!” Icekit added. “Tell us how he tried to take over the forest.”
Lionpaw saw Longtail’s tail tip flick as the blind cat hesitated. Curiosity clawed at him as he began weaving the length of bramble to block up a hole in the honeysuckle fronds that sheltered the den. He wanted to hear about Tigerstar as much as the kits did.
“Tigerstar was a great warrior,” Longtail began at last. “He was the strongest cat in the forest and the best fighter. When I was a young cat, I thought he would be the next leader of ThunderClan. I wanted to be just like him,” the pale tabby added awkwardly.