Alderheart was remembering the moment, soon after he’d first found the kits, when he had touched his nose to Twigpaw’s and promised himself he would make sure she had a good life.
How did we ever get from there to here?
Chapter 15
Twigpaw’s belly was yowling for food as she stumbled across a grassy clearing, forcing herself to take one paw step after another. She had never felt so exhausted.
The sun was slipping down the sky, casting long shadows across her path. Around her, trees stretched in every direction; she had no idea where she was or which way she should go. She had begun to despair of ever finding her kin, or even remembering her way home.
Reaching the roots of an oak tree, Twigpaw flopped down to rest. Her rumbling belly told her she should hunt, but she was too weary. The day before, she had even stooped to rubbing up against the legs of a Twoleg, purring and trying to look cute. The Twoleg had put out a hollow thing like a big hard leaf, full of some creamy white stuff. Twigpaw had lapped it up; it had tasted good, but it had made her feel sick for the rest of the day.
When did I last eat real prey? I can’t remember…
The days were beginning to blur into one another, so that now she had trouble remembering how long it had been since she’d first left ThunderClan. After she’d lost consciousness when the monster struck her on the Thunderpath, she had opened her eyes to find herself in a strange Twoleg den. It was full of peculiar, acrid scents, and a Twoleg with a white pelt kept forcing round white pebbles down her throat. She slept most of the time—maybe the white pebbles were Twoleg poppy seeds—so she wasn’t certain how long she had stayed there. But it must have been at least a quarter moon.
Finally she had started to feel stronger. Maybe the white-pelted Twoleg was like one of our medicine cats. He was kind, but Twigpaw knew that she couldn’t stay there. She waited for her chance, until one day a second Twoleg opened the door of the den where they were keeping her.
Twigpaw swiped at the medicine Twoleg as he tried to force another pebble into her mouth, dropped to the ground, and fled out of the den. She heard the Twolegs yowling behind her, and their heavy paws thumping along the ground, but she didn’t stop until she found refuge underneath a bush beside a Thunderpath.
After that, Twigpaw had begun to search for the yellow barn Alderheart had seen in his vision—but she’d had no idea where she was. She spent several days trekking to and fro around the edges of the Twolegplace, and she had many conversations with kittypets, who all looked at her as if they thought she had bees in her brain.
She’d finally found the barn, but there was nothing there except a faint scent of cats to tell her that she had found the right place. She was too late.
SkyClan might have been there at some point—but they had moved on.
Twigpaw set out to follow the scent trail, but it was faint to start with, and soon it faded altogether. For the last two days, she had been wandering aimlessly, not even knowing how to get home to the lake.
Here and there in the forest she encountered Twolegs, some of them living in pelt-dens, like the ones who came in greenleaf to the clearing on the ShadowClan border. The cats she met were all kittypets, and none of them knew what she was meowing about when she mentioned the Clans or asked if they had seen SkyClan.
Twigpaw was slipping into deeper sleep when she became aware of a gray tom standing beside her, staring down at her with brilliant blue eyes.
“Get up!” he urged her. “You’re wasting time! Don’t you know that you’re our only hope?”
“No, I’m too late… ,” Twigpaw responded, struggling to her paws. “I got attacked by a monster and messed everything up.”
“It’s not too late,” the gray tom insisted. “Wake up right now, and look for the blood trail in the sky… Follow it until you can see the whole circle of the sun.”
Twigpaw startled awake, finding herself still curled up among the oak roots. Looking around, she realized that she was alone in the forest; the gray tom had vanished. But through gaps in the trees she could see the sky and realized that the sun was setting—and just as the gray tom had said, there was what looked like a trail of blood leading to the horizon.
Was that a dream or a vision? Twigpaw wondered. It had to be a dream… I’m not a medicine cat. I don’t have visions. But something about that cat was so convincing…
Even though Twigpaw was exhausted, she forced herself onto her weary paws and began to stumble along, following the trail in the sky.
Shadows were gathering beneath the trees, and Twigpaw could barely force one paw in front of another. There seemed to be no end to the forest, and whenever she caught a glimpse of the sun, it was crisscrossed with branches. It was impossible to get a clear view.
Twigpaw was beginning to despair when the trees ahead of her started to thin out. A fresh spark of hope gave her the determination to bound forward, then thrust her way through a dense bank of ferns and break out into the open. The sky ahead of her was a blaze of scarlet, but the sun had already vanished.
I’ve failed, Twigpaw thought, letting out a murmur of dismay.
Then she realized that in the direction of the sunset the ground fell away sharply into a rocky cliff. Scampering up to the edge, she was just in time to see the sun, a huge red circle, before it dipped below the horizon of the plain below. Twigpaw stood staring until the last of it sank out of sight and the red trail in the sky began to fade.
So I did what the gray tom said. Now what?
Twigpaw turned around, gazing back through the trees and across the swell of moorland where she had emerged. There was no sign of any cats, and when she tasted the air, she couldn’t pick up the faintest trace of cat scent.
It was just a stupid dream, she thought miserably, collapsing in a heap. She was no closer to finding her father than when she’d left ThunderClan, and now she had no more ideas.
It’s time to give up. I’ll sleep now, and when I wake up, I’ll try to figure out a way to get home.
She was curling up in the shelter of a rock, wrapping her tail over her nose, when she spotted something moving through the bushes at the bottom of the cliff. A gray flash. Is it…?
New energy seemed to flow into Twigpaw’s body as she rose to her paws again and began scrambling down the cliff face toward the place where she had seen the movement. Soon she came to a wide ledge overlooking a shallow valley with a stream at the bottom. And beside the stream…
Twigpaw let out a loud meow of delight. Cats! So many cats, making their camp. Her gaze devoured them; she could hardly believe what she was seeing. That’s him—the gray flash I saw moving though the bushes. I don’t think he’s the tom I saw in my dream. But he looks just like me! Her paws skimmed the rocks as she hurled herself down the rest of the cliff, so eager to meet her kin that she never thought she might be in danger of falling.
At the sound of Twigpaw’s meow the cats looked up at her and began to crowd together defensively. For the first time, Twigpaw could see how skinny and bedraggled they looked… even worse off than she was herself.
Among them was a small white she-cat whose belly was so swollen that she must be close to kitting. A larger tabby tom stood protectively beside her. Twigpaw noticed three young cats, too, about her own age, staring at her with a mixture of fear and curiosity.