“Help!” he screeched. “Help me!”
Chapter 5
Before Leafstar could move, Sharpclaw shot out of one of the lower caves and began clawing his way upward, closely followed by Patchfoot. In the same heartbeat, Petalnose emerged from the nursery and flung herself across the rock face toward the terrified apprentice, scrambling precariously along a trail that was so narrow it was almost invisible against the sandy cliff.
Leafstar began to climb, too, her paws pounding over the rocks, but she was much farther away than her deputy.
“Hold on!” Sharpclaw ordered, his voice crisp and calm. “Don’t move!”
Petalnose let out a panic-stricken wail. “StarClan help him!”
The rock was crumbling beneath Sagepaw’s claws. Leafstar’s belly lurched as she saw him slide a tail-length down the cliff. She spotted Ebonyclaw and Rockshade peering out of the cave below, but Sagepaw was just out of reach of their paws.
“I’m slipping!” he gasped. “I can’t hold on!”
“Yes, you can. Keep still.” Sharpclaw was only a couple of fox-lengths below the apprentice now, the only cat close enough to have a hope of reaching him. His powerful hind legs pushed upward from a crack in the rock and he lunged toward Sagepaw, but before he could fasten his claws into the young cat’s fur, more of the rock flaked away under Sagepaw’s paws.
The apprentice let out a shriek; his paws flailed as he tried to dig his claws into the powdery surface. Leafstar gazed in horror as his small body plummeted down. Off balance, Sharpclaw barely saved himself from following.
Sagepaw’s shriek was cut off as he struck a jutting boulder, bounced off, and fell the rest of the way to the foot of the cliff, landing with an ugly thud. He lay motionless on the trail between the cliff and the river.
With a cold weight gathering in her belly, Leafstar turned and scrambled down to join him. Landing lightly beside him, she bent her head to sniff his pale gray fur.
“Is he dead?” Petalnose hurtled down the cliff and flung herself onto the ground beside her son. Every hair on her pelt bristled with horror. “StarClan, don’t let him be dead!”
Sagepaw lay stretched out in the dust at the bottom of the cliff. His eyes were closed, but relief flooded through Leafstar when she saw his flank twitch.
“He’s not dead,” she murmured, pressing her muzzle against Petalnose’s shoulder.
Patchfoot jumped down and shot one horrified look at the motionless apprentice. “I’ll fetch Echosong,” he meowed, and raced away.
Petalnose crouched beside Sagepaw and started to lick the fur on the top of his head. “Wake up, Sagepaw,” she pleaded, her voice quivering. “It’s my fault,” she added, raising wide blue eyes to her Clan leader. “I should have been watching him.”
Leafstar could understand the gray she-cat’s guilt. Sagepaw was Petalnose’s son and her apprentice; no wonder she felt responsible for his accident.
I remember Firestar telling us that forest cats don’t mentor their own kin. Maybe they have a point.
“It’s not your fault,” she reassured Petalnose, resting her tail-tip on the distraught cat’s shoulder. “He’s an apprentice, not a kit. You can’t have your eye on him all the time.”
Petalnose didn’t respond, just went on covering the young cat’s head with frantic licks.
Leafstar glanced over her shoulder at the sound of soft thuds behind her, and saw Sharpclaw, Sparrowpelt, and Shrewtooth heading toward her. Rockshade, Tinycloud, and Ebonyclaw leaped down just behind them. They crowded around and gazed down at the motionless apprentice.
“I’m sorry.” Sharpclaw lashed his tail, clearly angry with himself. “If I’d been just a bit quicker…”
“You did your best,” Leafstar told him. “No cat can—”
“He’s dead!” Shrewtooth let out a loud wail, his neck fur bristling out. “Sagepaw’s dead!”
Petalnose gasped, her blue eyes stretching wide with horror.
“No, he’s not,” Leafstar snapped. “And he’s not going to die. Shrewtooth, instead of terrifying every cat, go find some moss and wet it in the river.”
Shrewtooth stared at her; he opened his mouth to let out another wail, then shut it with a snap. “Sorry,” he muttered, scuffling at the ground with his forepaws. “I—I guess I’ll go and do that, then.”
He dashed off. Leafstar bent closer over Sagepaw’s body, encouraged to see that his breathing seemed to be more steady. She saw that one of his legs was stretched out at an awkward angle. Something’s wrong there. Please, StarClan, don’t let it be broken!
To her relief, she heard the quick pattering of paw steps approaching from farther down the gorge and Echosong appeared at her side, with Patchfoot just behind.
“Keep back, all of you,” the medicine cat mewed briskly. “Petalnose, you can stay, as long as you can keep him calm and not make him more scared.”
Petalnose gulped and sat upright, forcing the fur on her neck and shoulders to lie flat. Leafstar was impressed by her self-control, but the bleak look in her blue eyes showed how much she was suffering.
“Echosong, please save my son,” she begged.
Pity for the gray she-cat stabbed through Leafstar like a thorn. Petalnose had already lost her mate, Rainfur, in the battle against the rats. StarClan, you couldn’t be cruel enough to take her son, too!
For a few heartbeats Echosong studied Sagepaw, running her paw lightly over his fur. He stirred under her touch and tried to raise his head.
“Rainfur?” he whispered.
“No, it’s me, little one,” Petalnose purred, bending her head to lick his ears.
“That’s good.” Sagepaw’s voice was muzzy. “I thought I was in StarClan.” He scrabbled at the ground in an effort to sit up, then sank back with a sharp yelp of pain.
“Keep still,” Echosong told him, resting a paw on his shoulder. “You’ve hurt your leg, and I need to look at it properly before I can fix it.”
Her voice was steady, but Leafstar wondered how confident she really was. The Clan had been lucky to get through leaf-bare without any bad accidents, and Echosong had never needed to treat an injured leg before.
“Tinycloud,” Echosong meowed, glancing over her shoulder to where the other cats had withdrawn into a worried huddle. “Go and fetch me some poppy seeds.”
Tinycloud nodded, her eyes wide, and trotted off.
“Rockshade.” Echosong beckoned with her tail. “Come here and lie down in the same position as Sagepaw.”
Looking mystified, the young tom did as she told him, settling himself in the dust beside the injured apprentice. Echosong ran her paws over Rockshade’s outstretched leg, then did the same to Sagepaw’s. She felt Rockshade’s leg again, pushing it in each direction with one paw resting at the top where it joined his flank. She touched Sagepaw’s leg at the same place, and the apprentice let out a squeak of pain.
“I think I understand,” she meowed, nodding. “Thank you, Rockshade, you can get up now. Sagepaw’s leg isn’t broken,” she went on, “but it has come out of place. I need to put it back.”
“Can you do that?” Petalnose whispered.
“Yes.” Echosong sounded tense but brave. “But it will hurt. I’m sorry, Sagepaw.”
“I’ll be okay,” Sagepaw mewed. He blinked gratefully as Shrewtooth returned with a mouthful of dripping moss and set it down beside him. “Thanks, Shrewtooth.”
While the apprentice was lapping the moss, Sparrowpelt padded up with a stick in his jaws and dropped it next to Sagepaw. “Bite down on that,” he advised. “It’ll help when the pain comes.”
Sagepaw nodded. “Can we do it now, please?” he asked Echosong, unable to hide the fear in his voice. He gripped the stick in his jaws and held it tightly.