“Watch out when you get to the middle,” Mistyfoot called.
“Sometimes there are hollows that you can’t see above the water, and it could suddenly get deeper.”
The water almost reached Tawnypelt’s belly fur by now.
She paused and nodded without looking back, then went on more cautiously. Brambleclaw and the others followed; Crowfeather let out a startled meow as he slipped on a loose stone, but found his balance again after some rather undignified splashing, and managed to keep his head above the surface of the water.
Tawnypelt jumped out and shook herself from nose to tail, scattering drops of water around her. “You’ll be fine,” she called to the others. “I didn’t have to swim at all.”
Cold, wet, and with his belly fur clinging uncomfortably to his skin, Brambleclaw wasn’t sure that was much of a benefit right now. Beside him, Mistyfoot padded confidently through the water as if she were on dry land; Brambleclaw noticed her keeping one eye on Squirrelflight, who had the shortest legs of all of them, and had to tip back her head to stop the water from lapping at her muzzle.
There was another stretch of open grass on the far side of the stream, with more trees beyond. Soaked to his ears by the time he scrambled up the opposite bank, Brambleclaw made a dash for cover, but the branches here had shed their leaves, and didn’t offer much shelter from the rain.
He crouched beneath a tree while he waited for the others to catch up, trying to imagine what it would be like in greenleaf, with thicker grass and ferns and a canopy of leaves rustling above him. Right now the ground was unpleasantly soggy, and he couldn’t see any thickets of bramble or hazel like the ones in their old territory.
At least these trees were oak and beech, not pines like the forest they had just left. They would provide good shelter for the mice and birds ThunderClan was used to hunting.
Brambleclaw’s spirits began to lift, but he was still uneasy about all the signs of Twoleg activity—the paths, the brightly colored mark on a tree, the half-bridges. He wondered if it was just his nerves telling him there were more signs of Twolegs here than in their old territory, and he shook himself to clear his head.
“What do you think?” Mistyfoot prompted, joining him.
Before Brambleclaw could reply, Squirrelflight bounded up and began scuffling with one forepaw among the dis-carded beech shells lying in the grass.
“With all these nuts around there should be plenty of squirrels,” she meowed.
Mistyfoot narrowed her eyes at Brambleclaw, and he tried not to look as if he were beginning to give up all hope of finding somewhere for ThunderClan to live. “Why don’t we rest for a bit?” she suggested. “Find somewhere out of the rain and hope it stops soon.”
“Hope catches no prey,” Crowfeather commented dryly as he and Tawnypelt came up, flicking droplets of water from their ears.
“That’s a good idea, Mistyfoot,” Brambleclaw meowed.
“If we can find any shelter,” Tawnypelt added.
“Let’s go farther into the woods,” Mistyfoot decided. “The wind will be colder blowing off the water.”
They padded into the trees on a slanting course that led away from the lake. When they could still make out the silver sheen of water behind them, they came to a huge, ancient oak standing among the beech trees. The ground had fallen away around the twisting roots, and there was a faint, stale scent of rabbit, as if this had once been used as a burrow. There was room for all the cats to creep in among the roots, where they were sheltered from the wind, though rain still trickled in.
Brambleclaw huddled close to Squirrelflight and began to lick drops of rain from the fur around her neck and shoulders.
“This feels way harder than anything we had to do on the journey,” she murmured after a while. “All that way—all the danger we faced getting here, the times we nearly didn’t make it—and now we have to decide where the Clan is going to make its new home. It doesn’t feel as if StarClan is going to lead us straight to a nice, safe camp. What if we make the wrong decision?”
She had come so close to the heart of his fears that Brambleclaw paused to gaze into her forest-green eyes. “I thought it would be easier than this too,” he admitted.
Squirrelflight peered out of their shelter, blinking raindrops off her eyelashes. “These are the right sort of trees, but it’s so open here compared with the old territory.
ThunderClan won’t feel safe if there isn’t enough cover.”
“Or if the territory’s full of Twolegs,” Brambleclaw pointed out.
“Come on!” Tawnypelt stopped licking her chest fur and looked up to face him. “There were plenty of Twolegs back in the forest. It wasn’t a problem then, and it won’t be a problem now.”
She was talking sense, but more than anything else, Brambleclaw knew that he wanted to feel safe in his new home, and he didn’t feel safe here, at least not yet.
“It’ll look better in newleaf,” Mistyfoot meowed encouragingly. “Everywhere does.”
“Hmm…” Squirrelflight shifted so that she could lick the damp fur at the base of her tail. “We still have to find a camp, though.”
“You’ve hardly set paw in the territory yet,” Crowfeather pointed out.
“I know.” Brambleclaw made a determined effort to stop worrying and concentrated on giving Squirrelflight a few more vigorous licks.
Her jaws gaped in an enormous yawn. “This rain doesn’t help. If it goes on much longer it’ll wash my fur off.”
Brambleclaw stopped and let his muzzle rest against Squirrelflight’s warm flank. He was just dozing off when he felt her give a wriggle and heard her say, “I think it’s easing off.”
Lifting his head, Brambleclaw realized that the steady pattering of the rain on the grass outside their shelter had faded away into uneven, short-lived bursts. The wind had dropped, and a watery beam of sunlight glinted on the drops that hung from every branch and twig.
Tawnypelt meowed, “The clouds are breaking up.”
Brambleclaw scrambled out from the roots and glanced up to see that it was almost sunhigh. The rest of the patrol emerged behind him. Mistyfoot scented the air, while Crowfeather groomed the ruffled fur on his gray-black shoulder.
“Any chance of hunting?” Squirrelflight meowed, stretching each hindleg in turn.
“Sure,” Brambleclaw replied. “Let’s look for something on the way.” It would be a chance to see how well the woodland could feed hungry cats.
The five cats spread out among the trees. Brambleclaw kept his ears pricked for the sound of prey, and he paused every few steps to taste the air. At first all he could smell were wet leaves and dripping branches, and he felt his spirits sink.
Were there so many Twolegs here that all the prey had fled?
But at least the ground was becoming more uneven, with bushes and clumps of dead bracken where little creatures might hide.
Suddenly he picked up a tiny scuffling sound among the leaves at the foot of a tree. Squirrelflight heard it at the same moment, and streaked toward it. Her paws thudded on the ground, and the prey—a vole—shot out and vanished into a clump of brambles. Squirrelflight raced after it with her nose stretched out. Brambleclaw groaned—she should have known better than to chase something so noisily in the quiet forest.
“She won’t catch it now,” Crowfeather commented.
They watched Squirrelflight plunge into the bushes. For a heartbeat her dark ginger fur was visible among the waving branches before it disappeared. A fading yowl came out of the bushes, and then all was still.
“What happened?” exclaimed Tawnypelt.
Brambleclaw dashed toward the brambles, the vole forgotten. “Squirrelflight!” he yowled. “Squirrelflight, where are you?”