“Why did you do that?” Gray Wing asked, staring at Stoneteller.
The Healer returned his stare. “Never mind that,” she meowed. “What did the spider do?”
That’s a really dumb question, Gray Wing thought. But I can’t tell Stoneteller that! “Well, the spider saved herself,” he replied.
“Yes, it did,” Stoneteller agreed. “And what will she do now?”
What is this? Gray Wing asked himself, beginning to feel irritated. I’m not some kit who needs to be taught how to groom myself! Taking a deep breath, he answered, “She’ll build a new web.”
“That’s right,” Stoneteller mewed. “Wisdom and a long life come from being flexible. One day soon, you will need to be just as flexible. You will have to be strong for yourself, and for other cats.
You already know that life is hard. It’s about to become harder.”
Apprehension thrilled through Gray Wing from ears to tail-tip. He let out a snort of surprise and distress. “Can’t you tell me more than that?” he demanded. “Can’t you be more specific?”
Stoneteller’s voice softened and she dipped her head sympathetically. “It’s not for me to plan out your future, Gray Wing. I can only give you guidance. You must make your own decisions, but you will need to be strong—stronger than ever before.”
She glanced over Gray Wing’s shoulder. Turning his head to follow her gaze, Gray Wing seemed to see all the way down the tunnel to where his mother, Quiet Rain, was still asleep in her hollow. A
deep ache awoke in his heart. It’s been so long since I left her in the mountains. So long since I felt the soft touch of her fur.
“Make your mother proud,” Stoneteller instructed. “Remember who you are and where you come from. I’m telling you these things because I know you’re strong enough to listen. A great destiny awaits you and your friends, Gray Wing—but it won’t wait forever…”
Chapter 1
“It’s time to bury our dead,” Tall Shadow declared.
The black she-cat’s words dragged Thunder’s attention back to the death and devastation all around him.
Everywhere beneath the branches of the four oak trees the moonlight showed him pools of drying blood and tufts of torn-out fur. Cats lay on their sides in the trampled grass, their eyes open and their faces frozen in expressions of pain or shock. The anger that had made them fight had vanished like mist under the morning sun. Now every cat looked vulnerable, the living as well as the dead.
Thunder caught the flapping of a black wing from the corner of his line of vision, and turned to spot a crow as it alighted on a low branch. Its tiny, bright eyes flicked greedily from cat to cat. A shudder ran through Thunder from ears to tail-tip, and his fur bristled.
Tall Shadow is right. No cat should be left here as food for scavengers, not when they’ve given their lives in such a bloody battle.
He felt as if he were carrying a heavy, wet rock in his chest in place of his heart—somehow, he knew that everything had been leading up to this terrible battle: no matter what any cat could do, nothing could have stopped it. Cat against cat, claw against teeth—all because of arguments over territory. A vision of blood splashing against bark flashed behind his eyes and he shuddered. Spirit-cats had come to visit them in a vision, to tell them that fighting must stop. I want it to, Thunder thought now. But how do we claw our way back to peace?
Thunder struggled to find meaning in this devastation, but it was like groping blindly through thick fog. Now we’ve all seen that fighting tooth and claw over territory brings nothing but death and destruction, pain and grief. Thunder wondered whether the cats they had lost today had died so that could be understood.
“There are so many,” Thunder meowed as he moved forward to stand beside Tall Shadow, picking his way carefully among the bodies. “How can we protect them?”
Tall Shadow stretched out one foreleg, and thoughtfully slid out her claws. “This is what spilled blood,” she responded. “And this is what will make things right.”
Make things right? Thunder thought, bewildered. He knew what the she-cat meant, but almost unbearable pain pierced him at her words. What could possibly make things right?
“However long it takes,” Tall Shadow went on, “we will make a hole in the ground, big enough for all our fallen friends to lie in together. In life, they were torn apart; in death, they will be united.”
Thunder felt every hair on his pelt prickle at the words Tall Shadow had chosen. Unite. That was what the spirit-cats told us at the end of the battle. Unite or die. “Yes, this is what we should do,” he mewed hoarsely.
Gray Wing, Wind Runner, and River Ripple gathered around, murmuring their agreement.
“It will take a lot of effort from every cat,” Gray Wing warned them.
“Then we must make that effort,” Tall Shadow insisted. “Only the earth will be able to protect our fallen denmates from crows and foxes.”
As she and the other cats began to scrape at the ground, Thunder noticed that his father, Clear Sky, was standing silently a couple of fox-lengths away. He looked reluctant to step forward and join in.
Thunder padded over to him, reflecting that it was not so long ago he and his father had been fighting to the death. At his approach, Clear Sky dipped his head, deep shame in his blue eyes. “I caused this,” he rasped, as if he was fighting the urge to wail aloud. “It was my anger that created the chaos, my anger that brought these cats into the battle that killed them. So many of them…” he added in a whisper.
Memories crowded into Thunder’s mind: Clear Sky’s first rejection of him when he was a kit; their long estrangement, followed by Thunder’s shock at his father’s harsh methods when he tried to live with him in the forest; their arguments and their latest parting when Thunder’s paws couldn’t walk his father’s path any longer.
But in spite of all that, Thunder was unable to repress a surge of sympathy. “Come on,” he mewed encouragingly. “Let’s do right by those cats who sacrificed themselves.”
When Clear Sky did not protest, Thunder led him across to the others, who had already begun to dig in the shadow of the four trees. No cat spoke as they scraped and clawed at the ground, the hole growing bigger and bigger.
Already tired from the battle, Thunder felt his legs begin to ache as his paws grew black with dirt, and his vision blurred from exhaustion. Yet he forced himself to go on. The harsh caw of a crow sounded somewhere overhead, and he found himself digging even faster.
At last Tall Shadow stood back, shaking off the earth that clung to her paws. “That should be big enough,” she panted. “Now let’s bring our friends over here.”
Most of the cats divided into pairs, gripping the dead cats with their jaws and dragging their limp, lifeless bodies over to the grave. But Thunder found himself alone, standing over the body of Hawk Swoop. Her orange tabby fur was clotted with blood, and a cruel gash gaped in her throat.
Thunder felt sharp claws clenching around his heart as he remembered how Hawk Swoop had cared for him when Gray Wing first brought him to the hollow after he had been driven out of the forest by his father. His shoulder fur bristled as his gaze scoured the clearing and alighted on Clear Sky; he was padding up to the body of Rainswept Flower, whose life Clear Sky had taken just before the battle began.