Rage burned like a slow fire in her belly. Rippletail shouldn’t have died on this journey! She wanted revenge on the beavers now, wanted it like a starving cat longed for a bite of fresh-kill. We have to destroy the dam! The water belongs to the Clans!
As she stepped up to the edge of the grave and began to push soil and leaf mulch down onto Rippletail’s body, she paused to listen to the beavers. They were moving around quietly inside the lodge, and she imagined them smug and gleeful because they’d chased off the cats in such an easy victory.
Lionblaze’s voice distracted her from her thoughts. “We can’t fight the beavers again.”
“I told you so,” Woody muttered from where he sat on one of the oak tree’s gnarled roots.
Lionblaze flicked an ear to show the loner he had heard, but he didn’t reply. “We need to find a different way to free the water,” he went on.
Petalfur looked up from covering her Clanmate’s body. Her eyes were still stunned with grief, but her voice was hard and determined. “We could try luring the beavers away.”
“And then what?” Toadfoot asked.
“Then we destroy the dam,” Petalfur replied.
“But it’s huge!” Tigerheart objected. “It would take days. We can’t keep the beavers away for that long.”
“We don’t have to destroy it all.” Petalfur sounded confident. “If we can move enough of the top branches that the water spills over, the force of the stream will wash the rest of the logs away.”
Dovepaw nodded. “I see,” she mewed. She supposed that a RiverClan cat would know what she was talking about when it came to water. She cast her senses as far as the dam, feeling for the way the trunks and branches were woven together, and she realized that Petalfur’s idea might work.
“We must do it quickly,” Whitetail put in, with a glance up at the sky. “The weather is going to break soon, and besides”—her gaze flickered to Petalfur—“we need to get back to our Clans to tell them what’s happened.”
“That’s true,” Lionblaze agreed.
“I know what we can do!” Tigerheart was looking around the clearing. “Let’s practice moving these fallen branches. If we figure how to do that without losing our balance, we’ll be able to dismantle the dam much quicker.”
Toadfoot gave his Clanmate a nod of approval. “Good idea.”
Dovepaw was impressed, too. Tigerheart could be annoying sometimes, but she had to admit he wasn’t stupid.
When they had finished filling in Rippletail’s grave, the Clan cats scattered through the clearing and began trying to lift the branches. To Dovepaw’s surprise, Woody went to help Petalfur. “I shouldn’t have let you attack the beavers,” he muttered as he stood beside her and helped her roll a moss-covered log. “I should have known they were too strong for you. I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault, Woody,” Whitetail called to him. Petalfur said nothing, just concentrated on rocking the heavy branch onto its side.
Dovepaw followed Lionblaze across the clearing to a lightning-split tree trunk lying on the ground. Shock slashed through her when she saw that he was limping. “Are you okay?” she asked.
Lionblaze nodded. “I don’t get hurt in battles, remember?” he hissed. “But I can’t let the others know that.”
Dovepaw sighed. “I wish we didn’t have to keep everything a secret.”
“It’s for their own good.” Lionblaze turned to face her, pinning her with his compelling amber eyes. “They have to let us help them, and they might not do that if they think we’re different.”
Dovepaw glanced over her shoulder at the other cats, who were spread out over the clearing, struggling with logs. Would they really be afraid of me if they knew what I can do? Probably, she decided sadly. After all, if I hadn’t sensed the beavers, we would never have come, and Rippletail would still be alive.
She and Lionblaze began to roll the log; it was heavy, and the grass growing up around it made it hard to shift.
“Let’s try flipping it over,” Lionblaze suggested. “You go to that end, and I’ll lift it up from here.”
“Okay.” Dovepaw gave the log a doubtful glance. It’s so big! And some of the logs on the dam are even bigger!
She watched as Lionblaze thrust his paws under one end of the log and started to heave it upward. “I’m going to push it up from this end,” he hissed through gritted teeth. “You keep it steady, then push from your end and it should go over.”
Dovepaw tried to get a grip on the log, but as soon as it started to move, her paws slipped; the log banged her chin as it dropped to the ground again. “Sorry,” she puffed. “Let’s try again.”
But the second attempt was no better. This time the log rolled over toward Dovepaw, and she barely saved her paws from being crushed as she sprang backward.
Lionblaze lashed his tail in frustration. “I can’t move it on my own,” he snarled, though Dovepaw knew that he was more angry with himself than he was with her. “It’s too heavy.”
“This isn’t going to work, is it?” Dovepaw jumped, startled to see that Toadfoot had padded over to them. “We’ll need at least three cats to lure the beavers away,” he went on, flopping down beside the log with a tired sigh. “That leaves just five to dismantle the dam, even if Woody helps. We’ll never do it.”
Dovepaw glanced across the clearing to see that all the others had given up trying to shift the logs and branches. They looked exhausted, especially Petalfur, whose eyes were still dark with grief for her Clanmate.
This is hopeless! What are we going to do?
Lionblaze rose to his paws. “We can’t give up now,” he growled. “We need help.”
“But that’s mouse-brained,” Whitetail protested. “We can’t go all the way back to the lake to fetch more cats. It’s too far. We need water now!”
“There are cats who can help us much closer than that,” Lionblaze reminded them with a flick of his tail.
Toadfoot’s eyes stretched wide with astonishment. “You mean the kittypets?”
Lionblaze nodded. “It’s worth a try. We only need to go downstream as far as that Twoleg nest with the rabbits.”
“Yeah, but…they’re kittypets,” Tigerheart pointed out.
Whitetail murmured in agreement. “If you go looking for them and they won’t come, then we’ve wasted time.”
“That’s the risk we take,” Lionblaze responded.
Dovepaw’s belly churned. If the rest of the patrol won’t agree, what can Lionblaze do?
After a few heartbeats, Sedgewhisker broke the silence. “I think we have to try,” she mewed. “We owe it to Rippletail.”
Petalfur nodded. “I don’t want to think that he died for nothing.”
The cats looked at one another, and Dovepaw knew that all of them were grieving for Rippletail, regardless of their Clan.
“Then go for it,” Toadfoot meowed. “I can’t think of anything better.”
“Right.” Lionblaze pricked his ears. “Dovepaw, you can come with me. The rest of you, keep practicing. We’ll be back as soon as we can.”
Dovepaw followed her mentor as he raced down the slope to the pool and leaped down into the streambed below the dam. As she followed him along the pebbly channel, she realized that her pads had grown tough and hard from their long journey. She didn’t even feel any pain when she trod on a sharp-edged stone.
The day was approaching sunhigh by the time they reached the copse where they had stopped to hunt. Lionblaze slowed his pace. “Snowdrop followed us here,” he mewed. “Maybe she comes here often. Dovepaw, can you sense her?”