The she-cat took a threatening pace forward. “I’ve heard about trespassers on the moor. You’re not welcome here!” She spun around and, to Gray Wing’s astonishment, jumped neatly into the river. Her sleek dark head reappeared a heartbeat later as she swam strongly for the opposite bank.
“A swimming cat!” Clear Sky exclaimed.
Relieved that the encounter had been no worse, Gray Wing let out a mrrow of amusement. “She should meet Falling Feather,” he mewed.
Together the two cats leaped over the stepping-stones again and bounded back into the trees. A squirrel darted out in front of them and fled for safety up a tree, but Clear Sky brought it down with another massive leap.
He and Gray Wing settled down side by side to share the prey.
“You know,” Clear Sky murmured, glancing around him, “I could live somewhere like this.”
Gray Wing swallowed the mouthful he was eating. “I prefer open sky,” he responded.
Clear Sky flicked an ear at him. “Well, you have the speed to catch rabbits!”
When they had finished the prey, the two brothers headed back through the trees. Gray Wing could hear rustling, as if other cats were vanishing into the bushes.
“I think we’re being watched,” he hissed.
Clear Sky gave an airy wave of his tail. “So what? They’re not showing themselves, so they must be scared of us. And that’s fine by me. I don’t want to be challenged for every mouthful of prey.”
Gray Wing couldn’t share his brother’s confidence. “If we stay here, we need to live peacefully with these other cats,” he pointed out.
The strangeness of this place washed over him again like water surging over a rock. I feel like I don’t know anything about living here.
Clear Sky led the way back to the moor, veering away from the river to pass through the huge hollow where the four oak trees stood.
“This is a fantastic place!” he exclaimed, turning around as if he was trying to see all of it at once. Then he leaped up one of the oaks, clawing his way up the bark until he could stand where a branch forked from the main trunk.
“Come down!” Gray Wing called, not even trying to imitate his brother’s jump. “You’re not a squirrel!”
“There’s no reason cats can’t live in trees,” Clear Sky responded, waving his tail playfully.
Gray Wing rolled his eyes. Before he could reply, he felt once again the sensation of being watched. Scanning the slope, he spotted a plump tortoiseshell cat scrutinizing them from the shelter of a clump of fern, her dappled pelt almost invisible in its shadow.
“We’ve got company,” he told Clear Sky.
His brother looked where he was pointing, then climbed back to the ground, jumping the last few tail-lengths.
Before he landed, the tortoiseshell cat turned and bounded off up the slope. Gray Wing watched her go, frustrated that he hadn’t had the chance to speak to her.
“She seemed really well fed,” he commented to Clear Sky.
“You’re right,” said Clear Sky. “She was no wild cat. Do you think kittypets come into these woods?”
Gray Wing wasn’t sure. He knew that some of the others had spotted Twoleg dens through the trees, and the narrow paths carried the scents of Twolegs and dogs, but the moor and the forest were mostly left to wild creatures.
That’s how it should be. I can’t understand why any cat would want to live with Twolegs, he thought curiously.
Gray Wing and Clear Sky reached the hollow to hear Moon Shadow’s voice raised argumentatively.
“I’ve told you over and over again that I’m sick of eating rabbits and getting wet! Why don’t we go and live among the trees?”
He stood facing his sister, his neck fur fluffed up and his tail lashing.
“It’s not as easy as that,” Tall Shadow responded, her voice cold.
As Gray Wing and Clear Sky picked their way down the slope, Turtle Tail padded up to meet them. “Those two are at it again,” she muttered, rolling her eyes.
“All you ever do is order us around,” Moon Shadow was saying.
“And all you ever do is argue,” Hawk Swoop interrupted, stepping between Moon Shadow and Tall Shadow. “The rest of us are tired of listening to it. Look, it’s not raining now, so why don’t we try hunting some birds, like we used to?”
Glancing around, Hawk Swoop pointed with her tail toward a hawk circling over some rough grass below the hollow. “Come on,” she urged. “We know how to catch that kind of prey!”
Jackdaw’s Cry sprang to his paws at once, followed a heartbeat later by Dappled Pelt and Rainswept Flower. Though Gray Wing’s legs were tired, he stepped forward too.
Clear Sky padded across to Tall Shadow. “Are you okay with this?” he asked.
Tall Shadow shrugged. “You can hunt whatever you like—so long as you stay out of the trees where the other cats are.”
Moon Shadow looked as if he was going to start arguing again, then turned and stomped off to his nest.
“Are you coming?” Gray Wing asked Turtle Tail.
“No,” said the young tortoiseshell. “I’ve already eaten once today. I don’t need to hunt again.”
With Hawk Swoop in the lead, the mountain cats climbed out of the hollow and ran down the slope toward the hawk, keeping low so as not to alert it.
“It’s a bit small, isn’t it?” Dappled Pelt murmured. “It looks like a sparrow, compared to the eagles back home.”
“This is our home now,” Hawk Swoop meowed instantly.
A heavy silence greeted her words. Is it really our home? Gray Wing wondered. But racing along with the wind in his fur and the sun warming his back, he began to feel content.
This could be a good place to live.
The cats surrounded the hawk, instinctively remembering their mountain hunting patterns as they closed in on it from different directions. Hawk Swoop nodded to Jackdaw’s Cry; he could jump the highest, so he was a good choice to make the first leap.
The hawk was distracted by focusing on its tiny prey in the grass. At the last moment it became aware of the hunting cats, and beat its wings in an attempt to gain height.
But it was too late. Jackdaw’s Cry hurled himself into the air and brought the hawk down with a yowl of triumph. The other cats rushed in to help hold it down, but Jackdaw’s Cry had already killed it with a bite to its neck.
That was almost too easy, Gray Wing thought.
“Great catch,” Rainswept Flower mewed admiringly. “You can keep it for yourself.”
Jackdaw’s Cry ducked his head, proud and embarrassed.
While they were talking, Dappled Pelt had pounced into the grass. When she straightened up, the mouse the hawk had been hunting was dangling from her jaws.
“Two catches in one go!” she mumbled through the mouthful of prey.
“That would never have happened in the mountains,” Rainswept Flower commented.
Every cat looked pleased, though Gray Wing felt that their cheerfulness was slightly forced.
We’re all trying too hard to pretend this is perfect.
Chapter 15
Gray Wing padded through the trees, following Clear Sky’s lead. Jackdaw’s Cry, Falling Feather, and Turtle Tail hunted with them. As always when he left the moor for the forest, Gray Wing felt uncomfortable. He couldn’t hunt down his prey by running when every few paw steps a bramble tendril would trip him, and when the air was laden with so many scents it was hard to follow the one he wanted.
Falling Feather had just caught a mouse, when a loud screech echoed through the trees. It was followed by crashing in the undergrowth, and the furiously yowling voices of more than one cat.