TELLER OF THE POINTED STONES
THE STONETELLER WHO THE four Clans met on the journey to the lake was an old, old cat who had led his Tribe through many harsh seasons only to face the cruelest enemy of alclass="underline" a mountain lion named Sharptooth who seemed determined to treat every cat as prey. Stoneteller clung to the hope that his prey-hunters and cave-guards would protect them, but when a party sent out to kill Sharptooth failed to return, he began to despair. If every part of the mountains was set against them—from the snow and cold to the creatures that shared their home—then the Tribe of Rushing Water seemed doomed to extinction.
Then the Tribe of Endless Hunting sent him a prophecy that a silver cat would save them from Sharptooth. When the six Clan cats first arrived on their way to the mysterious sun-drown-place, it seemed as if the prophecy had been fulfilled. The gray tom Stormfur was surely the promised cat! But when Stormfur’s battle tactics failed against yet another attack from the mountain lion, Stoneteller banished the Clan cats and Brook Where Small Fish Swim, the Tribe cat that had befriended them, from the cave behind the waterfall. Stoneteller was resigned to watching his Tribe perish in Sharptooth’s jaws, and he wondered why their ancestors seemed to have given up on them.
But Brook and the Clan cats returned, bringing with them the exiled Tribe cave-guards, and this time it was another silver-furred cat, Feathertail, who killed Sharptooth. Stoneteller’s Tribe had been saved, and proud as he was, he acknowledged the debt he would owe the cats of the Clans for the rest of his life.
When they visited again, having found a new home by a distant lake, Stoneteller had grown weary with age, and the leadership of the Tribe, with no medicine cat or deputy to bear some of the burden, had become too much for him. With the arrival of another group of cats in the mountains who stole the Tribe’s prey and fought them over every paw step of territory, Stoneteller had yet again lost his faith in the Tribe of Endless Hunting. Because of this, he refused to name his successor, wanting his cats to find a different way to survive.
In the last moments of his life, he saw his ancestors standing around him, waiting to welcome him to the Tribe of Endless Hunting, and knew that he had been wrong. He watched, grateful, from his place in the stars as the ThunderClan medicine cat Jayfeather chose Crag Where Eagles Nest to be the next Teller of the Pointed Stones. The debt to these strange Clan cats, it seemed, was not over yet.
BROOK WHERE SMALL FISH SWIM AND STORMFUR
BORN IN THE CAVE of Rushing Water behind the waterfall in the mountains, Brook Where Small Fish
Swim knew early on that she wanted to be a prey-hunter for her Tribe. Brook was fiercely loyal to her Tribe, and when the journeying Clan cats arrived on their return from their meeting with Midnight, she was the first to spot Stormfur and ask whether he could be the cat that had been prophesied to save them from Sharptooth. She invited the forest cats to hunt with her and taught them the Tribe’s hunting techniques. She became Stormfur’s mate when he decided to stay with the Tribe, and later gave birth to his kits, Lark That Sings At Dawn and Pine That Clings To Rock. Brook was a cat of great courage, who struggled for many seasons with the conflict between her love for Stormfur and her loyalty to her Tribe.
Stormfur was the son of ThunderClan warrior Graystripe and RiverClan warrior Silverstream, and grew up in RiverClan. When his sister, Feathertail, was chosen by StarClan to make the journey to the sun-drown-place, Stormfur insisted on going with her—never imagining that this journey would lead to an eventual separation from the Clan life he had always known.
Stormfur returned to his Clan in the wake of Feathertail’s death, but felt isolated. He finally admitted to himself that he wanted to spend his life with Brook, and when the Clans reached the mountains on the Great Journey, he stayed with the Tribe because he cared for Brook so much that he couldn’t bear to leave her.
But Brook and Stormfur’s life together wasn’t easy. When a group of strange cats moved into the mountains, Stormfur persuaded the Tribe to fight against them, and in spite of their courage and the fighting skills he taught them, they lost the battle. Stormfur was blamed for the death of many Tribe cats, and exiled from the mountains. He and Brook returned to RiverClan, but Hawkfrost, afraid that Stormfur would be chosen as deputy instead of him, cast doubt upon his loyalty and had him driven out. Firestar then invited Stormfur and Brook to join ThunderClan, but when the Tribe cats came to the lake to ask for help, Stormfur returned to the mountains and supported the Clan cats in persuading
Stoneteller to use Clan methods to deal with the intruders. He was a strong and loyal cat who finally found a place for himself.
CRAG WHERE EAGLES NEST
RAG WAS THE LEADER of the Tribe cave-guards and was particularly skilled at protecting the prey-hunters from eagles that would attack them on the mountainside. He was one of the first cats to meet
Stormfur and the rest of the journeying cats when they first arrived in the mountains, and when Stormfur was made a prisoner, Crag escorted the other cats out of the Tribe’s territory and seemed to regret that there could not be friendship between them.
Crag fought bravely against the strange cats who invaded the Tribe’s territory, but when the Clan cats returned to the mountains to offer help, he was reluctant to accept. He was afraid that the Tribe would lose everything that was important to them if they gave up their traditions to follow the ways of the Clans. But he helped to establish the new territory and took part in patrols.
When Stoneteller died and Jayfeather had to choose his successor, he knew that he needed to find an experienced cat, one who had great courage and faith in his Tribe and was selfless enough to put them first and work with all his strength to secure their future. Crag was the cat he chose.
Crag was astonished that he should be the cat to take on leadership of his Tribe. But he felt honored to be chosen and promised to serve his Tribemates for the rest of his days.
THE EARLY SETTLERS
Introduction to the Early Settlers: Half Moon Speaks
THERE WERE ALWAYS WILD cats living in the territories between Highstones and the Twolegplace, in the woods, moorland, and riverside willow trees that later became the homes of ThunderClan, ShadowClan, SkyClan, WindClan, and RiverClan. But these cats were rogues and loners, living separately and independently, with occasional clashes over a particularly tasty piece of prey. They had favorite places to sun themselves or sleep, but there were no borders between hunting grounds, no sense that one area was more “home” to one cat than another.
Until the cats from the mountains arrived, that is. These cats had left the rugged shelter of a cave beneath a waterfall in search of somewhere richer in prey and warmer to live. Scant generations before, their ancestors had abandoned their home beside a lake, finding refuge in snow-capped mountains where food had to be dragged from the sky on eagles’ wings.
I was among those cats that had once lived beside the lake. My name then was Half Moon; by the time some of us left the mountains, I was the Teller of the Pointed Stones, leader of the cats that lived beneath the waterfall. We battled hard to survive among the rocks and the snow, but we brought too many hungry mouths to feed in a place that barely emerged from the cold season.