Rowanstar stared, his gaze stricken with shock.
Tigerheart turned to face Tawnypelt. “Are you okay?” He gasped at the blood welling beside his mother’s eye. He felt fur brush his flank as Puddleshine slid in beside him and gently eased him out of the way.
What in StarClan had they been fighting about? Dazed with shock, Tigerheart turned. Alderheart and Willowshine were hurrying out of camp. Scorchfur had backed to the edge of the clearing.
Rowanstar stared at the dark gray tom with undisguised contempt. “How can we trust a Clanmate who turns on his own so easily?”
Scorchfur glared back at him. “How can we trust a leader who gives up on his Clan at the first sign of threat?”
Tigerheart’s gaze flitted from the two toms back to his mother. Puddleshine was quickly lapping the blood beside her eye. “It’s only a flesh wound,” he reassured her. “Your vision won’t be harmed.”
Relief swept Tigerheart as Puddleshine led Tawnypelt toward the medicine den. He could hardly believe that one Clanmate had tried to blind another. Nothing could be further from the warrior code. He’d known tensions had been running high, but how had it come to this? I should have stopped it. If his thoughts hadn’t been wrapped up in Dovewing, he might have prevented his Clanmates turning on one another. Instead I was worrying about whether I should leave my Clan. Guilt choked him. He pictured Dovewing, waiting, frightened and alone, carrying their kits. Love seemed to tear his heart into two; the pain left him breathless.
“Tigerheart.” Puddleshine was padding toward him, Rowanstar at his heels.
“Is Tawnypelt all right?” Tigerheart met his gaze anxiously.
Puddleshine nodded. “She’s in my den. I put herbs on the wound. She’s resting. But I must speak with you and your father.”
Tigerheart frowned. “Why?”
The medicine cat’s gaze moved from father to son, dark with warning. “There’s something I must share with both of you.”
Chapter 3
Tigerheart glanced uneasily around the camp. Was there time to talk with Puddleshine? The fight between Scorchfur and Tawnypelt must have shocked the Clan. Perhaps they should be reassuring their Clanmates instead.
“Snakepaw.” Strikestone waved the apprentice closer with a flick of his tail. “Come with me. We’re going hunting.” He was clearly trying to divert her attention from her mentor Tawnypelt’s injury, and the tensions within the Clan.
The honey-brown tabby she-cat looked at him eagerly. “Can Whorlpaw and Flowerpaw come?”
Strikestone turned to their mentors, Juniperclaw and Scorchfur. “We can hunt together. The fresh-kill pile needs filling, and the youngsters can practice hunting in groups.” He eyed Scorchfur warily, as though worried the dark gray tom was still enraged enough to claw at his Clanmates’ eyes.
But Scorchfur dipped his head and grunted. “Okay.” He beckoned Whorlpaw toward the entrance with a flick of his muzzle, then padded after him as he headed into the forest. Flowerpaw and Snakepaw exchanged glances, then followed, Juniperclaw at their heels, Strikestone just behind him.
Tigerheart stepped toward the brown tabby tom. “Thank you,” he purred.
Strikestone dipped his head. “Don’t mention it,” he said, before joining the others on their way out of camp.
Tigerheart watched them go, enjoying the feeling of his anxiety draining away. It was good to see the warriors working together to diffuse the tension and keep the apprentices busy. Rowanstar hadn’t even seemed to notice. He was staring at Puddleshine. “What do you want to tell us?”
As Puddleshine lifted his chin, Tigerheart remembered suddenly how young the medicine cat was. In the moons since he’d earned his medicine-cat name, the young tom had seen so much. They all had. It was easy to forget that Puddleshine had been trained by Leafpool from kit to full medicine cat in little more than a moon. And yet Tigerheart trusted him now as much as he’d once trusted Littlecloud. He could see earnestness in the young tom’s pale blue eyes as Puddleshine began to speak.
“I had a vision this morning. I was watching the camp as it woke. The rising sun cut through the branches and sent long shadows over our Clanmates as they climbed out of their dens and began to move around the clearing. As I watched them padding in and out of the shadows, the sun seemed to strengthen. I could see it beyond the forest, growing fiery, and, as it did, the shadows in the camp became longer, darker—”
“Are you sure this was a vision?” Rowanstar looked puzzled. “It sounds like any other sunrise.”
Puddleshine gave a slow nod. “The sun shone intensely,” he breathed. “As though, at any moment, the whole forest might catch fire. And the shadows were so dark, it looked as though night had cut swaths through the camp. Between the shadows, the sunlight was blinding. Not like dawn light. It was so bright, I had to turn away.” He stopped, shifted his paws. “Then, suddenly, the sun dimmed. It faded beyond the trees and became so weak that it seemed to melt into the pale dawn sky. As it did, the shadows faded. The fierce stripes that had marked the clearing dissolved until no trace of shadow was left in camp. For a moment, the whole forest was awash in sunlight so soft that it was impossible to distinguish between light and shade.”
“The shadows disappeared.” Tigerheart breathed the words. He could barely imagine it. The camp had always been shaped by shadow. Even at sunhigh, the pines and brambles marked the clearing with patches of darkness.
Puddleshine blinked at him. “Without shadows, what is ShadowClan?”
Tigerheart knew the stories the other Clans told of ShadowClan—how darkness molded their hearts, how they thrived on the power they found in shadow where other Clans would wither. Of course, they were just nursery tales, told to frighten kits, but wasn’t there some truth in those stories? To be a ShadowClan cat was to grow up in the enclosing gloom of the forest, to feel hidden and protected by it, to learn to move within it and use its cover for stealth. “But you said when the vision started, the sun was strong.”
Puddleshine nodded. “And the shadows were strong.”
Rowanstar flicked his tail. “But shadows are always strongest when the sun is strongest. We’ve always known that.”
Puddleshine stared at him. “The vision was sent to remind us that when the sun is strong, the shadows are strong.”
Tigerheart’s pelt pricked ominously. “And when the sun fades, the shadows fade.”
Puddleshine’s ears twitched nervously. “In the vision, the shadows disappeared.”
Tigerheart swallowed. Was Puddleshine trying to tell them that ShadowClan was going to disappear?
“But how can we control the sun?” Rowanstar looked confused.
Puddleshine dropped his gaze. “Perhaps we don’t have to. I think the sun represented something else,” he murmured.
Rowanstar stared at him, his pelt prickling irritably. “What could it possibly represent?”
You. Tigerheart stared at his father. How could he fail to understand? The sun represents you. His throat tightened. If Rowanstar was weak, then ShadowClan would disappear. Wasn’t that what was happening already? He pictured Scorchfur’s claw flashing toward Tawnypelt’s eye. The Clan was crumbling. You have to be strong. The words dried on his tongue. How could he accuse his father of being weak in front of their Clanmates? It would crush him.
He looked hopefully at Puddleshine. Perhaps he was going to warn Rowanstar.
“So?” Rowanstar glanced impatiently at Puddleshine. “Tell me what the sun represents. You’re the medicine cat. You’re meant to know these things.”