Outcast

by Erin Hunter

  “I hope not!” Berrypaw still sounded doubtful.

  Suddenly alarmed, Jaypaw thought over what Brightheart had said. “You don’t think Leafpool might mention that I’m blind when she gives me my full medicine cat name?” he muttered into Hollypaw’s ear.

  “Like, Jayno-eyes? That’s just as stupid as Berrystumpytail,” his sister replied.

  “You think it’s stupid, but will Leafpool—”

  “Be quiet, all of you,” Graystripe interrupted. “The ceremony is about to start.”

  Lionpaw gave Jaypaw a nudge. “Come on. Let’s get a good place at the front. I want to see everything that happens.”

  “Yes, it’ll be our turn soon,” Hollypaw meowed enthusiastically.

  Jaypaw followed his littermates and the other apprentices to the front of the crowd that had gathered around Firestar. He could sense fizzing pride in the three who were to be made warriors. He pictured them sleek-furred and shiny after their mother’s frantic licking. Daisy felt just as proud, though Jaypaw picked up anxiety, too, for the two tiny kits she had left in the nursery.

  Then he located Ferncloud, sitting just outside the nursery with Icekit and Foxkit. The gentle queen would make sure no harm came to the two newborns while their mother watched her first litter become warriors.

  “This is a good day for ThunderClan.” The excited murmuring of the Clan cats died into silence as Firestar began to speak. “No Clan can survive without new warriors. Brambleclaw, is your apprentice Berrypaw ready for his warrior ceremony?”

  “He has trained well,” Brambleclaw replied.

  Jaypaw could feel the excitement of the three apprentices building as Firestar addressed the other two mentors, Dustpelt and Spiderleg. Then he heard their paw steps as they padded forward to stand in front of Firestar.

  “I, Firestar, leader of ThunderClan, call upon my warrior ancestors to look down on these three apprentices.” The Clan leader’s voice rang out above the rustle of trees at the top of the hollow. “They have trained hard to understand the ways of your noble code, and I commend them to you as warriors in their turn. Berrypaw, Hazelpaw, Mousepaw, do you promise to uphold the warrior code and to protect and defend this Clan, even at the cost of your lives?”

  “I do!” the three young cats replied, Berrypaw loudest of all.

  For a few heartbeats Jaypaw felt his fur prickle with envy. One day he would have his own naming ceremony as a medicine cat, but he would never stand before his Clan and make the promise to defend it with his life.

  “Then by the powers of StarClan I give you your warrior names,” Firestar went on. “Berrypaw, from this moment you will be known as Berrynose.”

  “Oh, thank you!” the new warrior exclaimed, interrupting his Clan leader.

  A ripple of amusement passed through the Clan, though Jaypaw caught a hiss of annoyance from Berrynose’s former mentor, Brambleclaw.

  Firestar waited for the noise to die down before continuing. “StarClan honors your bravery and your enthusiasm, and we welcome you as a full warrior of ThunderClan.”

  There was a pause; Jaypaw knew that Firestar would rest his muzzle on the top of Berrynose’s head, and Berrynose would lick his leader’s shoulder. Then Firestar went on to give Hazelpaw the name of Hazeltail, and Mousepaw became Mousewhisker.

  “ThunderClan is proud of you all,” Firestar finished. “May you serve your Clan faithfully.”

  “Mousewhisker! Hazeltail! Berrynose!” The Clan welcomed the three new warriors with enthusiastic yowls.

  Jaypaw sensed their pride in their new responsibilities, and a renewed confidence in every cat that the Clan was growing in strength and numbers, the hardships of the Great Journey now a fading memory.

  But there was something more lingering in the hollow like mist—traditions that stretched back beyond ThunderClan to the ancient cats who had walked the forest long ago. If Fallen Leaves had made it alive out of the tunnels, would he have been greeted like this?

  What happened to those cats? Jaypaw wondered. Where did they go?

  CHAPTER 2

  Lionpaw pushed his way through clumps of long grass wet with dew; he shivered as the moisture soaked his fur, and blinked sleep from his eyes. Clouds lay low over the forest, though a growing brightness above the trees showed where the sun was rising.

  The dawn patrol was heading toward WindClan territory. Ashfur and Berrynose had drawn slightly ahead, discussing something in voices too low for Lionpaw to catch. After a few moments Berrynose glanced over his shoulder. “Don’t lag behind, Lionpaw,” he meowed loudly. “And watch out for fox traps.”

  “Watch out yourself,” Lionpaw muttered. The cream-colored tom had been a warrior for three whole days, and already he was acting like a mentor. But he needn’t think I’m going to obey his orders!

  Lionpaw let himself drop even farther behind. His paws were tingling with memory as he rounded a bramble thicket and saw the entrance to the tunnels. It looked like a disused rabbit hole, half-hidden by bracken, but once it had led down to a cave with an underground river and then up again into WindClan territory. Pain stabbed Lionpaw’s heart as he remembered how he used to plunge into the tunnels at night and meet Heatherpaw in the cave. He wished they could go back to the time when she had been Heatherstar, leader of DarkClan, and he was her loyal deputy.

  He hesitated outside the entrance for a heartbeat, then couldn’t resist squeezing through it and crawling along the tunnel until he came to the avalanche of mud left behind when the tunnels flooded. He opened his mouth, but all he could taste was wet soil and worms.

  “Lionpaw! I know you’re in there!” Berrynose called. “Come out now!”

  For a moment Lionpaw felt like ignoring him, but he realized how stupid that would be. He didn’t want to stay in this damp, stifling hole. Slowly he wriggled backward until he could stand up and shake the mud out of his fur.

  Berrynose was standing in front of him, cream-colored fur bristling. Ashfur was a couple of tail-lengths away; his blue eyes were calm and unreadable.

  “What do you think you’re doing, exploring in a dangerous place like that?” Berrynose demanded. “What if the roof had fallen in? You’d expect us to dig you out, I suppose, like last time.”

  Lionpaw had almost suffocated when he fell into an old badger set during the daylight Gathering. But that was completely different. And anyway, Berrynose hadn’t been the one to dig him out.

  “Stop ordering me around,” he snapped. “You’re not my mentor.”

  “Then stop behaving like a stupid kit!”

  Lionpaw dug his claws into the ground to stop himself from taking a swipe at the arrogant tom. “Don’t call me a kit,” he growled. “Your scent hasn’t faded out of the apprentice den, and you’re already—”

  “That’s enough,” Ashfur interrupted. “Berrynose, I’ll do the mentoring, thanks. But he’s right, Lionpaw. There’s no point in sticking your nose down every hole between here and WindClan. Unless there were any suspicious scents down there.”

  “No. But there might have been!” Lionpaw defended himself.

  Ashfur made no comment, except for an impatient twitch of the tail. “Let’s get moving.”

  Lionpaw gave Berrynose a final glare and padded after his mentor. He could still feel a tug of longing for Heatherpaw, drawing him down into the caves. But he knew he would never walk there again—and not just because mud had blocked the tunnels.

  He wanted to be the greatest ThunderClan warrior ever. And he couldn’t be that if his best friend was a cat from another Clan.

  “Jump! High as you can—now!”

  Lionpaw leaped into the air, twisting as he landed so that he was facing his opponent. He managed to land a blow on Poppypaw’s haunches before she scrambled around to face him. Flashing a glance toward the edge of the clearing, he could just make out the shadow of a tabby-striped pelt and the gleam of amber eyes.

  Thanks, Tigerstar!

  Poppypaw sprang at him, and Lionpaw launched himself forward, slipp
ing underneath her with his belly brushing the moss. Hooking her hind legs out from under her, he planted his forepaws on her belly as she rolled over.

  “Well done, Lionpaw.” Ashfur gave him a nod of approval, though there was no warmth in his blue eyes.

  What am I doing wrong now? Lionpaw wondered. He had understood Ashfur’s annoyance with him when he was spending every night in the caves with Heatherpaw. Then he’d been almost too tired to put one paw in front of another during the day. But I’m training well now. I’m working really hard!

  “I’ve never seen that last move before.” Thornclaw, Poppypaw’s mentor, padded up to the two apprentices. “Where did you learn it?”

  “Er…I just figured it out, I suppose,” Lionpaw mumbled.

  He had learned the move from Tigerstar, during a training bout with Hawkfrost. The two shadowy cats visited him so often, he felt as if he always had voices in his ears, telling him to jump higher, strike harder, twist out of the way. The constant practice had made his muscles harder and stronger. He knew without any cat telling him that his battle skills had improved faster than any other apprentice’s. But it was difficult sometimes to explain where the skills came from.

  “You can let me up now,” Poppypaw mewed.

  “Oh, sorry.”

  Lionpaw stepped away from her and she bounced to her paws, shaking scraps of moss from her fur. “Will you teach me how to do that?”

  “Sure. When a cat leaps at you, you need to flatten yourself, but keep moving forward.”

  “Like this?” Poppypaw tried to imitate the move.

  “Yes, but a bit faster.”

  While the young tortoiseshell she-cat practiced, Lionpaw glanced toward the edge of the clearing again. But the ghostly presence of Tigerstar was gone.

  Lionpaw maneuvered a long tendril of bramble through the tunnel into the stone hollow, tugging hard as it snagged on the thorns. His paws were aching with tiredness. First the dawn patrol, then the training session, then, after a short break for a few mouthfuls of fresh-kill, Ashfur had set him to repairing the elders’ den. And it was only just past sunhigh!

  As he dragged the bramble across the clearing, something heavy landed on the other end of it, bringing him up short and making him stumble. Dropping his end, Lionpaw glanced back to see Foxkit. The reddish tabby tom had sunk his teeth into the other end of the tendril and was battering it with his paws. A low growl came from his throat.

  “ShadowClan are invading!” Icekit squealed, dashing up beside her brother and leaping onto the bramble. “Get out of our camp!”

  Whitewing halted on her way across the clearing, her neck fur beginning to bristle, then carried on with a flick of her tail. Cloudtail thrust his head out of the warriors’ den, blue eyes wide with alarm. When he spotted the two kits he twitched his ears in disgust and disappeared.

  “Hey, you’re disturbing every cat,” Lionpaw meowed. “And I need this to patch the elders’ den.”

  “Can we help?” Icekit asked.

  “Yes, we’ll be apprentices soon,” Foxkit added, letting go of the bramble.

  “Okay, but be careful you don’t get thorns in your pads.”

  Lionpaw went on dragging the tendril across the clearing. The two kits tried to help him tug it along, but they mostly got under his paws and made the task harder.

  When they drew closer to the elders’ den, Foxkit and Icekit seemed to forget about helping. Instead they dashed across to Mousefur and Longtail, who were sunning themselves at the entrance to the den.

  “Tell us a story!” Foxkit demanded. “Tell us about the Great Journey. Tell us how the Twolegs—”

  “No, I want to hear about the old forest,” Icekit interrupted.

  Mousefur yawned. “You tell them something,” she mewed to Longtail. “Then maybe they’ll settle down and some cats can get a bit of sleep.” She closed her eyes and wrapped her tail over her nose.

  Longtail sighed, then settled into a comfortable crouch with his paws tucked under his chest. He turned his face toward the kits, even though he couldn’t see them. “Okay, what do you want to hear about?”

  “Tigerstar!” Foxkit’s fur bristled with excitement.

  “Yes, Tigerstar!” Icekit added. “Tell us how he tried to take over the forest.”

  Lionpaw saw Longtail’s tail tip flick as the blind cat hesitated. Curiosity clawed at him as he began weaving the length of bramble to block up a hole in the honeysuckle fronds that sheltered the den. He wanted to hear about Tigerstar as much as the kits did.

  “Tigerstar was a great warrior,” Longtail began at last. “He was the strongest cat in the forest and the best fighter. When I was a young cat, I thought he would be the next leader of ThunderClan. I wanted to be just like him,” the pale tabby added awkwardly.

  “But he was evil!” Foxkit burst out, round-eyed.

  “We didn’t know that back then,” Longtail explained. “He killed Redtail, the ThunderClan deputy, but every cat believed that Redtail had died in battle….”

  Lionpaw’s belly churned as he listened to the tale of blood and conspiracy. It was hard to keep his paws moving, fixing the bramble into place, and to pretend that this was just a story to him, no more than it was to the kits. This was the cat who padded beside him through the forest, teaching him how to be a warrior!

  “It was Tigerstar’s ambition that destroyed him,” Longtail concluded. “If he’d been willing to wait for power to come to him, he would have been the greatest leader in the forest.”

  Lionpaw relaxed. There was no reason for him to avoid Tigerstar. The dark tabby couldn’t be ambitious now. He was dead; there was nothing left to plan for.

  And he had never suggested that Lionpaw should break the warrior code. He had been angry when he discovered the meetings with Heatherpaw in the cave. All he wanted was to make Lionpaw a really good warrior. Perhaps Tigerstar was sorry for what he had done and was trying to make up for it by helping ThunderClan.

  Lionpaw left the kits pestering Longtail with questions and padded thoughtfully out of the camp to fetch more brambles.

  CHAPTER 3

  Hollypaw pushed through the brambles into the nursery and set down a blackbird in front of Daisy. Rosekit and Toadkit lay in the curve of their mother’s belly, suckling with their tiny tails stretched out behind them.

  “Thank you,” Daisy mewed, reaching out one paw to drag the blackbird closer. “That feels like a good plump one.”

  “Can we have some?” Foxkit sat up from where he was wrestling with his sister. “I’m starving!”

  “Certainly not,” their mother, Ferncloud, replied. “You’re old enough to fetch your own fresh-kill.”

  “Can we?” Icekit’s head popped up out of the bracken. “I could eat a whole rabbit.”

  “All right,” Ferncloud meowed. “Fetch some for Millie, too!” she called after them as the two kits shot out through the opening in the brambles.

  Millie blinked sleepily from where she lay in a mossy nest. Her belly looked huge; Hollypaw guessed that it wouldn’t be long before her kits were born.

  “Thank you,” Millie purred to Ferncloud.

  Ferncloud sighed. “It’s time those two were apprenticed. They need mentors to keep an eye on them.”

  Hollypaw silently agreed as she left the nursery and padded across to the fresh-kill pile to fetch prey for the elders. Foxkit and Icekit were already there, play fighting over a chaffinch.

  “What about some prey for Millie?” Hollypaw reminded them.

  “Oh, sorry.” Foxkit scrambled up, grabbed a couple of mice by their tails, and scampered off across the clearing with the prey swinging from his jaws.

  Icekit let out a little purr of triumph and settled down to eat the chaffinch.

  Hollypaw began nosing through the fresh-kill pile to find something for the elders. The scents of the nursery still clung to her fur. She felt as if the whole camp was full of kits and mothers expecting kits.

  Will the Clan expect me to have kits? she wondered.
She knew that kits were the future of the Clan, but when she thought about becoming a mother herself, she felt as if she were carrying the weight of the whole forest on her shoulders.

  She was beginning to drag a rabbit out of the pile when Honeypaw came bounding up to her. “Who’s that for?” Honeypaw asked.

  “The elders.”

  “I just took them a squirrel,” Honeypaw told her. “If they’re okay in the nursery, then we’re done.”

  Hollypaw let the rabbit drop back onto the pile. “There’s not much fresh-kill left,” she meowed. “I’m going to ask Brackenfur if we can go hunting.”

  Though there had been a heavy shower at dawn, the clouds had cleared away and the sun was shining. Every leaf and blade of grass sparkled. A stiff breeze carried prey-scent from the forest; Hollypaw’s paws itched with longing to get out of the camp.

  “There’s a hunting patrol just coming back,” Honeypaw pointed out, flicking her tail toward the camp entrance.

  Graystripe emerged, carrying a squirrel and two mice in his jaws, followed by Brightheart with a couple of voles and Berrynose with a rabbit.

  “Oh, look!” Honeypaw’s eyes stretched wide. “Berrynose has caught a huge rabbit. He’s amazing!”

  “Berrynose?” Hollypaw couldn’t stop her voice from squeaking in surprise. Ever since he had become a warrior five days earlier, the cream-colored tom had been the bossiest cat in the Clan.

  Honeypaw blinked in embarrassment and scuffled at the sandy floor of the clearing with her forepaws. “I really like him,” she confessed. “But I don’t suppose he’ll look at me, not now that he’s a warrior.”

  Hollypaw privately thought Berrynose’s nose was so high in the air he wouldn’t be able to look at any cat. And if he knew that Honeypaw liked him, he would become even more unbearable.

  “You’re good enough for—” she began, only to break off as Honeypaw dashed away to meet Berrynose in the middle of the clearing.