Bramblestar's Storm

by Erin Hunter

  CHAPTER 25

  “Seeing that the water’s going down,” Bramblestar meowed, “we need to think about repairing the dens in the hollow.”

  A couple of days had passed without any more rain. Now a pale sun was shining and the clouds were thinning out, drifting across the sky like white mist. Bramblestar felt his energy rise at the thought of returning to their home.

  Dustpelt and Brackenfur were discussing the practicalities with him just outside the entrance to the tunnel, along with Cherryfall and Molewhisker. The life of the Clan went on busily around them. The apprentices were dragging bedding outside to let it dry off in the sun, with Daisy supervising them.

  “Stop it, Amberpaw!” Bramblestar heard her scold the young she-cat. “You won’t make that moss fit to sleep on by throwing it at Dewpaw.”

  Farther across the clearing, Millie was helping Briarlight with her exercises. The warmer weather was helping her, Bramblestar noticed; she wasn’t coughing nearly as much. In fact, most of the sick cats are getting better.

  Dustpelt twitched his whiskers thoughtfully before replying to Bramblestar. “It’ll be a long job,” he murmured. “Before we can repair anything, we’ll have to get rid of all the mess.”

  “But we’ll be home; that’s the most important thing,” Brackenfur added.

  “I suggest we split up the tasks,” Dustpelt went on. Bramblestar saw that his eyes were brighter as he considered the problem. He looked more like the cat he had been before he lost Ferncloud. “Some cats to clear up, some to fetch brambles and moss from the forest, some to start the actual rebuilding . . .”

  “And still keep up with hunting and border patrols,” Bramblestar pointed out.

  “Yeah, we need to keep an eye on ShadowClan,” Cherryfall put in, working her claws eagerly in the ground.

  “Let’s hope that ShadowClan has enough to do repairing their own camp, to have time to come bothering us,” Bramblestar responded. “And that goes for the other Clans, too.”

  “Then we should start by organizing work patrols,” Brackenfur suggested. “As soon as the water level sinks low enough to let us back in.”

  “That would be a task for Squirrelflight,” Bramblestar mewed. He glanced around for his deputy, who had been sorting out hunting patrols at the far side of the clearing. Now the patrols were leaving, and Squirrelflight was already heading toward him.

  “Bramblestar,” she began as soon as she was within earshot, “remember what we were talking about the other night? Well, Frankie is at it again. I was about to put him in a patrol when I saw him sneaking off.”

  Bramblestar rose to his paws with a frustrated lash of his tail. “I hoped he’d given that up. He was in a hunting patrol with me yesterday, and he made a couple of really good catches. Which way did he go?” he asked Squirrelflight.

  His deputy angled her ears in the direction of the ridge. “Up there.”

  “Sorry,” Bramblestar meowed to Dustpelt and the others. “I have to deal with this. Discuss the hollow among yourselves, and let me know what you decide when I get back.”

  Padding across the clearing, Bramblestar easily picked out Frankie’s trail from the mingled scents of the other cats. To his surprise, it led straight up to the ridge, then across the border and into the woods above ShadowClan territory. Before long, he spotted Frankie, trotting along swiftly and purposefully.

  Bramblestar quickened his pace to catch up. He was almost close enough to call out: Hey, what do you think you’re doing? Then he saw Frankie freeze and hurl himself into the shelter of a clump of bracken. Quickly Bramblestar leaped up into the nearest tree, hiding himself among the tiny, unfurling leaves, and peered downward. A heartbeat later he spotted a ShadowClan patrol padding past, focused and alert as if they were looking for prey. Rowanstar himself was in the lead.

  Thank StarClan they didn’t spot us! Bramblestar thought as the patrol vanished and their scent died away.

  Frankie emerged from the bracken and set off again, swift as a fox, into the dark pine forest in the direction of the Twolegplace. Is he going to visit Victor and those other kittypets? Bramblestar wondered, deciding not to call out to Frankie until he knew what was going on.

  But Frankie veered away from the Twolegplace and headed toward the border between ShadowClan and RiverClan. Suddenly Bramblestar realized that he was going back to his own nest. Does he want to leave us? Bramblestar felt a stab of disappointment that Frankie would just go without even saying good-bye. But if this is where he disappeared to before, he has already been and come back twice. What is he playing at?

  Bramblestar tracked Frankie in silence as his paw steps turned toward the lake. The stream leading down into it was much shallower now, not the turbulent current they had risked their lives to swim such a short time before. Frankie waded across it without hesitating, even though in the middle of the stream the water came up to his head and shoulders. Bramblestar waited for him to get a little farther ahead before following.

  Even though the water had gone down, Bramblestar could see the evidence of the terrible flood everywhere he looked. Vast swathes of mud covered the ground, clinging to his paws as he picked his way through it. The ground was littered with broken Twoleg things and branches swept along in the surge. Sometimes there was no way around it, so that Bramblestar and Frankie had to clamber over the heaps of flotsam, getting even wetter and muddier. As they drew closer to the Twoleg dens, Bramblestar saw that some of the Twolegs had returned. They waded in and out of the flooded dens, pushing water out with long branches that were bushy at the end, and yowling at one another in angry voices. Bramblestar’s fur began to bristle as he drew closer to them, but soon he realized that they were too busy to notice a couple of cats.

  By now Bramblestar was close enough to Frankie to have called to him easily, but he kept silent, in the grip of curiosity, and ducked out of sight whenever Frankie paused to look around. I want to know exactly what this kittypet is up to. Soon Frankie reached the flooded Thunderpath that led away from the lake. The water came up no farther than his belly fur now, and he waded along, venturing into each Twoleg den but staying out of sight of the Twolegs.

  What is he doing? Is he trying to steal food because hunting prey is too hard? Or looking for his Twolegs?

  When Frankie emerged from the next Twoleg den, he paused, looking around with his head raised. “Benny! Benny!” he called.

  Bramblestar stared at the kittypet in dismay. He’s looking for his brother! Why didn’t I think of that? He kept close as the gray tabby cat went on, searching under bushes, in abandoned Twoleg dens and monsters, underneath the bigger chunks of debris that littered the ground. His frantic, uncoordinated movements and his wide-stretched eyes gave away his growing despair.

  At last Frankie jumped up onto a fence. “Benny, where are you?” he yowled.

  Bramblestar couldn’t let him suffer on his own anymore. “Frankie!” he meowed, jumping up onto the fence beside him.

  Frankie whirled to face him, so startled that he almost lost his balance. “I—I’m sorry. . . .” he stammered when he had regained his footing.

  Bramblestar silenced him with a wave of his tail. “You have nothing to be sorry for. We should have known you’d come looking for Benny. We all know how it feels to lose kin. It’s part of Clan life.”

  Frankie lowered his head. “Then it’s a part of Clan life I can’t accept.”

  “I didn’t say we accepted it, either,” Bramblestar mewed. “Come on, I’ll help you look.”

  He leaped down from the fence and headed farther along the flooded Thunderpath, trying to remember which of the Twoleg nests Frankie had been trapped in when Jessy found him. “Show me your den,” he told Frankie. “Maybe we can work out which way Benny would have gone. That is where you saw him last, right?”

  Frankie nodded, beckoning with his tail. “This way.”

  He waded across the Thunderpath and up the slope on the far side. At the top, Bramblestar spotted the den set into the bank where
he had first seen Jessy trying to get through the window to release Frankie. Following the kittypet, he bounded down the slope until they reached the fence that surrounded the den.

  “Benny and I were here when the flood came,” Frankie explained, jumping over the fence and landing on a stretch of soggy grass. “The water came up from the lake like a huge wave. It knocked us off our paws and washed us that way.” He angled his ears toward the opposite fence. “I hit the fence and dug my claws in. I thought I was going to drown.” He shuddered and his eyes clouded.

  “What happened next?” Bramblestar prompted him.

  “I spotted that the basement window was open. I managed to get inside. I thought Benny was right behind me . . . but he must have been swept away.” His voice shook on the last few words.

  Bramblestar touched Frankie’s shoulder with his nose, then padded across the garden to inspect the fence at the opposite side. Water had washed away all traces of scent, but after a few moments he found a narrow gap at the bottom with a tuft of black-and-white fur caught on a splinter.

  “Hey, Frankie!” he called. “Benny is black and white, right? Could this be his?”

  Frankie ran over and stared at the scrap of fur. “Yes, that’s Benny’s,” he meowed.

  “Looks like he went this way, then.”

  Bramblestar squeezed through the gap, with Frankie close behind. On the other side a broad swathe of destruction—broken fencing, stinking mud, scattered branches and other debris, and even a small monster tipped over onto its side—revealed the path of the huge wave. Ignoring their wet paws and drenched fur, the two cats followed the trail, checking each possible hiding place to see if Benny was there.

  “Why are you helping me?” Frankie asked after a few moments.

  “Because right now you are my Clanmate,” Bramblestar replied, drawing his tail-tip along Frankie’s flank. “I would do the same for any of my cats.”

  The trail led to a narrow opening in the ground. At first Bramblestar thought it was another entrance to the tunnels, but then he realized it was something made by Twolegs. A neat square hole had been built into a raised bank of earth, supported by stones like the ones used to build Twoleg dens.

  “That’s a drain,” Frankie meowed. “There’s usually a cover on it, but it must have been washed away.”

  Bramblestar felt his fur start to prickle as he pictured what might have happened to a struggling cat, his fur heavy with floodwater, swept off his paws by a wall of water. I don’t like this one bit, but some cat has to check it out. Then he took a deep breath and crawled into the drain.

  The air was damp and full of a thick, rotting stench. This was nothing like the tunnels, which seemed light and spacious compared with this dank hole. Bramblestar’s pelt brushed against the slimy walls on either side. His own body was blocking the light, and ahead of him was only choking darkness. Oh, StarClan, please don’t let me get stuck!

  Bramblestar’s heart was pounding hard, and it took a massive effort for him to keep putting one paw in front of another. He was wondering how long he ought to go on when he bumped into something soft and furry. A tiny slice of light from a gap overhead revealed a heap of black-and-white fur, cold and solid and a long way from life. Every muscle in Bramblestar’s body stiffened as he realized that he had found Benny.

  Gagging at the smell, Bramblestar nosed about until he located one of the dead cat’s legs and fastened his teeth in it. Then he tried to crawl backward, but Benny’s body was stuck against something, and wouldn’t move. Bramblestar reached out one forepaw and felt around for whatever was blocking Benny. His paw touched something hard and chilled, lodged slantwise in the drain and wedging Benny’s body underneath it.

  Bramblestar gave it a shove. Maybe it’s the drain cover that Frankie said was missing.

  At first nothing Bramblestar could do would shift the obstacle. His legs started to ache as he heaved at it, stretched to his limit to reach past Benny’s unmoving body. He was on the verge of giving up when it gave way with an echoing clang against the side of the drain and slipped to one side.

  Bramblestar tried moving Benny again and this time the cat’s body slid easily toward him. Carefully he backed away, dragging Benny with him, until he felt a welcome draft of fresh air on his haunches, and emerged into the daylight. Frankie was waiting beside the drain entrance and helped him to pull Benny the last couple of tail-lengths out into the light.

  Bramblestar coughed to clear the stench of the drain from his throat. “Is that your brother?” he meowed hoarsely, though he was in no doubt about the answer.

  Frankie crouched beside the body, his head bowed. The dead tom looked small and pathetic out here, his black-and-white pelt plastered to his sides, covered in mud and slime.

  “Oh, Benny . . .” Frankie touched his nose to his brother’s cold side. His voice began as a whisper, then rose to a grief-stricken wail. “What am I going to do? I can’t leave him here!”

  “We’ll bury him,” Bramblestar told him. “We’ll give him a warrior’s farewell.”

  Together he and Frankie managed to hoist Benny onto their backs and carry him up the slope to the top of the hill, where the ground was drier. They laid Benny on the grass while they scratched a hole. The sun was setting, bathing the hill with scarlet light, as they settled him inside it and covered him with earth. Bramblestar stood beside the small, dark mound of soil and spoke the words that a medicine cat would say over the body of a fallen warrior.

  “May StarClan light your path, Benny.” His voice rang out over the heap of stones and earth. “May you find good hunting, swift running, and shelter when you sleep.”

  Frankie looked up to where the warriors of StarClan were beginning to appear, crossing the sky in a glittering pathway of stars. “Do all cats go to StarClan?” he asked. “Even Benny?”

  Bramblestar wasn’t sure if a kittypet would be welcomed into StarClan. He guessed that even Jayfeather or Leafpool would have trouble answering that question. But he knew that he had to give Frankie some comfort. “Well . . . there are a lot of stars,” he mewed. “More than there have ever been warriors, I’m sure.”

  Frankie peered more closely at the shimmering swathe of light. “I wonder which one is Benny?” His voice quivered. “Benny, I’ll look up at you every night. If you look down on me, then we’ll still be together.”

  Bramblestar leaned closer to Frankie, lending him his warmth and feeling him tremble from more than cold.

  After a moment Frankie spoke, his gaze still fixed on the stars. “Don’t you need to get back to the Clan?”

  Yes, Bramblestar thought, but that’s not important right now. “There’s plenty of time,” he murmured. “I’ll stay with you for as long as you need.”

  CHAPTER 26

  The last of the sun had gone and shadows were gathering fast before Frankie stirred, lowering his gaze from the stars. “What will happen to me now?” he mewed sadly. “My housefolk have left, and my home is still full of water. Everything has gone.”

  “But the water is going down.” Bramblestar tried to sound encouraging. “Your Twolegs will come back.”

  “But what will I do right now?” Frankie wailed.

  “Come back to ThunderClan.” The answer was so obvious to Bramblestar that he found it hard to understand why Frankie was asking the question. “We’ll look after you until you can go home.”

  Frankie let out a sigh. “Thank you.”

  Bramblestar led the way back to ThunderClan territory, retracing their previous route. Night had fallen by the time they reached the woods above ShadowClan, and Bramblestar felt his pelt rise at the eerie silence. The scents of ShadowClan warriors wreathed around him from every side, as if they had been hunting regularly beyond their border since ThunderClan had dealt with Victor and the other kittypets.

  “If we spot a ShadowClan patrol, climb a tree, quick as you can,” he murmured to Frankie. “I know we’re not actually trespassing, but I don’t want them to catch us.”

  Wh
en they reached the forest above ThunderClan, Bramblestar relaxed briefly, only to stiffen again as he picked up a trace of the bitter scent of badger. “Let’s get a move on,” he meowed, not telling Frankie anything about his fears. “I can’t wait to get back to my nest.”

  A quarter moon was shining down on the clearing when Bramblestar and Frankie returned to the makeshift camp. Squirrelflight was stalking up and down in front of the tunnel entrance, her tail-tip flicking and her whiskers quivering.

  “Bramblestar!” she exclaimed as the two cats limped out of the undergrowth. “Where have you been?”

  At the sound of her voice, Minty, Jessy, and Millie erupted out of the tunnel.

  “Are you two mouse-brained?” Millie demanded as she shot across the clearing. “Do you know how worried we’ve been? Do you care?”

  “Great StarClan, look at you!” Squirrelflight gasped.

  Bramblestar realized how they must appear: thorn-scratched and exhausted, their fur soaked and muddy, stinking of death. “It’s been a long day,” he muttered.

  Millie’s anger died as she reached Frankie and Bramblestar and saw them more clearly. “What happened?” she hissed. “Are you hurt?”

  “Did you fight a badger?” Minty asked, bounding up and giving Frankie’s filthy pelt a shocked sniff.

  “Benny’s dead,” Frankie responded wearily.

  Minty’s eyes stretched wide. “Oh, no! How?”

  While Bramblestar gave a brief account of their search and the discovery of Benny’s body inside the drain, more of his Clanmates emerged from the tunnel. Murmurs of sympathy arose from them as they listened.

  “We buried him on a little hill overlooking the lake,” Bramblestar finished.

  “I’m sure StarClan was with him at the end,” Leafpool mewed, padding up to Frankie and giving his ear a comforting lick.

  “I hope so.” Frankie’s voice was bleak. “Because I wasn’t.”