Bramblestar’s Storm

Squirrelflight looked annoyed at the addition of the kittypet; then Bramblestar reflected that perhaps she was just worried about the invasion. “I’ll take my patrol to the bottom of the stream and we’ll work our way up,” she meowed. “If we meet the trespassers, we’ll chase them off.”

“Oh, yes,” Thornclaw added, baring his teeth in a snarl.

“If you find the crossing place,” Squirrelflight went on to Bramblestar, “you should hide there and let the WindClan cats go back to their own territory. Then do what you can to block it.”

“Right,” Bramblestar responded, feeling amused. Just who’s Clan leader here? He waited until Squirrelflight had left at the head of her patrol, and Ivypool had returned with Snowpaw, who was bouncing excitedly at the thought of tackling WindClan.

“Stay close to your mentor,” Bramblestar warned him. He wasn’t sure it was wise to add an apprentice to the group. Still, Snowpaw can look after himself better than Jessy. He was about to set out when he heard his name being called, and spotted Jayfeather emerging from the tunnel. Bramblestar waited for his medicine cat to cross the wet grass to his side.

“Bramblestar, be careful,” Jayfeather mewed breathlessly.

“Have you had another dream?” Bramblestar demanded. “Another omen?”

Jayfeather shook his head, looking troubled. “I just don’t want to risk any more lives.”

Bramblestar guessed that Jayfeather was feeling distressed by the way that he had failed to interpret the warnings about the Stick of the Fallen. “Don’t worry,” he reassured the medicine cat. “We’ll be careful. I don’t want to lose any more cats, either.”

Bramblestar and his patrol trekked up to the ridge, then trudged along the top toward the swollen stream. Once out of the shelter of the trees, the wind blustered around them, flattening their pelts to their sides, and rain flicked in their faces. Though he kept halting to look and listen for WindClan cats, Bramblestar couldn’t pick up any trace of them, not even a whiff of their scent. But from here there was no clear view down to the lake. That patrol could be anywhere.

When they reached the stream, Bramblestar detected WindClan scent along the bank; it was fairly fresh, as if it might have been left by the patrol he had seen earlier. “They came this way,” he meowed. “So they must have crossed farther up. Let’s go.”

Before they had traveled many more fox-lengths, they crossed their own border scent markers. Bramblestar’s paws tingled as he led his patrol out of Clan territory.

“This is the way to the Moonpool,” Snowpaw informed Jessy, pattering along beside her. “I wish I could go there. It sounds so cool!”

“What’s the Moonpool?” Jessy asked.

“All the medicine cats go there,” Snowpaw told her. He seemed delighted to be teaching a cat who knew even less about the forest than he did. “That’s where they meet with StarClan.”

Jessy opened her jaws to ask another question, but Snowpaw forestalled her. “StarClan are the spirits of our dead ancestors,” he informed her. “They tell medicine cats omens and stuff.”

Jessy blinked and shot Bramblestar a glance full of confusion. “StarClan? Dead cats?”

“Shh.” Bramblestar raised his tail to silence them. “There might be WindClan cats about.”

The patrol’s pace slowed as the ground became rockier. The stream was still fast flowing and overfull, but narrower here as it cut through a deeper channel. Bramblestar began to think it might be possible to leap over it. Though I wouldn’t want to try it, he thought with a shiver as he watched the roiling water.

Ivypool had bounded ahead of the rest of the patrol. Suddenly she turned back, gesturing with her tail. “Come and see this!” she called.

Bramblestar picked up the pace until he reached Ivypool’s side and saw a fallen tree wedged across the stream. The flood must have washed it down from the mountains, he realized. The current had thrown debris against the tree on both sides of the stream, and water was breaking over the top, but Bramblestar had no doubt that this was the crossing place. The whole area reeked of WindClan scent.

“Those impudent rabbit-chasers!” Ivypool exclaimed. “Now what are we going to do?”

Chapter 17

“We have to dislodge the tree,” Bramblestar mused, examining it carefully. He couldn’t imagine how they were going to manage that; the trunk was firmly wedged among the rocks on both sides of the stream.

“I’ll take a closer look,” Jessy meowed, leaping onto the trunk and running confidently along it.

Bramblestar admired how light-pawed and nimble she was, realizing she must have had practice walking along the fence-tops by the Twoleg dens. His Clanmates looked a bit startled, though they said nothing.