Fading Echoes

Her sister stared at her, whiskers quivering as though she’d scented prey. “To their camp?” she echoed breathlessly.

“I haven’t seen Whitetail or Sedgewhisker since I got back from upstream.”

Ivypaw’s tail drooped. “What do you want to see them for?” She sounded puzzled and hurt. “You don’t need friends in WindClan. You’ve got friends here.” She flicked her tail toward the hollow.

“But don’t you want to see if we can make it?” Dovepaw coaxed. She couldn’t explain Sedgewhisker’s injury without giving away her secret. “We can always say we were lost if we get caught. We’re only apprentices. No cat is going to think we’re trying to invade.” She had to see if Sedgewhisker was safe. Just because Lionblaze couldn’t care less doesn’t mean I have to. “Oh, come on,” she pleaded with Ivypaw.

Ivypaw narrowed her eyes, then nodded. “Okay.” She trotted away through the trees, heading toward the WindClan border. “If any WindClan cat catches us”—she ducked under a spreading yew bush—“we can say we were chasing a squirrel and hadn’t realized we’d crossed the border.”

Dovepaw’s belly brushed the ground as she scrabbled under the low branches. “They’d think we’re pretty stupid not to notice we’d run onto moorland,” she pointed out.

“Okay.” Ivypaw skidded down a bank. “We’ll say we were sleepwalking.”

“What, both of us?” Dovepaw wondered if her sister was taking this seriously enough.

“We can’t just tell them we’ve come to visit Whitetail and Sedgewhisker,” Ivypaw mewed.

Why not? They had been on the quest together. “We’ll just have to make sure we don’t get caught,” Dovepaw decided.

They were nearly out of the trees and Dovepaw could smell the moorland. She let her senses reach far out over the peat and heather, relieved that she could detect nothing but the soft breathing of cats tucked up in their nests in the WindClan camp. “I wonder what the camp looks like?” she mewed.

Ivypaw padded from the trees and halted at the top of a steep bank. The wind tugged her whiskers and she shivered. “I’m glad I’m not WindClan.” The border stream gurgled below them. “It must be weird to sleep out in the open.”

“They must have dens.”

“But no trees,” Ivypaw mewed. “Just the open sky.” She slid down the bank, pushing off with her hind legs as she reached the bottom and clearing the narrow waterway in one bound. She looked back at Dovepaw, who had paused on the bank. “Imagine what it must be like when it’s stormy.” She shuddered.

Dovepaw was staring across the moorland rising ahead of them like a giant sleeping cat beneath the pale night sky.

“Hurry up,” Ivypaw urged. “It’s spooky over here.”

Dovepaw bounded down the bank and over the stream. Wind rushed over the grass and heather, buffeting her like a flock of starlings. She shivered, remembering the journey upstream and the exposed territories they’d had to cross to find the beavers. “It was like this when we—” She stopped herself.

“What?”

Dovepaw shook her head. “Nothing.” Ivypaw was still upset that she hadn’t been allowed to go on the quest. No wonder she wasn’t interested in visiting Whitetail and Sedgewhisker.

Ivypaw scanned the moorland, her eyes wide and anxious. The tang of the WindClan scent markers tainted the air. “Do you suppose they have night patrols?”

Dovepaw pricked her ears, searching for WindClan patrols. A monster growled far in the distance and sheep mewled on the hillside, their greasy, pungent smell familiar from the quest, when she’d had to hide between their stinky, mudencrusted legs.

She shook away the memory. There was still no sign of cats roaming the moor. “Nothing,” she reassured Ivypaw. Worried that Ivypaw might wonder how she was so certain, she added, “With the wind blowing toward us, it’ll be easy to scent any patrols.”

Ivypaw’s mouth was already open, tasting the breeze. “Come on.” Her silver-and-white pelt glowed in the moonlight as she began to head up the slope, eyes half closed against the wind.

Dovepaw followed her across the scent line, anxiety yawning in her belly, not daring to speak now that they were on WindClan territory. They weaved up the slope, the wind whipping more fiercely at their fur. A sheep bellowed close by and they both jumped, scooting through a clump of gorse and ducking lower as they pressed on between the heather bushes.

Ivypaw slowed. “Are you sure you want to go right to their camp?” There was a quaver in her mew.