Fire And Ice

“Adders live up there. A bite from one of those would kill a cat as small as you!” Fireheart gave Cinderpaw a quick lick on top of her head. “Come on. Let’s have a look at the Thunderpath.”

Cinderpaw stopped shaking at once. “The Thunderpath?”

“Yep,” meowed Fireheart. “Follow me!” He led Cinderpaw through the ferns, along a trail that skirted Snakerocks and took them to the part of the forest where the Thunderpath cut through like a hard, gray river of stone.

Fireheart kept one eye on Cinderpaw as they peered out from the edge of the forest. He could see from her twitching tail that Cinderpaw was desperate to creep forward and sniff the Thunderpath ahead of them. A familiar roar was beginning to ruffle his ear fur, and he could feel the ground trembling beneath his paws. “Stay where you are!” he warned. “There’s a monster coming.”

Cinderpaw opened her mouth a little. “Yuck!” she mewed, screwing up her nose and flattening her ears. The rumbling noise was coming closer, and a shape appeared on the horizon. “Is that a monster?” she mewed. Fireheart nodded.

Cinderpaw unsheathed her claws to grip the earth as the monster roared closer. She shut her eyes tight as it charged past, stirring the air around them into a storm of wind and thunder. She kept her eyes shut until the noise had faded into the distance.

Fireheart shook his head to clear his scent glands. “Sniff the air,” he meowed. “Can you smell anything apart from the Thunderpath stench?” He waited while Cinderpaw lifted her head and took several deep breaths.

After a few moments she mewed, “I remember that scent from when Brokenstar attacked our camp. And it was on the kits he took, when you brought them home. It’s ShadowClan! Is that their territory, beyond the Thunderpath?”

“Yes,” Fireheart answered, feeling his fur tingle at the thought of being so close to hostile Clan territory. “We’d better get out of here.”

He decided to take Cinderpaw the long way home past Twolegplace, so she could see Tallpines and the Treecut place.

As they padded beneath the thin pine trees, the scents of Twolegplace made Fireheart uneasy, even though he’d lived in a place not far from there as a kit. “Stay alert,” he warned Cinderpaw as she crept along behind him. “Twolegs sometimes walk here with dogs.”

The two cats crouched under the trees to look at the fences that bordered the Twoleg territory. The crisp air carried a scent to Fireheart’s nose that stirred an odd feeling of warmth inside him, although he didn’t know why.

“Look!” Cinderpaw pointed with her nose at a she-cat padding across the forest floor. The light brown tabby had a distinctive white chest and white front paws. Her belly was swollen, heavy with unborn kits.

“Kittypet!” sneered Cinderpaw, her fur fluffed out. “Let’s chase her out!”

Fireheart expected to feel the familiar rush of aggression at the sight of a stranger on ThunderClan territory, but his hackles stayed flat. For some reason he couldn’t understand, he knew this cat wasn’t a threat. Before Cinderpaw could attack, Fireheart deliberately brushed against a stalk of crunchy bracken.

The she-cat looked up, disturbed by the crackling noise. Her eyes widened with alarm; then she whipped around and set off at a lumbering pace, out of the trees. Within moments she was heaving herself over one of the Twoleg fences.

“Rats!” complained Cinderpaw. “I wanted to chase her! I bet Brackenpaw will have chased hundreds of things today.”

“Yeah, but he probably didn’t nearly get bitten by an adder,” replied Fireheart, twitching his tail at her. “Now come on; I’m getting hungry.”

Cinderpaw followed him through Tallpines, grumbling about the pine needles pricking her paws. Fireheart warned her to keep quiet, since there was no undergrowth here to hide in and he felt every Clan cat’s discomfort at being in the open. They followed one of the stinking tracks gouged out by the Treecut monster and stopped at the edge of the Treecut place. It was silent, as Fireheart knew it would be until next greenleaf. Until then, only the track marks—deep and wide and frozen into the soil—would remind ThunderClan of the monster that lived in their forest.

By the time they arrived back at camp, Fireheart was exhausted; his muscles were still weary from the long journey with WindClan. Cinderpaw looked tired too. She stifled a yawn and padded away to find Brackenpaw.

Fireheart spotted Graystripe beckoning to him from beside the nettle clump.

“Here, I’ve got you some fresh-kill,” Graystripe meowed. He hooked a dead mouse with his claw and flung it toward Fireheart.

Fireheart caught it in his teeth and lay down next to Graystripe. “Good day?” he mumbled with his mouth full.

“Better than yesterday,” answered Graystripe. Fireheart glanced up at him, worried, but Graystripe went on: “I enjoyed it, actually. Brackenpaw’s keen to learn, that’s for sure!”

“So is Cinderpaw.” Fireheart went back to chewing.

“Mind you,” Graystripe went on with a sparkle in his eye, “I kept forgetting I was the mentor and not the apprentice!”