River Of Fire

Sure now that she wouldn’t be discovered, Twigpaw slid out into the open, shaking leaves and debris from her pelt. She was about to launch herself down the rocky slope, when a sudden thought struck her.

Suppose I go to the Moonpool? Maybe I can help figure out how to drive back the storm.

Twigpaw knew that she wasn’t a medicine cat, and that she had no right to be down there. But if she could somehow get some information, she could reassure Leafpool, and prove her own allegiance to ThunderClan once and for all.

I’ll do it!

Twigpaw took a swift glance over the slope and across the moor to make sure that the medicine cats were gone. Only Alderheart, Leafpool, and Jayfeather were still in sight, and they were a long way off, their figures tiny in the distance.

Taking a deep breath, Twigpaw slid through the bushes and stood at the top of the spiral path.

At first she was transfixed, gazing at the beauty in front of her. Except for the pounding of her heart, she felt as if she had been turned to stone and would never move a paw again. She stood gazing down, drinking in the glimmer of the moon, reflected on the surface of the water. The stream that flowed down the rock face into the pool looked like liquid starlight.

I don’t care if I’m punished for this! It’s worth it, just to see. . . .

Slowly, torn between fear and wonder, Twigpaw began to descend the path, fitting her paws into the depressions made by countless cats before her. At last she reached the water’s edge, and crouched beside it with her nose a mouse-length from the surface.

At first everything was dark and quiet, the only sound the falling water and a soft breeze gently caressing the surface of the pool. Above her head, the stars shone brightly in the deepening dark of the night sky.

Twigpaw bent her head farther and touched her nose to the water. This was how the medicine cats were swept into their visions of StarClan. But for Twigpaw, nothing happened. She raised her head again, twitching water droplets from her whiskers and feeling remarkably silly.

Well, what did you think would happen, you stupid furball?

Feeling that she shouldn’t have come, Twigpaw began to retreat from the water’s edge when a change in the silver light on the surface caught her eye. It had become an ominous scarlet, as if the water were running with blood. She jumped with shock as a loud boom of thunder echoed and echoed around the hollow of the Moonpool.

With a gasp of fear, Twigpaw looked up to see that flame lit the sky from horizon to horizon. At first she flattened herself to the ground, terrified that the warriors of StarClan were coming to punish her.

Then she realized that an image was taking shape. Fire was roaring through the ThunderClan camp—or at least Twigpaw thought it was the ThunderClan camp. There were so many downed trees and piles of smoldering debris that it was hard to be sure.

This can’t be real! Twigpaw thought frantically. I just left the camp, and it was fine.

“Why is this happening?” she asked aloud, hoping that StarClan would answer her.

But the answer that came was not reassuring at all.

The image of an old, grizzled cat with a broad face formed amid the flames in the sky. Scarlet fire was reflected in her eyes. Her voice rolled out like thunder as she growled, “You don’t belong here!”

Remembering the stories Alderheart had told her when she was a kit, Twigpaw thought she recognized Yellowfang, the former ShadowClan medicine cat who had come to live with ThunderClan, back in the old forest. But she was too terrified to ask the spirit cat’s name or question her again.

Instead Twigpaw leaped back from the water’s edge and raced up the spiral path. Plunging through the bushes, oblivious of the twigs that scraped her sides and snagged in her pelt, she half fell, half scrambled down the rocky slope and fled across the moor.

But when Twigpaw had to stop for breath and looked around her, she noticed a glow on the horizon that showed her where the sun was about to rise. A chill struck through her paws as if she was walking on ice.

How can that be? I was only at the Moonpool for a few heartbeats.

Twigpaw went on more slowly, trying to stop her legs from trembling. The whole experience had shaken her to the depths.

What did that vision of the ruined camp mean? And what did Yellowfang mean when she said I didn’t belong there? Did she mean I didn’t belong at the Moonpool? Or . . . did she mean I shouldn’t be in ThunderClan?