The Apprentice's Quest

“No big deal?” Sandstorm’s neck fur began to bristle. “Are you mouse-brained? Cats have died on Thunderpaths.”

“Well, I still think we ought to hunt now,” Sparkpaw retorted, bristling in turn. “Last time I checked, we can’t fill up on herbs and bits of chewed-up bark!”

Alderpaw lashed his tail in frustration. I’m supposed to be in charge, but Sparkpaw still thinks she can boss me around. And she’s arguing with an elder!

He drew his lips back in the beginning of a snarl, ready to snap at his sister. But Sandstorm forestalled him, her neck fur lying flat again and her voice calm.

“Sparkpaw, even though you’re both young cats in training, this is Alderpaw’s quest, and his vision. You need to listen to him. He’s right.

We should continue on, not stop to hunt before we’ve even left our own territory.”

Sparkpaw ducked her head, her tail drooping. “Fine,” she muttered. “Sorry.”

Alderpaw puffed out his chest, pleased that Sandstorm had backed him up and announced that he was the leader. All the same, he didn’t like to see his sister miserable. As they set out again, he brushed his tail along her side. “It’s okay,” he whispered.

They emerged from the trees on the lakeshore not far from the stream that marked the border with WindClan. Alderpaw had been this way before, when they’d gone to the Gathering, and he felt quite confident as he splashed through the shallow water and led the way alongside the lake.

With his Clanmates clustered closely around him, Alderpaw glanced up to see if any of the leggy WindClan warriors were in sight, but nothing moved on the bare hillside.

“Good,” Molewhisker murmured. “I’d just as soon get away without WindClan knowing we’re gone. StarClan knows what rumors would start if any cat saw us.”

Sandstorm nodded. “They might even follow us. Come on, Alderpaw, pick the pace up a bit.”

Alderpaw sped up into a fast lope along the pebbly lakeshore, and his Clanmates followed him until they reached the WindClan border near the horseplace. Now and again he cast swift glances at the moor, and once he thought he saw a flicker of movement among some gorse bushes, but no cat emerged to challenge them.

When they crossed the border and stood near the horseplace, Alderpaw halted. He felt a fluttering in his belly. “You’d better lead now, Sandstorm,” he meowed. “You’re the only one of us who has been this way before.”

Sandstorm nodded. “We have to climb the ridge,” she responded, pointing upward with her tail to where a steep hill, dotted here and there with thickets of trees, led to a bare ridge many fox-lengths above their head. “I’ll never forget the night we arrived here,” she murmured, her green eyes deep with memory. “We climbed that ridge from the other side, and we had no idea where StarClan was leading us. Then we reached the top and saw the lake, and the spirits of our warrior ancestors reflected in the water.” She sighed. “It was one of the most wonderful nights of my life.”

She paused for a moment, then gave her pelt a shake. “Let’s go.”

Alderpaw and the others followed Sandstorm on the tough climb up to the ridge.

She led them past the clustered Twoleg dens of the horseplace, then alongside a fence made of some shiny Twoleg stuff.

“Look!” Sparkpaw whispered excitedly to Alderpaw. “Horses!”

Alderpaw recognized the huge animals from how Daisy had described them in the nursery.

There were two of them—one dark brown and one mottled gray—standing together in the shade of a tree, gently whisking their tails to and fro.

“They’re not dangerous unless you bother them,” Sandstorm mewed briskly. “And they won’t come on this side of the fence.”

All the same, Alderpaw was relieved when they left the horses behind and scrambled up the last few tail-lengths to the top of the ridge.

Reaching it, he halted, his paws frozen to the ground.

“Wow!” Sparkpaw breathed out, coming to stand beside him. “I didn’t know the world was so big!”

Gazing out in front of him, Alderpaw saw that the ground fell away sharply, sweeping down into a wide valley with stretches of woodland and what looked like a hard black snake winding across it. Beyond it were masses of trees, the huddled dens of an enormous

Twolegplace—far bigger than the one by the lake where they had gone to collect catmint—and fields and hills stretching away on every side until they became hazy with distance.

A shiver passed through Alderpaw, as if he were being stabbed by masses of icicles, all at once. Glancing back, he could still see the lake with the Clan territories around it, the only place he had known all his life. Ahead, everything was unknown. It was even more frightening than his journey to the Moonpool, because then he had been following a path the other medicine cats had traveled before him.

Now he was taking his Clanmates where there were no familiar paths.

“Can you see the place in your vision?”