The Apprentice's Quest

Alderpaw had been so concerned about Sandstorm that he hadn’t noticed what lay in front of them. Now he looked up to see that the other cats had stopped and were uneasily eyeing a huge creature that stood a few fox-lengths away. Even Needlepaw looked scared.

It was smaller than the horses Alderpaw had seen as they left Clan territory, but still big enough to be frightening. Its lumpy body was covered in black-and-white fur; its legs were spindly with hard, sharp paws. Its tail, ending in a tuft of hair, swung to and fro. Enormous eyes in a square face gazed expressionlessly at the cats.

“What is it?” Sparkpaw gasped.

“Nothing to be afraid of,” Sandstorm mewed calmly. “I’ve seen them before, and they’re not unfriendly. Mostly they just ignore cats.”

“Mostly?” Alderpaw asked nervously.

“They’re okay unless something scares them into running. Then they’re big enough to trample us underpaw. So we need to be careful not to scare this one.”

“You’ve no idea how good that makes me feel,” Molewhisker muttered.

Alderpaw forced his paws into motion, heading in a wide circle around the strange animal, never taking his eyes off it. His friends followed him. The creature swung its head around to track their progress, still gazing at them with those large, incurious eyes. Then without warning it opened its jaws and let out a deep-throated bellow.

Thoroughly spooked, Alderpaw gave a yowl of terror and raced for the big Twoleg den. He could hear caterwauling from behind him as the others pelted after him.

Have we scared it? Will it run?

But when he halted and looked back, panting, the huge animal hadn’t stirred. It just stood there, still staring at them. Its jaws moved rhythmically as it chewed.

“Great StarClan!” Cherryfall exclaimed.

“What is that?”

After a moment Sandstorm let out a mrrow of laughter, and the others joined in, beginning to relax. Alderpaw suddenly felt ashamed of his nervousness, and he could see from his friends’ faces that they felt the same.

“Let’s move on,” he meowed.

Skirting the big yellow den and the cluster of smaller dens, the cats headed away at a brisk lope. Alderpaw hoped they were leaving the Twoleg stuff behind them, until he spotted a smaller wooden den, with birds pecking at the earth around it and straying into the cats’ path.

“What are those?” he asked curiously.

The birds were bigger than pigeons, with reddish-brown feathers and scaly yellow legs.

They didn’t pay much attention as the cats approached.

“They’re birds, mouse-brain,” Sparkpaw replied to Alderpaw. “And that means they’re prey.”

Crouching down, she began to creep up on the nearest bird. But there was no cover, and the bird spotted her as she pounced. It spun around to face her, flapping its wings and letting out a series of harsh squawks.

The rest of the birds scattered, running across the grass as if they didn’t know how to fly. But the bird Sparkpaw had tried to hunt stretched its neck out and attacked her with furious pecks. Sparkpaw leaped backward, hissing defiantly.

“It looks like you’re the prey,” Needlepaw meowed, her voice full of laughter and her eyes gleaming.

“Leave them,” Sandstorm ordered, gesturing with her tail for Sparkpaw to rejoin the group. “It’s not worth risking injury. We’ll hunt when we get past this place.”

“Yes, we need to keep going,” Alderpaw added, urgency pricking his paws as he remembered the desperate cries of the SkyClan cats.

Looking sulky, Sparkpaw obeyed. She glared at Needlepaw as the ShadowClan cat let out a stream of squawks in imitation of the weird birds. “Stop messing around, you crazy furball,” she muttered.

But Needlepaw seemed not to understand the need to move on quickly. Alderpaw’s irritation with her rose as she poked her nose into every hole and clump of long grass. She halted at the sight of another strange creature, smaller than the first, but with the same hard, pointed paws. It had curving horns and a long wisp of hair dangling from its chin. Alderpaw shivered at the sight of its eerie eyes.

It let out a high-pitched, drawn-out cry, and Needlepaw at once tried to imitate it, snorting with laughter at her own weird meows.

“Whenever you’ve finished… ,” Alderpaw snarled, giving her a hard shove.

“Keep your fur on!” Needlepaw retorted.

She was still bouncing around like a kit on its first day out of the nursery when the cats approached a hedge. Beyond it, rows of tall, yellow-brown plants stretched into the distance. Alderpaw could hear a faint rumbling and noticed a haze hanging in the air.

“There may be a Thunderpath on the other side of this,” he mewed.

Sandstorm nodded. “I still think this is the way we should go.”

Without hesitating, Alderpaw began to push his way through the hedge; fortunately the bushes weren’t too thick. “Sandstorm, watch out for your shoulder,” he warned her.

Sandstorm brushed through without mishap, while Cherryfall and Molewhisker followed.