Micah sighed, then nodded, accepting her decision at last. “You’re a brave cat, Pebbleshine,” he meowed.
Pebbleshine dipped her head in thanks for his praise. She remembered watching Milo and Olive walk away, and then striking out on her own … she remembered hitting the window over and over in the tiny den, and the satisfaction she felt when her paws touched grass again. “If I’ve learned anything on this journey, it’s that I can rely on myself to do what has to be done. I hope my daughters can learn that lesson too—either on their own or because I’ll be watching over them. Being part of a Clan is a wonderful thing, but so is knowing that you can depend on yourself.”
She straightened, head and tail erect. “So, Micah, what do I have to do?”
Chapter 9
Micah brushed his cheek against Pebbleshine’s. From behind him, Billystorm called out, “Good luck!” The rest of Pebbleshine’s former Clanmates echoed his good wishes, while Duskpaw bounded forward to twine his tail briefly with hers and give her ear an affectionate lick.
“You’ll make it back here in the end,” he assured her. “I know you will.”
Her friend’s promise warmed Pebbleshine’s heart, convincing her that she wasn’t doomed to loneliness between life and death forever. “Thanks, Duskpaw,” she murmured.
As Duskpaw retreated to join his Clanmates, Micah gestured with his tail. “Step forward into the pool,” he meowed.
Determinedly Pebbleshine slid from the grassy bank. For a heartbeat she shivered at the touch of cool water splashing around her paws, and then she began swimming through a whirl of green and silver. The colors faded before Pebbleshine could lose consciousness, and she spotted an exit and began swimming toward it. She left behind a blue sky covered by a thin drift of cloud. At the next moment she reached dry ground and climbed onto it. When she got out, she realized her paws weren’t even wet.
Blinking, Pebbleshine looked around. She was standing on a grassy slope close to the Thunderpath, and not many fox-lengths away she could see the bank that held the dark gap of the tunnel entrance.
Her paws itched to carry her down the slope and into the tunnel to find her kits, but before she could move, she began to hear the voices of two cats somewhere behind her, farther up the slope. They were too far away for Pebbleshine to make out the words, but they sounded as if they were having an argument.
If only one of them were Hawkwing! she thought. Maybe my Clanmates have found me after all.
Pebbleshine turned and swallowed a cry of disappointment as she recognized the ginger tom and the silver-gray she-cat Micah had shown her in the pool. They were coming down the slope toward her. She began to duck down behind a thick tussock of grass before she remembered that the living cats couldn’t see her. The two unfamiliar apprentices halted so close to her that if she had stretched out her tail she could have touched them. Pebbleshine found it hard to believe that she was so close to them and yet they had no idea that she was there.
“Mouse-brain,” she muttered to herself, and pricked her ears to listen to what the cats were saying.
“I don’t think Sandstorm meant a literal different path,” the ginger tom was meowing. “Just …”
Excitement welled up inside Pebbleshine at hearing the name Sandstorm. That’s a warrior name! They really are Clan cats!
Preoccupied by the discovery, she missed the ginger tom’s next few words, though she realized that the two cats still seemed to be in the middle of some kind of squabble. Pebbleshine could tell that the argument wasn’t serious. They looked like friends, so surely they would act together to rescue her kits.
Pebbleshine let out a purr at the thought that help for her daughters was so close. A heartbeat later, every hair on her pelt tingled with shock as the gray she-cat turned toward her, a puzzled look on her face. Can she hear me? Pebbleshine asked herself. That’s not what Micah said!
Pebbleshine padded closer to the silver-gray cat. “This way,” she whispered into her ear. “Down into the grassy dip, where you can see that dark hole.”
At first the she-cat didn’t react. I have to get her attention! Pebbleshine thought, agonized. Somehow I have to lead her to my kits. Maybe if I just think hard enough …
She concentrated on the tunnel, imagining herself slipping through the bars and padding along in the dim light until she found the nest. She called up an image in her mind of the two tiny kits, gray and black-and-white, huddled together and wailing for help.
Come on! Pebbleshine directed her thoughts toward the gray she-cat. They need you!
The she-cat gave her pelt a shake, looking as uncomfortable as if she felt ants crawling through her fur. She couldn’t see Pebbleshine, but clearly she was picking up something. Her paws shifted and she glanced down the slope.
“Look!” she yowled. Without waiting for her companion to respond, she pelted downward to where the tunnel entrance gaped in the bank.
“What are you doing?” the ginger tom called after her, fluffing up his pelt in irritation as he trailed along in her paw steps. “That looks dangerous.”
Pebbleshine watched as the gray she-cat turned back, rolling her eyes at her friend. “Have you got bees in your brain, or what?” she demanded. “Look, we came over the Thunderpath, and now here’s a ‘different path’ that leads under it. Plus it’s all in shadow! We can go this way!”
The ginger tom still looked reluctant. Pebbleshine wanted to give him a shove, but she knew that he wouldn’t feel anything if she tried. Fear cramped her belly as she wondered whether he would be able to persuade his friend not to enter the tunnel.
But though the tom still argued, the she-cat wasn’t listening. Hope sprang up inside Pebbleshine as with a flip of her tail the silver-gray cat wriggled through the bars at the tunnel entrance and disappeared. The ginger tom hesitated, letting out a sigh, then followed.
Pebbleshine raced down the slope and entered the tunnel after them. At first she couldn’t hear anything except for the voices of the two Clan cats, and renewed fear gripped her.
Does time pass differently in StarClan? How long have I been away?
Pebbleshine knew that her kits were too young to survive for long without their mother. They could be lying dead in the nest at this very moment, and all her struggles would have been for nothing.
Then a vast relief swamped her as from somewhere up ahead Pebbleshine heard the soft cry of a kit. The she-cat had hurried past without noticing the nest, and it was the tom who heard the cry; he halted with his ears pricked. Then he set off again, padding forward until he reached the kits.
“Oh, my darlings! You’re alive!” Pebbleshine whispered. But as she gazed over the tom’s shoulder, she saw how thin and frail her two daughters looked. Though their eyes still weren’t open, they seemed to sense the tom’s presence, and they stretched their necks toward him, letting out tiny wails of distress.
The she-cat came bounding back down the tunnel to join her friend. “What’s the matter?” she asked. “Why are you—” She broke off, skidding to a halt as she spotted the nest. “They’re kits!” she exclaimed. “Where’s their mother?”