“Help!” Stream sounded even more frantic this time. Without pausing to think, Earth began to run toward his friend’s voice. He slipped in the mud and scrambled up again and kept running.
“Earth! Moonlight said to stay here!” Sunrise wailed behind him, but Earth didn’t turn back. Water streamed down his sides as he tried to get his bearings: in the dark and rain, the familiar camp was suddenly full of unidentifiable shapes and impossible to navigate. He took a few more tentative steps, his paws sinking into mud. Blundering against a bush—the den where Furze and Tempest were sleeping, maybe—he hissed as thorns scratched his pelt.
“Help!” Stream yowled again, and Earth changed course to head straight toward him.
Earth was moving uphill now, and it slowed him down. He tried to run faster. “I’m coming!” he yowled, but the wind whipped the words away so that he could barely hear his own voice. His paws slipped in the mud, making him slide backward. Thick mud splattered across his fur. He fell again and struggled to get up, the mud sticking to him and pulling him back.
The land is stopping me from getting to Stream, he thought. I couldn’t speak with it, and now it hates me. How had he managed to upset the land so badly?
Clenching his jaw, Earth felt carefully through the mud in front of him. There were rocks beneath the surface of the hill, and he extended his claws to grip their edges, slowly pulling himself up.
He slipped again, and again, mud now sticking to his fur and weighing him down. His claws ached, but he was making slow progress. The climb seemed like a nightmare: mud and darkness, sore muscles, and the rocks pulling at his claws.
As he finally came over the top of the hill, the wind caught Earth again, blowing rain into his face. He hunched automatically, blinking, as a dazzling bolt of lightning, accompanied by a crash of thunder, lit up the hilltop.
Stream was right in front of him, fur plastered to his sides, his eyes wide with panic. His mouth was half open in a yowl.
Everything went dark again, and Stream pressed his cold, shivering side against Earth’s. “I shouldn’t have run up here,” Stream panted. “I couldn’t get down, it was so dark. I didn’t know which way to go.” His meow was shaky. Earth had never heard his friend sound so frightened.
“It’s okay,” Earth told him. He was scared, too, but one of them had to be brave. “We’ll go downhill together.”
Another flash of lightning lit up the camp in the valley below them. Muddy streams of water were flowing through the clearing and flooding through the dens. The Sisters were wading through mud, running to save themselves and one another, the clearing more chaotic than anything Earth had ever seen.
As the world went dark, Stream pressed more closely to Earth. “This is bad.”
“Yeah.” Earth took a deep breath. “We can go down and help. There are rocks under the mud. If we dig our claws in, we can get down without falling.” I hope.
He went first, feeling carefully with one paw, then the other. He slipped several tail-lengths before he was able to stop himself, legs and claws aching. He could hear Stream behind him, thrashing through the mud.
He turned to call encouragement. “It’s not too—”
The world lit up bright white, with a simultaneous boom of thunder. His fur stood on end, and he could smell the sharp scent of lightning.
Then the world was dark again. Earth’s ears were ringing. Something fell past him in the darkness, sliding and rolling. Just a rock, Earth told himself, but his stomach twisted into a knot. Some tiny part of him knew it wasn’t a rock. It was …
“Stream!” he yowled, and tried to run. Losing his footing, he slithered and slipped down the hill, finally rolling, then landing in a heap in the valley, his fur clumped together with wet mud. “Stream,” he called again, but the rain was pounding down, drowning him out.
Blundering forward, his paws struck something soft and warm. “Stream?” Earth asked, bending to nose at the huddled shape. It was Stream, but with something strange beneath his scent. His body was hot as fire. His soft fur was standing on end. Earth stiffened, his stomach heavy with dread.
Stream smelled like burning. He smelled like fire and pain.
Earth gasped and staggered back a step, mud squelching beneath his paws.
Stream was dead.
Two days later, there was still evidence of the storm’s destruction everywhere. Earth and the remaining Sisters were huddled between the roots of a beech tree. Furze was scratched and cut all over from being washed through a thornbush as the river flooded their camp. Tempest had a sprained leg from pulling Ice out of a stream of mud, keeping her from being swept away. All the Sisters had scrapes and bruises, and their gazes were bleak.
Stream was not the only cat who had died. Haze, half a moon younger than they were, a close friend of Earth’s sister Sunrise, had drowned right in front of the Sisters as they struggled to reach her. Grief for the two lost kits battered the Sisters like another storm, Earth thought, drenching them in sorrow.
Sunrise was huddled close to Haze’s mother, Snow, her tail entwined with the white she-cat’s. They seemed to be taking comfort in each other. A little way from them, Stream’s mother, Petal, sat alone, her face somber.
Moonlight stood and brushed her tail comfortingly across Snow’s back. “We will sing for her,” she meowed softly. “Our sisters are never really lost.”
Snow nodded, her eyes closing for a moment. Moonlight headed toward the clearing, brushing her tail across Petal’s back too as she passed, but saying only, “I’m going to gather more herbs to treat injuries. We lost everything.” Petal said nothing.
Earth watched his mother walk away; then, with a sudden surge of anger, he jumped to his paws and followed her. “Mother,” he called, when they had walked out of earshot of the other cats.
Moonlight turned to him. “Are you going to help me find herbs?” she asked. “We can look for tansy and chervil farther from the river.”
Earth flexed his sore claws angrily. “Why are we singing for Haze and not Stream?” he asked angrily. “Stream was a kit of the Sisters, too.”
“Stream was a tom,” Moonlight answered gently.
“So?” Earth snapped. “That’s not fair.”
Moonlight sighed. “It’s not a matter of fairness,” she told him. “As a tom, Stream was always destined to return to the earth. We do not need to sing for him. Maybe we will see his spirit before he steps into his own afterlife; maybe we will not. The earth takes care of its own.” Her gaze grew stern. “Although, when I went back to the stone and you were gone, I was full of grief. You are far too young for me to accept the land’s taking you. Stream’s youth is the cause of Petal’s sorrow. You must not disobey me like that.”
Fur prickled uncomfortably along Earth’s spine. “You mean you won’t grieve for me if I die when I’m full-grown?” He couldn’t imagine his mother not loving him.
Moonlight’s gaze softened, and she bent to brush her muzzle against his. “Of course I would,” she told him. “I will never stop caring what happens to you. But before long, you’ll leave the Sisters for your wander. We might never see each other again. If the land takes you, I may never know.” She sighed again. “Mothers of toms have to take comfort in knowing that those toms will be taken by the land they guard during their lives. There is honor in a tom’s death.”
Earth stood silent, not knowing what to say. His mother touched her nose to his once more, then turned away. “I am going to look for herbs. I will be back soon.”
Earth watched her go, her pace steady and purposeful. He knew that Moonlight had had other litters, older sons who had gone on their wanders before he was born. But he had never thought about the fact that they had left and she had never seen them again. Was believing that a tom’s death was an honorable one, that he would die guarding the land, something a mother cat needed? He sat back and scratched thoughtfully at his ear. It was too big a question for him, he decided. How could he know how a mother felt?