“Firestar! Firestar!”
He halted; the leaves around him rustled as the squirrel vanished into the dense foliage. Firestar allowed himself a single hiss of regret, then turned and scrambled down the trunk to the ground.
Bluestar, the former ThunderClan leader, was waiting for him at the foot of the tree. Her blue-gray fur shimmered in the sunlight. “Sorry to disturb you, Firestar,” she meowed. Her eyes glinted. “I see you haven’t lost any of your hunting skill. You looked pretty comfortable up there… but I’m happy to leave the tree hunting to others. Walk with me,” she added, nodding deeper into the forest.
Firestar padded by her side, enjoying the sun’s warmth soaking into his pelt. StarClan has everything to make a cat content, he thought. But I still miss my old home and my Clanmates. Sometimes it seems like I left them when they needed me most.
“ThunderClan has had a difficult time, hasn’t it?” Bluestar commented, as if she had picked up Firestar’s regrets. “Wounded cats had scarcely healed after the Great Battle when the greencough came.”
Firestar hesitated before replying, swallowing the wail of grief that rose in his chest. We were already weakened by the battle; we didn’t stand a chance of fighting the greencough.
He took a breath and let it out in a long sigh. “There has been so much loss, so much pain. But the sickness has gone, thanks to Leafpool and Jayfeather.” He forced a note of optimism into his voice. “Brightheart and Cloudtail’s kits have become apprentices. And Bramblestar is a fair and confident leader. ThunderClan will survive.”
“Of course.” Bluestar nodded. “Bramblestar had a good mentor. Do you walk in his dreams?”
“I don’t need to,” Firestar responded. “I trust him.” He felt a familiar stab of anger in his belly. “I shouldn’t have had to leave my Clan,” he hissed. “I could have gone on serving them for many more seasons.”
“Could you have saved them from the greencough? Healed their injuries more quickly?” Bluestar rested her tail on his shoulder. “You gave ThunderClan nine good lives. They could not ask for any more.”
Ducking beneath some curling fronds of fern, they padded across a glade of bright green grass, circled by silver birch trees.
“All of the Clans have struggled this leaf-bare,” Bluestar mewed. “ShadowClan has more elders than warriors, and WindClan lost most of its best hunters in the Great Battle. It is hard for every cat here to watch our Clanmates suffer.” She paused to hold a bramble out of Firestar’s way. “But there is always hope. Especially in StarClan.”
“I know,” Firestar meowed. “But I never realized how far I would be from my Clan. And I—I always thought Spottedleaf would be here to guide me.” He pictured the beautiful tortoiseshell she-cat, ThunderClan’s former medicine cat, who had given up her existence in StarClan fighting for her living Clanmates. Her amber eyes seemed to glow with sadness in his memory.
“Spottedleaf will be much missed,” Bluestar agreed, a slight edge to her tone. “But one day Sandstorm will come here to be with you.”
One day. Pain clawed once more at Firestar’s heart as he thought of his mate. How many seasons must I wait for her?
Firestar had made a warm nest for himself at the bottom of a hollow tree. It seemed strange not to be sleeping in a camp with other cats, though if he listened carefully, he could hear the gentle murmurs of StarClan warriors settling around him, hidden in the ferns. As he closed his eyes, he hoped that he would dream himself into ThunderClan.
Instead it seemed only a heartbeat since he had slipped into sleep when he was roused by a paw prodding him in the shoulder. Firestar raised his head, blinking.
“Wake up, Firestar,” a voice meowed.
A cat was standing in front of him: a muscular gray tom with patches of white on his fur.
“Cloudstar!” Firestar exclaimed.
The former SkyClan leader dipped his head. “Greetings, Firestar.”
Firestar scrambled to his paws and shook scraps of moss from his pelt. He had last seen Cloudstar many, many seasons before, after the gray-and-white tom had led him upriver from the forest to restore his lost Clan. Once Leafstar, the new SkyClan leader, had received her nine lives, Firestar and Cloudstar had said farewell. Firestar had never expected to see him again.
“What are you doing here?” he asked. “The skies you walk are so far away.”
“I was allowed to visit you,” Cloudstar replied. “We must talk together. Come.”
He padded ahead of Firestar down a grassy slope to the edge of the forest. A pool of water stretched before them, its silver surface reflecting the light of the full moon.
“I want to thank you again, for understanding why it was so important to rebuild SkyClan,” Cloudstar meowed, halting at the water’s edge and resting his calm blue gaze on Firestar. “Sometimes one Clan cannot survive without the help of others.”
Firestar nodded. “We’ve certainly learned that recently, if we didn’t know it before,” he murmured. For a heartbeat the darkness of the Great Battle swirled around him once more, the stench of blood and the shrieks of dying cats.
“I saw your terrible battle,” Cloudstar meowed. “And for the first time I was glad that I had to lead my Clan to find a new home, because we were spared the vengeance of the Dark Forest.”
“It wasn’t vengeance. It was slaughter.” Firestar felt the fur rise along his spine. “I had to watch my Clanmates die. I gave my last life to save them… and it wasn’t enough.”
“The battle was won,” Cloudstar pointed out quietly. “You did not lose your life for nothing.” He padded alongside the pool, stepping delicately among the vegetation that grew by the edge of the water.
Firestar kept pace with him, their pelts brushing. “You haven’t come all the way here to thank me for helping Leafstar, or to speak about the Great Battle. What is it, Cloudstar? Is there something wrong in SkyClan?”
Cloudstar stopped and sat down, looking across the pool. Suddenly he lifted his hind paw and sliced a foreclaw across his pad. A line of blood oozed out and dripped into the water, spreading in a scarlet cloud against the silver.
The violence of Cloudstar’s response made Firestar wince. He stood with his mouth open, staring at the swirl of blood.
“I bring a message that you need to take to Bramblestar,” Cloudstar meowed, still gazing at the water.
“A prophecy?” Firestar echoed. My first prophecy! I am a true StarClan cat!
“Yes. Listen well, Firestar. When water meets blood, blood will rise.”
Firestar blinked. Is that it? “What does it mean?”
“We do not need to know the meaning,” Cloudstar told him, turning until his eyes burned into Firestar’s like two small moons. “Bramblestar will find that out for himself.”
“And when do I give this message to Bramblestar?” Firestar asked. He resisted the urge to demand more answers from the old cat. Do all StarClan cats deliver prophecies that seem to mean nothing?
“You will know when the time comes,” Cloudstar replied.
Could you be any more vague? Firestar thought irritably. But he kept his voice steady. “Does this mean that more trouble is coming for my Clan?”
“The life of the warrior Clans is always storm-tossed,” Cloudstar meowed. “It’s our duty—the duty of all StarClan—to watch over them, whatever happens.” His gaze softened. “I’m sorry, Firestar. I know this isn’t what you want to hear. But I promise, this message will help Bramblestar in the end. You have to trust me on that.”