Everything I said to them is true, he thought. I don’t need WindClan. I don’t even need my mouse-hearted son, Breezepelt, and I certainly don’t need that mange-pelt Onestar. I’ll show him! I can get along fine by myself.
But the hollowness, the pain of loss inside him, wouldn’t go away.
The shapes of Breezepelt and Heathertail dwindled and finally were lost to Crowfeather’s sight. At last he took a deep breath and stepped across the border, heading into unexplored territory. I suppose I’m a loner right now.
As he traveled up a long moorland slope, the sky grew darker still, and he thought he could see tiny specks of white floating in front of his eyes. He blinked to clear his vision, but the white specks didn’t go away, and as one landed on his nose, the cold shock told him that they were the first tiny flakes of snow.
“Mouse dung!” he grumbled aloud. “That’s all I need!”
Crowfeather realized that if he wanted to hunt, he had better do so soon, before the snow drove every piece of prey into their holes. Aware of hunger for the first time since he left the camp, he padded on, setting down his paws even more lightly, his ears pricked and his jaws parted to taste the air.
For a long time he found nothing. The flakes thickened, swirling around him, settling on the ground until he was plodding through snow a mouse-length deep. His paws were so cold he couldn’t feel them anymore. Snowflakes clotted in his dark gray pelt and clung to his whiskers.
Crowfeather was thinking that he had better give up and start looking for a place to shelter when a hare started up almost underneath his paws. It fled up the hill, and Crowfeather hurled himself after it, his muscles bunching and stretching. His gaze fixed on the bobbing black tips of the hare’s ears, which were all that he could see clearly; the rest of its white pelt was almost invisible in the snow.
The hare disappeared over the brow of the hill and Crowfeather followed. But as he raced downward, his hind legs skidded out from under him and he lost his balance. Letting out a yowl of shock, he rolled over and over down the slope, his legs flailing as he struggled to stop himself.
Then Crowfeather felt a sharp pain in his head as his body slammed into something solid. The white world exploded into blackness, and he knew nothing more.
Crowfeather found himself crouching in utter darkness. The pain in his head was overwhelming, and for a few moments he could do nothing but keep still, clenching his teeth to keep back moans of pain.
At last he opened his eyes, but the darkness didn’t lift. Sheer panic pulsed through Crowfeather. Have I gone blind?
He couldn’t smell or feel anything, but he sensed that a number of cats were gathered around him. Are they my Clanmates? he wondered wildly. Have they come to find me?
At first the cats were still, but after a little while they began to move, weaving around him in a circle, so close that now and again he could feel their pelts brushing against his.
At last one of them spoke, its voice low and gentle but somehow ominous. “Greetings, Crowfeather.”
Now Crowfeather was sure that these were not WindClan cats. He struggled to rise to his paws and face them in the darkness, but his legs wouldn’t support him, and he slumped back to the ground. “Who are you?” he asked hoarsely.
“You know who we are, Crowfeather,” a second voice murmured. “You have met us before.”
“No, I haven’t!” Crowfeather protested. “Stop playing games and tell me what’s going on.”
As he spoke, a dim light began to grow around him, pale and unhealthy like the shine of rotting wood. It was only enough to show him the outlines of the cats, still weaving around him, with here and there the gleam of predatory eyes.
“Is this… is this the Dark Forest?” he stammered.
“Clever Crowfeather,” a third voice purred. “We’re so glad you’ve come to join us.”
“What? No!” Crowfeather lurched upward and this time managed to scramble to his paws. “I’m not going to join you. I’m not even dead!”
“Not quite…,” another voice breathed out. “But soon.”
Crowfeather couldn’t remember ever having been so terrified, not even when he’d been trying to squeeze into the cleft, away from the cruel talons of Sharptooth. I know Onestar banished me, he thought frantically. But surely what I did wasn’t so bad that I would end up here? If I have to die, I should be in StarClan!
He was growing dizzy as he tried to watch the circling cats and work out where the voices were coming from.
“Come with us, Crowfeather.”
“You’re welcome here.”
Crowfeather wanted to barrel his way through the circle and flee, but he knew that he didn’t have the strength. Besides, he had no idea where he could flee to. A medicine cat might know the paths that would lead him out of this dreadful place and into the sunlit territory of StarClan, but he wasn’t a medicine cat.
Soft pelts brushed more firmly against his sides as the circle of cats grew tighter, closing in. Crowfeather forced back a screech of terror. “Leave me alone,” he gasped. “I’m not going with you!”
But he knew that his bravado was pointless. There was nothing he could do.
Now the light was strengthening, but this time it came from behind Crowfeather, casting his shadow out in front of him. With a sudden tingling of hope, he realized that this light was different, clear and silvery like the radiance of the full moon.
The Dark Forest cats froze, staring with wide, horrified eyes at something beyond Crowfeather. Then, letting out a chorus of eerie caterwauls, they turned tail and fled.
“Great StarClan, Crowfeather!” A familiar voice spoke behind him. “What have you gotten yourself into now?”
Crowfeather whirled around. “Ashfoot!” he exclaimed.
Chapter 20
Crowfeather’s mother stepped delicately over to him and sat down beside him with her tail wrapped neatly around her paws. With a grunt of relief Crowfeather slumped to the ground beside her.
“What in StarClan’s name do you think you’re doing, Crowfeather?” his mother asked him. Her voice was exasperated, but her eyes were warm. “You should be helping your Clan, not wandering about on the moor in the snow.”
“You do know that I was banished, right?” Crowfeather retorted. “I was banished for following your advice, and Feathertail’s. You told me to go behind Onestar’s back and ask Bramblestar for help.”
Ashfoot gave her whiskers a twitch, seeming briefly embarrassed. “I’m sorry. I’d hoped that Onestar wouldn’t refuse to let ThunderClan help, or insult Bramblestar. But, Crowfeather,” she added more briskly, “you know you could have been more tactful in dealing with Onestar. A good deputy needs to judge his leader’s mood.”
“But I’m not deputy,” Crowfeather reminded her sourly. “Right now I’m not even a WindClan cat.”
“That can be put right,” Ashfoot assured him, with a dismissive flick of her tail. “The most important thing is for you to convince Onestar to take Kestrelflight’s vision seriously. Don’t you remember the second wave of water, the one that engulfed all the Clans? Don’t you understand what it means? The stoats are threatening WindClan now, but they’re only the forerunner of a much greater threat.”