“I’ll take one now, if you like,” Harespring offered.
Onestar shook his head. “The sun will have gone down before you get there,” he responded. “It will have to be tomorrow. I expect some kind of animal has made its home in the tunnels,” he continued. “It wouldn’t be the first time that has happened, especially in the cold of leaf-bare. But if there is something living there, we need to drive it out. Those tunnels are ours.” Looking down reassuringly at the apprentices, he added, “Hootpaw, you did well to spot potential danger, but I don’t want any of you to go spreading wild stories around the camp. I want every cat to keep calm. There’s really nothing to worry about.”
Crowfeather was impressed by his leader’s authority and the way he comforted the apprentices, though he doubted that Hootpaw would be able to keep his mouth shut about what he had seen. Once the first shock was over, he would be too excited to keep quiet. And too fuzz-brained.
“Okay,” Onestar meowed, “go and get yourselves something to eat. No, not you, Crowfeather,” he added, as the patrol began to move away. “I want a word with you.”
Crowfeather halted. What now? he wondered.
Onestar waited until the rest of the patrol was gone. “Tell me again what you saw. Give me as much detail as you can.”
“I ran up to the tunnel entrance when I heard Hootpaw yowl,” Crowfeather explained. “And I caught a glimpse of something white disappearing into the darkness. I thought it looked like a tail, but I can’t be sure. Maybe it was as you said — just a trick of the light… or my imagination making me see danger.”
Onestar listened intently, saying nothing until Crowfeather had finished. Then he shook his head sadly. “If there were a time for WindClan cats to be seeing ghosts, it would be now,” he mewed, echoing Crowfeather’s earlier thought. “We lost so many Clanmates in the Great Battle.”
Crowfeather nodded, his throat suddenly dry. It hurt to think of all the cats they would never see again.
“The loss of Ashfoot must weigh heavily on you,” Onestar went on, his eyes full of sympathy. “I know you miss her every day.”
Crowfeather met Onestar’s gaze, surprised to hear the leader mention his mother. Even the sound of her name made his chest tighten with sorrow. Talking about his grief for his mother was still too painful. He had to struggle to respond without breaking down. “Yes, it has been… difficult,” Crowfeather admitted finally, almost having to push the words out of his mouth.
“Perhaps you can find comfort in the rest of your family,” Onestar suggested. “Nightcloud and Breezepelt.”
Crowfeather felt his muscles tense and said nothing. Does he have bees in his brain? Onestar knows very well there’s no comfort for me there.
“But that’s just it, isn’t it?” Onestar went on. “Breezepelt tells me you haven’t so much as looked in his direction since the Great Battle. Is that true?”
Fury began to build up in Crowfeather’s belly. I don’t want to talk about this! “I suppose so,” he muttered.
“Then tell me why,” Onestar persisted. “I’ve made it clear, as Clan leader, that I’ve forgiven Breezepelt for his part in the battle. And he has sworn a new oath of loyalty to WindClan. So why, as Breezepelt’s father, do you refuse to accept that?”
“I know that what you say is true,” Crowfeather replied, struggling not to unleash his pent-up frustrations on his Clan leader. “But… well, you know that I caught Breezepelt about to kill Lionblaze.”
“Lionblaze may be your son, but he is a ThunderClan cat,” Onestar responded in a level voice. “Breezepelt is a WindClan cat. It seems clear to me where your loyalty should lie.”
Crowfeather drew his lips back in the beginning of a snarl, but he could find nothing to say in answer to his leader’s arguments. He knew that what Onestar said made sense. He just found it hard to pretend that his time with Leafpool, and the kits they’d had together as a result, meant nothing to him.
But no cat would understand that but me.
For a few heartbeats, Onestar was silent. “Crowfeather,” he began again at last, “are you aware that many cats thought I would choose you as my deputy after Ashfoot’s death?”
Now Crowfeather felt even more uncomfortable. Whatever other cats had thought, the choice of a deputy was for the Clan leader to decide, and Crowfeather had never thought of objecting to Onestar’s choice of Harespring. Even if he did think it was mouse-brained.
“Yes, I knew that,” he admitted. “But—”
“Do you know why I made the choice that I did?”
Crowfeather took a deep, calming breath, wishing he could see the point of these questions. Because you’re mouse-brained? “I suppose that by choosing Harespring, you were sending a message that the Dark Forest cats can be trusted.”
“That’s true,” Onestar agreed. “But there is also a reason that I didn’t choose you.”
Crowfeather’s ears pricked in surprise. “There is?”
“Yes,” Onestar meowed sternly. “Because you care about your own anger and prejudices more than you care about WindClan.”
“That’s not true!” Is it?
“Wouldn’t you have accepted Breezepelt if it weren’t?” Onestar challenged him. “He is your Clanmate, not to mention your own son. Accepting him would clearly be the best thing for your Clan.”
Crowfeather had no answer to this. He felt his whiskers twitch with irritation as he looked away.
“I am your leader,” Onestar went on, “and I have said we will trust him. But you choose not to follow my lead. Instead of trusting your own son, you cling to your anger and disappointment.”
Crowfeather was silent, his claws flexing in and out as he struggled to calm himself. Part of him felt as if he should leap onto Onestar and rake his claws through his leader’s tabby fur. But he knew that attacking his leader would be crazy. If he lifted a claw to Onestar, he would be driven out of WindClan forever. Even thinking about doing it surprised and confused him. Why was he so angry all the time?
“I expect more from you, Crowfeather,” Onestar continued. “You are a brave and talented warrior. But you need to get to the bottom of your own problems and become a true WindClan warrior once again.”
“Do you know what I’ve given up to be loyal to WindClan?” Crowfeather demanded, his anger spilling over at last. “I’ve sacrificed so much, and you don’t give a mousetail about that!” Yet even as he said these words, guilt began to seep into his mind. There had been a time when he would have left WindClan to be with Leafpool; it was her decision that had led them back to the hunting grounds by the lake. From the way Onestar was looking at him, Crowfeather could tell that he suspected as much.
Onestar inclined his head. “I do know what you have sacrificed — or what you think you have,” he meowed. “But if you were sincerely a WindClan cat above all else, you wouldn’t have gotten yourself into that situation. And once you had, you would have accepted why it needed to end. You would not still be bitter about it.”
Full of rage and confusion, Crowfeather let his claws slide out and dig hard into the ground; he felt as if his blood were bubbling and his fur prickling. He didn’t know how to respond.
“You can go now,” Onestar told him with a dismissive wave of his tail. “Tonight, Kestrelflight will go to the half-moon meeting,” he added. “Perhaps StarClan will give him some guidance. And tomorrow I will send another patrol to see if we can find out what’s going on in the tunnels.”