“Uh—no one,” Goosepaw stammered, standing up so quickly that he mixed up his piles of leaves.
Moonpaw came over and studied the herbs. “Wow. They all look the same.”
“Tell me about it.” Goosepaw sighed.
“Are you sure there’s no one here?” Moonpaw pressed, looking around.
“Well, can you see anyone?” Goosepaw challenged.
“No, but…” Your gift must be a secret! Cloudberry’s words echoed in his mind. Goosepaw sighed. “Sometimes I talk to myself, that’s all. It’s easier to remember all the herbs if I say them out loud.”
“That’s kind of freaky.” Moonpaw’s blue eyes burned into him. “Cloudberry doesn’t talk to herself.”
“I’m not Cloudberry,” Goosepaw retorted.
“Moonpaw! Where are you?”
Goosepaw spotted a dark gray shape moving through the reeds on the far side of Sunningrocks. An image of a long pointed face, striped black and white and taut with fury, filled his mind. He pushed it away with an effort. “Stormtail’s looking for you,” he told his sister. “You’d better go.”
Moonpaw was already bounding across the rocks. “Coming!” she yowled.
“Any cat would think he was your mentor!” Goosepaw called. “Don’t make it too obvious how you feel about him, Moonpaw. It’ll just make his head even bigger.”
The silver-gray she-cat paused and looked back at him. “At least Stormtail is normal,” she retorted. “Why do you have to be so… so different?” She whisked around and disappeared among the ferns.
Goosepaw grumpily swept the herbs into a pile.
“Hey! Don’t mix them up!” Pearnose protested. “It may be greenleaf, but every leaf is worth saving.”
“I’ll pick some more,” Goosepaw snapped.
“Not if you can’t remember what they look like,” Pearnose teased. Her tone softened. “Look, I know what it’s like to be apprenticed to a medicine cat when your denmates are preparing to be warriors. It feels as if they’ll never understand what you do. But nothing—no herb name, no healing trick—is more important than being loyal to your Clan. And that includes all your Clanmates, especially when you are a medicine cat.”
“It would be easier to be loyal if they didn’t treat me like a rogue,” Goosepaw complained.
“Perhaps I should just accept that I’ll never have any friends because I walk a different path than they do.”
Pearnose snorted. “Sometimes, Goosepaw, I think you make your path more different than it needs to be. When you’re as old as me, you’ll realize that all cats—kits, apprentices, leaders, elders—are all the same underneath their fur. Your Clanmates need to be able to trust you, to see you as one of them, if you are going to treat them when they are sick or injured. Now take these herbs back to the camp and check Nettlebreeze for ticks again. I don’t think you used enough mouse bile on him yesterday.”
Goosepaw stood up. At least Moonpaw only has one mentor to boss her around! Sometimes he felt as if Cloudberry and Pearnose would wear his ears off with their constant nagging!
He plunged into the ferns, reveling in the feeling of the fronds brushing against his pelt. He imagined this was what it would be like to plunge into a cool green river, cut off from the sky and trees and all the forest scents… Goosepaw stopped. He could smell something beneath the ferns: newly cut wood overlaid with a sharp, sour tang that made his nose wrinkle. He had smelled it before, but where? Twolegplace! It was the scent of the wooden boundary at the very edge of ThunderClan territory. But he was nowhere near. Why could he smell it here?
Goosepaw’s ears filled with a loud buzzing noise. He dropped the herbs as the ground rocked beneath his feet, making him lurch sideways. Now he could smell other cats—musty, unwelcome scents as well as the stifling odors of Twolegs and too-bright flowers. Kittypets? What were they doing so far into ThunderClan territory?
Goosepaw blinked. The ferns had vanished—or at least faded until they seemed to be very far away. Instead he was at the edge of dense pine trees, standing in lush green grass beside the wooden Twolegplace border. Abruptly the buzzing in his ears was pierced by the shrieks and yowls of fighting cats, a writhing knot of fur that lurched toward him, then jerked away. Goosepaw stared in horror as more kittypets streamed over the wooden border and plunged into the fight. He strained to make out individual pelts—from the scent he knew that it was a ThunderClan patrol being attacked, but were these his Clanmates, or cats from long ago?
Goosepaw peered closer, trying to recognize each cat, but they were moving too fast, and too tangled up with their attackers. He winced as a thick-set ginger-and-white kittypet sank its teeth into a brown tabby neck.
“Those kittypets are stronger than you’d think,” purred a voice in Goosepaw’s ear.
He whirled around to see a tortoiseshell-and-white she-cat standing beside him. Her amber eyes gleamed with delight as she watched the battling cats.
“Who are you?” Goosepaw whispered.
The cat twitched her ears without taking her gaze from the fight. “Have I been forgotten so soon?” she murmured.
Goosepaw jumped as a cat thudded to the ground near his paws, flung by a kittypet with long black fur. He tried to make out the wounded cat’s face, but the buzzing had returned in his ears, and suddenly he was surrounded by ferns again. Goosepaw blinked. He was back on the path from Sunningrocks. The battling cats, the strange she-cat watching them, the pine trees, and the Twolegplace border had disappeared.
But Goosepaw couldn’t forget the shrieks of terror, and the bitter taste of fear clung to his tongue.
He had never been submerged so completely in a vision before. Everything had been louder, brighter, more vivid than his previous visions. Pelt bristling, he raced through the bushes and plunged down into the ravine. He burst into the clearing, startling the apprentices who were standing at the fresh-kill pile.
“Are you being chased by a fox?” Heronpaw called.
“Goosepaw always smells of leaves. He’s more likely to be chased by a rabbit!” Poppypaw teased.
Moonpaw and Rabbitpaw huffed with laughter. Stormtail looked up from the other side of the fresh-kill pile. “You want to watch out, Goosepaw,” he purred. “Even rabbits can be dangerous when you don’t know how to look after yourself.”
Rabbitpaw reared up onto his hind legs and boxed the air. “This rabbit’s always dangerous!” he meowed, bringing his front paws down on Heronpaw.
The dark brown tom shrugged him off. “Stop messing around!”
Goosepaw noticed his sister watching him with a frown, as if she was worried about how he would react. He forced his fur to lie flat and lowered his tail. “No foxes or rabbits after me today,” he mewed. “Something spooked me, that’s all.” The shrieks of battling cats rang in his ears for a moment, and he shook his head to clear it. “Have you left any fresh-kill for me?” he asked.
“Goosepaw? Is that you?” Cloudberry pushed her way out of the ferns, sniffing. “Did you bring back the herbs that I gave you?”
Goosepaw’s belly lurched. He had dropped all the leaves when he had the vision of the kittypet attack. “Er, not quite… ,” he began.
He was interrupted by Pineheart appearing from Doestar’s den. “Is Squirrelwhisker’s patrol back yet?” he meowed, looking around the clearing.
Larksong looked up from the pigeon she was sharing with Mumblefoot. “No, they’re still out.”
Pineheart narrowed his eyes. “But they went out before your patrol. What’s taking them so long?”
Goosepaw froze. He pictured the warrior who had fallen at his feet in the thick of the battle. The image wasn’t as clear as it had been before, but he remembered brown tabby fur, terrified amber eyes, long pale whiskers… Was it Squirrelwhisker’s patrol being attacked by kittypets? Goosepaw was about to say something when he caught Moonpaw’s eye. She wants me to be normal, right? He couldn’t be certain it was his Clanmates in the fight. Goosepaw shut his mouth and turned back to the fresh-kill pile.