“No,” Hollypaw lied. “I’m fine.”
I would be, she told herself, if I wasn’t worrying about wanting to be Clan leader. Just because that’s what Tigerstar wanted doesn’t mean it’s wrong, does it? I know I’m his kin, but I’d never do what he did to gain power. And what about Jaypaw? If he gets himself killed looking for those ancient cats, it’ll be my fault!
Brook touched her nose sympathetically to Hollypaw’s ear.
“I had a lot of trouble when I first came here,” she admitted. “I was used to hunting on bare mountain slopes, and I couldn’t get the hang of how to hunt in the forest. One thing Stormfur taught me is that sometimes it helps to slide your paws forward while you’re stalking. That way a mouse can’t feel your paw steps. Like this,” she added, rubbing her paws softly over the moss.
“I never thought of that,” Hollypaw meowed. “I’ll give it a try.”
“It’s important to stay away from long grasses and fern, too,” Brook went on. “If you brush against them, the moving shadow will scare off the prey.”
Hollypaw nodded; she had known that, but with everything else on her mind she had forgotten.
“You’ll soon get the hang of it again,” the tabby she-cat assured her. “You’d be a great hunter in the mountains, because you have strong back legs for leaping.”
“You need to leap when you’re hunting?” Cinderpaw asked, padding up to listen.
“Yes. Here in ThunderClan, you mostly catch birds on the ground. But in the Tribe, we jump up to catch them when they’re taking off or landing.” A hint of pride tinged Brook’s voice. “We catch hawks like that, and sometimes even eagles.”
“How big are the eagles?” Lionpaw joined them. “Do they ever carry cats away?”
“Most of them aren’t strong enough to take a full-grown cat.” Brook sat down with her tail wrapped over her paws, while the rest of the apprentices clustered around to listen.
“They might be able to take kits or to-bes, but kits stay in the cave with their mothers, where it’s safe. And all the hunting patrols have at least one cave-guard with them.”
“What’s a to-be?” Poppypaw demanded.
“And what’s a cave-guard?” Honeypaw added.
“You’re to-bes,” Brook explained, sweeping her tail around to indicate all the apprentices. “Young cats who are learning the skills you need to be warriors. Cave-guards are, well, cats who guard the cave. They’re strong and trained to fight off hawks and eagles. Stormfur was a cave-guard when he lived with the Tribe, and I was a prey-hunter.”
Hollypaw was puzzled. “Do you mean that cats have separate duties? You don’t hunt and fight, like Clan cats?”
“No,” Brook replied. “When kits are born, our leader chooses what they’ll be. The biggest and strongest become cave-guards, and the fast, nimble ones become prey-hunters.”
“So you can’t choose for yourself? I wouldn’t like that,” Lionpaw mewed.
“It feels different when you grow up with it,” Brook assured him.
Lionpaw didn’t look convinced, but before he could say any more, Poppypaw broke in. “Tell us about your leader, and your medicine cat. Do StarClan choose them?”
Brook shook her head. “The Tribe of Rushing Water doesn’t know StarClan,” she explained. She waited until the shocked gasps had died down. “The Tribe of Endless Hunting walks our skies. We don’t have a leader and a medicine cat. In the Tribe, one cat is both. He’s called the Healer, and his name is Teller of the Pointed Stones.”
“Or Stoneteller,” Stormfur put in, padding up to sit beside his mate.
“What a weird name!” Poppypaw exclaimed.
Her sister Honeypaw gave her a nudge. “Don’t be so rude!
Tribe names are different from ours, that’s all.”
“Stoneteller has his den just off the main cave behind the waterfall,” Stormfur explained. “It’s full of pointed stones, rising up from the cave floor and hanging from the roof.
There’s a hole in the roof, and when it rains the floor is covered with pools of water. Stoneteller looks at the reflections in the water and reads signs there.”
“And he’s a medicine cat as well?” Hollypaw meowed. That’s a lot of power for one cat! “Does he have a deputy?”
“No, but eventually he’ll have a to-be—an apprentice,” Brook told her. “The Tribe of Endless Hunting will send him a sign so that he can choose a tiny kit who will become Stoneteller after him.”
Hollypaw felt a pang of envy. How much simpler it would be to have your life planned out! She wouldn’t have made her earlier mistake of choosing to be a medicine cat when she was really best suited to be a warrior. Sometimes her head had ached with the effort of learning all the different herbs.
Training to be a warrior was tough as well, but it didn’t feel like such an impossible task. There were fighting moves and hunting moves and all the details of the warrior code that had to be memorized. And if she wanted to be Clan leader she would have to learn the intricate relations between Clan and Clan, how to be diplomatic with her own warriors and the cats of other Clans, and how to react in a crisis.
She remembered watching Firestar on the border the day before. She had been impressed by how calm the ThunderClan leader had stayed, even when his own warriors were clearly at fault. That was the kind of leader Hollypaw wanted to be, one who relied on the warrior code to keep the peace instead of dragging her Clan into an unnecessary battle. A leader who wasn’t selfish or greedy, who put the good of her own Clan above everything, but still remembered the rights of the other Clans in the forest.
“I think there’s a mouse under the roots over there.”
Stormfur broke into her thoughts, pointing with his ears to the bottom of a nearby beech tree. “Why don’t you see if you can catch it?”
“Okay.”
The other apprentices scattered, keeping well away from the beech tree to give Hollypaw the best chance. Whiskers quivering, she tasted the air. Vole, not mouse, she decided. A heartbeat later she spotted it, a plump creature scuffling among the debris under the tree. She began to creep forward, sliding her paws over the moss in the way Brook had shown her. The vole seemed not to notice her at first, but as she dropped into a crouch, ready to pounce, it froze for a heartbeat, then darted away.
Hollypaw let out a yowl. Her first pounce brought her to the spot where the vole had been; instantly she leaped again and trapped it between her front paws just before it slipped into the safety of a crack between two rocks. She killed it with one blow of her paw.
“Well done!” Brackenfur meowed.
A warm feeling of triumph flooded Hollypaw from ears to tail tip. She picked up her prey and turned back to her mentor.
“See what I said about your strong back legs?” Brook reminded her, touching Hollypaw’s shoulder with the tip of her tail. “That was a great leap!”
“I think that’s enough for one day,” Brackenfur added.
“Let’s carry the prey back to camp. The Clan will eat well tonight.”
As Hollypaw followed him back to the clearing, carrying her vole and the shrew, she kept casting sidelong glances at Brook. She must love Stormfur a lot to give up everything she knew and come with him to a strange place and a strange way of life.
Curiosity bit at her, sharp as a fox’s fangs. She wanted to visit the Tribe and see how cats lived when they knew right from the start what kind of life they would have and what their responsibilities would be.
But they’re so far away! Hollypaw let out a sigh. I don’t suppose I’ll ever travel as far as the mountains.
Chapter 5