Leafstar’s heart was thumping as if it were about to burst out of her chest. It was a moment before she could reply. “I don’t know. But it must mean something. Because I had the same dream last night.”
Echosong sprang to her paws. “The exact dream?”
“Near enough. Except I dreamed that I went to the new dens up the gorge, and that’s where I saw the two cats. Spottedleaf was there, too.”
Briefly Echosong looked envious. “I wish I’d seen her. There’s so much I need to ask her about herbs.”
“Maybe Fawnstep will visit you tonight for another training session. After all, she was a SkyClan medicine cat,” Leafstar suggested. She was still a little suspicious of Spottedleaf’s appearance in her dreams. Surely Spottedleaf’s loyalties were to ThunderClan? Why is she so interested in my Clan? Leafstar flicked her tail-tip, trying to control her frustration. “But right now, we need to figure out what those cats in the gorge were talking about. It… it sounded like a prophecy, didn’t it?”
“Yes, it did,” Echosong agreed quietly.
“The small tabby was warning us,” Leafstar murmured, anxiety prickling in her fur as if ants were running through it. “He talked about worse things to come for SkyClan.”
The young medicine cat shuddered. “What could be worse than the rats?”
“And ‘deeper roots,’” Leafstar went on. “Whatever that means.”
“Maybe we should eat roots?” Echosong guessed.
Leafstar shook her head. “What good would that do? Unless they’re a source of medicine that we haven’t discovered yet… Besides, I had another dream the night before. Floodwater was pouring down the gorge, uprooting everything in its path, flooding into our dens and sweeping us away. I think the two dreams are connected.”
Echosong nodded thoughtfully. “One of our Clanmates might have a better idea about what the dreams meant,” she suggested. “Should we call a meeting and tell them?”
Something inside Leafstar flinched away from the thought of confessing to the rest of the Clan that the leader and the medicine cat couldn’t figure out what their ancestors were trying to tell them. Was Firestar plagued by these kinds of doubts? Maybe she should give StarClan another chance to explain.
“No, we won’t say anything to the rest of the Clan yet,” she meowed. Echosong looked surprised. Leafstar added, “Not because they’re not involved, but because we might get more dreams that make the prophecy clearer. After all, what could we tell them now? That something bad is going to happen? That will only make them panic.”
Echosong tilted her head to one side. “If that’s what you want, Leafstar,” she murmured.
Leafstar tried not to bristle at the hint of doubt in the medicine cat’s tone. “It’s what is best for the Clan,” she insisted. “And if we have any more visions, we’ll discuss them in private until we can figure out what our ancestors are trying to tell us.”
Chapter 4
Leafstar padded up the gorge toward the new caves, enjoying the sensation of sunlight on her fur. A few days had passed since the snowfall, and the weather had turned unexpectedly warm for so early in newleaf.
As she approached the new dens, a twig sailed out into the air from the cliff face and clattered onto the ground by Leafstar’s paws; she had to jump aside to avoid it.
“It’s a snake!” a voice yowled from above her head. “I killed it!!”
Gazing upward, Leafstar spotted two of the daylight-warriors, Harveymoon and Macgyver, on a ledge outside the fourth of the new caves, which so far no cat had cleared out. As she watched, Macgyver scooped up a pawful of dry moss and threw it at Harveymoon; it hit the white tom in the chest and spattered all over his fur.
“I’ll get you for that!” Harveymoon meowed, leaping on top of Macgyver.
For StarClan’s sake! Leafstar thought, annoyed, as she began to scramble up to the ledge. Fallowfern’s kits have more sense!
The toms sprang apart as Leafstar bounded up the last couple of tail-lengths and joined them on the ledge.
“What d’you think you’re doing?” she growled. “I thought you were here to help, not behave like a couple of kits.”
Before either of them could reply, Sharpclaw emerged from the cave. His dark ginger pelt was clumped and streaked with dust and his green eyes sparked with irritation. “I’ve had to put up with this all morning,” he told Leafstar, turning a furious glare on Harveymoon and Macgyver. “You’re being disloyal to your Clan when you behave so stupidly. Don’t you care about the honor of being a warrior? You haven’t done a stroke of work, and you’re making it harder for every other cat.”
“It’s not like we’ll have to sleep in these caves,” Harveymoon pointed out. “So why should we have to clear them out?”
Sharpclaw let out a long hiss of anger, and even Macgyver’s eyes widened in shock. Harveymoon glanced uneasily from one to the other; Leafstar could tell that he hadn’t realized how insolent the words sounded until they were out of his mouth.
Ebonyclaw and her apprentice, Frecklepaw, had appeared at the mouth of the cave, peering around Sharpclaw, and Leafstar spotted Rockshade and Sparrowpelt in the shadows behind them. She realized that every cat was waiting for her to do something; behavior like this couldn’t be ignored. The fact that it was warriors from Twolegplace causing the trouble somehow made it much worse.
“Clan cats don’t fool around when their Clanmates are working,” she told Macgyver and Harveymoon. “And they certainly don’t talk like that to the Clan deputy—or any other cat. Warriors treat one another with respect.” She felt as if a stone were lodged in her belly as she added, “It’s not as if this is the first time. You couldn’t be bothered to turn up for the warrior ceremony, and on your last two hunting patrols you never caught a thing.” She took a deep breath and went on, “You’re both banished from the camp until the next full moon. Perhaps by then you’ll have decided whether you really want to be part of SkyClan.”
Macgyver and Harveymoon crouched down as their leader scolded them, their ears flattened. As she pronounced their sentence they exchanged a shocked glance.
“We’re sorry, Leafstar,” Macgyver meowed. “We didn’t think. Please let us stay.”
“We’ll work really hard,” Harveymoon promised. “Sharpclaw, I’m sorry I said what I did. I didn’t mean it.”
“‘Sorry’ catches no prey,” Leafstar responded. “It’s too late for that.”
“But I promised to join Waspwhisker and Mintpaw on a hunting patrol after sunhigh,” the white tom protested.
“And I was going to help Sagepaw check the elders for fleas,” Macgyver put in. “Tangle is halfway through telling us a story about a fox, and I really want to hear the end.”
“You should have thought of that sooner,” Leafstar meowed. She couldn’t weaken now, not with Sharpclaw’s stare scorching the fur on her back. “We’ll welcome you back at the next full moon, if you are ready to behave like proper warriors while you’re here. But now you have to go.”
Harveymoon opened his jaws to argue again, then seemed to think better of it. Despondently the two cats scrambled down the cliff face to the bottom of the gorge and headed toward the Rockpile with their heads bowed and their tails drooping.
Watching them, with Sharpclaw bristling at her side, Leafstar wondered if she was doing the right thing by allowing kittypets into her Clan at all. Could this be the “greater storm” that the dream-cat had warned about? Leafstar shoved the thought away; a couple of flea-brained toms didn’t deserve a prophecy all to themselves.
But I can’t go on ignoring Sharpclaw’s doubts about the daylight-warriors. I have to stand up for my deputy.
Before Harveymoon and Macgyver had gone more than a couple of tail-lengths, they met Cherrytail and Bouncefire bounding around a spur of rock on their way to the new caves. In the still air, their voices floated clearly up to Leafstar.