“Of course, of course.” Gray Wing soothed his leader with his tail-tip resting on her shoulder. Except you never actually said so.…
Tall Shadow looked down at the other cats. Acorn Fur and Lightning Tail were tossing a ball of moss to each other, while Hawk Swoop and Turtle Tail looked on. Cloud Spots and Dappled Pelt were having an earnest consultation over a heap of herbs; Thunder was sharing some prey with Rainswept Flower. None of them seemed interested in Tall Shadow or Gray Wing, up on the rock.
“They asked you to be leader,” Tall Shadow mewed after a moment. “And just now I let Wind take over. Maybe it is time to let some other cat take charge.”
“Never!” Gray Wing protested.
Tall Shadow fixed her gaze on the horizon again. “Have you never, ever questioned the leadership here?” she asked. “Have you never thought about how things could be different? I wouldn’t blame you.”
Gray Wing remembered the dream when he had returned to the mountains and met with Stoneteller in the Cave of Pointed Stones. She implied I would become leader, he thought, shame throbbing through him. But I can’t tell Tall Shadow that. “Never,” he protested weakly.
Tall Shadow turned to look at him, her gaze deep and searching. For a moment she said nothing, only sighed deeply, then turned away again to scan the rolling moorland. “Leave me to my thoughts—please,” she murmured.
Gray Wing wanted to find words to reassure his leader, but he knew that nothing he could say would do any good. Reluctantly he jumped down from the rock. He felt that something had changed in the hollow. Something big. If only he could see into the future, to what would happen in a few moons.
And I’ve learned something new about Wind, he thought. She took control so smoothly and bundled Bumble out of the hollow. She’s clever…
Chapter 10
Gray Wing found himself in a vast open space with lush grass beneath his paws. A rabbit ran past him and instinctively he gave chase. It was odd, but however hard he pushed himself, he couldn’t seem to go any faster. Then the rabbit vanished and the open space gave way to a wide forest ride, with trees arching overhead to form a green tunnel. Gray Wing knew that something hugely important was waiting for him at the end.
But wait! What’s that scent? As he raced along, the scent of prey and growing plants was suddenly blotted out by the smell of smoke. He halted; his nose twitched and he rubbed it with one paw. There was movement to one side of his vision—a darting, flickering orange. The crackle of flames. Fire!
Startled, Gray Wing jerked awake. He found himself in his mossy nest under the gorse bush. I was dreaming. But in the next moment he realized that the smell of smoke and the orange glow in the sky were still terrifyingly real. He leaped to his paws.
“Fire!” he yowled. “Fire in the forest!”
Some of the cats were already awake and in a panic. Hawk Swoop dashed past him, hard on the paws of Acorn Fur and Lightning Tail, then herded them back toward their den. Jackdaw’s Cry bounded up to the top of the hollow, took one appalled look, then raced back down, his fur bristling and his tail bushed out. Rainswept Flower was crouching in her nest, her eyes wide and scared as she gazed up at the sky.
Struggling to control his own terror, Gray Wing stuck his head into Turtle Tail’s sleeping tunnel. Her kits were still asleep in a furry heap beside their mother, but Turtle Tail was awake, her head raised as she gazed out fearfully.
“What’s happening?” she asked.
“Fire in the forest,” Gray Wing repeated. “Stay here with the kits. It won’t get this far.”
Relieved at the she-cat’s nod of acknowledgement, Gray Wing raced to the top of the hollow and looked across the moor. Fire was sprouting from the edge of the forest. Even at that distance he could hear the crackling. The blaze stretched up like a flaming foreleg swiping at the trees.
Clear Sky! Gray Wing felt his heart begin to pound so hard he could hardly breathe. He and his cats are in there somewhere. They might be trapped!
“Come on!” he yowled. “We have to help.”
As the cats began to emerge from their dens, Gray Wing spotted Jagged Peak hobbling toward him. “I know I can’t come with you,” the young cat meowed. “But is there anything I can do?”
Gray Wing turned back to meet his brother. “Yes—can you protect the kits in the hollow while we’re away?”
Jagged Peak’s eyes shone and he puffed his chest out importantly. “Of course I can!”
“Great!” Gray Wing rested his tail on his brother’s shoulders for a heartbeat. Jagged Peak is finding a new role for himself, he thought as he dashed back up the slope. And just in time…
Reaching the top again, Gray Wing clambered over the edge of the hollow and hurtled across the moor. All his instincts were shrieking at him to flee the other way, but he forced his fear down and kept going.
Casting a rapid glance over his shoulder, he realized that Thunder, Tall Shadow, Jackdaw’s Cry, Rainswept Flower, Cloud Spots, and Dappled Pelt were following him. Thunder was the most determined of them all, picking up the pace until he was running along at Gray Wing’s shoulder. “Do you think any cats are hurt?” he panted.
Gray Wing didn’t reply. I don’t even want to think about that.
As they approached the forest Gray Wing and his companions slowed, moving more cautiously. The fire on the edge of the forest was dying down, but farther into the trees it still raged on, sending hot red sparks swirling into the sky.
“Now what do we do?” Rainswept Flower asked.
“We have to find Clear Sky,” Gray Wing responded, appalled at the sight of the blaze and finding it hard to get his breath as the surge of hot air hit him in the throat.
“But we need to stay together,” Tall Shadow meowed, raising her voice so that all the cats could hear her. “Follow me, and keep your eyes and ears open.”
Tall Shadow took the lead as the cats picked their way cautiously among smoldering, glowing branches. “What’s this?” she muttered.
Gray Wing padded through the swirling smoke and drifting, charred leaves to see a circle of stones in the middle of a black patch of earth, with a heap of ash and burnt branches inside it. There were huge dents in the earth around the circle of stones. “Some sort of Twoleg thing,” he responded. “Look, you can see the marks of their paws. This could be where the fire started.”
Tall Shadow sniffed at the dents. “I guess the Twolegs tried to stomp out the fire,” she murmured.
Gray Wing nodded. “Maybe they didn’t get it all,” he suggested. “If there were embers, they could have set the bracken on fire and then the flames could have spread to the trees.”
Jackdaw’s Cry snorted. “Trust Twolegs to do something flea-brained. That’s one thing we never had to deal with in the mountains.”
The branches around them were glowing with bits of fire. The cats crouched down as one of them exploded in a shower of sparks and Rainswept Flower let out a sharp screech as a spark singed her fur.
Gray Wing stiffened as he looked up and saw that the sparks had rekindled several small fires. Fresh orange patches sprang up all around them, including one back the way they had come. Retreating was going to be hard.
But I’m not retreating yet.…
Bracing himself, Gray Wing turned toward the heart of the forest, where flames still roared greedily around the trees. My brother is in there somewhere… I’ll do everything I can to find him. Only then would he be ready to find a way out.