Yellowpaw let herself be urged toward the entrance. Before she ducked under the branches, she looked back. “Good-bye, Silverflame,” she whispered.
There was no sign that Silverflame had heard her. She drew a breath that rattled in her throat. As Yellowpaw climbed out of the den, she strained her ears for the next breath. It didn’t come.
“She’s dead, isn’t she?” Yellowpaw whispered.
Littlebird nodded. “She hunts with StarClan now.”
Yellowpaw dug her claws into the ground. “She shouldn’t be dead. Why didn’t Sagewhisker save her?”
“It wasn’t—”
Yellowpaw cut off Littlebird’s words with a yowl of rage. “She should have saved her! What good is a medicine cat if she can’t do that?”
“Come for a walk with me,” Littlebird meowed gently.
“Yes, go with Littlebird.” Brightflower, who had waited outside the den, touched her nose to Yellowpaw’s ear.
Her eyes blurred by sadness, Yellowpaw followed the small ginger tabby out of the camp. She realized that Littlebird was heading for the marshes Deerleap had shown her earlier. It felt as though the tour of the territory had happened in another life.
“Medicine cats can only do their best with the knowledge that they have,” Littlebird told her. “StarClan wanted Silverflame to walk with them. Look,” she added, pausing beside a shrub with a few pale green leaves clinging to its spindly branches, “there’s the juniper bush that Sagewhisker used to help Silverflame’s pain. And in newleaf there’s also coltsfoot for shortness of breath—”
“But none of it did any good,” Yellowpaw snarled. “Sagewhisker should have found something better.” She lashed her tail. “What’s the use of being a medicine cat if you can’t heal your Clanmates?”
“Death is part of life,” Littlebird meowed, resting her tail on Yellowpaw’s shoulder. “Every good warrior goes to StarClan, and that’s a glorious place to end up.” She raised one paw and pointed at a star that was shining above their heads. “Look, Silverflame is watching over us now.”
“But I want her back in the Clan,” Yellowpaw whispered. The star was too far away to mean anything, and how could any cat know that it was Silverflame?
“Every cat has to leave sometime,” Littlebird murmured. “Until then, all we can do is try our hardest to be the best for our Clan.”
As leaf-bare dragged on, the hard frost made the grass sharp enough to pierce a cat’s pads like thorns, and prey stayed deep inside their holes. Yellowpaw felt as if her belly was flapping, it was so empty, but Deerleap kept her on a grueling training regime.
“I have to get up before any of you,” Yellowpaw grumbled to Nutpaw as she licked a paw and tried to rub sleep out of her eyes. “Some mornings we’re even out before the dawn patrol! And it’s never enough if I catch one piece of prey. Oh, no—we can’t come back to camp until I’ve caught two or three.”
“You’re doing great,” Nutpaw muttered. He was still curled up in the moss of the apprentices’ den, and he sounded half-asleep. “Deerleap is a fantastic mentor.”
Yellowpaw snorted, though she was pleased that she had managed to impress her brother. I’m trying really hard, she thought. Surely I’m going to be a good warrior with all this training?
“Yellowpaw!”
“Uh-oh.” Yellowpaw flinched at the sound of her mentor’s voice. “Coming!” she called as she scrambled out of the den.
Deerleap was standing a fox-length away, impatiently flexing her claws. The first faint light of dawn was creeping into the sky; Yellowpaw could barely see the outlines of the trees. Stonetooth was emerging from the warriors’ den. He arched his back in a long stretch and his jaws parted in a yawn.
Yellowpaw blinked and tried to look alert. “Where are we going today?”
“I thought we might try near the big ash tree,” Deerleap replied. “No cat has hunted there for a day or two.”
Yellowpaw’s sleepiness vanished as she headed into the forest after her mentor. The air was crisp and cold; her paws pattered on the hard ground, and she made a conscious effort to walk softly. The dawn light was strengthening as the ash tree came into sight. Deerleap gestured with her tail for Yellowpaw to take cover behind some brambles.
“Keep perfectly still,” she instructed. “Look, listen, and scent. What can you pick up?”
Yellowpaw drew herself up, her whiskers quivering with concentration, and tried to focus all her senses at once. At first she could hear nothing but the breeze in the bare branches of the ash, and the soft sound of her own breath. Then a familiar scent wafted into her jaws and she pricked her ears.
Blackbird!
She poked her head out from behind the brambles and spotted the bird pecking among the roots of the ash tree. Remembering to check the direction of the breeze, she worked her way around the outside of the thicket and dropped into her hunter’s crouch to creep up on the bird from the other direction. Stealthily, paw step by paw step, Yellowpaw edged forward, her gaze fixed on her quarry. She was aware of Deerleap watching her, which made her even more determined. I’ve got to make a good catch!
But before Yellowpaw came within pouncing distance, she accidentally stepped on a dead leaf. It crackled under her paw, and the blackbird, alerted by the tiny sound, fluttered up onto a low branch.
“Mouse dung!” Yellowpaw hissed.
She padded back to Deerleap, who was still in cover behind the brambles.
“Okay,” her mentor mewed. “What did you do wrong?”
“I stepped on a leaf.” Duh!
“And why did you step on a leaf?”
“I wasn’t aware of everything around me,” Yellowpaw admitted. “I was so focused on the blackbird that I didn’t think about where I was putting my paws.”
Deerleap gave her an approving nod. “Good. You’ll remember next time, won’t you?” Glancing out from the thicket, she added, “And now you get another chance.”
Yellowpaw poked her head out and saw that the bird was back among the tree roots, pecking away as if it had forgotten the threat.
I’ll get you this time!
Checking the wind direction again, she crept forward; this time she looked down at the ground in front of her, assessing everything that lay between her and her prey. She avoided a fallen twig, and used a clump of frostbitten grass for extra cover. At last she was close enough to pounce; bunching her muscles, she shot forward in an enormous leap, and sank her claws into the bird before it realized she was there. Once the limp body was securely in her jaws, she trotted back to her mentor.
“Well done,” Deerleap purred. “That was a perfect bit of stalking.”
Yellowpaw felt warm all over; Deerleap’s praise had to be earned. “It’s a little scrawny,” she confessed after she had dropped the bird on the ground.
“Never mind. Any piece of prey is welcome in weather like this.”
The ground was too hard to dig a hole and bury the fresh-kill while they kept hunting, so Yellowpaw scraped leaves over it before starting to search the area for more prey, moving in widening circles around the ash tree. But it seemed as if nothing else was moving in all the frozen forest. Claws of frost dug deep into Yellowpaw’s pelt, and she was almost ready to ask if they could go back to camp when she spotted a flicker of movement between two stones. Swiftly she flashed out a paw and was startled to find that she had hooked a lizard on her claws. It wriggled for a heartbeat and then was still.
“That was lucky,” Deerleap commented. “You don’t usually see those in weather as cold as this.”
Yellowpaw swelled with pride as she carried her two pieces of prey into the camp. Nutpaw and Rowanpaw were standing by the fresh-kill pile with their mentors.