“Does Cinderpelt visit you too?” Hollykit asked.
Leafpool shook her head. “Just Spottedleaf. She helps me find the answers to questions that are worrying me, and she warns me if something threatens the Clan.”
Hollykit was surprised to hear Leafpool talk so warmly about a cat she’d never met in real life. “You talk about Spottedleaf like she’s a friend.”
“Our warrior ancestors can be our friends.”
Jaykit let out a moan. “I hurt.”
“I’ll fetch more comfrey,” Hollykit offered. She bounded over to the pile of herbs and carried a mouthful back to Leafpool.
“Thank you,” Leafpool meowed. “Can you fetch some
poppy seeds, too? You’ll see them at the back. They’re tiny, round black seeds.”
“Okay.” Hollykit hurried to the back of the den and searched among the piles of herbs until she found the poppy seeds. “How many?” she called.
“Five,” Leafpool answered. “Pick them up by wetting your paw and dabbing the pile.”
Hollykit followed her instructions, shaking the extra seeds from her pad, and hopped back to where Jaykit lay. He licked them from her paw, his eyes growing sleepy.
“Is he all right?” she asked, worried.
“He will be,” Leafpool reassured her. “But we should let him rest.”
Hollykit did not want to leave the medicine den.
Excitement was buzzing in her paws. Leafpool could cure sick cats, and share tongues with her ancestors, and warn the Clan leader of troubles ahead. If Hollykit wanted to be important to her Clan, perhaps becoming a medicine cat was the way to achieve it. After the disastrous adventure with the foxes, maybe she wasn’t cut out to be a warrior at all.
She padded away from Jaykit but lingered at the bramble-covered entrance. “Leafpool,” she called quietly.
“Yes?” Leafpool padded to her side.
“When do medicine cats take on an apprentice? Is it only when they get old?”
Leafpool looked seriously at her. “I can take an apprentice anytime.”
“But would your apprentice have to stay an apprentice
until you . . .”
Leafpool’s whiskers twitched with amusement as she guessed what Hollykit was trying to ask. “No,” she purred.
“Once a medicine cat apprentice has learned enough, he can take his proper name and assume full responsibilities, even with his mentor still alive.”
Hollykit wondered why Leafpool had said
Leafpool flicked the tip of her tail. “I’ve not decided anything yet.”
Before Hollykit could say anything else, she heard Ferncloud calling her from the nursery.
“You’d better go,” Leafpool meowed. “You’ve been in enough trouble for one day.”
Her pelt prickling with frustration, Hollykit pushed her way through the brambles and raced back to the nursery. She had just discovered how she wanted to serve her Clan, how to make sure that what she did really mattered. She wanted to be the next ThunderClan medicine cat!
Chapter 5
Jaykit usually slept beside him, but there was an empty space there now.
Then he remembered.
Lionkit felt sickness surge in his belly as he pictured Jaykit lying limp at the side of the clearing.
But in the clearing, watching Leafpool and Brambleclaw crouch by his body, Lionkit had thought that his brother was dead. A shiver ran down his tail. He nudged Hollykit, who was still sleeping beside him, her black pelt almost making her invisible in the darkness. “It’s cold without Jaykit.”
“He’ll be back soon,” she murmured, not opening her eyes.
“But it’s weird when he’s not here.”
“He’s only on the other side of the clearing, and he’ll be back in a day or two.” Hollykit rolled over. “Go back to sleep.” Within moments her breathing deepened and she was asleep again.
Lionkit still felt a tug of sadness. Jaykit should be with them, just like always.
He closed his eyes but the image of his brother lying in the clearing filled his mind again.
Jaykit could be dead, or the fox cubs could have chased them into the hollow. What a mess!
Lionkit got to his paws. He needed fresh air to clear his head.
He peered through the shadows to where Daisy slept. Her long, creamy fur blended into Ferncloud’s dark gray pelt.
Ferncloud’s whiskers were twitching as she dreamed, her two kits snuggled against her flank. Neither queen would be pleased at being woken just so he could ask permission to leave the den; besides, he’d be back before they woke.
With a flick of his tail, he picked his way past Hollykit and squeezed through the prickly entrance.
Cold night air stung his nose, and the frosty ground made his paws ache as he padded around the edge of the camp. Prey scents drifted from the forest. A bird chattered an alarm call far away. He glanced up at Silverpelt, spread across the inky sky. He was glad StarClan had let Jaykit stay down here with his Clanmates. Perhaps he could look in on his brother.
Leafpool would be asleep by now.
Lionkit kept to the shadows, painfully aware that he was not supposed to be outside the nursery without permission.
As he crept along the stretch of thornbush that sealed the camp, his heart seemed to pound in his chest loud enough to wake his Clanmates. When he scanned the clearing, Lionkit realized with a start that he was not the only cat awake so late.
A shape was stirring on the other side of the clearing. The
lithe outline of a cat peeled away from the shadows, followed by another.
Lionkit ducked under a branch, relieved to find a small space inside the prickly barrier where he could hide. He peered through the twigs at the emerging shapes: Dustpelt and Spiderleg were padding side by side into the pool of moonlight that lit the center of the camp.
“They’re nearly here,” the long-limbed warrior told Dustpelt.
“Good,” Dustpelt meowed.
Lionkit strained his ears, listening. Frozen leaves crackled beyond the camp wall. He felt the thorn barrier tremble as Stormfur and Brackenfur pushed their way through the entrance tunnel into the camp. The moonhigh patrol had returned.
Dustpelt hurried toward them. “Anything to report?”
“All quiet,” Stormfur replied.
Lionkit pressed himself further into the thorns. He could always say he had slipped out only to make dirt, but he was not ready yet to be sent back into the nursery.
Brackenfur held a mouse between his teeth. He dropped it. “It’s good to be out hunting again,” the golden tabby purred.
