The Fourth Apprentice

able to trick me if he doubled back?

Lionblaze’s paw steps thudded on the dried mud. Pausing, he glanced around, then bounded over to a lump of battered wood and started dragging it onto the pebbles. Dovepaw could hear them rasping and rolling as Lionblaze tugged the wood higher. When he had pulled it all the way up to the grass, he pulled a tendril of bramble out of a nearby thicket and laid it over the wood.

“Lionblaze, what are you doing?” Dovepaw heard Sandstorm’s voice and spotted the ginger she-cat appearing around the edge of the thicket, with Leafpool, Briarpaw, and Bumblepaw just behind her. All four cats were carrying bundles of moss.

“Oh, hi, Sandstorm.” Lionblaze sounded startled. “I’m…uh…just trying an experiment.”

“Well, don’t let me interrupt you.” Sandstorm seemed puzzled as she waved her tail and led the two apprentices out onto the mud, heading for the water in the distance.

When Sandstorm had gone, Lionblaze ran back through the trees and arrived, panting, a few moments later. “Well?” he gasped. “Where did I go and what did I do?”

“You tried to trick me, didn’t you?” Dovepaw began; she felt so self-conscious that every hair on her pelt was prickling. “You set off toward WindClan, but then you went down to the lake. And you found a piece of wood…”

As she went on, she saw Jayfeather listening with his head to one side, his ears pricked. He didn’t speak until she had finished. “Was she right?”

“Yes, every detail,” Lionblaze replied.

Suddenly the air around the three cats seemed to crackle with things unsaid, as if a greenleaf storm was about to break. Dovepaw drew a shaky breath.

“It’s no big deal,” she protested. “I thought every cat could tell what was going on, even if it’s not right in front of us. We all have good hearing and sensitive whiskers, right?”

“Not that sensitive,” Lionblaze meowed.

“Listen.” Jayfeather leaned forward with an intensity in his sightless blue eyes. “There is a prophecy, Dovepaw,” he began. “There will be three, kin of your kin, who will hold the power of the stars in their paws. It was given to Firestar a long time ago by a cat from another Clan, and it refers to three cats who will be more powerful than any others in the Clans-more powerful even than StarClan. Lionblaze-”

“But what has that got to do with us?” Dovepaw interrupted; suddenly she felt as if she didn’t want to know the answer.

“Lionblaze and I are two of those cats,” Jayfeather mewed with a flick of his ears. “And we believe that you are the third.”

“What?” Horror and disbelief surged over Dovepaw; her voice came out like the squeak of a startled kit. “Me?” Spinning around, she fixed her gaze on her mentor. “Lionblaze, this can’t be right! Please tell me that it isn’t true!”

CHAPTER 7

Jayfeather winced at Dovepaw’s dismay as she learned that she was different from all the other cats in her Clan, with a destiny greater even than StarClan. Not that we know what our destiny is…He heard Lionblaze sigh as she begged him to tell her it wasn’t real.

“I can’t tell you that, Dovepaw,” his brother meowed. “Because it is true. I often wish it wasn’t, believe me.”

“Lionblaze and I both have special powers,” Jayfeather put in. “He can’t be beaten in battle, and I…well, I have more skills than other medicine cats.” No way am I telling her what they are! Not yet, anyway.

“And you have especially strong senses,” Lionblaze told her. “You can tell what’s going on very far away. I started to wonder that day we went to RiverClan, when you told me there was a very sick cat in the camp. I didn’t sense anything like that. You’re a better hunter than you should be, with less than a moon’s training. And no other cat knows anything about these animals you say are blocking the river. The way you could tell exactly what I did just now makes me think you could be right about them.”

Dovepaw was silent for a few heartbeats; Jayfeather could hear her claws tearing at the grass. “This is mouse-brained!” she burst out at last. “I don’t believe you. I don’t want to be different!”

“What you want isn’t-” Jayfeather began, then broke off as he heard the swishing sound of cats pushing their way through bracken. Sandstorm was in the lead, with more cats behind her, their scents almost drowned in the dank smell of mud.

“I’m sick of this,” Sandstorm complained, her voice muffled so that Jayfeather could picture the soaked moss she held in her jaws. “RiverClan is behaving as if we have to ask their permission every time we want to go near the water.”

“And I’m covered in mud,” Briarpaw protested.

“We’re all covered.” Leafpool’s voice was tired. “Once we take the water to our Clanmates, we can have a rest and lick it off.”

“Yuck!” Bumblepaw exclaimed.

The sounds of the patrol faded as they headed into the thorn tunnel.

“We can’t talk here,” Jayfeather meowed. “We might as well announce everything to the Clan and be done with it.”

“Then let’s go farther into the forest where no cat can overhear us,” Lionblaze suggested.

Jayfeather led the way along the old Twoleg path as far as the abandoned nest. The scent of catmint greeted him, soothing his worries and filling him with a deep sense of satisfaction. If ThunderClan ever suffers from greencough again, we’ll be well prepared.

“Your catmint is flourishing,” Lionblaze remarked as the three cats padded into the overgrown Twoleg garden. “It’s weird that it grows so well in a drought.”

“If it did, that would be weird,” Jayfeather agreed. “I’ve been fetching soaked moss to water the roots. We can’t afford to let it die.”

Distracted for the moment from the problem of Dovepaw, Jayfeather moved confidently from plant to plant, guided by the strong scent of catmint, and gave each root a careful sniff to make sure that the fragile shoots were thriving.

“You must understand how I can tell what’s going on all over the forest.” Dovepaw padded up behind him, a challenge in her voice. “You know where every one of those plants is, even though you can’t see them.”

Jayfeather flicked up his ears, startled, while Lionblaze began, “Dovepaw, that’s different-”

“It’s okay,” Jayfeather interrupted. It was refreshing to meet a cat who didn’t tie herself into knots trying not to mention his blindness to his face. “Dovepaw has a good point. I know other cats are surprised when I know where things are. I’ve developed very good senses of smell and hearing,” he went on to Dovepaw. “I suppose that’s to make up for not being able to see. But I can’t tell what’s going on at the other side of the forest.” A flicker of resentment crossed his mind. “Your powers are much greater than my senses.”

“But I don’t understand!” Jayfeather could tell that Dovepaw was trying very hard to keep her voice steady. “Why do I have these powers? What does the prophecy mean? ”

“We’re not sure,” Lionblaze replied. “We felt just like you, at first. And we’ve struggled hard to understand it, but-”

“What’s the matter with you?” Jayfeather cut in. “How can you not want to be more powerful than your Clanmates? To have a greater destiny, a mystery to solve? How can you not want to be one of the Three?”

“But we’re not three, we’re four!” Dovepaw spun around to face him. “What about Ivypaw? What are her special powers? What does the prophecy say about her?”

“Nothing,” Jayfeather told her. “At first we didn’t know whether the prophecy meant you or your sister. But