Fire and Ice (Warriors 3)

“Smallear says he climbed to the top branch when he was an apprentice,” Fireheart meowed.

“No way!” mewed Cinderpaw.

“Mind you, when Smallear was an apprentice, this tree was probably only a sapling!” Fireheart joked. He was still gazing up when a rustling sound behind him told him Cinderpaw had dashed off again. He sighed and chased after her through the bracken. His nose detected a familiar scent that made him nervous. Cinderpaw was heading toward Snakerocks.

Adders! Fireheart picked up his pace.

He emerged from the trees and looked around anxiously. Cinderpaw was standing on a boulder at the bottom of the steep, rocky slope. “Come on; I’ll race you to the top!” she mewed.

Fireheart froze, horror-struck, as she crouched, ready to spring onto the next boulder. “Cinderpaw! Get down from there!” he yowled.

He held his breath as Cinderpaw turned and scrambled down again. She stood trembling, her fur on end, as Fireheart rushed over to her. “This place is called Snakerocks,” he puffed.

Cinderpaw looked up at him, her eyes huge. “Snakerocks?”

“Adders live up there. A bite from one of those would kill a cat as small as you!” Fireheart gave Cinderpaw a quick lick on top of her head. “Come on. Let’s have a look at the Thunderpath.”

Cinderpaw stopped shaking at once. “The Thunderpath?”

“Yep,” meowed Fireheart. “Follow me!” He led Cinderpaw through the ferns, along a trail that skirted Snakerocks and took them to the part of the forest where the Thunderpath cut through like a hard, gray river of stone.

Fireheart kept one eye on Cinderpaw as they peered out from the edge of the forest. He could see from her twitching tail that Cinderpaw was desperate to creep forward and sniff the Thunderpath ahead of them. A familiar roar was beginning to ruffle his ear fur, and he could feel the ground trembling beneath his paws. “Stay where you are!” he warned. “There’s a monster coming.”

Cinderpaw opened her mouth a little. “Yuck!” she mewed, screwing up her nose and flattening her ears. The rumbling noise was coming closer, and a shape appeared on the horizon. “Is that a monster?” she mewed. Fireheart nodded.

Cinderpaw unsheathed her claws to grip the earth as the monster roared closer. She shut her eyes tight as it charged past, stirring the air around them into a storm of wind and thunder. She kept her eyes shut until the noise had faded into the distance.

Fireheart shook his head to clear his scent glands. “Sniff the air,” he meowed. “Can you smell anything apart from the Thunderpath stench?” He waited while Cinderpaw lifted her head and took several deep breaths.

After a few moments she mewed, “I remember that scent from when Brokenstar attacked our camp. And it was on the kits he took, when you brought them home. It’s ShadowClan! Is that their territory, beyond the Thunderpath?”

“Yes,” Fireheart answered, feeling his fur tingle at the thought of being so close to hostile Clan territory. “We’d better get out of here.”

He decided to take Cinderpaw the long way home past Twolegplace, so she could see Tallpines and the Treecut place.

As they padded beneath the thin pine trees, the scents of Twolegplace made Fireheart uneasy, even though he’d lived in a place not far from there as a kit. “Stay alert,” he warned Cinderpaw as she crept along behind him. “Twolegs sometimes walk here with dogs.”

The two cats crouched under the trees to look at the fences that bordered the Twoleg territory. The crisp air carried a scent to Fireheart’s nose that stirred an odd feeling of warmth inside him, although he didn’t know why.

“Look!” Cinderpaw pointed with her nose at a she-cat padding across the forest floor. The light brown tabby had a distinctive white chest and white front paws. Her belly was swollen, heavy with unborn kits.

“Kittypet!” sneered Cinderpaw, her fur fluffed out. “Let’s chase her out!”

Fireheart expected to feel the familiar rush of aggression at the sight of a stranger on ThunderClan territory, but his hackles stayed flat. For some reason he couldn’t understand, he knew this cat wasn’t a threat. Before Cinderpaw could attack, Fireheart deliberately brushed against a stalk of crunchy bracken.

The she-cat looked up, disturbed by the crackling noise. Her eyes widened with alarm; then she whipped around and set off at a lumbering pace, out of the trees. Within moments she was heaving herself over one of the Twoleg fences.

“Rats!” complained Cinderpaw. “I wanted to chase her! I bet Brackenpaw will have chased hundreds of things today.”

“Yeah, but he probably didn’t nearly get bitten by an adder,” replied Fireheart, twitching his tail at her. “Now come on; I’m getting hungry.”

Cinderpaw followed him through Tallpines, grumbling about the pine needles pricking her paws. Fireheart warned her to keep quiet, since there was no undergrowth here to hide in and he felt every Clan cat’s discomfort at being in the open. They followed one of the stinking tracks gouged out by the Treecut monster and stopped at the edge of the Treecut place. It was silent, as Fireheart knew it would be until next greenleaf. Until then, only the track marks—deep and wide and frozen into the soil—would remind ThunderClan of the monster that lived in their forest.

By the time they arrived back at camp, Fireheart was exhausted; his muscles were still weary from the long journey with WindClan. Cinderpaw looked tired too. She stifled a yawn and padded away to find Brackenpaw.

Fireheart spotted Graystripe beckoning to him from beside the nettle clump.

“Here, I’ve got you some fresh-kill,” Graystripe meowed. He hooked a dead mouse with his claw and flung it toward Fireheart.

Fireheart caught it in his teeth and lay down next to Graystripe. “Good day?” he mumbled with his mouth full.

“Better than yesterday,” answered Graystripe. Fireheart glanced up at him, worried, but Graystripe went on: “I enjoyed it, actually. Brackenpaw’s keen to learn, that’s for sure!”

“So is Cinderpaw.” Fireheart went back to chewing.

“Mind you,” Graystripe went on with a sparkle in his eye, “I kept forgetting I was the mentor and not the apprentice!”

“Me too,” Fireheart admitted.

They shared tongues until the moon rose and the coldness of the night drove them into their den. Graystripe was snoring within moments, but Fireheart felt strangely awake. The image of the pregnant she-cat kept returning to his mind, and even though he was surrounded by the familiar smells of ThunderClan, her soft kittypet scent lingered in his nostrils.

He fell asleep at last, but his dreams all carried the same scent, until finally he dreamed of his days as a kit. He remembered lying beside his mother’s belly, curled in a bed softer than any forest moss with his brothers and sisters. And still the scent of the she-cat lingered.

Fireheart opened his eyes, suddenly jolted out of his sleep. Of course! The she-cat he had seen in the woods…was his sister!

CHAPTER 10

Fireheart woke at dawn with the image of his sister still clear in his mind. He pushed his way out of the den, hoping the routine of the day would distract him. It was another cold, frosty morning. Whitestorm and Longtail were waiting near the camp entrance, preparing to leave on patrol. Mousefur padded past on her way to join them and greeted Fireheart with a cheery mew. Whitestorm called for Sandpaw, who came racing out of her den just in time to follow the patrol as it pounded out of the camp. It was a scene Fireheart had watched many times, but for once he didn’t yearn to join them as they thundered away into the morning-fresh forest.

He padded across the clearing, wondering if Cinderpaw was awake yet. Brindleface was just squeezing out of the narrow nursery entrance. A speckled kit followed her, then one more. A third kit, pale gray with darker flecks like the other, tumbled out and fell onto the ground.

Brindleface picked

it up by its scruff and placed it gently back on its paws. The tenderness of Brindleface’s action brought Fireheart’s dream flooding back. His mother had probably done the same for him. He knew that Brindleface’s fourth kit had died soon after it was born, and she seemed to love the remaining kits even more fiercely now.

Fireheart was overwhelmed by a pang of envy at the thought that the other cats here all shared something he did not—they were all Clanborn. Fireheart had always been proud of his loyalty to the Clan that had taken him in and given him a life he would never have known as a kittypet. He still felt that loyalty—he would die to protect ThunderClan—but no one in the Clan understood or even respected his kittypet roots. Fireheart felt certain the she-cat he had seen yesterday would. With an ache in his heart, he wondered what memories they might share.

Fireheart heard Graystripe’s heavy pawsteps behind him. He turned to greet his friend, stretching his head to touch Graystripe’s nose, and asked, “Could you take Cinderpaw for the day?”

Graystripe looked curiously at Fireheart. “Why?”

“Oh, it’s nothing important,” replied Fireheart as casually as he could. “I just wanted to check out something I saw yesterday. Watch out for Cinderpaw, though; she doesn’t listen to orders very well. Don’t take your eyes off her or she’ll be charging off in every direction.”

Graystripe’s whiskers twitched with amusement. “She sounds like a pawful! Still, it’ll be good for Brackenpaw. He never charges off anywhere without thinking about it carefully first.”

“Thanks, Graystripe!” Fireheart bounded away toward the camp entrance before his friend could remember to ask him where he was going.

As the Twolegplace came into view through the trees, Fireheart dropped into a crouch. He opened his mouth and breathed in the cold morning air. No sign of a ThunderClan patrol, and no Twoleg scents either. He relaxed a little.

Slowly he approached the Twoleg fence where he had seen the she-cat disappear. He hesitated at the bottom and looked around, sniffing the air once more. Then he leaped, landing on a fence post in one easy jump. No Twolegs to be seen—just an empty garden with its strongly scented plants.