Эрин Хантер – MIDNIGHT (страница 7)
Squirrelpaw shrugged. “No harm in trying.” With a flick of her tail, she stalked off to find Cinderpelt.
Brambleclaw headed for the elders’ den, which was in a patch of grass sheltered by a fallen tree. The tree was a burned-out shell; Brambleclaw could still scent the acrid tang from the fire that had swept through the camp more than four seasons ago, when he was only a kit. But the grass had grown up again around the tree trunk, thick and luxuriant, making a comfortable home for the elderly cats whose service to the Clan was done.
When he pushed his way through the grasses he found the elders sunning themselves in the small, flattened clearing. Dappletail, the oldest cat in ThunderClan, was curled up asleep, her patchy tortoiseshell pelt rising and falling with each breath. Frostfur, a still beautiful white queen, was dabbing lazily at a beetle in the grass. Speckletail and Longtail were crouched together as if they were in the middle of a good gossip. Brambleclaw felt the familiar jolt of sympathy when he looked at Longtail; the pale tabby tom was still a young warrior, but his eyesight had begun to fail so that he could no longer fight or hunt for himself.
“Hi, there, Brambleclaw.” Longtail’s head swung around as Brambleclaw entered the clearing, his jaws parted to take in the newcomer’s scent. “What can we do for you?”
“I’ve come to help Squirrelpaw,” Brambleclaw explained. “Dustpelt sent her to look after you today.”
Speckletail broke into rasping laughter. “I heard she went missing. The whole camp was in an uproar, looking for her. But I knew she’d just have gone off by herself.”
“She tagged onto the dawn patrol,” Brambleclaw meowed.
Before he could say any more, there was the sound of another cat pushing through the grasses, and Squirrelpaw appeared. She had a twig clamped in her jaws; hanging from it was a ball of moss soaked in mouse bile. Brambleclaw wrinkled his nose at the bitter scent.
“Right, who’s got ticks?” Squirrelpaw mumbled around the twig.
“You’re supposed to look for them yourself,” Brambleclaw pointed out.
Squirrelpaw shot him a glare.
“You can start with me,” Frostfur offered. “I’m sure there’s one on my shoulder, just where I can’t get at it.”
Squirrelpaw padded over to the she-cat, parting her white fur with a forepaw and grunting when she discovered the tick. She dabbed at it with the damp moss until it dropped off; ticks obviously found mouse bile as disgusting as cats did, thought Brambleclaw.
“Don’t worry, youngster,” Speckletail mewed as Squirrel paw went on searching Frostfur’s pelt. “Your father was punished many a time when he was an apprentice. Even after he became a warrior. I never knew such a cat for getting into trouble, and look at him now!”
Squirrelpaw swung around to look at the elder, her green eyes sparkling, obviously begging for a tale.
“Well, now.” Speckletail settled herself more comfortably in her grassy nest. “There was the time when Firestar and Greystripe were caught feeding RiverClan with prey from our own territory. . . .”
Brambleclaw had heard the story before, so he began to collect the elders’ used bedding, rolling the moss together until he had gathered it up in a ball. When he took it out into the clearing he spotted Firestar emerging from the gorse tunnel, with Sandstorm and Cloudtail behind him. Thornclaw was hurrying across to meet them from the other side of the clearing.
“Thank StarClan Squirrelpaw’s safe,” Firestar was mewing as Brambleclaw came into earshot. “One of these days she’ll get into real trouble.”
“She’s in real trouble now,” Sandstorm growled. “Just wait till I get my paws on her!”
“Dustpelt already did.” Thornclaw gave a
Firestar nodded. “Good.”
“And there’s something else,” Thornclaw went on. “We found a badger up at Snakerocks, living in the cave where the dogs used to be.”
“We think it might be the one that killed Willowpelt,” Brambleclaw put in, setting his ball of moss down. “We’ve not seen any trace of a badger anywhere else in the forest.”
Cloudtail let out a growl. “Oh, I
Firestar swung around to face him. “You’ll do nothing of the kind without orders. I don’t want to lose more cats.” He paused for a moment, then added, “We’ll keep watch on it for a while. Pass the word around not to hunt at Snakerocks for the time being. With any luck, it will move on before leaf-bare, when prey gets scarce.”
“And hedgehogs might fly,” Cloudtail grumbled, stalking past Brambleclaw toward the warriors’ den. “Badgers and cats don’t mix, and that’s the end of it.”
“
“She deserves to be.” Cinderpelt glanced up from counting juniper berries. She spoke firmly, though not unsympathetically. “If apprentices think they can go off by themselves, without telling any cat, then where would we be?”
“I know.” While Leafpaw prepared the mouse bile, she had listened to her sister raging about how unfair the punishment was. Squirrelpaw’s anger churned deep within Leafpaw’s belly, as if the air in the camp were water and her sister was sending ripples of cold frustration into the medicine cat’s den. Ever since they were tiny kits they had always known what the other was feeling. Leafpaw remembered how her fur had tingled with excitement when Squirrelpaw was made apprentice, and how her sister had been unable to sleep on the night when Leafpaw had been apprenticed as a medicine cat at the Moonstone. Once she had felt an excruciating pain in her paw, and limped around the camp from sunhigh to sunset, until Squirrelpaw returned from a hunting patrol with a thorn driven deep into her pad.
Leafpaw shook her head as if she had a burr clinging to her pelt, trying to push away her sister’s emotions and concentrate on her task of sorting yarrow leaves.
“Squirrelpaw will be fine,” Cinderpelt reassured her. “It’ll all be forgotten tomorrow. Now, did you get any of that mouse bile on your fur? If you did, you’d better go and wash it off.”
“No, Cinderpelt, I’m fine.” Leafpaw knew her voice was filled with the strain she was feeling, however hard she tried to hide it.
“Cheer up.” Cinderpelt limped out of her den to join her apprentice, pressing her muzzle comfortingly against Leafpaw’s side. “Do you want to come to the Gathering tonight?”
“May I?” Leafpaw spun to face her mentor. Then she hesitated. “Squirrelpaw won’t be allowed to come, will she?”
“After today? Certainly not!” Cinderpelt’s blue eyes glowed with understanding. “Leafpaw, you and your sister aren’t kits anymore. And you have chosen a very different path from hers, to be a medicine cat. You will always be friends, but you can’t do everything together, and the sooner you both accept that, the better.”
Leafpaw nodded and bent over the yarrow leaves again. She struggled to calm her feelings of excitement over the Gathering, so that Squirrelpaw would not feel even more upset over being left out. Cinderpelt was right, but all the same she couldn’t help wishing that she and Squirrelpaw had been able to attend the Gathering together.
The full moon rode high in the sky as Firestar led the cats from ThunderClan up the slope toward Fourtrees. Padding along beside Cinderpelt, Leafpaw shivered with anticipation. This was the place where the territories of all four Clans joined together. At every full moon, the Clan leaders met here with their warriors under the sacred truce of StarClan to exchange news and make decisions that would affect the whole forest.
Firestar paused at the top of the slope and gazed down into the clearing. Leafpaw, near the back of the group, could only just see the tops of the four great oak trees that gave the clearing its name, but she could hear the sounds of many cats, and the breeze brought to her the mingled scents of ShadowClan, RiverClan, and WindClan.
Before her first Gathering, the only other cats Leafpaw had met were the three medicine cats from the other Clans, when she made her journey to Highstones at the half moon to be formally apprenticed. When she had attended a Gathering for the first time, she and Squirrelpaw had been overwhelmed by all the strangers, and had stayed close to their mentors. But this time Leafpaw felt more confident, and she was looking forward to meeting warriors and apprentices from other Clans.
Crouching in the undergrowth, she watched her father for the signal to move down into the clearing. Brambleclaw was standing just in front of her with Mousefur and Sorreltail. Leafpaw could see from the tautness in the young tabby’s muscles that he was eagerly waiting for the Gathering to start, while Sorreltail’s whole body quivered with excitement at the prospect of her first Gathering as a warrior. Further ahead, Greystripe and Sandstorm were exchanging a few words, while Cloudtail shifted impatiently from paw to paw. Briefly Leafpaw felt a pang of sadness that Squirrelpaw was not there as well, but to her relief her sister had not minded too much about being left behind, saying that she was looking forward to a good night’s sleep after caring for the elders all day.