Эрин Хантер – STARLIGHT (страница 10)
There was no scent of predators or Twolegs, and by the time his friends had hooked several fish out of the stream there had been no sound to disturb them.
“Aren’t you hungry, Brambleclaw?” Squirrelflight asked, padding up to him and setting down the plump silver fish she carried in her jaws. “Or have you forgotten how to fish?”
“I was keeping watch,” he protested. He broke off when he spotted the gleam in her green eyes.
“Mousebrain,” she purred, patting the fish towards him with one forepaw. “I know exactly what you were doing, and I caught enough for both of us. Come and share.”
Tawnypelt shot Brambleclaw a look from narrowed eyes as he sat down beside Squirrelflight. “You seem pretty close,” she remarked quietly. “No need to ask StarClan what your future holds!”
Brambleclaw squirmed in embarrassment, uncomfortable at the thought of other cats gossiping about who he chose to spend time with. Then he relaxed. He had no reason to be secretive about his feelings for Squirrelflight, especially with his own sister. “Then that makes one less thing for StarClan to worry about,” he retorted lightly.
When the meal was over, he stood up, swiping his tongue around his jaws. “Where now?” he asked. “Back to the lake, or shall we have a look downstream?”
“I’d like to explore downstream,” meowed Mistyfoot. “We could see if there are any good places for a camp.”
Brambleclaw nodded, and the cats padded in single file along the bank of the stream, away from the lake. Brambleclaw let Mistyfoot take the lead, because she had the best idea of what she’d be looking out for to make a good RiverClan camp. As far as he could see, there were plenty of places where her Clanmates would feel at home: reed beds, clumps of bramble thickets for fresh-kill that wasn’t fish, with the gurgling of the stream always in their ears. Before very long, they came to a small trickle of water that fell down a slope thickly covered with fern and moss to join the main stream. The land between the two streams was sheltered by clumps of hazel and brambles.
“That’s perfect!” Mistyfoot’s eyes shone; she crossed the main stream, leaping from one pebbly island to the next, then paused as if she had almost forgotten that they needed to watch out for danger. She lifted her head to taste the air before vanishing into the undergrowth.
“It looks as if RiverClan are settled,” Tawnypelt commented.
“Nothing is settled,” Crowfeather reminded her sharply. “It’s for the leaders to decide how the territories are divided up.”
“Well, don’t tell me WindClan want to live by a stream, because I won’t believe you,” Squirrelflight retorted.
“Crowfeather’s right, but there’s no need to argue.” Brambleclaw tried to sound neutral, but he couldn’t help feeling a twinge of envy. This place was perfect for RiverClan, but it would suit ThunderClan very well, too. OK, so they had never hunted for fish back in the forest, but they could learn, and there were enough trees growing here to provide them with fur-clad prey as well. Brambleclaw wasn’t going to say anything now because it might upset Mistyfoot, but no final decisions could be made before they had seen everything. “With any luck, we’ll find somewhere right for all of us,” he meowed firmly.
Mistyfoot soon came back, her tail in the air and her eyes gleaming with satisfaction. “I’ve seen enough for now,” she mewed. “We could definitely make a camp here. Let’s keep going, and see if we can find somewhere for your Clans, too.”
Trying not to feel irritated by the trace of smugness in her tone, as if she was doing them a big favour by accompanying them when RiverClan seemed to have found their perfect home, Brambleclaw led the way to join her on the other side of the main stream. They headed back towards the lake, past the place where they had stopped to fish, and emerged from the trees into an open space stretching down to the shore. Not far ahead was the Twoleg half-bridge, and now that they were closer, Brambleclaw caught a faint but familiar tang in the air.
“There’s a Thunderpath nearby!” he hissed. The hair on his shoulders lifted and his blood turned to ice as he remembered the Twoleg monsters gouging through the forest, ripping the trees out of the ground and leaving an unrecognisable landscape of mud and ruts. Would Twolegs and their monsters drive them away from this place too?
Beside him, Squirrelflight stood with her paws braced against the ground and her fur fluffed up, as if she too was watching their home being destroyed all over again.
“I haven’t heard any monsters,” Mistyfoot meowed calmly. “Let’s go and look.”
She took a pace forward, glancing back when she realised that none of the others had followed her. “Look,” she went on, “we lived near the old Thunderpaths for seasons and seasons, and they never did any cat any harm, so long as we were careful. This one is quieter already—we haven’t heard a single monster today. There’s no need to lose your fur over it. Now come on.”
Brambleclaw gave himself a shake. He felt a bit cross that he had frozen at the first hint of danger, leaving Mistyfoot to take charge of the patrol. He padded forward warily with the others bunched around him. The scent of the Thunderpath strengthened and soon he spotted the hard, black surface, winding through the grass like a flattened snake. It was much narrower than the old Thunderpath, and as Mistyfoot had pointed out there were no monsters charging back and forth on it.
“What’s it for?” Crowfeather wondered, walking right up to the edge. “Look—it just goes down to the lake and stops.”
Brambleclaw realised he was right. The Thunderpath ended beside the lake in a wide area covered with the same hard, black stuff. At one side was a small Twoleg nest made of wood.
“The Twoleg scent is faint and stale,” Tawnypelt remarked. “I’d guess they haven’t been here for moons.”
“Look what I’ve found!”
Brambleclaw spun around and froze when he saw that Squirrelflight had ventured right out onto the half-bridge, and was gazing down into the water.
“Be careful!” he called, bounding over to her. His paws made a soft thudding sound on the planks of wood, and every few paces one of them rattled ominously. He tried not to think what it would feel like to plunge through into the icy grey water.
“Look!” Squirrelflight leaned over the edge and pricked her ears.
Following where she pointed, Brambleclaw saw another Twoleg object floating on the water. It looked like an upturned leaf, but it was much bigger and was made of wood. It was partly hidden by the half-bridge, so they hadn’t seen it from the shore.
“What is it?”
“Twolegs call it a boat,” Mistyfoot told them, padding up. Her fur lay flat on her shoulders, and she obviously wasn’t bothered by the rattling half-bridge. “They used to bring them onto our river sometimes—did you never see one? Sometimes they used them for fishing.”
Brambleclaw tried to picture a Twoleg crouching in this
“I think this must be a place where the Twolegs come in greenleaf, like the river,” Mistyfoot went on. “That means we don’t have to worry about them now.”
“We’ll need to worry in greenleaf, though,” Squirrelflight meowed.
Mistyfoot shrugged. “We’ll think about that when the time comes. There’ll be thicker growth everywhere by then. We can keep out of the Twolegs’ way, just as we did before.” She lifted her head to look squarely at Brambleclaw and Squirrelflight, and her gaze took in Crowfeather and Tawnypelt, who were waiting anxiously where the half-bridge joined with the shore. “Of course there will be dangers in our new home, wherever we end up,” she meowed, “but we mustn’t forget that we had enemies back in the forest, even before the Twolegs brought their monsters. If StarClan brought us here, it was not because there were no dangers here at all, but because we could learn to live among them, just as we did before.”
Squirrelflight nodded, chastened, but Brambleclaw curled his lip. He didn’t like the way Mistyfoot was treating them all like anxious apprentices. She had no idea of the dangers they had faced on the first journey to sun-drown-place! More Thunderpaths than she had crossed in her entire life, as well as dogs, hostile kittypets, Twolegs who wanted to trap them, hungry foxes . . .
“Are you going to stay here forever?” Squirrelflight had padded past him and was looking over her shoulder with her tail raised questioningly. Mistyfoot was already back on the shore with the others.
“No, I’m coming,” Brambleclaw muttered. He followed Squirrelflight off the half-bridge and tried not to feel mutinous when Mistyfoot led the way out of the clearing, away from the Thunderpath.
“She’s the deputy of her Clan,” Squirrelflight murmured, dropping back to walk close beside him. “You can’t blame her for having more experience than us.”
Brambleclaw was about to reply fiercely that their journey to sun-drown-place made them more experienced than any other forest cat when he saw that Squirrelflight was looking at him with sympathy in her green eyes. It wasn’t fair to take out his temper on her. If he was honest with himself, he was mostly feeling embarrassed because he had frozen with fear at the sight of the Thunderpath, afraid that what had driven them out of the forest was going to happen all over again.