STARLIGHT. Эрин Хантер
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 boat, waiting to hook out a fish with its big clumsy paws. He found it hard to believe they’d be quick enough to catch anything, but if Mistyfoot said so, it must be true.
“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.
He stretched his head forward to lick Squirrelflight’s ear. “I know,” he meowed. “And everything she says is true. Come on, let’s not get left behind.”
They broke into a run, and Brambleclaw felt a jolt of relief as they left the Twolegplace and the half-bridge behind and headed into the next part of the territory.
They were approaching the dark green smudge that he had seen across the lake from their temporary camp. As he had guessed, it was a pinewood, like the part of the forest in ThunderClan’s old territory that had surrounded Treecutplace. He sniffed the air, but there was no sign of the bitter stench left by tree-cutting monsters, and the ground was smooth and flat, unscarred by the ruts that monsters left behind.
The sun had started to go down, and a red light shone through the trees, casting dark shadows across their path. Tawnypelt’s tortoiseshell fur smouldered as the light glanced across her shoulders, and her eyes gleamed.
Brambleclaw realised that it wasn’t just the woods around Treecutplace that were like this; ShadowClan’s old territory had also had lots of pine trees, giving way to sticky, marshy ground where only a few stunted trees grew.
“Do you think ShadowClan would like to settle here?” he asked his sister.
“Maybe.” Tawnypelt’s tail twitched. “But back in