Firestar’s Quest

Sandstorm gazed up at him and bared her teeth in a hiss that was drowned by the thunder of the water. “Stay where you are,” she called back. “I can manage.”

Firestar flicked his tail irritably. Why did Sandstorm always have to prove that she could cope on her own? “Don’t be mouse-brained. You can’t—”

“I said I can manage!” Sandstorm interrupted. “It’s no good putting us both in danger. One of us has to survive to find SkyClan.”

Before Firestar could respond, his mate launched herself upward, snagging her claws in a clump of moss above her head. As the moss started to give way, she scrabbled with her hind paws until she reached a deep crack in the rock. From there she managed to spring across to where Firestar stood waiting, his heart pounding with alarm.

“See?” Sandstorm shook herself, scattering drops of water from her pelt. “I told you I’d be fine.”

Firestar pressed his muzzle against hers and tried to stop his legs from trembling. Then he began to climb again. His breath came fast and shallow, his pelt bristling with tension by the time he hauled himself up over the cliff edge and collapsed onto level ground. A heartbeat later Sandstorm joined him and flopped down by his side. He felt her warm breath on his ear.

“Sorry,” she murmured.

The sun was close to setting; the river reflected the red sky, barred with the long shadows of trees that lay across it.

Firestar and Sandstorm padded on upstream; the river grew narrower still, and the banks rose until they were traveling through a sandy gorge, close to the edge of the water. It was smaller than the gorge at the edge of WindClan territory, but the sides were just as steep, and although there was still light in the sky they were soon walking through shadow.

“We’d better find somewhere to spend the night,” Sandstorm suggested. “If there are any signs of SkyClan here, we could miss them in the dark.”

As much as Firestar wanted to keep going, he knew that what she said was sensible. They found a small cave in the side of the gorge, sheltered by a stunted gorse bush, and crawled into it. The sandy floor was more comfortable than Firestar expected, and it was not long before he slept with Sandstorm’s sweet scent all around him.

Daylight filtering through the spiky gorse woke him.

Alarm stabbed him when he saw that Sandstorm was not there. He pushed his way past the thorny branches and emerged beside the river, blinking in the bright sunlight and shaking seeds from his pelt. To his relief, Sandstorm was trotting toward him.

“I thought I’d hunt,” she mewed as she came up to him, an annoyed look in her eyes. “But I haven’t found any prey.

There’s hardly anywhere up here for them to live.”

“Don’t worry. We’ll carry on and hunt on the way. There’s bound to be something.”

Sandstorm’s only response was a sniff. Firestar knew how proud she was of her hunting skills; it was unusual for her not to bring back any prey at all.

In full daylight he could see that their surroundings were very different from the lush territory below the waterfall.

The sides of the gorge had turned into sandy cliffs, with a few straggly bushes and clumps of tough grass rooted in cracks.

The path beside the river almost vanished on both sides, so the cats had to scramble over boulders in order to keep close to the water. Though they kept on stopping to scent the air, there was only the faintest trace of prey.

“This is no good,” Firestar meowed after a while. “No cats could live this close to the water, with no space for a camp.

We’d better climb to the top of the gorge.”

This time the climb was easier; although the sandy cliff was smooth and slippery, there were cracks and occasional shallow ledges to give them plenty of pawholds. When Firestar scrambled over the edge wind buffeted his pelt, and he bounded a few pawsteps away from the cliff in case he was blown over. He found himself looking out over a wide stretch of sandy earth, with patches of scrubby grass dotted with stunted trees. In the distance he could just make out the walls of a Twolegplace, and the glitter of monsters speeding along a Thunderpath.

“We’ll stay away from there,” he muttered as Sandstorm climbed up to join him.

His mate was already scenting the air. “Rabbits!”

Firestar didn’t feel too hopeful. He was used to stalking prey in thick woodland; he wasn’t a WindClan cat, swift enough to run it down in the open. “Let’s keep going,” he mewed. “There might be a better place to hunt farther on.”

As they padded along the edge of the gorge, his paws began to tingle. He could smell cats! Tasting the air carefully, he tried to pick out the SkyClan scent that was familiar from his encounters with the Clan leader. But these scents were completely different.

Sandstorm had drawn a few paces ahead, and had paused at the foot of a tree to sniff the bark. “Come and look at this,” she called, beckoning with her tail.

Bounding up to her, Firestar saw long claw marks scored into the bark. The cat scent was stronger here, too.