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“This is Whitestorm,” purred Lionheart. “One of ThunderClan’s senior warriors.”
Rusty looked at the tom and felt his spine tingle with cold fear. Was this a trap? Long-bodied and muscular, Whitestorm stood in front of Rusty and gazed down at him. His white coat was thick and unmarked and his eyes were the yellow of sunbaked sand. Rusty flattened his ears warily, and tensed his muscles in preparation for a fight.
“Relax, before your fear-scent brings unwanted attention,” growled Lionheart. “We are here only to take you to our camp.”
Rusty sat very still, hardly daring to breathe, as Whitestorm stretched his nose forward and gave him a curious sniff.
“Hello, young one,” murmured the white cat. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”
Rusty dipped his head in greeting.
“Come, we can speak more once we are in the camp,” ordered Lionheart, and, without pausing, he and Whitestorm leaped away into the undergrowth. Rusty jumped to his paws and followed as quickly as he could.
The two warriors made no allowances for Rusty as they sped through the forest, and before long he was struggling to keep up. Their pace barely slowed as they led him over fallen trees that they cleared in a single leap, but which Rusty had to scramble over paw by paw. They passed through sharply fragrant pine trees, where they had to jump across deep gullies churned up by a Twoleg tree-eater. From the safety of his garden fence, Rusty had often heard it roaring and snarling in the distance. One gully was too wide to jump, half-filled with slimy, foul-smelling water. The Clan cats waded through without hesitating.
Rusty had never put a paw in water before. But he was determined not to show any signs of weakness, so he narrowed his eyes and followed, trying to ignore the uncomfortable wetness that soaked his belly fur.
At last Lionheart and Whitestorm paused. Rusty skidded to a halt behind them and stood panting while the two warriors stepped onto a rock that rested on the edge of a small ravine.
“We are very close to our camp now,” meowed Lionheart.
Rusty strained to see any signs of life—moving leaves, a glimpse of fur among the bushes below, but his eyes saw nothing except the same undergrowth that covered the rest of the forest floor.
“Use your nose. You must be able to scent it,” hissed Whitestorm impatiently.
Rusty closed his eyes and sniffed. Whitestorm was right. The scents here were very different from the cat-scent he was used to. The air smelled stronger, speaking of many, many different cats.
He nodded thoughtfully and announced, “I can smell cats.”
Lionheart and Whitestorm exchanged amused looks.
“There will come a time, if you are accepted into the Clan, when you will know each cat-scent by name,” Lionheart meowed. “Follow me!” He led the way nimbly down the boulders to the bottom of the ravine, and pushed his way through a thick patch of gorse. Rusty followed, and Whitestorm took up the rear. As his sides scraped against the prickly gorse, Rusty looked down and noticed that the grass beneath his paws was flattened into a broad, strong-smelling track. This must be the main entrance into the camp, he thought.
Beyond the gorse, a clearing opened up. The ground at the center was bare, hard earth, shaped by many generations of pawsteps. This camp had been here a long time. The clearing was dappled by sunshine, and the air felt warm and still.
Rusty looked around, his eyes wide. There were cats everywhere, sitting alone or in groups, sharing food or purring quietly as they groomed one another.
“Just after sunhigh, when the day is hottest, is a time for sharing tongues,” Lionheart explained.
“Sharing tongues?” Rusty echoed.
“Clan cats always spend time grooming each other and sharing the news of the day,” Whitestorm told him. “We call it sharing tongues. It is a custom that binds the members of the Clan together.”
The cats had obviously smelled Rusty’s foreign scent, for heads began to turn and stare curiously in his direction.
Suddenly shy of meeting any cat’s gaze directly, Rusty looked around the clearing. It was edged with thick grass, dotted with treestumps and a fallen tree. A thick curtain of ferns and gorse shielded the camp from the rest of the woods.
“Over there,” meowed Lionheart, flicking his tail toward an impenetrable-looking tangle of brambles, “is the nursery, where the kits are cared for.”
Rusty swiveled his ears toward the bushes. He couldn’t see through the knot of prickly branches, but he could hear the mewling of several kittens from somewhere inside. As he watched, a ginger she-cat squirmed out through a small gap in the front. That must be one of the queens, Rusty thought.
A tabby queen with distinctive black markings appeared around the bramble bush. The two she-cats exchanged a friendly lick between the ears before the tabby slipped inside the nursery, murmuring to the squealing kits.
“The care of our kits is shared by all of the queens,” meowed Lionheart. “All cats serve the Clan. Loyalty to the Clan is the first law in our warrior code, a lesson you must learn quickly if you wish to stay with us.”
“Here comes Bluestar,” meowed Whitestorm, sniffing the air.
Rusty sniffed the air too, and was pleased that he was able to recognize the scent of the gray she-cat a moment before she appeared from the shadow of a large boulder that lay beside them at the head of the clearing.
“He came,” Bluestar purred, addressing the warriors.
Whitestorm replied, “Lionheart was convinced he would not.”
Rusty noticed the tip of Bluestar’s tail twitch impatiently. “Well, what do you think of him?” she asked.
“He kept up well on the return journey, despite his puny size,” Whitestorm admitted. “He certainly seems strong for a kittypet.”
“So it is agreed?” Bluestar looked at Lionheart and Whitestorm.
Both cats nodded.
“Then I shall announce his arrival to the Clan.” Bluestar leaped up onto the boulder and yowled, “Let all those cats old enough to catch their own prey join here beneath the Highrock for a Clan meeting.”
Her clear call brought all the cats trotting toward her, emerging like liquid shadows from the edges of the clearing. Rusty stayed where he was, flanked by Lionheart and Whitestorm. The other cats settled themselves below the Highrock and looked expectantly up at their leader.
Rusty felt a rush of relief as he recognized Graypaw’s thick gray fur among the cats. Beside him sat a young tortoiseshell queen, her black-tipped tail tucked neatly over small white paws. A large dark gray tabby crouched behind them, the black stripes on his fur looking like shadows on a moonlit forest floor.
When the cats were still, Bluestar spoke. “ThunderClan needs more warriors,” she began. “Never before have we had so few apprentices in training. It has been decided that ThunderClan will take in an outsider to train as a warrior….”
Rusty heard indignant mutterings erupt among the Clan cats, but Bluestar silenced them with a firm yowl. “I have found a cat who is willing to become an apprentice of ThunderClan.”
“Lucky to become an apprentice,” caterwauled a lou
d voice above the ripple of shock that spread through the cats.
Rusty craned his neck and saw a pale tabby cat standing up and glaring defiantly at the leader.
Bluestar ignored the tabby and addressed all of her Clan. “Lionheart and Whitestorm have met this young cat, and they agree with me that we should train him with the other apprentices.”
Rusty looked up at Lionheart, then back at the Clan, to find all eyes were on him now. His fur prickled and he swallowed nervously. There was silence for a moment. Rusty was sure they must all be able to hear his heart pulsing and smell his fear-scent.
Now a deafening crescendo of caterwauling rose from the crowd.
“Where does he come from?”
“Which Clan does he belong to?”
“What a strange scent he carries! That’s not the scent of any Clan I know!”
Then one yowl in particular sounded out above the rest. “Look at his collar! He’s a kittypet!” It was the pale tabby again. “Once a kittypet, always a kittypet. This Clan needs wildborn warriors to defend it, not another soft mouth to feed.”
Lionheart bent down and hissed into Rusty’s ear, “That tabby is Longtail. He smells your fear. They all do. You must prove to him and the other cats that your fear won’t hold you back.”
But Rusty couldn’t move. How could he ever prove to these fierce cats that he wasn’t just a kittypet?
The tabby continued to jeer at him. “Your collar is a mark of the Twolegs, and that noisy jingling will make you a poor hunter at best. At worst, it will bring the Twolegs into our territory, looking for the poor lost kittypet who fills the woods with his pitiful tinkling.”
All the cats howled in agreement.
Longtail went on, well aware that he had the support of his audience. “The noise of your treacherous bell will alert our enemies, even if your Twoleg stench doesn’t!”
Lionheart hissed into Rusty’s ear once more: “Do you back down from a challenge?”
Rusty still did not move. But this time he was trying to pinpoint Longtail’s position. There he was, just behind a dusky brown queen. Rusty flattened his ears, narrowed his eyes and, hissing, leaped through the startled cats to fling himself onto his tormentor.
