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Sandstorm met him as he emerged from the gorse tunnel into the clearing. “Been hunting?” she asked.
“Looking for Graystripe, honestly.” Fireheart decided to admit to the easiest part of the truth.
“I don’t suppose you found any signs of Cloudpaw then,” Sandstorm meowed, apparently unconcerned by Fireheart’s admission.
“He’s not in camp?”
“He went out hunting first thing this morning.”
Fireheart knew she suspected the same as he did—that Cloudpaw was paying another visit to the Twolegs. “What should I do?”
“Why don’t we go and find him together?” suggested Sandstorm. “Perhaps if I talk to him too, we can make him see sense.”
Fireheart nodded gratefully. “It’s worth a try,” he agreed.
He led the way through Tallpines, neither cat speaking as they ran lightly over the ground. The air was still, and the needles felt soft and cool beneath their paws. Fireheart was acutely aware that this trail was as familiar to him as the route to Fourtrees or Sunningrocks, but Sandstorm was more cautious, pausing every so often to sniff the air and check for scent markings.
As they padded out from the pine forest and into the green woods, Fireheart sensed that Sandstorm’s anxiety was building. He glanced at her and saw the tension in her shoulders as the line of Twoleg nests loomed ahead of them.
“Are you sure this is the way he would have come?” she whispered, looking nervously from side to side. A dog barked and Sandstorm’s fur bristled.
“It’s okay, the dog won’t leave its garden,” Fireheart assured her, feeling uncomfortable that he knew things like this. Sandstorm had taunted him about his kittypet origins when he had first joined the Clan, and now that she accepted him so completely as a forest cat, he was reluctant to remind her that he had been born somewhere different.
“Don’t the Twolegs bring their dogs out here?” she asked.
“Sometimes,” Fireheart admitted. “But we’ll have plenty of warning. Twoleg dogs don’t exactly creep through the woods. You’ll hear them before you smell them, and their stench isn’t subtle.” He hoped his humor might help Sandstorm relax, but she remained as tense as ever.
“Come on,” he urged. “Cloudpaw’s scent is here.” He rubbed his cheek against a bramble stem. “Does it smell fresh to you?”
Sandstorm leaned forward and sniffed the bramble. “Yes.”
“Then I think we can guess where he was heading.” Fireheart padded around the bramble, relieved that at least the trail was leading them away from Princess’s garden. He had no desire for Sandstorm to meet his kittypet sister just yet. Since he had brought Cloudpaw to the camp, the Clan all knew that he visited her, but they had no real idea of the affection that bonded him to Princess, and he preferred to keep it that way. It was best to keep the other cats as certain as he was that his heart lay with the Clan, in spite of his friendship with his sister.
As they neared the fence that Cloudpaw had climbed the day before, Fireheart felt an ominous chill ripple through his pelt. There were new scents here, as well as Cloudpaw’s. Something had changed. He led Sandstorm to the silver birch and she followed him lightly up the smooth trunk and into its branches. Fireheart could see her whiskers twitching as she sniffed the air.
Fireheart peered through the windows in the Twoleg nest. The space inside looked curiously dark and empty. He jumped as a door slammed, making a strange echoing bang like a thunderclap. He began to feel alarmed.
“What is it?” asked Sandstorm nervously as Fireheart leaped down to the fence, his tail fluffed up.
“There’s something strange going on. The nest is empty. Stay there,” he ordered. “I’m going to have a closer look.”
He crept across the garden, keeping low. As he neared the door to the Twoleg nest he heard pawsteps behind him. He spun around and saw Sandstorm, her face tense but determined. He nodded at her, silently agreeing she could stay with him if she wanted, then turned toward the door again.
Just then, the loud rumble of a monster started up. Fireheart slipped down the passage that skirted one side of the nest. His fur bristled with fear, but he kept going until he had reached the end of the pathway. He peered out from the shadows to where bright sunshine flooded a treeless maze of Twoleg nests and pathways.
He felt Sandstorm panting at his side, her pelt lightly brushing his. “Look,” he hissed. A gigantic monster, almost as big as a Twoleg nest, stood on the Thunderpath. The deafening growl was coming from the belly of the monster.
Both cats flinched as another door to the nest clattered shut just around the corner from them. Fireheart saw a Twoleg walking toward the monster with something swinging from its hand. It looked like a den woven from brittle dead stems. Through the hard mesh at one end of the den, Fireheart could see a soft white pelt. He peered closer, and felt his heart lurch as he recognized the face behind the mesh, its eyes stretched wide with terror.
It was Cloudpaw!
CHAPTER 12
“Help! Don’t let them take me!” Fireheart heard Cloudpaw’s desperate yowling above the noise of the roaring monster.
The Twoleg took no notice. It clambered into the monster with Cloudpaw and slammed the door shut. In a cloud of choking fumes, the monster pulled away and headed up the Thunderpath.
“No! Wait!”
Fireheart ignored Sandstorm’s cry as he dashed out of the passageway and pelted after the monster. The rough stone path tore at his pads, but as fast as he ran, the monster went faster, until it rounded a corner and disappeared from view.
Fireheart skidded to a halt, his paws stinging and his heart pounding. Sandstorm called to him again. “Fireheart! Come back!”
Fireheart glanced in despair at the empty Thunderpath where the monster had stood just moments before and then hurried back to Sandstorm. Numb with shock, he blindly followed Sandstorm as she led him along the passageway, past the nest, through the garden, and over the fence into the safety of the woods.
“Fireheart!” Sandstorm gasped when they landed on the leafy forest floor. “Are you okay?”
Fireheart couldn’t answer. He stared at the blank fence, trying to take in what he had just seen. The Twolegs had stolen Cloudpaw! Fireheart couldn’t block out the look of fear on the young cat’s face. Where were they taking him? Wherever it was, Cloudpaw hadn’t wanted to go.
“Your pads are bleeding,” murmured Sandstorm.
Fireheart lifted a foreleg and turned over his paw to look. He gazed blankly at the oozing blood until Sandstorm leaned forward and began to lick the grit from his wounds. It stung, but Fireheart didn’t protest. The rhythmic licks comforted him, stirring long-distant memories of kithood. Gradually the panic that had frozen his mind began to melt away. “He’s gone,” he meowed dismally. His heart felt like a hollow log, ringing with sorrow at every beat.
“He’ll find his way home,” Sandstorm told him. Fireheart looked at her calm green eyes and felt a flicker of hope.
“If he wants to,” she added. Her words pierced him like thorns, but her eyes were full of sympathy, and Fireheart knew she was only speaking the truth. “Clo
udpaw might be happier where he’s going,” she meowed. “You want him to be happy, don’t you?”
Fireheart nodded slowly.
“Come on then; let’s get back to camp.” Sandstorm’s mew became brisk, and Fireheart felt a surge of frustration.
“It’s easy for you!” he argued. “You share Clan blood with the rest of them. Cloudpaw was my only kin. Now there’s no one in the Clan that’s close to me.”
Sandstorm flinched as if he had struck her. “How can you say that? You have me!” she spat. “I’ve done nothing but try to help you. Doesn’t that mean anything? I thought that our friendship was important to you, but clearly I was wrong!” She spun around, flicking Fireheart’s legs with her tail before racing away into the trees.
He watched her disappear, bewildered by her response. His paws stung, and he felt more wretched than he could ever remember. He began to wander slowly through the woods, steering clear of Princess’s fence. He couldn’t even imagine how he would tell her what had happened to her kit.
With every step, the thorn-sharp worry about what Fireheart was going to say to the rest of the Clan added to his misery. He imagined how Darkstripe would gloat when he discovered Fireheart’s kin had gone back to the soft life of a kittypet. Once a kittypet, always a kittypet! Perhaps the jibe that had haunted Fireheart for so long had an element of truth in it after all.
The scuttling of a mouse under the pine trees distracted him. The Clan still had to be fed. Fireheart crouched instinctively, but there was no joy in the hunt this time. He chased and caught the mouse with cold swiftness and carried it toward the camp.
The sun was touching the tips of the trees when he reached the gorse tunnel. He paused and took a steadying breath before he walked into the clearing, the mouse swinging between his jaws.
The Clan was sharing tongues around the clearing after their evening meal. Mousefur met him at the entrance and Fireheart wondered if she had been waiting for his return. “You’ve been gone a long time,” she observed mildly. “Is everything okay?”
