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“Is it dead?” Fireheart whispered.
“No!” Cinderpaw set down the kit and patted it toward him. “Lick, Fireheart! Make it warm, get its blood flowing.”
As soon as she had finished speaking she turned in the narrow space and went back to Silverstream. Her body blocked Fireheart’s view of what was happening, but he heard the apprentice medicine cat begin to meow reassuringly, and an anxious question from Graystripe.
Fireheart bent over the kit and rasped his tongue over its tiny body. For a long time it didn’t respond, and he began to think Cinderpaw had been wrong, and the kit was dead after all. Then he felt a tiny shiver run through it and it opened its jaws in a soundless mew. “It’s alive!” he gasped.
“Told you,” Cinderpaw called to him. “Keep licking. There’s another one coming, any moment now. That’s right, Silverstream…you’re doing fine.”
Tigerclaw had come down from the rock and was standing in the mouth of the gully with a look of thunder on his face. “That’s a RiverClan cat,” he hissed. “Will one of you tell me what’s going on?”
Before any cat had time to reply, Cinderpaw let out a shout of triumph. “You’ve done it, Silverstream!” Moments later she turned with a second tiny kit in her jaws, and set it down in front of Tigerclaw. “Here. Lick.”
Tigerclaw glared at her. “I’m not a medicine cat.”
Cinderpaw’s blue eyes blazed as she rounded on the deputy. “You’ve got a tongue, haven’t you? Lick, you useless lump of fur. Do you want the kit to die?”
Fireheart flinched, half expecting Tigerclaw to hurl himself at her and slash her open with his powerful claws. Instead, the dark tabby bowed his huge head and began to lick the second kit.
At once Cinderpaw turned back to Silverstream. Fireheart heard her meow, “You need to swallow this herb. Here, Graystripe, make her eat as much as she can. We’ve got to stop the bleeding.”
Fireheart paused for a moment in his own vigorous licking. His kit was breathing evenly now, and it seemed to be out of danger. He wished he knew what was happening in the gully ahead of him; he heard Cinderpaw growl, “Hold on, Silverstream,” and a louder, panicky meow from Graystripe: “Silverstream!”
At the sound of his friend’s distress, Fireheart could not stay back any longer. Leaving the kit, he pushed forward until he could crouch beside Cinderpaw. He was in time to see Silverstream raise her head and feebly lick Graystripe’s face. “Good-bye, Graystripe,” she whispered. “I love you. Take care of our kits.”
Then the silver tabby’s body gave a massive shudder. Her head fell back, her paws jerked, and she was still.
“Silverstream!” whispered Cinderpaw.
“No, Silverstream, no.” Graystripe’s mew was very soft. “Don’t go. Don’t leave me.” He bent over the limp body, nuzzling her gently. She did not move.
“Silverstream!” Graystripe reared up and flung back his head. His wails of grief split the quiet air. “Silverstream!”
Cinderpaw crouched over the body for a few moments more, nudging at Silverstream’s fur, but at last she admitted defeat. She sat up and stared ahead, her blue eyes bleak and cold.
Fireheart got up and padded over to her. “Cinderpaw, the kits are safe,” he murmured.
The look she gave him made his heart freeze. “But their mother is dead. I lost her, Fireheart.”
The rocks were still echoing to Graystripe’s dreadful wailing. Tigerclaw appeared, scrambling past the other cats, and reached out a massive paw to cuff the gray warrior behind the ear. “Stop that moaning.”
Graystripe fell silent, more out of shock and exhaustion, Fireheart thought, than obedience to the deputy’s order.
Tigerclaw glared around at all of them. “Now will some cat tell me what’s going on? Graystripe, do you know this RiverClan cat?”
Graystripe looked up. His eyes had gone dull and cold, like pebbles. “I loved her,” he whispered.
“What—these are your kits?” Tigerclaw seemed stunned.
“Mine and Silverstream’s.” A faint spark of defiance kindled in Graystripe. “I know what you’ll say, Tigerclaw. Don’t bother. I don’t care.” He turned back to Silverstream, pressing his nose against her fur and murmuring softly to her.
Meanwhile, Cinderpaw had roused herself enough to examine the two kits. “I think they’ll live,” she mewed, though to Fireheart she sounded less certain than before. “We need to get them back to camp, to find a queen to suckle them.”
Tigerclaw spun around to face her. “Are you mad? Why should ThunderClan raise them? They’re half-breeds. No Clan will want them.”
Cinderpaw ignored him. “Fireheart, you take that one,” she ordered. “I’ll carry the other.”
Fireheart twitched his whiskers in agreement, but before he picked up the kit he walked over to Graystripe and pressed his body against his friend’s broad gray shoulder. “Do you want to come with us?”
Graystripe shook his head. “I have to stay here and bury her,” he whispered. “Here, between RiverClan and ThunderClan. After this, not even her own Clan will want to mourn her.”
Fireheart felt his heart break for his friend, but there was nothing more he could do to help. “I’ll come back soon,” he promised. More softly, though he was past caring if Tigerclaw heard him or not, he added, “I will mourn her with you, Graystripe. She was brave, and I know she loved you.”
His friend did not respond. Fireheart picked up the kit with his teeth, and left Graystripe beside the cat he had loved more than his Clan, more than honor, more than life itself.
CHAPTER 22
Tigerclaw went on ahead, and by the time Fireheart and Cinderpaw reached the camp with Silverstream’s kits, the whole Clan knew what had happened. Warriors and apprentices had gathered outside their dens, watching in silence. Fireheart could almost smell their shock and disbelief.
Bluestar stood at the entrance to the nursery as if she was waiting for them. Fireheart half expected her to turn them away, refusing to take care of a different Clan’s kits, but she only meowed quietly, “Come inside.”
In the heart of the bramble thicket, all was dim and quiet. Brindleface was curled around her kits, asleep in a heap of gray and tawny fur with Cloudkit’s white coat shining among them like a patch of snow. Close by her, in a nest of moss lined with downy feathers, Goldenflower lay on her side, suckling her new kits. One was a pale ginger color like Goldenflower herself, and the other a dark tabby.
“Goldenflower,” murmured Bluestar, “I have something to ask you. Can you manage two more? Their mother has just died.”
Goldenflower raised her head, her startled look softening when she saw the two helpless scraps of fur dangling from Fireheart’s and Cinderpaw’s mouths. They had begun to wriggle feebly, giving out thin, high-pitched mews of fear and hunger.
“I suppose—” Goldenflower began.
“Wait,” Speckletail interrupted; she had padded into the nursery just behind Fireheart. “Before you agree to anything, Goldenflower, ask Bluestar to tell you whose kits these are.”
Fireheart felt a pang of anxiety. Though Speckletail was a good mother, she had a ferocious temper, and he guessed she would not look kindly on kits that were neither one Clan nor the other.
“I would not hide such a thing from her,” Bluestar meowed calmly. “Goldenflower, these are Graystripe’s kits. Their mother was Silverstream—a RiverClan cat.”
Goldenflower’s eyes widened in astonishment, and Brindleface, roused from her doze, pricked up her ears.
“Graystripe must have been slinking off for moons to see her,” Speckletail hissed. “What loyal cat would do that? They both betrayed their Clans. There’s bad blood in those kits.”
“Nonsense,” Bluestar spat back, her hackles suddenly raised. Fireheart winced—he had rarely seen his leader so angry. “Whatever we think about Graystripe and Silverstream, the kits are innocent. Will you take them, Goldenflower? They’ll die without a mother.”
Goldenflower hesitated, an
d then let out a long breath. “How can I say no? I have plenty of milk.”
Speckletail let out a snort of disapproval and pointedly turned her back as Fireheart and Cinderpaw gently laid the kits in Goldenflower’s nest. The pale ginger queen bent over to guide them toward her belly, and their miserable squeaking died away as they burrowed into the warmth of her body and found a place to suckle.
“Thank you, Goldenflower,” purred Bluestar.
Fireheart realized that she was looking down at the young kits with an expression of longing. He wondered if she was thinking about her own lost kits, and his doubts about what had really happened to them came flooding back. Could they possibly be Mistyfoot and Stonefur, alive and well in RiverClan? Did she have any idea?
His thoughts were interrupted when Cinderpaw turned abruptly and made her way out of the den. Fireheart followed her, to find her crouching outside with her head bowed onto her front paws. “What’s the matter?” he asked.
“Silverstream died.” Fireheart could hardly hear her muffled reply. “I let her die.”
