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“That’s not true!”
Cinderpaw looked up, blinking. Her eyes were blue pools of misery. “I’m supposed to be a medicine cat. I’m supposed to save lives.”
“You saved the two kits,” Fireheart reminded her, moving closer and pressing the side of his face against her cheek.
“But I didn’t save Silverstream.”
A wave of sympathy washed over Fireheart. He understood how Cinderpaw felt, and he wanted to tell her she was wrong to blame herself, but he didn’t have the words. Feeling useless and saddened, he began to lick her gently.
“What’s going on?” Fireheart looked up to see Yellowfang standing in front of them, a puzzled frown on her broad gray face. “What’s this I hear about Graystripe and a RiverClan queen?”
Cinderpaw didn’t even seem to notice that her mentor was there. It was left to Fireheart to explain.
“Cinderpaw was brilliant,” he told the elderly medicine cat. “Those kits would have died without her.”
Yellowfang nodded. “I’ve seen Tigerclaw,” she rasped. “Brackenfur was taking me to the Sunningrocks when we ran into him. He’s furious about the kits. But he’s not furious with you, Cinderpaw,” she added. “He knows you did your duty, just as any medicine cat would.”
Cinderpaw glanced up at that. “I’ll never be a medicine cat,” she spat bitterly. “I’m useless. I let Silverstream die.”
“What?” snarled Yellowfang angrily, arching her skinny gray body. “That’s the most mouse-brained thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Yellowfang—” Fireheart began to protest at her harsh tone, but the medicine cat ignored him.
“You did your best, Cinderpaw,” she growled. “No cat can do more.”
“But it wasn’t good enough,” Cinderpaw pointed out dully. “If you’d been there, you would have saved her.”
“Oh? StarClan told you that, did they? Cinderpaw, sometimes cats die, and no cat can do anything about it.” She let out a rusty mew, half laughter, half scolding. “Not even me.”
“But I lost her, Yellowfang.”
“I know. And that’s a hard lesson.” Now there was rough sympathy in the old cat’s meow. “But I’ve lost cats before now—more cats than I care to count. Every medicine cat in the world has. You live with it. You go on.” She nudged Cinderpaw with her battle-scarred muzzle, and went on nudging until the younger cat rose unsteadily to her paws. “Come on. There’s work to be done. Smallear’s complaining about his aching joints again.”
She herded Cinderpaw in the direction of her den and paused to glance over her shoulder at Fireheart. “Don’t worry,” she told him. “She’ll be fine.”
Fireheart watched the two cats cross the clearing and vanish into Yellowfang’s den.
“You can trust Yellowfang.” At the sound of the quiet meow, Fireheart turned to see Bluestar. “She’ll see Cinderpaw through this.”
The Clan leader was sitting just outside the nursery, her tail wrapped neatly over her paws. In spite of all the turmoil of Silverstream’s death and the discovery of Graystripe’s illicit relationship, she looked as calm as ever.
“Bluestar,” Fireheart meowed hesitantly, “what will happen to Graystripe now? Will he be punished?”
Bluestar looked thoughtful. “I can’t answer that yet, Fireheart,” she admitted. “I need to discuss it with Tigerclaw and the other warriors.”
“Graystripe couldn’t help himself,” Fireheart blurted out loyally.
“Not help himself—when he betrayed his Clan and the warrior code to be with Silverstream?” Bluestar’s eyes glinted, but her tone was not as angry as Fireheart would have expected. “I promise you one thing,” she added. “I’ll do nothing until the shock has died down. We need to consider the whole matter carefully.”
“You’re not really shocked, though, are you?” Fireheart dared to ask. “Had you guessed it was happening?” He half expected Bluestar not to answer. She held him motionless for several heartbeats with her penetrating blue gaze. There was wisdom in her eyes, he saw, and even pain.
“Yes, I suspected,” she mewed at last. “It’s a leader’s place to know things. And I’m not exactly blind at the Gatherings.”
“Then…then why didn’t you stop it?”
“I hoped Graystripe would remember his loyalty to the Clan on his own,” Bluestar replied. “I knew that even if he didn’t, something would happen to end it, sooner or later. I only wish it had not ended so tragically, for both of them. Though I don’t know how Graystripe would have coped with watching his own kits grow up in another Clan.”
“You understand about that, don’t you?” The words were out before Fireheart had a chance to think about what he was saying. “It happened to you.”
Bluestar stiffened and Fireheart flinched at the sudden blaze of anger in her eyes. Then she relaxed, and the anger was replaced by a distant look of memory and loss.
“You guessed,” she murmured. “I thought you might. Yes, Fireheart, Mistyfoot and Stonefur were once my kits.”
CHAPTER 23
“Come,” Bluestar ordered. She began to walk slowly across the camp toward her den, leaving Fireheart with no choice but to follow. Once inside, she told him to sit down, and settled herself on her bedding.
“How much do you know?” she asked Fireheart, her blue eyes searching his.
“Only that Oakheart once brought two ThunderClan kits to RiverClan,” Fireheart admitted. “He told Graypool—that’s the queen who suckled them—that he didn’t know where they had come from.”
Bluestar nodded, her gaze softening. “I knew Oakheart would stay loyal to me,” she murmured. She raised her head. “He was the kits’ father,” she added. “Did you guess that much?”
Fireheart shook his head. But it made sense, then, that Oakheart had been so desperate for Graypool to care for the helpless kits. “What exactly happened to your kits?” he demanded, curiosity making him unguarded. “Oakheart didn’t steal them, did he?”
The Clan leader’s ears flicked impatiently. “Of course not.” Her eyes met Fireheart’s, suddenly clouded with a pain he could not begin to imagine. “No, he didn’t steal them. I gave them away.”
Fireheart stared in disbelief. There was nothing he could do but wait for the she-cat to explain.
“My warrior name was Bluefur,” she began. “Like you, I wanted nothing more than to serve my Clan. Oakheart and I met at a Gathering early one leaf-bare, when we were still young and foolish. We were not mates for long. When I discovered I was to have kits, I intended to bear them for ThunderClan. No cat asked me who the father was—if a queen does not wish to tell, that is her choice.”
“But then…?” Fireheart prompted.
Bluestar’s eyes were fixed on a point far away, as if she were staring into the distant past. “Then our Clan deputy, Tawnyspots, decided to retire. I knew I had a good chance of being chosen to take his place. Our medicine cat had already told me that StarCl
an held a great destiny for me. But I also knew the Clan would never take a queen nursing kits as deputy.”
“So you gave them away?” Fireheart could not keep the note of disbelief out of his voice. “Couldn’t you have waited until they had left their nursery? Surely you could have been made deputy once the kits were old enough to care for themselves.”
“It wasn’t an easy decision,” Bluestar told him, her voice rough with pain. “That was a bitter leaf-bare. The Clan was half-starved and I had barely enough milk to feed my kits. I knew that in RiverClan they would be well cared for. In those days the river was full of fish, and RiverClan cats never went hungry.”
“But to lose them…” Fireheart blinked at the sharpness of pain he felt in sympathy.
“Fireheart, I don’t need you to tell me how difficult my choice was. I lay awake for many nights, deciding what to do. What was best for the kits…what was best for me…and what was best for the Clan.”
“There must have been other warriors ready to be deputy?” Fireheart was still struggling to accept that Bluestar had been so ambitious that she would have given away her own kits.
Bluestar jerked her chin up defiantly. “Oh, yes. There was Thistleclaw. He was a fine warrior, strong and brave. But his answer to every problem was to fight. Should I have watched him be made deputy, and then leader, and let him force the Clan into unnecessary wars?” She shook her head sadly. “He died as he lived, Fireheart, a few seasons before you came to join us, attacking a RiverClan patrol on the border. Wild and arrogant to the last. I couldn’t stand by and let him destroy my Clan.”
“Did you give the kits to Oakheart yourself?”
“Yes. I spoke to him at a Gathering, and he agreed to take them. So one night I crept out of the camp and took them to the Sunningrocks. Oakheart was waiting, and he took two of them across the river.”
