Chapter 5

It had been two and a quarter moons since Cherrypaw, Creampaw, and Fawnpaw were made into apprentices. Wildkit would be an apprentice any day now, because she had been almost four moons when Tigerlily gave birth to her kits. The two she-cats rarely saw Wildkit nowadays; they were always patrolling, or hunting, or training, or doing apprentice duties, or whatever. Creampaw was the only one that visited Wildkit and her sisters anymore .Wildkit missed the three eager, adventurous littermates, but not that much, since she had Shimmerkit, Midnightkit, and Brackenkit to play with.
Right now, Wildkit was hiding behind the fresh-kill pile, which was pityingly low, because the hunting patrols had not yet return with their prey. But Wildkit didn't mind; she was planning to jump on Brackenkit, who was happily pawing at the fresh-kill pile, and surprise him. She bunched up her back muscles, preparing to leap, but before she could do so, teeth met in her scruff and someone swung her high up into the air. From the scent of the cat that wreathed around her, Wildkit knew it was Fireblaze who was carrying her.
“Let go of me!” she squeaked angrily, struggling to loosen her father’s grip on her scruff. She didn't want to be treated as a newborn kit! She was almost an apprentice!The bright ginger tom set his daughter in front of the nursery. A moment later, Stargaze came out, her pelt fully groomed, muscles rippling under her shiny pelt, and her gaze darted from her mate, to her kit, which was sulking, and back to her mate again.
She let out an exasperated sigh. “What did she do now? Did she ‘accidentally’ step on Shimmerkit's tail, like the other day? Did she try to convince Midnightkit to eat some poppy seeds, like last time?”“She was going to jump on Brackenkit and scare him,” the deputy meowed, amusement glinting in his amber eyes.
Her mother sighed again, shaking her head, while Wildkit protested, “Hey! I was just practicing on how to surprise enemies!”“I wonder what Tigerlily will say if you scared poor little Brackenkit to death,” pondered the ginger warrior, his expression amused. “You can't scare a cat to death!” Then Wildkit shuffled her paws in the ground, turning her eyes upwards to her father.
"Can you?" she squeaked uncertainly.
“Oh, yes, you can.” Her father nodded gravely.
“Can you really scare a cat to death, Stargaze?” asked Wildkit, turning to her mother. She could trust her mother not to lie to her.
“Mousebrain,” her beautiful mother purred lovingly. "How come I’ve never heard a story of how a cat scared another to death?"
“See?” Wildkit rounded on her father. "You can't scare a cat to death! You were lying!" Her grass-green eyes shone with triumph.
"Well, that's be—" A yowl interrupted Fireblaze in mid-sentence. Wildkit whirled around in time to see Cherrypaw, Fawnpaw, Willowshade, and Foxheart pounding to the middle of the camp. They were looking agitated and angry, and Cherrypaw was carrying something in her jaws. Wildkit's stomach clenched; whatever the thing in her ex-denmate's mouth was, she was sure it was bound to be bad news.
"Hazelstar! Hazelstar! Look at this!" the leader of the patrol had spotted the ThunderClan leader sharing tongues with her senior warriors and the four cats made their way over to their leader. Upon reaching them, Cherrypaw spat out the stuff she had been carrying, and screwed her face up into a disgusted expression. Following her father, Wildkit rushed over to the pile that gleamed white in the sunlight, and saw it was a pile of bones. Bones that belong to a small animal, a mouse maybe. She sniffed it hard, and recoiled.ShadowClan! she thought. What is ShadowClan's stench doing on the mouse-bones? She turned to her father, who was talking to Willowshade and Foxheart.
"...found bones on our side of the border," Foxheart was meowing angrily, pacing around in front of Hazelstar, who calmly looked on. "With ShadowClan stench on it! A few fox-lengths along the border we found more bones, with ShadowClan scent on them too!"
"Stupid ShadowClan cats!" spat Fawnpaw angrily, her slender paws working furiously in the ground. "I'll rip them to shreds for stealing ThunderClan's prey! They'll pay!" She lashed her tail. Wildkit flinched; she had never seen the gentle apprentice like this. Icestorm and Foxheart stopped pacing.
"What should we do, Hazelstar?" he demanded to his leader. "We can't just let them steal our prey and get away with it!"
"You're right," Hazelstar solemnly agreed, nodding. "We'll have to do something." She padded across the camp, strolled up the rock slope, and jumped onto the Highledge. She called out the familiar words, ordering every cat that could cat their own prey to gather beneath the Highledge. She needn't have bother, though; most of ThunderClan's cat was there, brought out of their dens by Foxheart’s angry meowing. Wildkit sat herself down next to Fawnpaw as Hazelstar opened her mouth to speak."Cats of ThunderClan," she began, "ShadowClan has been stealing our prey." Furious yowls met this statement; some cats even stood up, their eyes blazing, their fur bristling. Wildkit understood why they were angry: one more moon and it would be leaf-fall time. By then there would be lesser prey and the Clan wanted to stock up before leaf-bare approached. So ThunderClan was mad that ShadowClan was stealing their prey.Hazelstar flicked her tail, demanding silence, and the cats quieted down.
"We will teach them a lesson," she meowed loudly, her voice bouncing off the walls of the stone hollow. "We will attack them in a moon's time. But for now, we will train until we are sure we can beat them."
“But is that smart so close into leaf-fall?” asked a silver tabby she-cat with white paws. She stood up and padded to the front of the crowd of cats. Wildkit recognized her as Silvermoon, a quiet she-cat with blue eyes. “Why risk battle wounds and waste herbs on them instead of warning them at the next Gathering?” Murmurs followed her suggestion and Hazelstar looked rather taken aback.
“You have a point, Silvermoon, but if we don’t they may very well continue to steal ThunderClan’s prey.”
The ThunderClan leader flicked her tail to dismiss the Clan meeting and disappeared into her lichen covered den. ThunderClan cats immediately broke up into groups and started whispering excitedly. There were murmurs of agreement from every cat in the stone hollow. Hazelstar was very wise. Unlike the leaders of RiverClan, ShadowClan and WindClan, she'd prefer to make sure they will win if they fought another Clan, rather than attack straightaway. "I'm going to train so hard that when the battle comes, I'll be the best fighter there," whispered Fawnpaw to Wildkit. Wildkit nodded vaguely, not really listening, feeling excitement trill through her. She wanted to fight ShadowClan so badly!But then, she didn't like to see other cats get hurt, too.In a few days’ time, it would be her apprentice ceremony. But to whom will she be apprenticed to? Sagewhisker, the medicine cat, or one of the warriors? Once again, the question whether she would rather be a medicine cat or a warrior haunted her.