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“What can you sense?” he asked in a murmur low enough not to wake the sleeping cats, or to reach Petalfur on watch outside.
Dovepaw closed her eyes. “Scraping sounds through the ground,” she whispered. “The sound of teeth gnawing wood...and the crash of trees falling! The brown animals are dragging the trees to the stream and setting them in place, lodged tightly together like a wall.” She took a deep breath. “Oh—I can sense the water! It’s trapped behind the trees.... What are these creatures?”
She opened her eyes again to see Lionblaze looking alarmed, though his expression quickly changed to a look of determination when he saw she was watching him. “How many animals are there?” he meowed.
“I’m not sure....” Dovepaw tried to concentrate on the brown animals as they moved among the fallen trees, but she couldn’t get the picture clear enough to count them all. “Fewer than our patrol, I think.”
Lionblaze touched her shoulder with the tip of his tail. “It’ll be okay,” he reassured her.
Dovepaw couldn’t share his confidence. What she hadn’t told her mentor was that these animals wouldn’t be easy to fight. They were much heavier than cats, dense and low to the ground, so it would be hard to flip them onto their bellies. They had long, sharp teeth and powerful clawed feet; she shivered at the thought of the wounds they could inflict. The fear that she could be leading the patrol into a battle they couldn’t win weighed in her belly like a stone.
Lionblaze crept out of the hollow tree to relieve Petalfur on her watch. Dovepaw had already done her shift, so she settled down to sleep, but she couldn’t block out the sounds from further upstream. She jerked back into wakefulness every time a tree crashed down, or a branch grated harshly as it was dragged across another. She was still trying to rest when pale dawn light filtered into the hollow tree and the other cats began to stir around her.
“Great StarClan!” Tigerheart exclaimed, sitting up and shaking dead leaves from his pelt. “Dovepaw, you’re wrigglier than a pile of worms!” “Sorry,” Dovepaw muttered.
Tigerheart pushed his nose briefly into her fur to show that he hadn’t meant to be unkind, before squeezing through the cleft and out into the
open. Dovepaw and the other cats followed him out, and they finished off the rest of the fresh-kill pile. Dovepaw noticed that Rippletail and Petalfur didn’t look so hollow and frail anymore.
They must be really starving in RiverClan if they’re fattening up on what we’ve managed to catch out here!
Above the trees, the sky was milky-pale. A cold wind drove gray clouds across the sky, ruffling the cats’ fur the wrong way.
“It’s moons since it’s been as cold as this,” Petalfur meowed, shivering. “Maybe the weather is changing at last.”
“We can deal with it,” Toadfoot grunted.
When the cats had finished eating, Lionblaze took the lead, waving his tail for the others to follow him. “It’s not far now,” he encouraged them.
“We’re really close to the brown animals.”
“How do you know?” Toadfoot demanded, his eyes narrowing in suspicion.
“The dream from StarClan said that they were just beyond the Twolegplace,” Lionblaze explained, with a discreet nod to Dovepaw. Even though she was worried about what other cats would say if they knew about her abilities, Dovepaw found she was annoyed by her
mentor’s secrecy. He’s willing enough to use my power, so why is he treating it like it’s some sort of embarrassment for ThunderClan?
“Don’t forget to watch out for falling trees,” she warned them. “And when we get to the place, the water will be really deep, so be careful not
to fall in.”
“All this was in your dream?” Toadfoot asked, sounding as if he didn’t believe her.
“That’s right.” Lionblaze paused to give his chest fur a couple of licks, as if he was thinking fast. “She saw the brown animals pushing trees
over, and—and StarClan warned her about the water, isn’t that right, Dovepaw?”
Reluctantly Dovepaw nodded.
“That was some dream!” Rippletail exclaimed. “Firestar never said anything about that at the Gathering.”
“Yeah, well, he didn’t need to,” Lionblaze mewed uncomfortably, with a glare at Dovepaw.
Dovepaw met his glare innocently. You got yourself into this mess, so get yourself out of it!
As the patrol made its way along the streambed, up the gently sloping valley, the rush of the rising wind in the trees made it hard for
Dovepaw to hear what was up ahead. She strained to make out the sounds of the brown animals, and she jumped when she heard Tigerheart’s voice close beside her.
“Isn’t this cool?” he mewed. “We’re going to find these animals, and then—pow! Give us back our water! They won’t refuse. If they do— well...” He crouched down, then sprang into the air, swiping his forepaws in a strong clawing move.
Dovepaw didn’t think it would be as easy as that, and she wished that the chatty young warrior would just shut up. She stifled a sigh as Sedgewhisker came bounding up on her other side.
“Boasting—just like ShadowClan!” she meowed. “Watch this.” Turning to face Tigerheart so the young warrior nearly tripped over her, she launched herself into the air with a terrifying shriek, twisting as she leaped and landing just behind him.
“Ha—missed!” Tigerheart exclaimed.
“I wasn’t trying to grab you,” Sedgewhisker retorted. “You’d know about it if I was.”
“Oh, would I? Try it, then, and see!”
Dovepaw dodged aside as Tigerheart launched himself at the WindClan she-cat and cuffed her around the head, with his claws sheathed.
Sedgewhisker let herself fall on one side, hooking Tigerheart’s paws out from under him so that he lost his balance. The two young cats rolled over and over in the narrow streambed; Petalfur had to scramble up the bank so she wouldn’t be squashed.
“Stop that right now!” Lionblaze growled, wading into the middle of the fight. “Mouse-brains! Do you want to get hurt before we even arrive?” The two young cats broke apart and sat up; their fur was sticking out all over the place and coated with dust.
“I’d have won with the next move,” Tigerheart muttered.
“In your dreams!” Sedgewhisker gave him a parting flick over the ear with her tail before drawing back.
Dovepaw spotted Lionblaze giving Sedgewhisker a worried look; she seemed to be moving awkwardly, as if she’d wrenched her shoulder
again. Then his gaze swiveled back to Tigerheart; the look he gave the younger warrior was unreadable.
Nowwhat’s on his mind? Dovepaw wondered.
At the top of the valley, the land opened out into flatter, sparser woodland. The wind had dropped, and Dovepaw could hear the scraping
and gnawing of the brown animals even more clearly than before. Her sense of urgency seemed to spread to the others, and Toadfoot, who was in the lead, picked up the pace until the cats were almost running along the stream bottom.
Lionblaze jumped onto the bank of the stream to look ahead and halted, his tail flicking up in surprise. “Look at that!”
“What?” Whitetail called up to him.
Lionblaze didn’t reply; he just signaled with his tail for the rest of the patrol to join him on the bank.
As she scrambled up beside him and looked, Dovepaw felt her heart start to pound. She had known from the beginning of their journey what
they would find, and yet it was all so much clearer and more frightening now that she was faced with it.
Ahead of them, the stream led through a stretch of patchy woodland. Several of the trees had been lopped off neatly about two tail-lengths
from the ground, the top of the stump rising to a sharp, splintered point. It looked as if an enormous animal had crashed along the streambed, flattening the trees on either side.
But that wouldn’t look so...so deliberate.
Stretching across the stream, clearly visible above the fallen trees, was an enormous barrier of logs. It rose in a curve like a hill, almost as big as a Twoleg nest.
Dovepaw shrank down, closing her eyes and pressing herself to the ground. The noise that surged through her was deafening: grunts and scratches, gnawing and scraping, the thump of heavy paws on wood. It took all the strength she had to control the sounds until she could cope with them and still stay aware of what was going on around her.
“So that’s what’s blocking the stream,” Rippletail whispered.
A moment of shocked quiet followed his words; it was broken by Petalfur. “We’ll have to push the logs away.”
“No, better drag them out of the stream,” Toadfoot argued. “Otherwise who knows where they’ll end up?”
“Whatever, as long as we let the water out,” meowed Lionblaze.
“And we’ll need to keep well back when the logs give way,” Whitetail pointed out.
“Wait.” Dovepaw’s voice was a hoarse croak as she struggled to her paws again. “The brown animals are still here. They built that barrier
deliberately to trap the water.”
Another shocked silence greeted her words. Then Toadfoot shrugged. “We’ll just have to chase them away, then.”
Dovepaw was sure it wouldn’t be as easy as that, but she couldn’t think of anything helpful to say.
“Don’t be scared,” Tigerheart whispered, padding up to stand beside her, with his pelt brushing hers. “I’ll look after you.”
Dovepaw felt too shaken to protest. She followed Lionblaze as he beckoned the rest of the patrol back into the cover of the streambed.
“I suggest that we wait until after dark before we attack,” he meowed. “First we need to scout around on both sides of the logs, because right
now the brown animals have the advantage of knowing the territory much better than we do.”
“That’s a good idea,” Whitetail commented.
“And we have to remember that each Clan should fight to its strengths,” Lionblaze added. “We—”
“I’m confident of my strength, Lionblaze,” Toadfoot interrupted. “You just worry about yours.”
Lionblaze held the ShadowClan warrior’s gaze for a couple of heartbeats, but he didn’t rise to the veiled challenge. Dovepaw was unnerved
by the tension between the two cats, as well as the anxiety she could sense from the rest of the patrol. They couldn’t argue now! More than ever, they needed to work together to free the water.
Whitetail took the lead as the cats crept out of the streambed and up a slope through the trees, circling around the fallen logs. She paused at the first of the lopped-off trees and gave it a curious sniff. “Big teeth,” she murmured to Lionblaze, angling her ears toward the spiky top of the stump, where the jaw marks of the brown animals were clearly visible.
Lionblaze replied with a cautious nod, while Dovepaw’s belly churned at the thought of those teeth meeting in her pelt. The scent of the brown animals was everywhere; Dovepaw had been aware of it before now, but the reek here was much stronger, a mixture of musk and fish.
“Hey, they smell a bit like RiverClan!” Tigerheart whispered with a playful gleam in his eyes.
“Don’t let Rippletail or Petalfur hear you say that,” Dovepaw warned him, in no mood for jokes.
Following Whitetail up the slope, she gradually became aware of something else up ahead. Twolegs! She nearly called out the word, but she
realized that she would be in trouble again, trying to explain how she knew. There are green pelt-dens, too, like the ones on the ShadowClan border.
Putting on a spurt, she caught up to Whitetail and hissed, “I think I can scent Twolegs.”
“Really?” The white she-cat halted and opened her jaws to taste the air. “Yes, I think you might be right.” Turning to the rest of the patrol, she added, “Twolegs up ahead. Be careful.”
The cats padded on more slowly, using the logs and stumps for cover. At the top, Whitetail signaled with her tail for the others to crouch down, and they crawled the last few tail-lengths on their bellies. Gazing out from the shelter of a clump of grass, Dovepaw made out several pelt- dens in the clearing ahead. A full-grown Twoleg was sitting outside the entrance to one of them, while two others were examining something on the ground a few fox-lengths away. There didn’t seem to be any of the young Twolegs playing about, like the ones in the other clearing.
Just as well, Dovepaw thought with a sigh of relief.
“What do you think the Twolegs are doing here?” Rippletail asked, getting up to pad a little farther forward. “Do you think they have anything to do with the brown animals?”
“Maybe they’ve come to watch them,” Petalfur guessed.
Around the edges of the open space were hard, black Twoleg things, with long black tendrils trailing along the ground. More of the Twolegs were gathered around them, muttering and occasionally touching the black things, which made sharp clicking sounds. Dovepaw bent down to lick one of the tendrils that was snaking past her, and jumped back at the bitter taste, which was similar to the stench on the Thunderpath.
“Hey, look!” Tigerheart padded up to her. “Some of those Twolegs have fur on their face! They look weird.”
“Twolegs are weird,” Toadfoot pointed out sourly from just behind him. “We don’t have to go on about it.”
“I wonder what they have in that den,” Sedgewhisker murmured, peering around the trunk of a tree. “It smells so good!”
Dovepaw gave a long sniff, her nose twitching as she picked up the scent from the farthest pelt-den. It smelled like some sort of fresh-kill, though it was mixed up with Twoleg scents as well. Her belly rumbled. She was hungry enough to eat anything.
“I’m going to check it out,” Sedgewhisker announced, bounding into the clearing toward the pelt-den. “Hey, wait!” Whitetail called, but her Clanmate didn’t reappear.
“I’ll get her,” Petalfur meowed, heading off in the WindClan cat’s paw steps.
“Now there are two of them in danger.” Whitetail lashed her tail angrily.
Dovepaw watched, holding her breath. Sedgewhisker was heading straight for the pelt-den; Petalfur followed, but she was focused so closely on the WindClan warrior that she didn’t spot the Twoleg moving toward her.
“Oh, no!” Dovepaw whispered. She didn’t want to see what happened next, but she couldn’t tear her gaze away.
The Twoleg yowled something, bent down, and scooped up Petalfur in its huge paws. Petalfur let out a startled squeal and began wriggling, but the Twoleg held her firmly. The Twoleg was meowing something to her; Dovepaw didn’t think it sounded hostile.
“I’ll claw its ears off!” Toadfoot hissed, bunching his muscles to leap out into the clearing.
“No, wait.” Lionblaze blocked the ShadowClan warrior with his tail. “Look.”
Petalfur had stopped struggling. Instead, she pushed her face up to the Twoleg’s, and batted gently at its ear with one paw. Dovepaw could
hear her purring as the Twoleg stroked one paw down her back.
“I don’t believe I’m seeing this,” Tigerheart meowed gleefully. “Wait till I tell them back home.”
The Twoleg put Petalfur down and made patting motions at her with its paws, as if it was telling her to stay where she was. Petalfur sat
down, still purring. The Twoleg strode across to the pelt-den, passing Sedgewhisker, who was watching, frozen with horror, near the entrance.
The Twoleg ducked inside and reappeared a moment later with something in its paw; the Twoleg carried the object over to Petalfur and put
it down in front of her. Petalfur picked it up and rubbed herself against the Twoleg’s leg, then darted away, back to the edge of the clearing. “What are you all staring at?” she demanded, dropping the thing the Twoleg had given her.
“Er...you, being so friendly with that Twoleg,” Toadfoot replied.
“So?” Petalfur challenged him. “It got us out of trouble, didn’t it? Oh, yuck!” she added, scraping herself against the nearest tree. “I’m going
to stink of Twoleg for a moon!”
“I’m so sorry!” The undergrowth rustled as Sedgewhisker bounded up to them. “I didn’t think they’d be bothered about us.”
“No harm done,” Lionblaze murmured, while Petalfur was still trying to get the Twoleg scent off. “But let’s be a bit more careful from now on.” Dovepaw curiously sniffed the Twoleg thing. It smelled like fresh-kill, mixed with Twoleg scents and herb scents, and it was shaped like a fat
twig. “I’ve never seen an animal like that before,” she meowed.
“It must be Twoleg prey,” Tigerheart suggested. “Hey, Petalfur, can I have some?”
“You all can,” Petalfur replied. “I don’t know what it is, but it smells tasty.”
Dovepaw crouched down to eat her share. Petalfur was right; it was tasty and felt warm in her belly after the scant pickings that morning. “Too bad there’s no more,” Tigerheart announced, swiping his tongue over his jaws and looking out into the clearing with a speculative
gleam in his eyes.
“If you go out there, Tigerheart,” Toadfoot growled, “I will personally shred your ears and feed them to the brown animals.”
“I never said—”
“You didn’t have to,” Whitetail interrupted, sounding concerned. “The Twolegs already know we’re here, and that’s bad enough without
looking for trouble.”
“I wouldn’t worry.” An unfamiliar voice spoke behind them. “The Twolegs are far more interested in the beavers.”
Every cat spun around. Dovepaw found herself staring at a long-legged tom with shaggy brown fur. He looked them over with sharp yellow
eyes, his gaze flicking from one cat to the next.
“So who are you?” he asked eventually.
“We could ask you the same thing,” Toadfoot replied, his neck fur beginning to bristle. “And what do you know about these Twolegs?”
The cat seemed unimpressed with Toadfoot’s show of hostility. “My name’s Woody,” he replied. “I’ve been getting food from the Twolegs for
the last few moons.”
With a warning glance at Toadfoot, Lionblaze stepped forward and dipped his head. “We haven’t come to steal food from you or the
Twolegs,” he meowed. “We’re here because of the blocked stream.”
Woody’s ears flicked up in surprise. “You mean the beavers?”
“Beavers?” Whitetail echoed. “Are those the brown animals? Is that what they’re called?”
The loner nodded. “Big, mean animals with sharp teeth,” he mewed, confirming the impression Dovepaw had received through her senses.
“I came across some of them once before, when I was traveling.”
“Have you ever fought one?” Toadfoot demanded.
The brown tom stared at him as if he had taken leave of his senses. “No way! Why would I need to? What do I want with a bunch of fallen
trees?”
“We need the trapped water to fill the lake,” Rippletail explained.
Woody looked completely baffled. “Lake? What lake?”
“The lake where we live,” Lionblaze explained. “A couple of days’ journey downstream.”
“And you came all this way to find it?” Woody’s ears twitched. “Why not just go to a different lake?”
Dovepaw examined the cat curiously. He didn’t smell like a kittypet, and he didn’t have the soft, groomed look that the cats in the
Twolegplace had. Was he a loner? He seemed quite confident to be in these woods, even though he was badly outnumbered by the patrol. He seemed to know a lot about the brown animals, too. Maybe he’ll help us free the water.
“You don’t understand,” Lionblaze replied to Woody, waving his tail to draw all the cats deeper into the undergrowth, well out of sight of the Twolegs. “There are a lot of us by the lake—far too many to give up our homes and find somewhere else to live.”
“And StarClan told us to come here and find what’s blocking the stream!” Tigerheart put in.
Mouse-brain! Dovepaw thought. Woody won’t understand about StarClan. She was surprised to see that the brown tom just nodded briefly, as if he understood very well. Maybe he’s heard of Clan cats before?
“We’ve got to chase these...these beavers away,” Whitetail meowed determinedly. “Then we can get rid of the blockage and we’ll have our water again.”
Woody shook his head. “Bees in your brain,” he muttered.
“Then you won’t help us?” Lionblaze asked.
“I didn’t say that. I’ll take you down to the river and show you the dam—that’s what they built to block the stream and make a pool deep enough for their den. You might change your mind when you’ve had a good look at it up close.”
“Thanks,” Rippletail purred; he was working his claws in the leaf-mold, as if he couldn’t wait to get close to the sound and scent of water again.
“There’ll be Twolegs around,” Woody warned them, turning to lead the way down the hill. “But you don’t need to worry about them. They’re only interested in watching the beavers. In fact, the Twolegs brought them here.”
“What?” Toadfoot halted, his jaws gaping in astonishment. “Twolegs brought them? In StarClan’s name, why?”
Woody shrugged. “How do I know? Maybe they wanted some trees chopped down.”
The brown tom led them around more of the black Twoleg things with the trailing tendrils, down into the valley, and across the dry streambed
just below the wall of logs. This, then, was the beavers’ dam; the reason the water had stopped flowing into the lake. Dovepaw looked up at the looming pile of tree trunks as she padded past. It’s so big! Can we really shift something that size?
On the other side, Woody led them in a circle through the woodland until they approached the stream again. “There are no Twolegs on this side,” he explained. “But watch out for the beavers. You won’t be welcome here, you know.”
He stopped halfway down the slope, in a patch of fallen trees, and the cats lined up beside him to stare across the trapped stream above the dam. It had overflowed the riverbank on this side and spread out into a wide, flat pool, reflecting the gray sky. Here and there circles appeared, spiraling outward as if a fish had risen to take a fly.
Toward the upstream edge of the pool was a mound of mud, twigs, and bark, jutting out from the bank but not blocking the stream like the dam. Dovepaw detected strong beaver scent coming from it.
“What’s that?” Whitetail asked Woody, flicking her tail toward it.
“It’s where the beavers live,” the brown loner explained. “It’s called their lodge, and they—”
“Oh, look!” Petalfur interrupted, her voice rising to the squeak of an excited kit. “So much water...it’s wonderful!”
Before any cat could stop her she bounded down to the water’s edge, with Rippletail hard on her paws, and she plunged in, splashing her
paws rapturously and ducking her head under the water.
“They’re like furry fish,” Tigerheart grumbled, padding up to stand beside Dovepaw and Sedgewhisker. “Say what you like, it’s not right for
cats.”
“They look as if they’re having fun.” Dovepaw felt a little wistful.
She was so busy watching the two RiverClan cats play in the water that she stopped remaining alert to her surroundings. Suddenly she
sensed movement on top of the dam. Spinning around, she saw that two heavy brown shapes had appeared on the logs. Their bodies were sleek and rounded like a bird’s egg, with tiny black eyes and ears like furled leaves. Their tails spread out behind them, broad and flat like a solid wing. They were much bigger than a cat, and as broad and sturdy-looking as the logs that they stood on.
“Beavers!” she yowled. “Look—up there!”
“Oh, great StarClan!” Tigerheart muttered. His neck fur fluffed up and his tail bristled to twice its size. “They’re weird!”
Still happily swimming in the pool, the RiverClan cats didn’t notice the two animals, even when they clambered down the dam and slipped
into the water, slapping the surface hard with their tails and sending up a shower of drops.
“Rippletail! Petalfur!” Dovepaw screeched, hurling herself down to the edge of the pool. “Beavers! Get out now!”
The beavers glided across the pool, their huge bodies making scarcely any ripples. Dovepaw could hear their paws churning through the
water and felt their massive tails steering them toward the cats.
Rippletail and Petalfur spotted them and began splashing madly toward the edge of the pool. The beavers swerved effortlessly in pursuit,
lifting their heads to avoid the waves behind the cats. Dovepaw dug her claws into the ground as she watched the gap between them grow smaller and smaller.
Oh, StarClan, help them!
The two RiverClan cats scrambled out of the water just ahead of the beavers’ noses. Their fur was dripping and plastered to their sides, and their eyes were wild with fear.
“Run!” Lionblaze yowled.
Every cat bolted for the trees at the top of the slope. Glancing back, Dovepaw saw the beavers haul themselves out of the water, raising their muzzles and baring long yellow teeth. On land they were much clumsier than they were in the water; Dovepaw realized the cats could easily outstrip them if they gave chase.
But the beavers stayed where they were on the bank of the pool, gazing after the cats and not making any move to follow them. The patrol gathered close together under the trees, Petalfur and Rippletail shivering and shaking water from their pelts.
“That was close,” Rippletail muttered. “Thanks for warning us.”
“Oh, StarClan,” Toadfoot breathed. “This isn’t going to be as easy as we thought.”
Dovepaw caught Lionblaze’s gaze on her. He didn’t speak, but she could guess what he was thinking. Why didn’t you tell us it was going to be this hard?
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