Sorry for confusion in this chapter. I made it that way intentionally. Things will get cleared up in later chapters.
Part One
Reaches of Darkness
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Pathway Cliff, Nightsong Valley
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Chapter One
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JUST ONE LAST VIEW OF THE STARS...
"Stop. Concentrate," the blurred figure in front of her commanded.
MISTRESS, I BEG YOU TO SAVE ME.
I AM LOST IN A CURSED WOOD.
"I can't!" Mousepaw screamed. "They're—"
STRANGER, PLEASE HELP ME.
"I've never met an apprentice this useless," he muttered under his breath.
I NEED ANOTHER CHANCE.
Mousepaw didn't answer. She was already on the ground, gasping.
SOMETHING TO REDEEM.
Where am I? she wondered. Who is that before me? Who am I? How do I breathe?
Red blobs swam in front of her eyes. Who? What? How? Where?
Why?
Why why why?
"For the stars' sake! Just look at me and concentrate! None of those other idiots had any trouble with the voices!" someone was yelling, right outside her ear. Outside? Inside?
Inside out?
Both at the same time?
Neither?
Maybe the voice is my ear...
PULL ME OUT OF THIS.
I KNOW YOU CAN.
By this time, she was losing control. Eyes blurred, spasms jerking her left and right, rolling on the ground like the Moonsweep mossballs in the camp clearing, a spiraling crescendo in her mind...
"Get up!"
YOUR SHADOW.
She gasped, head throbbing, her eyes glazed. Huh?
YOUR SHADOW.
Miniature lightningstorms ripped through her mind. Frustrated claws slammed her against a rock surface, and consciousness faded away.
Mousepaw came to later in the night with a headache and a fuzzy vision. Dream memories of smiling cats with contorted faces and jerky, unnatural movements wouldn't leave her alone. Propping herself up against the ground, she took a moment to catch her breath.
It happened again.
This had been going on for quite some time, but only recently had the cascade of voices came so often, so loud, so desperate. Mousepaw curled against the den wall again, shivering and trying to stop the flow of self-pity. It's not just you, she reminded herself.
Every kit born in Nightsong Valley since some cursed moon ages ago had been subject to this endless stream of whispers. Every single one. Some voices asked for favors. Some pleaded, like Mousepaw's. Some gave orders. Some were more easy to ignore. Others weren't.
But it was an essential part of training to be able to shut them out entirely... and Mousepaw had just failed the assessment for the fourth time, as the only fifteen-moon old apprentice.
No more chances.
No more of her mother forcing her mate to do those 'favors' for Silverstar in exchange for another retry, even if he wanted to. Mousepaw shuddered.
Most of all, no more hope of her ever becoming a full Watcher in the clan. She'd have to see what Silverstar decided. Best case scenario, she'd have to be some sort of lowly worker, forced to perform mundane everyday tasks. Mousepaw wasn't particularly worried about this, however. She'd been pondering over this situation for moons.
The worst case scenario, on the other paw...
"It wasn't my fault," her mentor's voice filtered in through the medicine den walls. "I'm sorry, Silverstar, but she's rather hopeless. I tried everything, but she's rather rebellious. Not listening to me. I've tried my best. It's really not working."
"Hmm," Silverstar considered. "Really. How do you explain the claw marks then, Sedgefoot?"
There were scuffling sounds as Sedgefoot took a few steps back. "She was out of control," he explained hurriedly. "I was trying to calm her down, but in her madness she may have accidentally hurt herself. Entirely not my fault."
Mousepaw cringed. Her losing control might not have been caused by him, but the claw marks definitely were. Sedgefoot had begun to lose his temper with her more and more often recently, but he had never attempted to directly attack her before. What's next?
Silverstar, surprisingly, barked a short, humorless chuckle. "That should teach you to be calmer in an emergency. I would trust you to be more careful next time."
"I understand," Sedgefoot assured quickly.
No, you complete rabbit-brain! Mousepaw thought angrily. He's lying! He's lying about all of it! Immediately, guilt that she was thinking badly of her leader filtered through into her mind, but she shoved it away. Shifting toward the den entrance, she took a deep breath before poking her head out.
There was someone staring right at her about two claw-lengths away from her face.
Mousepaw yelped in surprise, flailing backward and trying to keep her balance. The tom smiled in the darkness, reminding her unpleasantly of her dream. "Easily scared one, isn't she, eh?" he commented smoothly, turning to face Silverstar.
Silverstar nodded, seemingly amused. "I thought so."
"Who are you?" Mousepaw demanded, trying to stop a blush from showing on her face. "I've never seen you before."
The mottled old tom appeared offended, but grinned at her with stained teeth anyway. "Respect your elders, dear," he said. "I'm one of those appointed to maintain the Moonsweep, of course."
"Oh?" Mousepaw said blankly. She had never quite thought much of that pile of arranged mossballs in the camp clearing, and anyway, she was too busy trying to stop headaches and dodge her mentor, who seemed to be everywhere at once to notice him. "I've never seen you around before... and anyway, why were you watching me sleep?"
"Such impudence," the tom scoffed, though he seemingly remained calm. "Experience tells me that this is the apprentice we need to, as you say, fix?"
"I'm not broken."
Silverstar ignored her. "I prefer the word 'correct', actually. Just set on the right path. If she can indeed, ah, be corrected, then I believe your skills can be of great use in the future when dealing with those like her. Sedgefoot, watch and learn."
"Well, actually," the tom interrupted, "I would like to do this alone, so as much of her mind can be cleared as possible, without distractions. With your permission, of course."
He smiled crookedly up at Silverstar, who frowned slightly but didn't press the issue. "I see. If that works best for you, then I suppose I can allow it."
Feelings of dread ran down her spine, but she didn't even try to argue otherwise.
It was a losing battle anyway.
She glanced longingly over her shoulder in the direction of the Watcher den, where she knew even now that her mother was leaning over the scarred body of her mate, asking yet again for forgiveness. The medicine cat, Finchheart would be back from herb-gathering soon, carrying the few flimsy, fragile stems left from leaf-bare back to her den. Mentors would lead their apprentices out into the territory to train, kits would play, and no one would notice she was gone.
No one.
Different cats weren't worth paying attention to, even for belittling. Those cats just came and went. Occasional bumps along the road. Some day, they just disappeared. Life moved on.
Mousepaw watched as the tom began padding toward the camp entrance, and as she followed, trailing behind, she couldn't help chuckling a little. Chuckling at how pointless the whole cycle was, birth and life and death, remembrance and forgetfulness. Maybe he's going to claw me, just like Sedgefoot, she mused.
They were right all along.
She was crazy after all.
Eventually, they settled into a slower, rhythmic pace, the tom only slightly ahead of her now. The crescent moon shone through gaps in the wispy clouds, and Mousepaw imagined the mossballs being rearranged again tonight, displayed in a way that matched the pattern of the night sky. The usual chants would be chanted, the hymns recited, asking for the ancestors to bring running prey and fresh herbs to a dying land surrounded by impassable mountains. Pointless, too.
"Do you really believe in StarClan?" the tom asked, turning his calm green eyes toward her.
Mousepaw's heart nearly skipped a beat. Did he guess? How did he know? "I—I don't know," she stuttered. Maybe this isn't about correcting me after all. Maybe Silverstar knew that I doubted our spirits were watching over us and not just wandering around without hope and purpose, and he thought I was just useless, and he wanted to get rid of me... "I can't really..."
This is it... Silverstar must have sent this tom to kill me...
"No worries, your secrets are safe with me," the tom reassured, giving her a mysterious grin. "I won't report anything we talk about. I'm not as much of Silverstar's pet as you think I am. He won't find out even if he suspected, in any case. He's not that dangerous even if he wants to be."
Mousepaw didn't reply.
She knew he was wrong.
Silverstar's not just incompetent. Whoever you are, you haven't seen what he has my father do.
Silence passed between them for several long minutes. The terrain beneath their feet changed gradually from hard soil still coated with frost to a softer landscape underpaw, with a few reed plants scattered here and there. The snow-capped mountains loomed over them in all directions, and Mousepaw could see the Pathway Cliff where she had been training earlier that day. "Where are we going?" she finally asked.
The tom nodded toward someplace ahead of them. "The Starry River."
Sure enough, soon the dried ferns and dead grasses cleared out enough for them to get a view of the tiny, frozen stream that ran down between two of the mountains, ending at a small pond. Not even crickets chirped here today, and the thin ice was broken only occasionally by tiny cracks that showed the sluggish water underneath.
"My name is Crouchfeather," the tom began, sitting down close to the edge. "I've heard you have a bit of trouble managing the voices?"
"It just takes time," she snapped, not believing it herself. "Oh, and, please stop pretending to be nice."
Crouchfeather chuckled sadly, gazing off into the frozen river. "I've had some trouble with them too, when I was younger," he admitted. "I've just never found quite the correct coping technique for it when it gets to be too much... until now. In some ways, it's helpful. But I also regret finding out."
He turned back to her, his expression more sympathetic now. "Do you hear them all the time?"
Mousepaw hesitated, then replied, "Exactly. It's like... dormant. I mean, It's like, it's always back there, the tiny little voices, tugging at my mind. But occasionally it gets louder and louder at random times, and I can't control them, and eventually it just... takes over. Sometimes it actually hurts, physically. Right now, they're not overwhelming but still there."
"So what do they say?"
"They beg." Mousepaw swallowed a lump in her throat. "Not for me to do anything, just... asking for help. For something I can't give. It sounds like they're all trapped somewhere where they can't see the stars, and they're constantly begging for me to save them, but..."
"Just ignore them," Crouchfeather said softly.
"Huh... you don't sound like you mean it."
He was about to reply, when suddenly, Mousepaw gasped and clenched her teeth. Her gray tail arched over her back, and her neck fur bristled.
"Is that it?" Crouchfeather asked, standing up.
Mousepaw couldn't talk, just nod ever so slightly, trying not to stagger over. Nausea spread through her like a wave; that familiar, stupid feeling of helplessness was starting to come back. Crouchfeather was already moving toward her, though, and she stepped away from him with a jolt of pain.
"Don't," she said weakly, not sure what she was protesting.
He didn't reply, though. Just as her vision began swimming, Crouchfeather shoved her toward the river and slammed her head through the thin sheet of ice, pushing it under.
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Shadow Flight
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a fanfic
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Stormshadow3
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Hi! :D It's been a while since I last posted a fic. Need to get back into writing... For those that know me from DotS (for new readers, it's one of my discontinued fanfic series, which is not that good), welcome back! I'm now here, with, uh... this thingamajig.
If you have any questions about this, feel free to ask, but I probably won't be able to answer. Mostly because I'm as clueless as you are. The one thing I can tell you is that updates are probably going to be rather here-and-there. If there isn't a new chapter for a while, sorry.
By the way, the 'favors' for Silverstar mentioned aren't as questionable as it might appear. It's completely different than what you might be thinking about, I promise.
Thank you for reading. Tell me what you think!