Chapter 7: Rippling Water
Raindrop opened her eyes, staring around. The Cave of Dancing Moonlight was full of cats, breathing slowly. Like a light wind behind the waterfall, whispers danced around her ears. She turned her head slowly and looked around.
Pounce was curled up on her side, snoring slightly; between Pounce and Raindrop, Eddy lay neatly curled up, his tail over his nose, his eyes wide open and staring straight ahead, thinking; and Windteller was on Raindrop's other side, curled in a tight ball, twitching nervously in his sleep.
Early the morning before, Raindrop had awoken to find the rest of tribe surrounding her and her friends. Together, they had journeyed along the river, out into the field, down beside the Waterfall, to the Crossing Place, and into the cave. After hunting they'd gathered for a Telling where they'd prayed to the Tribe of Endless Hunting to keep them from harm and guide them to wherever they might go.
While they'd slept, two scouts had gone out to see the forest—Monkey, who was the eldest to-be, and Sunset, had gone back into the Jungle to asses the fire's damage and see where it may have started. Of course, wild theories and rumors were already flying—the Monkeys and Piranhas were really demon dragons who could breathe fire; it was a sign from the Tribe of Endless Hunting; a fallen star had set the Jungle on fire—already cats were beginning to call the forest fire the Blaze.
Even when the two branch-guards returned that morning to tell them what had happened, the name stuck.
"Tribe of Dappled Sunlight!"
Pounce awoke with an especially loud snort, and Windteller sprang to his feet with a yelp. "Its okay, Whisper," Eddy said soothingly. Chest heaving, Windteller looked around wildly.
"He's way too high-strung," Eddy said in an undertone to Raindrop as they trotted towards Leafteller's summons outside of the Cave of Dancing Moonlight, allowing Pounce and Windteller to draw ahead. "Paranoid, you know. He thinks he's gonna die or let every cat down, and the forest fire and several other near-death experiences didn't exactly help."
Raindrop nodded, still a bit cool and distant with Eddy for taking Pounce's side in their quarrel; Raindrop still wasn't speaking to Pounce. "Yeah," she said unhelpfully. Something in her vague tone made Eddy stop walking.
"What's on your mind?" he asked, his voice light and conversational, but his face was grim and he stared hard into her stormy eyes.
"Nothing," said Raindrop, a bit too quickly.
"Come on, Raindrop," said Eddy, "I know you. Why aren't you concerned with Windteller all the sudden?"
"I said 'nothing'," Raindrop replied coldly. "Let's go." And she led the way out of the cave and into the sunlight where the Tribe was waiting.
"So," said Pounce loudly as they walked across a huge expanse of rock, "the brilliant plan is to basically—"
"Shh!" said Windteller, looking over his shoulder at the knot of to-bes behind them. "Talk quieter!"
"It's not exactly a top-secret plan, you know," replied Pounce sternly. "So the plan's to basically wander until we find someplace to live instead?" she glanced over her shoulder, lowering her voice in spite of herself.
"Yes," said Windteller emphatically. "They said—"
"They said the Tribe of Endless Hunting will guide us," Eddy interjected calmly. "And," he dropped his voice so only they could hear, "as they decided we're going to the mountains, I don't think we have anything to worry about."
"What are you—?" began Pounce sharply, but Raindrop interrupted as if she wasn't speaking.
"You heard them at the Telling," mewed Raindrop in a low voice, "if the mountains are whispering too, we ought to go see what that's all about."
Pounce gaped at her tribemate, not registering a single word of their cryptic conversation. "What are you talking about?" she demanded.
"Nothing that concerns you," replied Raindrop coldly. Pounce glared at her.
"What about those monkey things? And their piranhas?" said Pounce anxiously, turning to Eddy and Windteller. "Are they gonna kill the whole Jungle?"
"We don't know," said Eddy sadly. "It seems like it. If they started the fire like Monkey and Sunset found, and didn't make any effort to put it out, then it sure seems like the Jungle is at their mercy. It isn't ours anymore. It's theirs. To destroy."
"I still don't see why we couldn't have told them what we heard in the Cave," said Windteller nervously, glancing over his shoulder at the chattering to-bes again.
"Because," said Raindrop, trying to sound more certain than she felt, less annoyed, and more like a leader, "if you use logic, you would discover that since the prophecy was made, there's no changing it, and since we decided to go to the mountains anyway, it doesn't matter. The prophecies are gonna play themselves out, and telling the world wouldn't do anything about it."
"Yeah, but it couldn't hurt to tell—" began Windteller again. Eddy cut across him as Raindrop began to bristle angrily.
"Give it a rest, will you?" he sighed.
Silence fell between them. The mountains, blue in the hazy, humid distance, rose like spikes into the cloudy sky. The stone they walked across reflected the cloudy gray above them. The tribe moved slowly along, a line like a dark brushstroke on the dreary stone landscape. The wind was light and cool, dancing between the cats occasionally, breaking the humid, muffled silence. Birds of prey wheeled above them as the sky became steadily darker as if waiting for one of the cats to break ranks and fall to the ground.
Over the next few days, the muffling humidity didn't lift, pressing them from all sides like heavy, suffocating, water, nor did the gray clouds above them, darkening steadily over the mountains and the rocky plateaus like an omen. The mountains too seemed to grow taller as they approached.
By the third day of walking, the whole tribe was exhausted, their throats parched, and they were all starving. No one knew how to hunt out here, used to the cover of the Jungle and the noise that protected them from being spotted by their prey. Out here, you had to be as silent as a shadow and approach from behind. On the second day, the to-bes learned the first lesson of hunting out on the bare rock: use prey to lure prey.
The mouse scratched doubtfully among the roots of a tiny, withered tree that was growing in a thin crevice. Eddy and Pounce, one on each side, crept up behind the tree as silently as they could. Neither of them had had a thing to eat since the morning before, and both were growing desperate. They padded at a maddeningly slow pace to avoid being heard, but the mouse suddenly raised its nose, sniffing. All three of them froze. Eddy and Pounce, pressed up against the gnarled tree, heard a whoosh, and a huge black eagle dove down snatching at the mouse. It darted away, but not fast enough.
"Get the eagle!" yowled Pounce, struck with a sudden inspiration. Raindrop, who'd been watching, charged over to help. Together, she, Pounce, and Eddy leapt onto the bird's back. They were small enough to get onto its back without completely tipping over, and as they clawed their way towards the base of its neck, it let out a horrible screech, and took off.
Pounce screamed, Eddy gave a strangled yell, and Raindrop gasped. The eagle flapped its wings furiously, and they lifted clumsily off the ground, hovering several tail-lengths above the stone. Pounce was whimpering, Eddy was staring straight ahead with his eyes popping out, but Raindrop gaped, her heart pounding as they glided just above the ground, the wind whooshing in her fur, the muffling humidity lifted, her heart soaring with the eagle's wings. It pumped furiously, trying to stay airborne, and as it leaned one way to turn towards the other tribe cats, Raindrop leaned the other way to stay balanced.
The eagle curved its wing tips, turning gracefully in a circle, before diving straight for the cats a few feet below.
"Look out!" screeched Raindrop.
"HELP!" screamed Pounce.
The cats below scattered, all but a small kit, who stumbled after his mother, mewling pitifully. With a suddenly stiffened resolve, Raindrop stretched her paw forward and brought her claws down on the base of the eagle's neck. It crumpled just as they were about to hit the ground.
Legs shaking, hearts pounding uncontrollably, Pounce and Eddy got off the eagle's back. With a glance back at the tree where they'd lifted off briefly, just a few tail-lengths away, they walked dazedly over to comfort the little kit. Raindrop followed, with a glance back at the eagle.
Thank you, she thought as the first raindrops of the storm began to fall, and for just a second she thought she felt a whoosh above her head like a wingbeat.
And the dark clouds that had hovered above them for so long began to rain like tears falling on the stone below.
Sorry it's been so long, I was working on my other stories, but I'll be focusing a lot more on this one now. Hope you liked it! -Mo0ny
