Chapter 21 – Last chapter... yay! This chapter is a bit rushed, but a lot of things are 'revealed' in this chapter.
Sun
There was a very long, awkward silence as the three companions looked from one to the other, and then back to Sun again. Coal's shoulders seemed to hunch ever-so-slightly, as if prepared for a blow of some sort. Harepaw's whiskers twitched nervously – he seemed to have lost all his previous confidence when faced so suddenly with the subject of their conversation. Kestrelpaw herself gulped in anxiety and fear as she wondered how much Sun had overheard.
Sun stared at Kestrelpaw with her huge black eyes (or, at least, Kestrelpaw assumed that Sun was staring at her. You could never tell which direction Sun was looking because of her pupil-less eyes). Kestrelpaw resisted the urge to shiver as she attempted to gaze back at fearlessly.
"Was there something that you wanted to ask me?" Sun said softly, her claws sheathing and unsheathing on the hard ground, causing tiny puffs of dust to hover over the earth.
Kestrelpaw and Harepaw exchanged a glance, each wishing that the other one would speak first. When Harepaw stubbornly refused to say a word, Kestrelpaw took a deep breath and summoned up all her courage and wits so that she could speak without rambling too much.
"Are you alone?" Kestrelpaw asked in feigned confidence, drawing herself up to her full height as she stalked a few pawsteps closer to Sun.
"Does it matter?" Sun replied coolly, returning Kestrelpaw's green gaze piercingly.
Kestrelpaw wanted to hand over the responsibility of talking to Sun over to one of the two toms that were helpfully edging away from Sun. Seeing as how they were too cowardly to offer to sacrifice themselves, however, it seemed that she would just have to cope by herself. Which she was perfectly capable of doing, Kestrelpaw reminded herself firmly.
"Of course it doesn't," Kestrelpaw agreed, not knowing why she was agreeing. "But my companions and I have something to discuss with you – something of utmost importance". She liked the way the words 'utmost importance' sounded, and it gave her the courage to continue to look Sun in the eye.
"Feel free to elaborate," Sun said, eyeing Kestrelpaw in an almost thoughtful way.
Kestrelpaw briefly looked over her shoulder and shot her companions a glare, then turned to look at Sun again. "We – that is, Coal, Harepaw and I – have been sent here on a mission by WeatherClan to return a 'star' of theirs that had been stolen. We have good reason to believe that you are the 'star' in question, and we are here to ask you if you would consider returning to WeatherClan."
If Sun hadn't been a cat, she would have smiled. As it was, she had an amused expression upon her face was patronising, as though she was dealing with some very persistent kits. "And can I ask you why you believe that I am the 'star' that you are talking about?"
"Because you are. There is no use denying it, Sun. Nothing is going to change our minds about the fact that you – and none other – are the 'star', and that you are therefore what WeatherClan wants so badly," Kestrelpaw stood her ground, utterly convinced that Sun was the 'star'. She was confident of that fact, even if she wasn't confident about anything else in their plan.
"Why were you sent on this mission in the first place? What did WeatherClan offer you?" Sun asked, avoiding the question that Kestrelpaw had originally asked.
"We want WeatherClan to stop a drought that they have placed on our Clan," Kestrelpaw had already decided that truth was the best policy in this case. After all, Sun was bound to know a lot more than she let on if she was as powerful as WeatherClan had said.
Sun stared at Kestrelpaw, hard. "What if I am Star? What will you do then?"
Kestrelpaw considered her answer carefully before replying. "We will order you to return to WeatherClan and explain why you ran away from them -" she didn't know how she knew, but somehow it seemed rather obvious that it was Sun's choice to be where she was today - "and convince them, of course, to lift the drought. If you return to WeatherClan, my companions and I will have fulfilled our part of the bargain, and perhaps WeatherClan will see fit to grant us our wish."
Sun looked at the three of them thoughtfully, examining them. Then: "You are fools to believe that WeatherClan will uphold their part of your bargain. They never do."
Kestrelpaw felt as though somebody had raked an icy, burning claw right through her heart. Was it true? Did Sun know what she was talking about when she said that WeatherClan never fulfilled their part of the bargain? Did that mean that Kestrelpaw had thrown her life, and her companions' lives, into a danger zone for nothing at all? Did that mean that Kestrelpaw was doomed to living in WeatherClan territory without ever dying or seeing another cat for all eternity?
"That's not true!" Kestrelpaw exclaimed, momentarily losing her calm. Then she hastily regained her composure, realising that this was not the way to convince Sun to go back. "Listen..."
Another pause that seemed to stretch for hours as Kestrelpaw struggled to find a way to reason with Sun. She realised now that Sun was not one who would do things for other cats, not unless she benefited from it herself. That was probably why Sun was one of the most respected leaders in the Place of the Exiled – she was cruel, merciless but she knew what she was doing. Nothing Sun ever did was done without deep thought and careful planning. Kestrelpaw had heard about the previous leaders of the Others, and all of them had sounded very similar to Sun. Perhaps that was simply what it took to become leader in this place.
To get back to the point, though, Kestrelpaw now understood that if she was going to have to reason with Sun, she was going to have to offer a good enough reason for Sun to go back to WeatherClan – one that Sun would profit from. Unfortunately, Kestrelpaw could not actually think of any good reason for the leader of the Others to go back to WeatherClan. This was what had caused her to trail off as she realised the hopelessness of her task.
Suddenly, Harepaw stepped forward. His eyes were sparkling with excitement as he spoke. "Go back to WeatherClan with us. You know that they took some powers from you when you left them, and that you want those powers back. If you come to WeatherClan with us, and you rejoin them, they will give you back the powers that you lost. They would never dare to refuse you because you are precious to them – because of you, they were able to have access to the abilities of StarClan as well as their own abilities."
Kestrelpaw stared at Harepaw, once again dumbfounded. How did he know that? There was no way that he could have known that! Kestrelpaw didn't know that! He hadn't known that Sun was the 'star' until today, and therefore he couldn't have possibly known that she had lost her powers.
Sun stared at Harepaw with a strange mixture of contempt and surprise. "It seems that you have been paying attention, unlike your companions. But you still have given me no reason to return to WeatherClan."
Kestrelpaw wracked her brains desperately in the hope that she could find a persuasive reason for Sun to rejoin WeatherClan. She would have to ask Harepaw later on how he knew about all that, but for now there was a much more important matter on her mind. What could she say? What could she say? What could she? Something that would convince Sun... or Star, whatever she was really called. Then, in a flash, the words came tumbling out of Kestrelpaw's mouth without her even thinking about what she was saying.
"You'll go back and join WeatherClan again – at least temporarily – because you want to help another WeatherClan cat, don't you? If WeatherClan cats don't help one another, then there will be nobody left to help them. And, admit it, they need help sometimes. You may not be part of WeatherClan now, but you can't renounce your birthright, whatever you say," Kestrelpaw said hastily, trying to get in as much as she could before Sun interrupted her. "So you'll do this, just this once, because otherwise I'll never let you forget this. And a WeatherClan cat's wrath is not one you want to face."
Sun eyed Kestrelpaw suspiciously, disbelief written all over her face. "Are you trying to say that you're a WeatherClan cat?"
"I... yes, of course I am," Kestrelpaw said quickly, causing Coal and Harepaw to stare at her in utter shock. She flicked her tail to silence them, just in case they would say something that ruined her speech once and for all.
"Can you prove it to me?" Sun said, still looking disbelieving.
Kestrelpaw was at a loss as to how to 'prove' her lie. Thinking quickly, she said. "Wait. If I prove it to you, will you return to WeatherClan and make sure that they lift the drought from SkyClan?"
Sun thought this over for a long time, the seconds ticking by with painful tension. Kestrelpaw was torn between wanting her to agree – so that her Clan would be saved – and wanting her to say 'no' – so that her lie wouldn't be proven to be exactly what it was, a lie.
"Very well. Go ahead and do your best. If you convince me that you belong with WeatherClan, and that you are part of WeatherClan, then I'll go back to WeatherClan. Even if only temporarily," Sun agreed, but she didn't say what would happen if Kestrelpaw couldn't prove it. Obviously, Sun was a believer in 'if they don't know what happens, then they only get more frightened'. Kestrelpaw couldn't say that that wasn't true, either. Certainly, she didn't like the idea of what Sun would do with her should she fail any more than she didn't like the idea of what WeatherClan was going to do to her if she failed. What a life.
"Okay. Fine," Kestrelpaw gulped as she looked around for something to prove her WeatherClan-ness to Sun. Maybe she could make it seem like it was thundering? Kestrelpaw thought really hard about the sky turning black and lightning striking nearby, which seemed like a rather hopeless attempt considering that she had been lying to Sun in the first place. Nevertheless, something inside Kestrelpaw convinced her to go along with this idea.
Not wishing to see the horrified expressions of Harepaw and Coal, Kestrelpaw closed her eyes and blocked out everything else. She thought about the thunder and the lightning, and then something hit her mentally like a rock. She had wondered why Mistral had seemed so familiar to her, and now she knew why. Oh Great StarClan. Kestrelpaw hastily banished the thoughts from her mind – she had to concentrate on this mad, foolhardy attempt of hers that was bordering on the stupidly insane.
For a few minutes, nothing happened. Then there was a gasp from Harepaw and Kestrelpaw felt something wet on the tip of her nose. She opened her eyes gingerly and almost jumped six foot in the air when she saw the stormy black clouds above her and the rain that was now pouring down on them. In a mere few seconds, she was utterly drenched to the bone, but she was so ecstatic that she barely noticed it.
"Great StarClan, Kestrelpaw! What did you do?" Harepaw shouted over the howl of the wind and the sudden roar of thunder in the distance. Kestrelpaw felt like jumping up and down in joy at what she had just done. Or, at least, she assumed that she was the cause of this sudden change in weather. If she wasn't, what great good fortune!
"Happy now?" Kestrelpaw bounced over jubilantly to Sun, yelling in the other she-cat's ear at the top of her lungs. She was now feeling rather cold, but didn't give a damn. She was so close to getting Sun to agree to go back to WeatherClan...
Sun's black eyes bored into Kestrelpaw's green ones. Then the leader of the Others sighed, her long whiskers drooping with the weight of all the water. "Yes. I'll go back to WeatherClan – but you owe me. Now, I -"
There was a tremendous shake all of a sudden, cutting off Sun's sentence. Kestrelpaw felt the world spin around her wildly, and she squeezed her eyes tight shut as her stomach did a somersault. Even with her eyes shut, her stomach still felt absolutely terrible, and hearing Harepaw retching didn't help much, either. Kestrelpaw kept her mouth closed, not wanting to throw up and wound her pride.
Then, with a loud thump, Kestrelpaw and her companions fell flat on a hard, dirt ground. Kestrelpaw could have sworn that she broke a few teeth, too. However, she didn't have much time to think about her poor teeth, as she soon realised that there was a cat standing over her, casting a long shadow that made her shiver with a mixture of cold and fright.
Sun scrambled up from where she was lying flat on her stomach. She was giving the newcomer the glare of a lifetime. "Mistral."
Kestrelpaw leapt to her feet at the sound of the name, her heat beating at least two times faster than it usually did. She gazed at the WeatherClan she-cat with wide-eyes, and then said. "Are you really..."
Mistral deigned to look at Kestrelpaw, and then nodded solemnly. "Yes."
Kestrelpaw continued before any of the others could say anything, and totally ignored Harepaw's frustrated look. "And am I really..."
"Yes," if Mistral had been able to smile, she would have smiled with faint happiness. Which was an exceedingly odd emotion to be expressed by a WeatherClan cat, from Kestrelpaw knew of them. Whilst she was trying to puzzle out why Mistral looked so 'happy', Harepaw was already sticking his nose into Kestrelpaw's business.
"What in StarClan's name are you talking about, Kestrelpaw?" Harepaw demanded, stalking forwards so that they couldn't ignore him any more. His whiskers twitched as though he was on the verge of some amazing discovery.
Kestrelpaw hesitated, and then blurted out. "You know that when I first saw Mistral, I thought that she looked really familiar? Well... who do you think she looks like?"
Harepaw stared at Mistral with a confused expression, and then realised what Kestrelpaw was talking about. His mouth dropped open in amazement as his gaze darted from Kestrelpaw to Mistral and then back again. He stuttered in his astonishment. "You-you d-d-don't mean to s-s-say that she's your m-mother?"
"Yes, I most certainly do mean exactly that," Kestrelpaw squeaked, part excitement, part confusion.
"But, what about S-stonebrook?" Harepaw stammered in utter confusion at this sudden change in events. His poor brain was overworking as he tried to figure this one out. "You have two mothers?"
"Don't be stupid! I... Stonebrook can't be my mother, because Mistral most definitely is," Kestrelpaw looked to Mistral for help in explaining this new turn of events that had all of them stumped for answers. Even Sun was staring bemusedly at the other cats, not quite sure what they were talking about but intrigued all the same by the conversation.
"Stonebrook is just your adopted mother. And you're only half-WeatherClan. Your father was a... rogue," Mistral sniffed with distaste at the mention of Kestrelpaw's father. She clearly no longer held any affection for the aforementioned tom, as there was not a trace of warmth in her voice when she talked about him. "WeatherClan didn't want you, and I didn't either. So when Stonebrook had a kit on the same day that you were born, we just gave you to her. She doesn't know that you aren't her kit and nobody else does – we did a bit of tampering with their memories. We would also prefer for it to remain this way. As for your developing WeatherClan powers... we didn't know that that would happen."
Coal interrupted the joyful family reunion with an uncharacteristically sharp comment. "The 'Star' has agreed to come back – can we all go now and they can return to their Clan?"
Mistral glared at him, but before she could reply a young tortoiseshell she-cat bounced up to them enthusiastically. The newcomer shrieked with delight when she saw who Mistral was talking to, and she launched herself at the understandably confused Kestrelpaw, who didn't know quite what to make of the strange she-cat.
"Oh, I thought you were never going to make it!" the she-cat exclaimed with joy, and then leapt off Kestrelpaw and ran towards Harepaw, who immediately side-stepped. Kestrelpaw glared at the strange tortoiseshell cat, and said haughtily. "And who are you?"
The tortoiseshell she-cat stopped racing around with excitement, and stopped suddenly, disappointment and hurt all over her face. She looked from one cat to the other, unable to believe her ears. Then she said in a surprised voice. "Don't you recognise me?"
"Noooo... wait... Oh my StarClan! If this keeps happening, I'll end up dying of a heart attack!" Kestrelpaw exclaimed, sure that she would faint any time soon because of all the surprise and excitement that had happened that day. First, realising that Sun had been listening to their devious conversation; second, discovering that she actually could control the weather; third, discovering that Mistral was actually her mother and fourth discovering that the strange tortoiseshell, WeatherClan she-cat was actually...
"Squirrelpaw?" Harepaw and Coal had caught up with Kestrelpaw's train of thought, and were staring at the tortoiseshell she-cat as though the world had just ended and they were actually in StarClan.
"Nope. Well... I used to be called that. Now, I'm known as 'Clement' – and I'm part of WeatherClan. They decided that they couldn't let me die, and they had other uses for me – so they allowed me to become part of WeatherClan!" Clement exclaimed delightedly, totally forgetting her previous hurt in the light of her friends' surprise. Then she frowned as she looked at the other cats. "Where's Sparrowpaw?"
"He's gone – we don't know where," Harepaw said harshly, and Kestrelpaw shot him a surprised look. He hadn't seemed to be so touchy about the subject before, but then a lot of things had changed about Harepaw since they had left SkyClan.
"Can we go back to SkyClan?" Kestrelpaw interrupted, suddenly feeling an overwhelming need to be back with her 'family' and friends in her old Clan. No matter what happened, she knew that she would always want to go back to SkyClan. She was eager to go back there right now, and felt irritated that she would have to wait for even the teensiest bit longer.
Mistral considered the companions, and then looked at Sun questioningly. It was clear that the choice was up to Sun and whether the black she-cat decided to follow through on her promise. Kestrelpaw felt a twinge of unease – had she been right to trust Sun? Would Sun back out at the last minute and allow more of Kestrelpaw's Clan members to die as a result. Kestrelpaw had no idea whether the drought was improving or not, and she sincerely hoped that Stonebrook was still alive.
"Do you want to return to WeatherClan, Star?" Mistral asked Sun, her gaze sharp and without a hint of the warmth they had previously shown.
"No. But I will return to WeatherClan because I agreed to help Kestrelpaw and her friends," Sun glared at Kestrelpaw as though Kestrelpaw had somehow forced her into the agreement, and then she turned back to Mistral. "I want you to return her to her Clan, along with Harepaw and Coal."
There was a very short pause, and then Coal broke in with a panicked voice. "No! I don't want to go to SkyClan. I want to stay with the Others."
"What?" Kestrelpaw and Harepaw exclaimed in unison, staring in shock at Coal. 'Shock' was an emotion that Kestrelpaw was becoming increasingly familiar with, thanks to the events of the past day. It wasn't an emotion that she was too fond of, and she wished that she could live her life without so many shocks.
"I... I... want to stay with the Others," Coal said in a firm voice, and before he could even explain why, Mistral nodded her head in agreement with him. Perhaps she had foreseen this, and was thus her surprise was nearly nonexistent. Kestrelpaw fumed at the thought that somebody could have foresight – that made life way too unfair.
Another pause, and then Mistral looked at Kestrelpaw and Harepaw with a faint glimmer of amusement in her usually emotionless green eyes. After all, Kestrelpaw was her daughter – how could she fail to show at least some kind of emotion in front of her? "Do you both want to return to SkyClan? Tornado has already arranged for the drought to be called off, so by the time you get there your Clan ought to be recovering. I, personally, don't want you to join WeatherClan, Kestrelpaw. So I'm very happy for you to go back to where you were brought up."
Kestrelpaw and Harepaw nodded vehemently in agreement. They both said definitively. "Yes. I want to go back." and then they looked at each other in surprise and amusement that they had voiced one another's thoughts. Life really was changing somewhat around here.
"Say goodbye to Coal and Clement, then. You will be sent there as soon as you've finished that," Mistral said hurriedly, not wishing to wait around any longer and waste her time. There were plenty of other things for a WeatherClan cat to do than be with her only daughter and get to know her better – like running the world's weather and making sure that just the right amount of cats knew about WeatherClan's existence.
"Goodbye!" Kestrelpaw headbutted Clement affectionately, and then turned to Coal in haste. "And goodbye to you, too. I hope you... um... enjoy your new life with the Others."
"Goodbye," Harepaw nodded briefly to both Clement and Coal in his usual, un-affectionate way.
"You'll have a wonderful life, Kestrelpaw, I just know it! And you will, too, Harepaw," Clement's eyes looked suspiciously misty. She was sniffling ever-so-slightly. "Don't worry. I'll make sure that Sparrowpaw is safe."
"Thank you," Kestrelpaw said stiffly. She no longer held her 'brother' in high regard. There wasn't even the excuse that he was her brother any more – he wasn't! She thought of him now with barely any emotion at all. His actions had done their work perfectly: he had totally alienated Kestrelpaw and Harepaw from him.
"Goodbye," Coal whispered, looking happy and sad at the same time. Kestrelpaw strongly suspected that the reasons for Coal wanting to stay with the Others had something to do with the fact that he had found a certain somebody in the Others that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. Nevertheless, she didn't have time to question him about it as, before she could say another word, the world began to spin around her wildly.
So... she would never know exactly why she had been dumped in SkyClan – Mistral's explanation was not the best one – and she also wouldn't know the answer to a great many more mysteries that had taken place during her rather short journey. In fact, the amount of unanswered things far eclipsed the amount of answered ones, and Kestrelpaw's head hurt just to think of them. Those mysteries were what she could think about in the future though, when she had some spare time and was back in her home.
Maybe one day, Kestrelpaw thought as she fell hard on her face just outside SkyClan's camp. Maybe one day I'll know the answers. But not now. Now, there are more important things to worry about
As if on cue, she heard her mother's voice – Stonebrook's voice – right next to her, sounding breathy and astonished. "Kestrelpaw?"
OMG! Finally! Done! There will be an epilogue, but I'm so happy that I've finally finished the story. Gawd, it was really beginning to drag, and the last chapter (this one) has a rushed air about it. I'm really sorry about that, but I don't want to edit it because I kinda like it the way it is. You know?