"What possessed you to sneak off to the Moontree by yourself?!" Kestrelfeather's mew was hoarse from his cough. His green eyes blazed with anger as he paced in front of his apprentice, tail lashing.
Heronpaw bowed his head and stared at the ground. He had snuck back into camp with Hawkpaw earlier that morning and tried to slip into his nest unnoticed. His hopes were dashed when he found Kestrelfeather waiting for them. Hawkpaw was lightly chastised and sent away, leaving Heronpaw to fend for himself.
"Well?" Kestrelfeather demanded. Heronpaw lifted his head and met his mentor's eyes.
"I believed that it was the right thing to do." He said, unflinching.
Kestrelfeather's eyes widened. "You couldn't trust our leader and medicine cat?"
"I was trusting our medicine cat." Heronpaw said. He still held Kestrelfeather's gaze. The auburn tom opened his mouth but no sound came out. He stared at Heronpaw for a few heartbeats longer before breaking eye contact and shaking his head.
"You are to stay in camp and tend to the elder's every need for the next quarter-moon." He said. His shoulders drooped. Heronpaw blinked. He had been expecting a far greater punishment. Instead, Kestrelfeather turned from his apprentice and padded away slowly. His tail dragged along the frozen earth.
Heronpaw watched the warrior go, unnerved. Where had Kestrelfeather's fight gone?
The sun had risen by now, yet the camp was still. Coughing and groans came from the warrior's den. A few cats, Swiftwing and Hawkpaw sat around the meager fresh-kill pile. Heronpaw looked around, his heart sinking. There was nothing he could do for his Clan now. Dawnheart was their hope.
With a sigh, Heronpaw trudged over to the elder's den. . . .
It was past sunhigh by the time Heronpaw had finished caring for the elders. They had stayed uncharacteristically quiet and moody the entire time. Beepelt's absence hung over the den like a low mist. The two healthy elders clearly missed their sick denmate.
Heronpaw hadn't minded the quiet. He had been eager to finish his duties. He needed to find somecat to tell him what had happened while he was gone. To his disappointment and irritation, he had emerged from the elder's den to find an empty clearing. Every cat but he was either resting, ill, or out hunting. He would have to wait.
Figuring that since he had finished the task Kestrelfeather had given him, Heronpaw padded over to the meager fresh-kill pile and picked up a small, rather shriveled mouse. He wrinkled his nose but it was better than nothing. He took the mouse over to a shaded spot above the tangled mess of exposed roots of the Root-Tree. He settled down next to the trunk and began to thoughtfully eat his meal.
Lost in thought, Heronpaw didn't hear anyone approaching. He jumped, then, when someone settled down beside him. He looked up, startled, to see a familiar kindly face.
"Beepelt?" Heronpaw gaped. "I thought you were ill!"
Beepelt wrapped his thick tail around his paws. "I feel much better now." he said. It was true. His eyes were bright with health and his voice had no trace of a wheeze or a cough. Relief flooded through Heronpaw. If a cat as old as Beepelt could recover without the need for catmint, surely no one else was in any danger. Perhaps the Clan wasn't as threatened as he thought.
Beepelt eyed Heronpaw. Heronpaw immediately felt that he had been rude. He pushed the half-eaten mouse towards the elder.
"You can have this." he said.
Beepelt purred and shook his head. "Oh, I'm not hungry." he said in his jovial way. "I was hoping you could tell me where you ran off to?"
Heronpaw felt his ears grow hot. For some reason he hadn't expected the cats in the medicine den to have heard of his escapade. But of course they had. Petalpaw had vanished along with him.
"It's a long story." Heronpaw said slowly, not meeting Beepelt's gaze.
Beepelt settled down onto his belly. "I have all the time in the forest." he said. His eyes sparkled with amusement. Heronpaw didn't quite know what was funny.
"Go on." Beepelt urged.
Heronpaw dove into his story. He left out his vision of Dovekit. That was private. Beepelt listened intently the whole time. When Heronpaw finished, Beepelt continued to stare thoughtfully into his face. After a few moments he spoke.
"Is there something bothering you, young'un?"
Heronpaw blinked in surprise. Didn't Beepelt want to know any details about the journey? Wasn't he impressed by Heronpaw's antics? The old cat usually beamed with pride if Heronpaw caught so much as a mouse.
"I'm fine." Heronpaw lied.
Beepelt snorted and shook his head. "You go through something like that and tell me youre 'fine'?"
Heronpaw flicked an ear. He didn't know what to say to that.
Beepelt looked out at the empty clearing. A faraway look stole into his brown eyes. "All this misfortune and turmoil lately…" he murmured. "Reminds me of some old stories I know."
Heronpaw stayed quiet. There was a moment of silence.
"What did you say distracted the PineClan warriors?" Beepelt said suddenly.
Heronpaw froze. He looked at the elder, confused. He couldn't remember how he had told that part of the story. What is it he had said? He swallowed hard. How relieving it would be to tell somecat what he had been seeing. What a weight would be lifted from his chest. He took a deep breath.
"I asked for help." He said quietly.
To Heronpaw's surprise, Beepelt nodded sagely. He didn't ask who Heronpaw had asked. He seemed to already know.
"She helped you, didn't she?" Beepelt said.
Heronpaw stared. "I…"
"She's been around a long time, you know. In stories and legends." Beepelt continued. "Remember that old tale I told you about the three kits who snuck out of camp?"
Heronpaw thought hard. He had been so young when Beepelt had told him that story on that bitterly cold, impossibly sad night when Dovekit had died. He remembered a detail that stuck out to him like a sore claw.
"A white cat had shown the apprentice the way." he breathed. His mind began to race.
"Yes. She appears all over Clan history helping those who ask for it. Some say she represents luck or StarClan's guidance but I never really believed that."
Heronpaw was staring at his half-eaten mouse, hardly seeing it. "Have you ever seen her?" he asked.
Beepelt sighed and closed his eyes. "No. But I wished to."
"Do you know anything about her?"
Beepelt opened his eyes. "I get a sense of her. Not much fact to go on. But I think she died in the cold, which is ironic because she was named for the snow."
Heronpaw jerked his head up and stared at Beepelt. "How do you know that?"
Beepelt shrugged. "Not sure." he didn't seem bothered at all.
Something prodded at the back of Heronpaw's mind. A vivid memory of crashing through ice into freezing water, and a pair of terrified green eyes staring sightlessly from behind a sheet of ice.
"She did die in the cold." Heronpaw whispered.
Beepelt nodded. "I thought so."
The pair sat in silence for a while. Heronpaw's mind was racing. Could Beepelt really know what he was talking about?
Could she really be such an ancient spirit?
. . .
Some time later, Heronpaw found himself perched alone on a low hanging pine branch. He didn't remember when Beepelt had left him, he just knew that he had come up here when he found himself without company.
Heronpaw closed his eyes and concentrated.
For a reason Heronpaw couldn't quite place, he found it important to dwell on the white she-cat's name. Beepelt had said that she had been named for the snow. What name was hers? Snowfeather? Snowfur? Snowtail? There were too many options. Maybe she could give him a sign.
Please come out. He thought. I want to know who you are. A cold breeze cut through his fur and made him shiver. He felt a dusting of snow fall onto his shoulders from the higher branches of the tree.
Snow...breeze?
He sat motionless. The sounds of the Clan below drifted up to his ears, distracting him. They had been quiet all day but now, when Heronpaw needed to concentrate, they were making a commotion.
The noises got louder. Heronpaw opened his eyes, annoyed. What was-?
A low, keening cry interrupted his thoughts. His blood ran cold.
"Beepelt! No!" Another cry sounded.
Heronpaw jumped up and scrambled down the tree. He landed on the forest floor and pushed through a hawthorn bush and into the main clearing.
Elkhart and Shadowgrove were dragging a limp body out into the middle of camp. Plumleaf padded beside them. Her fur was rumpled and her steps were unsteady. Her eyes looked as if she had not slept in days.
Foxtail and Hollowtree were trying to get near the body of their denmate but Whiteshade was holding them back. Cats were pouring out of every den. Their eyes were huge with fear and grief. Heronpaw watched, numb, as the warriors set Beepelt's body down at the center of the clearing.
Confusion and shock battled in Heronpaw's head. He had just seen Beepelt. He was fine! How could he be down there now, looking so thin and sickly, when just a short time ago he had looked so full and strong.
Coldness seeped into Heronpaw's limbs as he looked down at Beepelt's unmoving figure. He remembered Dovekit and how healthy and full of life she had been in StarClan, a stark difference to her thin and sickly existence when she was alive. Could Beepelt have...could he have seen...he didn't know what to think.
The cats of CedarClan began to gather around their fallen Clanmate. Plumleaf blocked the way and raised her tail.
"Beepelt has died of greencough." She announced. Gasps and wails rippled through the cats. Heronpaw's stomach flipped.
"Only cats that are already exposed to sickness may groom him for burial." Plumleaf continued.
"He's our denmate! It's our duty to bury him!" Foxtail cried from behind Whiteshade. She tried to approach Beepelt but was blocked by Hollowtree. The old she-cat looked up at her mate with a look of stark betrayal in her eyes.
Hollowtree bent and whispered something in her ears but Foxtail shook her head and pulled away.
Elkhart and Shadowgrove had begun to groom the fallen elder. They both had streaming eyes and paused every once in a while, to cough. Other cats with similar symptoms began to pad forward from the warrior's den and settle down around their Clanmate.
With a horrible lurch of his belly, Heronpaw recognized his mother and Kestrelfeather among them. They sat around Beepelt and began grooming him.
He wanted to bound forward and push them away from the threat. He wanted to protect them from the contagious greencough that could kill even the healthiest warrior, but rationale kept his paws where they were. They all had streaming noses and wheezing breath. They had already been exposed.
Instead, he watched as a pitifully small group of cats gathered together on the opposite side of the clearing; Hawkpaw, Crowfrost, Swiftwing, Whiteshade, and the remaining elders. They were the only cats left that weren't either sick or badly injured from the battle.
Heronpaw took a step back towards the edge of camp. There was nothing he could do. He looked around, noting that no cat had even seemed to notice his presence. With one final glance at his mother he turned and slipped behind the pine tree and into the forest.
Once he was outside of the camp Heronpaw breathed deeply of the quiet forest scents. He paced underneath a tall cedar. Part of him wanted to race off to Twolegplace and find Dawnheart so he could help. The other part of him knew that was a ridiculous idea. StarClan knew how long it would take Heronpaw to find his friend among the maze-like twoleg nests.
He just had to wait. Wait and pray.
He took a deep, calming breath and turned to continue pacing.
And there she was.
She stood a tail-length away from Heronpaw. Her white fur glowed with a soft light that he hadn't seen about her before. Her eyes had changed from a misty white to a cool green. Her plumy tail swayed behind her silently.
Heronpaw swallowed, expecting the cold dread that usually accompanied her presence, but it never came. Her head tilted to one side and her eyes shone with genuine, deep emotion.
"You found me." She said in a soft, airy voice. It shook with relief.
Heronpaw's feet were glued to the ground. He stared at the cat in front of him, not knowing quite what to do. He had thought that he was ready for this. He had discovered her like Dovekit had told him, but now what?
He settled on a simple question.
"Why me?"
She looked at him and opened her mouth. Her ears flattened and her eyes unfocused for a moment before she met his gaze again.
"You called out to me. You saw me." She said.
Heronpaw shook his head. "I don't understand."
Snowbreeze stepped forward and fixed him with an intense stare.
"You don't need to understand. What you need to know is that it is happening again." She said. Her voice had gained a note of desperation.
"What is happening again?" Heronpaw demanded.
"The darkness that took the others and I." Snowbreeze said. "It's found another mind to corrupt."
Heronpaw's mind whirled. "The darkness?" he said. "Do you mean Greencough?"
Snowbreeze shook her head. "That is a sickness of the body. This is a sickness of the mind." Her last word was cut off as she stiffened and looked around, her ears pricked and her spine rigid. Heronpaw jumped at her sudden movement and looked around to see what had spooked her.
He squinted into the forest, trying to discern any unusual shapes among the evening shadows. There was nothing. Heronpaw turned back to Snowbreeze. She was still staring into the trees, eyes wide.
"I have questions." Heronpaw ventured. Snowbreeze came out of her trance and faced him again.
"I don't have all the answers. I was only a victim." She said. Her eyes flashed with pain. Heronpaw shivered as he remembered the pure terror of being trapped beneath the frozen lake. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to chase away the memory.
"Why aren't you in StarClan?" He said, opening his eyes again.
Snowbreeze dropped her chin and flattened her ears. A sudden look of anger split her face into a snarl.
"They forgot us." She hissed. "They tried to act like it never happened."
"Some cats remember you." Heronpaw said, thinking of Beepelt. He felt the pain behind her anger. It stuck his heart like thorns in his pelt. He took a step towards the she-cat. She backed away from his advance. He froze.
Snowbreeze blinked and the fury in her eyes faded as she met his gaze.
"They remember what they were told." She said bitterly. "They don't know the truth."
"Then tell me." Heronpaw pleaded. "I can help you."
Snowbreeze gave a short sigh and looked away from him.
"I'm dead." She said. Her tone had changed to bittersweet. "No cat can help me now." She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Then she looked up and fixed Heronpaw with an intense stare.
"I want to stop what happened to me from ever happening again." She said.
Heronpaw nodded. A weight lifted off of his chest and he breathed in a shaky gulp of frigid air. Finally, he had his answer. This spirit that had been haunting his life was no longer shrouded in mystery.
Then a new weight began to form in his belly. Something terrible had happened to Snowbreeze many moons ago, something so terrible that StarClan themselves pretended it had never happened. A whole new cascade of fears and questions pelted his brain like hail. His breathing shallowed.
"What happened?" He asked. He couldn't stop his voice from shaking.
Snowbreeze fluffed out her pelt against a nonexistent wind.
"There was a warrior in my Clan who thought the warrior code was everything." She began. Her eyes focused on something in the distance that Heronpaw couldn't see.
"He believed that the code was never to be broken, challenged, or changed. For most of the time that I knew him, he was a model warrior. He was the moral compass of the Clan. Every cat knew that he would become leader one day." She closed her eyes.
"Until he changed. He began advocating for harsher and harsher punishments for even the smallest of misdeeds. Bonestar saw this change and gave another cat the deputyship when it came time." Snowbreeze opened her eyes and looked past Heronpaw's shoulder. There was pain in her gaze.
Heronpaw turned and felt his jaw drop open. Several foxlengths of the forest behind him had changed. It was lush with the greenery of Greenleaf again. A fallen tree was standing tall once more. The edges of the vision blurred and bled back to Leaf-bare. A large black tom stood among the curling ferns. He wasn't facing them.
"Thunderstrike." Snowbreeze breathed. There was a note of awe, pain, and, strangely, longing in her mew. She padded past Heronpaw and into the vision. The large tom turned and greeted her by touching his nose to her ear. Snowbreeze closed her eyes at his touch.
Heronpaw suddenly understood. She had loved this cat before he had changed, and she still loved this memory of him.
"The denial of the deputyship broke him." Snowbreeze said as she drew her tail along the tom's flank. "He began to doubt himself and his own loyalty. Even the assurance of cats he loved couldn't convince him that he was a good and noble warrior."
The vision began to fade. Ferns wilted and grew brown. The tree fell and died. Thunderstrike stood amidst the rapidly withering forest. He began to walk away from his mate. An unnatural darkness waited for him between the trees. Snowbreeze stood back and watched as the tom was entirely consumed by the shadows.
"By that time, it was too late. To us it looked as if he had fallen to his own fear and insecurity, but I know better now." She hung her head. "I should have known better then." She whispered. She stood still in her grief for a moment before turning back to Heronpaw.
"That is not the only sin I am guilty of. I found comfort in the company of a warrior from another Clan." There was no shame in her posture. She knew what she had done and she owned it. She didn't care what Heronpaw thought of her.
"I thought that my kits would make him realize what he had lost. I thought that if he knew what his change had driven me to, it would wake him up." Her eyes widened as if she was remembering something fearful. "I was wrong. Something broke in him that day. The final brace keeping his madness at bay splintered."
She clamped her jaws shut. Heronpaw could almost hear the wail of pain that she had silenced.
"What did he do?" Heronpaw asked softly. Snowbreeze squeezed her eyes shut.
"He killed them. Any cat he deemed a traitor to the warrior code deserved to die. Riverheart crossed into PineClan territory while chasing a squirrel. Thunderstrike chased her onto the Thunderpath in turn. The young warrior Mapleflight loved the medicine cat apprentice. He had confessed to her and was waiting to meet her when Thunderstrike attacked." Her voice was ragged but she kept going. Her story needed to be told.
"That's when he turned on me. He followed me out of camp one night. I was going to break contact with the father of my kits. They didn't need him, and neither did I. As you saw I never got there.
"Once I was dead, I could see it; a dark shroud hanging over Thunderstrike's head. It whispered in his ear, telling him that StarClan would honor his great deeds. He obeyed its every command. I went to StarClan and demanded to know what was happening to him. They said it was madness."
Thunderstrike's form reappeared from the distant darkness. He was walking slowly and deliberately towards his mate. A dark mist seemed to flow outward like water from his edges. Snowbreeze gave his return no heed.
"I knew it wasn't true. StarClan refused to help me so I turned my back on them." Her voice had grown bitter. "But there was nothing I could do to save him. I was tossed away from his dreams by an unknown force. In my desperation I took to appearing to him in his waking hours, but he ignored me.
"Inevitably, he found another cat to punish. Three kits had gone missing from the nursery. The whole Clan was in a panic." Snowbreeze's voice cracked.
"Thunderstrike found an apprentice standing over the injured and unconscious kits with bloodied paws. There was no mercy. He struck the apprentice down without a thought."
The vision of Thunderstrike was getting closer now. Heronpaw could make out the glint of green eyes, full of hatred. He had to remind himself that it wasn't real. Snowbreeze was just showing him her memory.
"But then the kits woke up. They asked where their hero had gone. They apologized for making everycat worry. They just wanted to see the outside of camp!"
Heronpaw felt a chill run across his skin.
"They had been attacked by a weasel and the apprentice had come to their rescue. Thunderstrike had murdered a truly innocent cat." At Snowbreeze's words, Thunderstrike stopped dead. He was only a fox length from her now.
"It shattered him." Snowbreeze choked out. "His mind was freed from his torment by its destruction. The only thing left for him to do was enact punishment."
"He killed himself." Heronpaw finished, understanding. Snowbreeze had re-lived enough of this horror for him. He didn't want her to have to speak of her mate's suicide.
The white she-cat turned to face Heronpaw. The scent of raw grief hit Heronpaw like a wave of thundering water. He flinched away from the suffocating pain. After a few frenzied heartbeats the grief began to ebb away.
"Now he wanders outside of StarClan like I do, endlessly punishing himself for his crimes." Snowbreeze continued. She took a moment to compose herself. Then she met Heronpaw's gaze again. "Whatever force that stole Thunderstrike's mind is back. I can feel its influence hanging over the forest."
Heronpaw flicked his eyes back to the unmoving image of Thunderstrike. The blackness still whisked off of his pelt but his body was as still as stone. Heronpaw tore his gaze away.
"Who is it targeting?" He asked.
Snowbreeze shook her head. "I don't know. I feel it everywhere."
Heronpaw shivered. An unseen entity could be poisoning the minds of his Clanmates and there was no way he could know?
"What do I do?" he said. His tail twitched. He could feel the vision's gaze boring into him.
"Watch for dramatic changes in cats you know." Snowbreeze said. She padded up to him. Her paws made no sound or print as they skimmed the snow. "Now that you've found me, I can help more."
Heronpaw nodded but found that the continued presence of Thunderstrike's shadow was becoming too much to bear.
"Snowbreeze," he began. "Can you take away the vision?"
She cocked her head.
"I did." She said.
Thunderstrike lunged.