PHANTOM PAIN.

TWO.

I feel weird. I feel really weird.

I'm looking at myself in this puddle, and I was going to stab it with my paw to disturb the reflection and make my face go away.

So that's what I finally do.

I'm maybe two fox-lengths out of camp, but I can hear through the thickets how excited everyone is to go to this forest-wide gathering of monumental importance. They're all going to be making these huge important decisions about the futures of our Clans and our livelihoods once it's over. The Gathering. Of course.

My back paw is stuck in a thicket or something torn lose from the camp's exterior barrier and I've walked almost to the camp entrance before I notice it snagged in my fur and dragging in the leaves and dirt. I have to sit down to work on pulling it out, because I've got this pain in my back leg where it's snagged. It's sort of a deep pain in the joint where it meets the rest of my body.

I'll tell you, I'm a young cat. I've only been a warrior for about six months now. Old enough to have my own apprentice, finally, but not old enough to feel like I'm much more than…

Or whatever.

When I'm sitting on my bottom wrestling with this enormous rotten thicket, two warriors burst out of the camp entrance and almost slam into me. "Hey, Tawnyfur!" One of them says to me. It's Briarmouth. He gives me a friendly old tail-swish. "We were just going to go grab something before we leave, you want to join?"

"Uhhhhhhhhhhh." I say. I'm just still fighting this thicket. "What?"

"We're going hunting." Briarmouth says. "You hungry?"

"You know, pass." I say. This guy's got a mouth like a rabid badger. "Pick me up a vole, though." I couldn't be less hungry. I thought I was hungry. But I'm not. I can't remember if I'm hungry, actually. StarClan, I feel so weird.

I kick the thicket away from me at long last like it's something rotten, and wander down into camp.

I'm moving pretty slow, but ugh. Too many cats. Cats everywhere. Just emerging through the briar tunnel is like getting hit by a wave of sound. All the meowing and blabbering. Heatherstar is regally passing to the leader's den with her head held high and three of her senior warriors flanking her. I'm going to swish my tail at her as a hi, but I know she's not even going to see me.

I've got to get some poppy seeds for this leg of mine. I think that's what I'm doing. I think something might have happened to me just now. When I was sitting out there looking at my face in the puddle, but I have no idea what it could have been. There's this Gathering coming. That's what everyone's so buzzed about. Right…

"Tawny! Tawnyyyy!"

Before I reach the medicine cat's den I'm intercepted by Shallowtail skidding in front of me, trembling about, wiggling with excitement, slapping me with her tail. "Tawn!" She says. "You look like someone threw crowfood on you! Not like – you look bad – just like you look bad, because you look sad or something." She pulls a frown. "Why so sad?"

"Shallowtail." I say. I look, very slowly, all the way around the camp in a steady circle, and then I face her very close, very serious. I mean I really need this flighty she-cat to look right at me, and only at me, for once. "I don't remember what I was just doing."

"What do you mean?" She chirps. "You went out for a drink of water because you said drinking soaked moss was a good way to purge and nothing more." She wrinkles up her face. "I mean I thought that was kind of weird thing to say."

I'm gazing at the exit from camp. "I just ran into Briarmouth and Reedpelt at the camp entrance, but I feel like that already happened to me."

"Yeah, those two are always running out to 'grab' something for dinner." Shallowtail wiggles about in one spot. "Like, what are they even doing out there? You know? Alone in the forest together…"

"No, no, no, no," I am laughing at her. I'm not sure what I'm laughing at. "I mean I already talked to them just like that and – and I already talked to you!"

"Whaaaat?" Shallowtail meows.

"My leg hurts." I say.

"Oh no, is it getting worse?"

"I have to go get some poppy seeds." I decide. I practically run to the medicine cat den. Shallowtail is calling, "Tawny, wait! Wait!" Behind me.

I nose my way into Blackwing's den, and it's so dark in there. While my eyes are still adjusting, I'm greeted by a soft, herb-smelling paw lightly against the side of my cheek.

"Tawnyfur." a voice whispers. It's Thistlepaw, Blackwing's apprentice. My eyes adjust and I see the round, wide-eyed face of this calico little apprentice.

"Where's Blackwing?" I ask.

"She's in the back, treating Greenwhisker…"

"He has an adder bite!" I say. "But it's his own fault he developed an appetite for lizard and now goes hunting for them where adders live."

"He can hear you." Thistlepaw whispers.

"Listen, I'm just going to…" and then I shove straight past her. Poor she-cat. She's got the social skills of dry algae. StarClan, it smells in here. Smells like medicine. Everything these medicine cats do is smelly. Even they kind of smell. Oh, I feel so weird. "Blackwing!" I say.

Blackwing is bent over Greenwhisker's orange form, he's sprawled lazily in the back, his cobweb-wrapped paw stuck straight in the air. Blackwing comes to greet me with a nose touch, but then I lean away from her, I lean really far away. "Whoa…" I say. "…whoa…"

"Are you okay?" Blackwing asks.

I look around the entire den. I see Greenwhisker half-asleep on his back and his foot in the air. I point my entire paw at Blackwing. "I need some poppy seeds."

"Why?"

"My leg." I kick it out. "My leg hurts."

"Come lie down, I have a nest for you."

"No, you don't need to pull my leg around. It only hurts when you pull it backward…" I stretch my leg for her, standing in one spot. "See that?" I stretch it too hard and a pain like fire stabs all the way through my body into my brain. I almost fall over, and, overwhelmed by pain and how absolutely-profoundly terrified I feel, I'm flooded by agony and emotion. "Why does my leg hurt?" I'm begging.

"Tawnyfur – on no." Blackwing stoops beside me, and caresses me with both of her paws. "Lie down, let me look at that leg. It looks like it's gotten a lot worse?"

"No, it's not my leg." I say. "My leg hasn't gotten worse. My leg is the same. It's the same that it was." I'm babbling. Both Blackwing and Thistlepaw are staring at me raptly, and so is Greenwhisker even, upside down in his nest. "Do you ever feel like you're repeating something you've already lived before?"

"Yes." Blackwing says. "It's a phenomenon that happens frequently for cats with a heightened connection to StarClan. It's happened to me any times, as a medicine cat."

"So like you really already experienced something, and it's happening to you all over again?"

"No, it's more recollection of certain key events, like watching from the outside."

"But I'm not on the outside." I'm peering all around the den under their scrutiny. "All I feel is empty." I spring up suddenly, as suddenly as my leg allows. "I have to go get ready for the Gathering."

"What about your leg?" Blackwing says, and her voice escalates quickly in volume because I'm leaving so quickly. "Do you want some poppy seeds?"

I skid to a stop and turn around all of a sudden. I point at her again. "It's phantom pain." I say. "I can't do anything about my leg. It's phantom pain."

The camp outside is even more crowded than it was before. I've never been more confused in my entire life. Shallowtail is chattering eagerly with Sunwing, this pale-orange tom with the whitest paws and the whitest belly and the greenest eyes. I'm pretty sure they're becoming mates. Well, Shallowtail thinks they're becoming mates. Brackenclaw is with them too. He waves his tail exactly. Brackenclaw thinks we're becoming mates. I think. Actually, I don't care what this tom thinks. I don't like him at all. It's all pretending. "I'd like to watch you climb some trees. I want to see if you're as strong as you look." Stupid. Foxdung. Strictly for the birds. I decide I'm not even going to go over there because I don't want to get close to that guy.

Shallowtail, though, waves her tail at me eagerly and gets up to dash through camp to join me. "Tawny!" She calls. She skids in a puff of dirt at my side. "Hey, you should come chat with me and Sunwing, Brackenclaw is there." She shivers in excitement, like she's living through me or something.

"No way, that guy is the worst." I say. "He's disgusting, Shallowtail."

"Whaat? I thought you really liked him! What about that trip to the lake you guys went on? You were so happy after."

"Yeah, the lake was fun." I say. "It was fun. It was fun that he did nothing but spend the entire time showing off how he could hunt as well as a RiverClan cat, and then the one he caught for the two of us was like eating a bunch of pine needles. But you know what? I don't care. I don't care if he actually sucks at hunting, or anything like that. I don't need a mate who is any of those things. I would never have said this out loud, but last night, the stuff he said when we were walking to the Gathering…"

"What Gathering? Last moon?"

"No – just – last night. About climbing the trees and stuff. You know what, Shallowtail, I'm having a really weird night, okay? I think something might have happened to me – like something really big happened, and I'm not sure what's going on. I have to go talk to Heatherstar, apparently."

"Oh, someone told you?" Shallowtail straightens up. "Because that actually reminds me, I was supposed to tell you that Heatherstar wanted to talk to you, but now I guess I don't have to."

"No," I say. I'm shaking my head, and turning for Heatherstar's den. "I feel like you did tell me, but I know that's wrong. But you did. You told me."

"Well, good luck." Shallowtail stands dejected.

I wander really slowly to Heatherstar's gloomy den and go straight inside instead of waiting for her like I usually would. "Tawnyfur," she says. "I'm glad you're here."

"Mom." I say.

Heatherstar's in the process of eating a squirrel. "Want to share?" She offers me.

"Okay," I say. I stoop to start nibbling this decimated squirrel with her. I realize I'm actually really hungry now that I didn't take those poppy seeds this time.

She turns in one spot in her den. "You look glum."

"I think I am." I say. "Glum, I mean. I think glum would finally be the accurate word to describe what I'm feeling."

"Tawnyfur, the Gathering's tonight." Heatherstar looks so somber, even strict. "If this Gathering doesn't go well diplomatically, this could be the end of the peaceful agreement we've maintained for over two generations now."

"I don't think it's our problem." I say. I'm staring deeply into the guts of the squirrel, tearing at it distantly with only the very tips of my claws. "How are you, mom? I feel like we don't really talk anymore, and you're always busy…"

"I am busy." Heatherstar says wryly. "You mind sharing some of that? It's my kill, after all."

"Yeah, take all of it." I mumble.

"I'm worried about this glum attitude of yours." She says.

"I know, I'm so glum." I'm shaking my head at the floor. I rub my paw into my face, and I squeeze my eyes shut really tight. "You know – I think I might have passed out or fallen at some point this evening, or I'm still passed out somewhere, and it's really messing with my head."

"Well, you are prone to bouts of random sleep." Heatherstar remarks. "Which is a kind way of saying you're a little lazy."

"I thought you said you were worried at me."

"I am worried about you."

"Why?"

"Because you're unmotivated, you're withdrawn, you eat way more than you hunt, you don't like patrolling, or even heading to the borders, you sleep way too long, your apprentice has complained to my deputy about how poor her training is going, and most of all Tawnyfur, because of the way you talk."

"You know what." I say. I get to my feet. "I don't know why you just talk to me like this, mom. You say you want me to come see you, and then you have this proposition for me to keep me out of battle that's really just a means of telling me that I'm such a disappointment to you, but really you want me to come see you so you can remind me how I'm so unmotivated and withdrawn and fat."

"Good StarClan, Tawnyfur. Settle down. Sit down."

"No." But I sit down.

Heatherstar regards me for a little while, with the squirrel cooling on the sand beside her, and then tilts her head to one side. "How did you know I planned to propose you stay out of the war?" She meowed.

"Because I have this really bad feeling I already had this conversation with you." I say desperately. I nod, grimly, at the floor. "Yeah, we definitely already talked about all this. And how you hope I choose to fight and choose the good of this Clan but you know I won't, because I'm a failure and a disappointment, but you don't want me to resent you, which – let's face it, mom. Who cares if I resent you. Okay? You don't."

Heatherstar is shaking her head at me, all baffled and a little offended. "Where is this all coming from now? How did you know all this? I was trying to do you a favor – a favor for my daughter, who I love, and want to protect, and don't want to see die needlessly in battle! Does that make me such a bad cat?"

"Well, why didn't you say that part the first time?!"

"What time?"

Heatherstar is totally incredulous. I'm staring at the inside of my squeezed-shut eyelids. She puts her paw on my chest. "Tawnyfur." She says, softly. "Why don't you have some dinner and get ready for the Gathering?"

I get up like I'm numb. "Okay." And I stagger out of her den on stiff, dead limbs.

I don't know what's going on with me. I can't believe how bad I feel. I guess you could always say I've been a bit of a downer for most of my life – well, the cats who know me would probably say, including my own mother and Clan leader – but I've never felt anything like this. This is – emptiness. This is the emptiest I've ever felt. Like I'm watching all meaning drain out of the things around me, the very motions of my life. Maybe even reality, even. I'm thinking very seriously now of heading to the warriors den to just turn in early, skip the Gathering and end this Dark Forest-level horror that seems to have taken over my life.

But before I can go crash out, walking against the crowded lines of cats preparing to leave for the Gathering, tail dragging in the dirt, Shallowtail appears at my side. "Tawny!" She's saying. "I've been waving at you, Tawn. What are you doing? Come eat with us."

"Okay," I mutter, in a tiny little voice. I follow Shallowtail to the fresh-kill pile. She keeps having to slow her pace to keep up with me. And then she flounces down beside Sunwing. They're as adorable as their kids will probably be. I stand awkwardly over the fresh-kill pile.

"So what did Heatherstar want?" Shallowtail asks.

"Motherly stuff." I say.

I feel the tap of a tail on my shoulder behind me, and I know it's Brackenclaw without having to look. He lowers his eyes, his whiskers twitch invitingly. "Hey Tawnyfur."

"Hey…Brackenclaw." I say. I move away from him and his tail.

"Are you looking forward to the Gathering?" he asks with a purr. He stoops to pick up a vole.

"Yeah – you know what I am, is hungry. I'm really, really hungry." I'm saying very loud. "It turns out, when you spend your whole evening not taking a bunch of poppy seeds, you get really hungry. And so…"

"Have this one." Brackenclaw drops the vole at my feet. He beams at me.

I stop my rant mid-sentence, and sit awkwardly to bite into the vole with a soft crunch.

Crunch.

My neck snapping against the protrusion of the fallen tree's old branch. Crunching. Crunch.

I died.

The vole drops out of my slack mouth. The entire ground beneath me sort of moves, or shudders, and I struggle to stay on all four paws. I sit all the way back from the fresh-kill pile, the vole, my friends.

"Tawnyfur?" Shallowtail asks. "You okay?"

I spring to my feet. I've got to get out of here. I'm pretty sure I'm going to puke. I keep hearing this crunch in the back of my ears. Crunch, crunch. At first I'm heading for the warriors den, but then I change my mind and get out of camp. Puke is coming. It's happening. Better to throw up in the woods somewhere than in someone's nest. I spy the puddle I was drinking out of and looking at myself in earlier. I throw up my guts into its filmy surface, and everything is wrecked. It floats listlessly, stained with the contents of my hurl. I'm bent before it, heaving for breath, nursing a trickle of drool, watching my vomit floating around this stupid puddle.

"Tawny!" Shallowtail calls behind me. She suddenly kneels beside me. Someone else eases me into a sitting position, sturdy paws. Sunwing and Brackenclaw. The string of drool takes a long time to separate from the puddle, and then its trailing halfway down my chest while they all look at me. I'm panting like crazy, StarClan, I can't breathe. I might throw up again. "Tawny, what's going on?" Shallowtail begs.

"Do you think there's something weird about this puddle–" I'm gesturing at it, but I accidentally stick my paw in it doing so. More puke. You can smell it. "Like, does this whole spot right here seem weird to you guys?"

"Well, it has puke in it," Sunwing says, but they can all sense my urgency. You can tell. "Are you doing okay?"

"I feel really really sick," I'm telling all of them, mostly with my eyes trained into Shallowtail's.

"Did you eat something bad?"

"No, not like that sick – I mean I know I just threw up but not like that sick – it's like I can't remember what I was doing before this night, I mean I can't remember how I got here, but then other stuff is really clear like I'm reliving it." I nod grimly. "I think I died."

"You died?" Shallowtail asks.

"I think I died crossing the tree to the Gathering, and now I'm dead."

"Tawn, you're not dead." She rubs my paw with her paw. My puke paw. Now that's a friend. She meets my eye with a steely face. "Are you going to be okay?"

"Yeah." I decide. I manage a deep breath. "Yeah, I'm okay, I'm going to be okay."

"Okay." Shallowtail gives me a little breathing room.

"Are you still coming to the Gathering?" Brackenclaw asks.

"Yeah." I say. "I bet cats have already been leaving. We better go."

Brackenclaw stays in step with me as we start after where the overwhelming scents of ShadowClan are heading. We fell quite a bit behind while I was puking and throwing up by the puddle. I'm trying to focus on my feet walking to stay grounded and maybe not freak out again, but this annoying tom keeps brushing against me and vying for my eye contact. It's like I didn't just throw my guts up and have a total breakdown a few heartbeats ago.

"So," Brackenclaw finally says when I won't look at him. "Shallowtail said that she wanted all of us to go climb trees after we get back."

"Yeah, I know."

"Oh…you already know? How?"

"I don't know."

"Did she tell you?"

"I don't know."

"Well, I think it would be fun. It sounds exciting. I'd like to watch you climb some trees. I want to see if you're as strong as you look."

"No." I say. I stop walking and round on him. "I'm not strong. I'm going to make it to that fallen tree, and I'm going to try and cross, and I'm going to fall and snap my neck and die while you watch."

"Are you still on about that?" He looks cross; he flattens his ears back. Oh, of course he's cross. Why are some of these toms just so easy to bother? "If you don't want to climb trees with me then just tell me."

"It's not about you!" I almost caterwaul. "It is not! About! You! Brackenclaw! I'm dead! I'm dead!"

"I thought you liked me." He snarls. "Last week you made it seem like you liked me. At the lake. I caught a fish for you."

"I don't like you!" I call. "I don't like you at all!" Everyone else has gone ahead, it's just the two of us behind now. "I never told you that before because I thought I was supposed to be nice and act a certain way and secure you as a mate, or something, but I don't want that! I don't want any of that, and nobody listened to me try to say that when I was alive, so maybe they'll hear me yelling it into their faces when I'm dead!"

"You suck." Brackenclaw spits at me. "I always knew you were this stuck-up." He turns around and then takes off after our Clanmates at a run.

"Well – you know what?" I yowl after him. "You know what – you're not that good at fishing!"

I'm answered by a ringing clap of silence, the flickering of bats, the curiosity of invisible owls in the trees around us.

The trees around us? Well. I can climb trees. Brackenclaw's right about that much. He's such an idiot. I want to barf again or something. Why is this bumming me out so much? Well, I'm going to have to deal with him tomorrow. I'm going to have to deal with Shallowtail and Sunwing tomorrow, too. Shallowtail will really want to know why I ripped Brackenclaw to verbal shreds, and Brackenclaw will be doing everything in his tiny power to let me know what a supple shot I missed with him, and Sunwing will need answers too, a sort of go-between because Brackenclaw is his best friend.

Fox-dung. And there's me ripping my mom a new one in her den earlier on, too. She's definitely going to need to address that with me. Address it. Everything's got to be this Clan leader business with her. She's really not even my mom anymore. It would have been so much better if things had gone the way they did the first time. Letting my mom roll all over me with her proposition to keep me out of war, getting comfortably docile and doped out on those poppy seeds, actually getting along with my friends, heading to the Gathering with them…and now I'm not even going. Now I'm alone in ShadowClan territory.

But last time I went to the Gathering with my friends, and I died. So I can't go to the Gathering. I'm not going to face that tree again. Whatever happened to me, it's not like I can go back to the first night and have that one instead of this one. I'll just have to face tomorrow and let things fall how they will.

Trees, though. I decide I'll climb a tree way down at the shore, close to the island, and watch the Gathering from there. I prowl for quite a while along the murky, licking shore, trying to keep my paws out of the water. I really hate getting wet. It doesn't work for me. Even rain. If it's raining, that means it's bedtime.

Once I decide I'm close enough, and narrowly toying the border of RiverClan territory, I find an enormous oak tree curling high into the sky, and I hook my claws into the old, supple bark, and claw my way as high as I can. I climb and climb. Stupid Brackenclaw wanting to see me climb trees. So gross. At the very top of the tree, I've really got to dig my claws in because there's a bit of a breeze and I've got to be this high up to see the island and witness the Gathering. I see WindClan has already arrived. The Clan cats are sitting in these rigid, meticulous rows, not moving, not mixing, and a few of them flank the edge of the fallen-tree entrance, like they're guarding it. StarClan. What is Mousestar doing with that Clan? Maybe Heatherstar is right that it's time for war.

ShadowClan is on their way over the tree bridge now. Heatherstar leading the way, her head proud, her deputy in tow. They all cross together. All of a sudden, I remember the ThunderClan tom. The smoky tom. I get a punch feeling in my gut, this deep wrench of longing. StarClan, that stupid tom. He got under my fur. From here, I can see the dark mass of ThunderClan, but I can't pick him out.

ShadowClan has finished crossing to the island. It's ThunderClan's turn now. It's like I can finally breathe. Like I was holding my breath really tight this whole time. I suppose if my whole Clan is over the tree, and I'm not down there to cross and repeat that violent death that happened to me earlier, things are okay. I'll just deal with everything in the morning and we can all move on from this like it never happened.

At the end of ThunderClan's line, I see the last few cats crossing. Next up is my smoky tom. It's him. Even from this far away, he's gleaming. His pelt is practically silver. When I'm up there watching, and I see him approach the trunk of the tree, I get this horrible, ripping, shredding feeling that if he steps onto the wood, the same thing will happen to him that happened to me.

Everything kind of goes cold. That feeling again; that all meaning has drained from reality.

I yowl into the night as loud as I possibly can.

"HEY!"

My cry is so loud, it echoes off something and comes back to me. I see the tom stop, like miraculously, he heard me. I take a huge breath to yowl again, and when I do I lose my footing on the tree's highest spindly branches, and all of them give way beneath me.

I crash all the way down the tree, whacking into leaves, snapping branches, cracking, crunching against wood, and then the lowest branches give way to a long fall into a craggy rocks lining the shore, onto which my entire body descends with a crunch so loud the stars can hear it. And then everything is blood.

Ugh.

The night before a Gathering.

Everyone always loses their minds about it, but I'm here staring at my reflection in a rain puddle and wondering if I can make myself throw up so I don't have to go.

All of a sudden I am throwing up. I'm puking like crazy. I turn away from the puddle and I puke even more. StarClan, it's everywhere. I think I'm going to die in a puddle of my own puke for a moment there. But then it stops, and I get to my feet so fast I nearly faint, and I stamp to the camp entrance. There's some stupid thicket stuck in my fur or something. This time, I'm the one who nearly collides with one of two warriors bursting out the other way.

"Hey, Tawnyfur!" Briarmouth says to me. "You okay?" He gives me a friendly old tail-swish. "You want to go grab something to eat with us?"

"No." I shove him out of the way. I fall into camp. My leg hurts. Where is Shallowtail? Oh – there she is. "Tawny! Tawnyyy!" She's calling.

She skids to a stop in front of me, trembling about, wiggling with excitement, slapping me with her tail. "Tawn!" She says. "You look like someone threw crowfood on you! Not like–"

"You." I say. I point my entire claw at her, and it cuts her off outright. She's frozen. "Is this a joke to you? Do you think this is funny?"

"What?" Shallowtail literally backpeddles over herself. "I was totally joking, you don't look like someone threw crowfood on you."

"Oh no," I say very loud. "Oh no, no, no, no, no. I am not going to play with you like this. I am not going to play with anyone like this, period, okay? I am going to figure out – what in StarClan is happening to me – and I'm going to…!"

I look around the entire spot my body stands, the circle of the camp surrounding me, and how the thronging of cats around me have taken notice of me yowling at Shallowtail and interrupting an otherwise mellow, yet anticipant, evening. Most of them have gone silent to listen and watch me. Never in my life have I attracted this much attention On her part, Shallowtail is staring blink at me. Outright incredulous.

"What are you talking about?"