Chapter 10 | Danger
Lightningpaw circled Leopardclaw, watching for any signs of attack. The two wolves had been mock fighting for a while, and Lightningpaw was exhausted. Leopardclaw, on the other hand, looked energized. Suddenly, he leapt, and Lightningpaw was too tired to dodge. He was pinned to the ground. Lightningpaw relaxed his chest, ready to give up, when he felt Leopardclaw's grip loosen, ready for his surrender.
Lightningpaw felt a new surge of adrenaline. Never! I will NEVER surrender! He'd made that promise to himself when Leopardclaw beat him the first time. Using his strength alone, Lightningpaw surged upward, rearing, and threw Leopardclaw off. Despite the unexpected move, Leopardclaw landed on his paws and tackled Lightningpaw. They grappled, neither wolf gaining the upper hand, until finally they both broke loose at the same time.
"Truce," Lightningpaw heard himself say, his voice ragged from exertion.
"Yes, truce," Leopardclaw agreed. His voice sounded rich, as if he had just eaten a particularly good fish. He didn't sound tired at all. "I suppose I do have to train you instead of just sparring. Great job, by the way. You were much better than yesterday."
Lightningpaw glowed with pride. He still couldn't believe that he was being trained personally by Leopardclaw- the legendary Leopardclaw. Sparrowstar had gone back to MoonClan, figuring that Leopardclaw and Lightningpaw could handle themselves (she was reluctant to admit this, however, insisting that "male wolves can't even walk without she-wolves around").
Leopardclaw continued, "Go get a drink from the stream, and then I'll show you one of my favorite techniques."
Lightningpaw trotted to the stream, his muscle fatigue suddenly not mattering anymore.
By the end of the training session, it was afternoon, and Lightningpaw could grapple Leopardclaw for much longer without being forced into some sort of uncomfortable position. Leopardclaw had left for MoonClan, telling Lightningpaw to be at the training hollow by dawn, and now Lightningpaw was hunting. He stalked along the stream, hunting for water voles, when he realized that the stream was much, much lower than usual: almost one tail-length below its usual bank. There was only a half tail-length's worth of water left in the deepest part of the stream.
Lightningpaw finished hunting quickly, his uneasy feeling growing as he passed the clump of watermint, usually lush and mouth-wateringly minty. Today, however, it was wilted and starting to brown. Lightningpaw hurried into camp and deposited his prey onto the full fresh-kill pile; Yellowtail must've gone hunting.
Swiftbreeze came out of her den. "Lightningpaw, have you noticed the unusual dryness?"
"Yes, I have. I hope it's just a small dry spell; a drought is the last thing we need in the heat of greenleaf."
Swiftbreeze was struck by the fact that Lightningpaw somehow seemed bigger and much more mature than Sharpclaw or any other wolf she'd met. "The pool of water in the medicine den has dried up, and I fear that my herbs will shrivel. All the herbs I've seen in the forest have been nibbled or withered."
"If the medicine den has dried, that's bad," Lightningpaw said in a tone somewhere between stating facts and being worried. "I'll check to see if the Cold Cave river has dried." He bounded to the cave and jumped in. The cold air felt good on his sweaty face, and he stood still for a few heartbeats, letting the chill cool him down. Then he padded to the river. It hadn't changed in the slightest, and the cool water looked so inviting…
Lightningpaw shook himself. He couldn't swim in what might be WaterClan's only source of fresh water for a while, not when he was all sweaty and dirty. He wouldn't drink from it, since the water was from the Starpool and was enchanted to make him sleep and enter MoonClan. Lightningpaw sprang up out of the Cold Cave and dashed through the entrance of camp, nearly knocking down Yellowtail.
"Sorry, Yellowtail!" he called, skidding to a halt. He quickly filled the lions in on the dry spell and the Cold Cave.
Yellowtail's golden tail curled up in amusement. "Does this mean that we might have to move to the Cold Cave again in greenleaf?"
"It might," speculated Swiftbreeze. "But we should wait until we're sure that we need to before we actually move."
"I agree," Lightningpaw said.
Swiftbreeze let out a shriek as she was cornered by the shadows. Lightningpaw sprang to help her, but was restrained by more of the shadows. As he watched, horrified, Swiftbreeze fought valiantly but was overpowered soon. She faded into a shadow, and soon Lightningpaw couldn't tell her from the other shadows.
Yellowtail had the same thing happen to her. They abruptly swung around to face Lightningpaw. With a shared, creepy voice, they rasped, "Give up now, Lightningpaw. You know you cannot rebuild your Clan, so why bother?"
The worst part was that Lightningpaw found himself believing the shadows. He knew he shouldn't, but he did. His mind became a traitor, determined to help the shadows. And his body stopped resisting. He became one of the shadows.
Lightningpaw woke drenched in sweat. For the past half-moon, he'd been having disturbing nightmares, all of them ending in his Clan- and himself- becoming shadows. Becoming evil. He calmed himself, and then climbed out of his nest. He knew he wouldn't be able to go back to sleep, so he got a drink from the shrinking stream and lay down on the flat rocks to wait for dawn.
Once Lightningpaw saw the rosy pink rays of the sun peeking over the forest, he gulped down a mouse, had a bit more water, and padded to the training hollow to wait for Leopardclaw and Sparrowstar.
Leopardclaw arrived with rumpled fur and a disturbed look on his face.
"What's wrong?" Lightningpaw asked.
"Nothing," sighed Leopardclaw tiredly. "I just had dreams… nightmares."
"I did too," Lightningpaw said. "About shadows attacking, and me becoming one of the shadows."
"Really?" Leopardclaw began to look more awake. "That's exactly what my dream was, too."
"Is something terrible going to happen?" Lightningpaw asked. He knew that dreams often foretold the future, although he'd honestly never had one himself.
"I wouldn't know. My talent has never been interpreting dreams. When we're done training, maybe you can ask Swiftbreeze if she had something like that. I hear she's quite good at the dream thing." With that, training started, this session even more exhausting and educational than the first.
When Lightningpaw returned to camp that day, he found Yellowtail and Swiftbreeze talking anxiously.
"What's going on?" he asked.
"The stream has completely dried up," Yellowtail explained. "We're pretty sure that unless we get a good rainstorm, we'll have to move to the Cold Cave."
"But if we do move to the Cold Cave, and a rainstorm comes during the night, which they usually do, we'll be flooded and if we're sleepy and not alert, we could be seriously injured or drown," Swiftbreeze countered. "You're the unofficial leader of WaterClan, Lightningpaw. Do you think we should go?"
Lightningpaw thought about that. "We'll go, but we'll keep a watch outside as much as we can, and if we see clouds moving in, we'll move to the leader's den and bring lots of wet moss with us. The den's high up, so we shouldn't get flooded. Leopardclaw will understand if I don't train quite as often."
Swiftbreeze and Yellowtail glanced at each other, both thinking, Lightningpaw is the only one who can jump up there; but they both agreed to his plan, and Yellowtail gathered fresh-kill to move to the Cold Cave while Swiftbreeze carefully bundled the last of her non-shriveled herbs. Lightningpaw packed up the earth around the entrance to the Cold Cave to make it harder to flood, and dug out a drainage channel right below the entrance so that if it did flood, the water wouldn't get to the Clan's main chambers.
Soon, WaterClan's camp was empty again, with the lions and Lightningpaw snuggled into the soft rabbit's-ear moss. Swiftbreeze lifted her head. "Remember, don't drink from the river unless you really have to. Go outside at morning and lick the dew from the leaves. The river will make you sleepy and give you dreams. If you really, really have to get a drink, put it in a bowl-shaped rock and wait for it to evaporate; then lick the water vapor from the ceiling of the Cave when it condenses. Got that?"
Yellowtail and Lightningpaw nodded.
"All right. Go to sleep now so you can wake up early to get the leaves' dew." She padded over to the river and drank some, and then settled down in the moss next to Yellowtail. Lightningpaw did the same, hoping that the Starpool water would help to stop his nightmares.
Everyone in the Cold Cave had different dreams. Swiftbreeze met Silverflame in MoonClan; Yellowtail dreamed about hunting an elusive mouse that escaped her grasp; Lightningpaw dreamed of the shadows again, but this time he fought back; and a mouse in the Cold Cave dreamed of managing to escape a hungry wolf by growing large and clawing its flank.
All of the dreams were important, including the mouse's.
Swiftbreeze padded along MoonClan. She couldn't find anyone. Suddenly, the trees rotted to black and the stench of rotting crow-food filled the air.
"Silverflame!" Swiftbreeze cried desperately. "Sparrowstar! Stormstar! Help!"
No one came to help her. Suddenly, huge wolves with razor-sharp claws slunk out of the shadows. Their faces were all the same: a mask of cruelty. Swiftbreeze was trapped against a blackened tree. She noticed that the warriors' faces were ringed with frost.
FrostClan.
Yellowtail's face stared at her, a solid mask of cruelty.
Swiftbreeze suddenly could move, and she shot up the tree like a squirrel. Her bulk made the tree sway, but the warriors knew that they couldn't climb without bringing the tree down on themselves.
Then strong paws lifted her to safety, and Swiftbreeze gazed up into Silverflame's face. She was in MoonClan, with its lush trees.
"Where was I?" Swiftbreeze asked.
"That was the Dark Forest," Silverflame replied. "Beware the shadows. They will attack."
Swiftbreeze woke with her heart thudding desperately in the middle of the night, hearing Silverflame's warning echoing in her head. Beware the shadows.
Yellowtail carefully stalked the mouse. She couldn't let it go, for the mouse was the last prey in the forest. But it sensed her, and scooted away, just out of her grasp. Finally, Yellowtail caught it, but the mouse was snatched and eaten by a shadow. Yellowtail looked up at the thief; he was a dark-hearted version of Leopardclaw. Leopardclaw pounced on Yellowtail, fading to a dark blur that Yellowtail could see through.
She saw the WaterClan camp taken over by the shadows; she saw Lightningpaw and Swiftbreeze willingly serving the shadows like slaves.
"This is WaterClan's future," Leopardclaw hissed. "Do not resist. There is nothing you can do about it."
Yellowtail woke with the certainty that Lightningpaw would rebuild WaterClan, whatever it took, but as she remembered her dream, she wasn't quite so sure. And then she realized that the shadows all had the distinctive body shape of FrostClan.
Lightningpaw leaped at the shadow attacking Swiftbreeze. He tore it off of her. She gasped and joined the fight, but with a skip of his heart, Lightningpaw realized that she was fighting against him. Lightningpaw grappled with the shadow, but it suddenly had a face.
It was Sparrowstar.
Lightningpaw released Sparrowstar in shock, watching the other shadows. They were all former warriors of WaterClan, turned against him. They had become FrostClan.
Remembering Quailfur's story that she'd told him in the nursery, Lightningpaw realized that the shadows were Dark Forest warriors.
Lightningpaw yowled fearfully to the new moon and raced out of camp. The mountain lion reared over him.
Suddenly Lightningpaw wasn't sure if the lions across from him were enemies or allies.
The mouse squeaked in terror and raced away from the shadow pursuing it. Suddenly, the mouse grew ten times in size and defeated its shadow, but then more came. They all had FrostClan scent, and they were all dark. They had WaterClan faces, though the mouse had no way of knowing this.
When the mouse woke up, it was groggy, and then it forgot its dream.
By dawn, all of WaterClan had had a dream that made them unsure if their allies really were allies. Swiftbreeze woke first, giving Yellowtail an unsure look, and then realizing how ridiculous that was. Yellowtail would be innocent until proven guilty. She wasn't going to doubt her loyalty because of some silly dream!
"Wake up, WaterClan!" Swiftbreeze called. "Wake up early and get some fresh water! Come on!"
Lightningpaw sprang up. He suddenly distrusted Swiftbreeze, remembering how she'd betrayed him in his dream. Then he remembered how loyal she'd been in real life. There was no reason for her to betray him. Still, he felt uneasy until he remembered that the dream had been sent to him by the Dark Forest. They probably wanted him to turn against his Clanmates.
Yellowtail had never really had a strong connection from dreams to real life, but suddenly she believed that her mouse dream was telling the truth. Could Leopardclaw and her Clanmates really be trusted? She shook the ridiculous idea out of her mind. Her subconscious was messing with her. WaterClan was going to be rebuilt and her Clanmates were loyal. Anyways, if Leopardclaw was planning on betraying them, which seemed very unlikely, then Lightningpaw could handle him. She'd heard that Lightningpaw could beat Leopardclaw in mock fights now.
The FrostClan section of the Dark Forest hissed in frustration. The dreams had not worked. WaterClan now trusted each other more than ever. Well, then. They could wait for the invasion without warning. The Frost Forest could easily take down two warriors and a medicine lion. They would clear the way for the living FrostClan to take over the WaterClan territory.
Who cared about "balance" in the Clans? As long as FrostClan was supreme, the Frost Forest was content.
And contentness was not something that the Frost Forest really liked, anyways.