MISTPELT

Cloverfern could have warned her what it meant to be a queen. She'd endured claws and fangs for LeafClan in combat, nursed battle wounds, survived starvation and whitecough and fever, but this was a different kind of daily struggle. Not that it was without bright spots.

At first, just the idea of giving birth was almost enough to make her go light-headed. But after two moons of this, she just wanted it out already.

"We wanted to hear a story!" Flykit said, to the eager agreement of the other kits.

"A story about Sunstar!" Nutkit added.

The sun blazed even through the shade of the thick bramble thicket, a newleaf that had swept in eager and early, melting away memories of frost-crusted nests. It was enough to almost make one wish for a gentle, brisk rain.

Mistpelt gave a long sigh, shuffling uncomfortably around her nest. There was too much of her to move around; it felt like she was shuffling around in another cat's pelt, like some fur-sleeve one size too big for her. "Another story about Sunstar, hm…?" she mewed. "Another one?"

"Yes!"

"Tell us about the battle again!"

Mistlespeck's litter was crowding in on the action too, not yet two moons old, but growing more vocal and rambunctious by the day.

"Pleasepleaseplease!" Mallowkit and Lightkit added to the other kits' cries.

She couldn't help it. She was helpless against those excited, eager eyes. Leekroot was by far the better storyteller, and it seemed like he always had a new one; he had the gift of a HillClan tongue. But he was out hunting and patrolling with the rest of LionClan, and she had to do her part.

How she loved him, but also how she lately wanted to bite every tom's head off that poked their head into the nursery, deserved or not. It was almost like primal instinct. Elmseed and the other queens assured her it was quite normal.

Mistpelt twitched her whiskers, looking over them as they crowded in. "Can this nursery hold the vasty fields of MeadowClan?" she asked, as the kits stilled into silence, wide eyes absorbing it all. Despite the stuffy heat of the nursery, she could almost feel the driving rain again, the mud between her claws. "Can we cram a hundred MeadowClan warriors into this little den, bring the rain and the leaf-bare cold? Could a queen like me play the part of the great Sunstar? Could I really tell that story?"

"Tell us, tell us!"

Ruddsnout lazily groomed herself from the back wall of the den, flicking her ears, as Shademist gently curled her tail around her paws. They had all taken their part, telling this same story a hundred times over.

Mistpelt smiled. "Then suppose this bramble thicket confines two mighty Clans, parted asunder by a raging river… Close your eyes and imagine a leaf-bare storm… Nutkit, Flykit, can you remember snow?"

"I remember!" Nutkit mewed, eyes shooting back open. "Sheephead brought some snow inside for me!"

That Sheephead was kindly enough, for a meadow-born cat. Some part of her bristled to see MeadowClan half-strangers hunting on her territory, but Tilly brought the queens fresh moss and colorful feathers for the kits, and Embercloud seemed every whisker a respectable senior warrior.

The others, Rootnose and Thumptail and Hornfoot, well… She supposed she still hadn't made up her mind what to make of them, but she forbade herself from rushing to judgment. It was enough so far in her mind that they hadn't defected to the MeadowClan rebels that harassed them in the prairie even now.

"Me too! I remember!" Flykit added.

Shademist twitched her whiskers. "The last big snow, you were still nursing at my belly, Flykit. Your eyes were barely open."

"I do remember!" Flykit insisted, stamping her little paws.

No sooner than Redkit had left to the apprentice's den, Mistlespeck had joined the nursery at the onset of newleaf. The young queen was back there now, one white paw over her dusky gray face, pretending or attempting to nap. Frostsky's mate had passed her litter in a long, miserable night, the normally graceful queen screeching until sunup like she was trapped in a fox's jaws.

The wind had shook and swayed the trees, sending up flurries of night-birds, and an owl shrieked all through the night. First came white and gray Lightkit, then cream Mallowkit, but the last kit's birth prolonged his mother's torment.

He came legs first, a tiny bundle of white and black fur without even the strength to cry, and Elmseed and Hollypaw feared him stillborn. His fur seemed too long, flat, and shaggy for a newborn, but worse, the kit was horribly misshapen, six-toed, with a hunched shoulder and a curled, withered foreleg.

They did not name him for half a moon, in fear that he might die. But against the odds, as the days grew warmer, he gained his strength, and became all the more horrible and aggressive than his littermates, shoving and pushing at them away from Mistlespeck's belly.

And she'd cry out in pain, because Crouchkit was born with a full set of teeth. He was slow to learn to walk, but with his strong foreleg, he seemed to drag himself around the nursery at almost the same speed as his littermates.

He sat between them now, one paw curled up near his chest, blinking mismatched eyes at the queen. One blue, the other a pale gray, blind and unseeing since his birth. Silently, as horrible as it might be, Mistpelt prayed her kits would not be so afflicted.

Four good legs, two good eyes, working ears and nose, a full tail, fur, and a handsome muzzle full of whiskers. Health; every day she prayed for her kits' health, and ate like a badger in leaf-fall. It was the least a cat expected, but some cats were withheld from life's basic blessings. It twisted her heart, in a way. Could he ever live a full warrior's life, with all its challenges?

So she spoke. About sleeping in the icy grass, and Boulderstep holding the tree bridge, and fighting side by side with her future mate in a Twoleg barn. And she smiled to show the long scars down her tortoiseshell flank, mementos that would stay with her when all else faded away.

They gasped and shared amazed glances when she admitted Sunstar had mentored her himself, and snickered in disbelief when she said he'd been a bit of a naughty kit.

And she told of the island in the stream, the near-sleepless night beneath the hawthorns, and slipping and sliding in the mud. In that moment, just a moment, the nursery did contain the prairie, and she saw the shadows swarming down the hill. She heard the yowls, saw the heaps of bodies in the red stream, leaned over her brother again, the hot blood burbling in his throat, dead Asterstripe's arm thrown protectively over his former apprentice's corpse.

"Mistpelt?" a tiny voice asked, and she was back in the nursery again. "Are you okay?"

"You stopped telling the story."

"Why are you crying?" Mallowkit piped, voice suddenly frail, as if she might start crying too.

She forced a smile and blinked the tears away. "Well, anyway," she finished, rather anticlimactically. "It was a great LeafClan victory."

"Yes," Shademist added faintly. "The greatest."

Lightkit puffed himself up now. "I want to be just like Sunstar! And Mallowkit, you'll be my deputy."

"But I want to be the leader," Mallowkit whined.

The small, shrill voice piped, "And me? What about me?" Crouchkit leaned in, long teeth poking over his lips, even the symmetry of his face seemed off. There wasn't any word for him but ugly.

"Um… Medicine cat!" Lightkit offered with a grin. "I think you look like a medicine cat."

"No!" Crouchkit snarled now, almost a screech. "No! No, no, no! I'm going to be a warrior!"

"The medicine cat is just as important as the leader," Mistpelt reasoned. "Maybe more important."

"No!"

"Thorns! Fine, but I called being Sunstar first," Lightkit sighed.

Nutkit bristled now. "You got to be him last time! I'm sick of being MeadowClan, it's not fair! MeadowClan always loses!"

Mistlespeck lifted her head now, green eyes sharp as she narrowed them in on her litter.

"Enough!" she snapped, with an icy sharpness that snapped all the kits in the nursery to attention. Her voice whipped like the leaf-bare wind. "Take turns playing as Sunstar."

"Me first!" all the kits blurted over each other, before devolving into a scrum of kicks and blows, tumbling over each other in the melee. It was mere kit-games, even as she curled back further in her nest to avoid being drawn into the mighty battle, until Mallowkit cried out with a sharp, higher pitch than the rest.

The sobbing was soon afterward, as the cream kit went limping toward Mistlespeck with a small, bloody nick in one ear.

"Crouchkit used his claws…!" Mallowkit wailed, pressing her face into her mother's chest as the gray tabby queen bent down to lap at her fierce warrior's mighty wound.

"Wretched thing!" Mistlespeck hissed at Crouchkit's direction, green eyes glowing in contempt, and Mistpelt felt a spike of rage in her heart when she watched how the ugly kit seemed to melt and deflate.

Mistpelt forced her hackles flat. "It was only an accident," she mewed. "But that's your lesson not to play too rough. We never unsheathe our claws on a clanmate, not even when you're training."

"Accident? It's only a lesson when you listen! I have told you a hundred times!" Mistlespeck snapped now, curling her tail protectively around Mallowkit. "Hurt either of your littermates again, and I'll leave you in a badger's den! Do not play-fight in this nursery anymore, only in camp right outside, with a queen watching!"

Mallowkit, despite her tears, couldn't help but shoot Crouchkit a smug smirk between quiet sobs.

She felt another flare of agitation toward her fellow queen, twitching her tail. You won't talk to my kits that way when they're here, I promise you that. But there was only so much she could say, without making this den more of a prison than it already was. Better to keep things smooth-furred between clanmates.

Crouchkit just looked down, his face a mask of cold, sullen anger.

"How about you look for Redpaw about that cut, Mallowkit? And the rest of you go with her," Mistpelt suggested. "He'll give you some cobwebs and make it all better, and then I think he'll be happy to play, if he's not too busy."

"Yes, Redpaw's fun!" Flykit chirped, with the other kits chorusing in agreement, even as Crouchkit continued to quietly face the bramble thicket wall. Mallowkit sniffed away the last of her tears, padding gingerly forward.

"If you get bored, maybe Boulderstep and Owlswoop might tell you some stories you've never heard before, hm?" Mistpelt said.

"If Redpaw's not there, then come straight back!" Mistlespeck called after them, and the kits took stumbling steps into the newleaf daylight. Ruddsnout and Shademist crowded near the entrance to watch after them as they went walking across the green hollow by themselves, smiling LionClan warriors offering greetings or curious looks as they crisscrossed the bustling clearing toward the medicine den.

There was Honeypad on the Ash, rattling orders to Sootfang and Smokestripe. Waspclaw curled up her tail around her paws at the Ash's roots, looking admiringly up at her mate on the low-hanging bough. Across camp, young Frostsky sat by the fresh-kill pile with Swiftstorm, Quailtail, and old Owlswoop, greeting his kits with a warm wave of his bushy white tail as they scampered by.

Ruddsnout groaned, "Good stars, I hope they don't get into the herbs…"

"That Redpaw is the image of irresponsibility," Mistlespeck sniffed. "A lazy cloud-gazer, through and through. I only hope he does not say anything odd that frightens the kits."

All she knew was that Redpaw could see what others couldn't. He knew she was a queen before she knew herself, still in the midst of leaf-bare, when he was still in the nursery. A scrawny, timid little thing, sky blue eyes wide as moons as he stared at her, stalking past with fresh-kill in her mouth.

"Why don't you live in the nursery?" he asked her as she went by. It might have been the first and only words he'd spoken to her at that point.

She'd just flicked her ears, bemused. "I sleep in the warrior's den," Mistpelt had answered with a gentle purr. "The nursery is for kits and their mothers."

"But you are," he answered with a vacant blink.

"No, little kit. Not yet." Not for a long while yet, she thought.

"But you will be," he asserted, and those sky blue eyes seemed to almost stare past her, through her, almost unseeing. "You're carrying a bright star in your belly."

The silly things that kits said, until she still felt starving after one piece of fresh-kill, and the nausea and the swelling. Sick, like the rest of the Clan had grown sick that leaf-bare, but Elmseed and Hollypaw assured her that she was healthy.

Healthy, and expecting kits. Leekroot couldn't stop himself from babbling to every ear in camp, and twice over for measure, boasting about being a father.

"They'll know all the stories," Leekroot promised, unable to contain his smile. "I don't want them to forget their HillClan blood. Do you think they'll let me mentor them? One, or all of them, I don't care. Do you think it'll be a big litter?"

"My sister had a litter of six," Mistpelt bemoaned. "Not that big, please, StarClan."

"But I do hope for more than one," Leekroot admitted with a twitch of his whiskers. "I had three littermates that lived to their warrior names, StarClan bless them… A kit should have siblings."

"They'll have denmates to play with, don't worry."

"Yes, yes… But you can't replace a brother or a sister."

But that Redkit had seen other things too. Wailing and crying for days, inconsolable, screaming over and over that Puddlepaw would die from the white flowers. And her sweet sister's son had looked a bit rattled, a glint of fear in his blue eyes, but laughed it off with the rest of his denmates.

They'd teased each other and joked. "Where's Puddlepaw?" a warrior would ask, and an apprentice would chime in, "Oh, no, the flowers got him!"

Then newleaf came, the hawthorn over the elder's den blossomed with white petals before all the other fresh buds, and Puddlepaw slipped in the river and drowned before the next half-moon. Graymask and the other daylight warriors were trying to teach the apprentices how to fish when the prey in the forest grew scarce, when Puddlepaw wandered too far over a sandy bank, and it suddenly washed out from under him.

Since then, he knew some cats in camp looked at him differently, and no cats made jokes about the silly things Redpaw had to say. He seemed to continue on, oblivious to his own gift, if such far-sight could be called a gift.

Or maybe the rascal had bees in his brains and babbled nonsense. Sometimes, she was almost inclined to think so. But as newleaf heated into full flower, and her belly swelled, it was Redpaw helping Hollypaw and Elmseed deliver her litter.

Then, only then, did the fear really stake her again. Mistpelt pictured herself in a nest full of blood and flowers, like Rainripple, dizzy as the medicine cats rushed into the nursery.

She swore muffled curses into a thin, smooth stick, perforated with bite marks from generations of swearing, pained LeafClan queens. Maple, by the taste. Swearing was about all she could do, Leekroot banished from her side by the medicine cats and she-cats that crowded around her.

Waspclaw, Ryebreeze, and Ivyflower cried encouragement with the other queens, Cloverfern cracking jokes, Hollypaw clumsily leading Ruddsnout and Shademist through prayers. Even Mistlespeck stood steadfast by her side, giving comforting licks over the ear.

At some point, without thinking, she spat out the stick and just began to howl.

"A tomcat!" Hollypaw announced, to yowls of triumph from the queens, like warriors who'd just won a battle.

So much pain, for just one kit. He favored her pelt colors much more than Leekroot's. She curled around to lap furiously at his white coat, almost all white except for a ginger tail like a burning brand, touches of fire to his ear tips.

Blind, tiny paws fumbled and pressed at her belly, and she felt tears sting her eyes as a smile broke across her face. Redpaw had been right. "His name is Brightkit."

"Brightkit! Brightkit! Brightkit!"