GOOSEBELLY

The medicine cat had needed to see his dirt, and it was a challenge to meet his demand. But for all his time and trouble, when Murkpool looked it over, he just gave a tut-tut and shook his head. No herbs, no sage advice. Just one mournful look.

Goosebelly paced back and forth beneath the bronze, drooping boughs of the Father Oak. Fallen leaves carpeted around the roots, almost belly-deep in some places, the air rich with the musty scent of wet, decaying growth.

His dirt, he left unburied, and tasked his new apprentice with getting the medicine cat apprentice's second opinion. Acornpaw's littermate, and inexperienced as she might be, he found it much more inconvenient to trust the doddering old gray-pelt at his word.

The apprentice appeared on silent paws, a small head poking through the brush before padding into the clearing. He was aptly named; so small at his age, that he had to wade and high-step through the leaves like it was water. They swished and rustled with every movement.

"Acornpaw," Goosebelly purred in greeting. "What did Elmpaw say about my dirt?"

"She said it was a good, healthy dirt," Acornpaw answered, "but for the cat who laid it, he might have more diseases than she knew for."

How very funny. "All sorts delight in having a poke at me," Goosebelly said. Every feather-brain seemed to have jokes when he was around. "I'm not only witty in myself, but the cause of wit in other cats."

The apprentice snorted, but he was a joke himself. Tiny as a flea, fitter to ride around on his back than to trot at his heels. Standing side by side, Goosebelly looked like a lumbering badger mother who had eaten all their cubs but one. If Sunfire had given him another apprentice for any other reason than to set him off, then he was a plucked pheasant.

"And Sunfire?" Goosebelly pressed. "What does he say about our LodgeClan allies?"

"He said that you have to get more than just Sneezy. Doesn't count, he said."

Goosebelly lashed his tail. "I told him I'd get him a war party, as I'm an honorable warrior, and he tells me I have to get more than just Sneezy. Let him get them himself."

Even after all their high-and-mighty posturing, Rowanstar had sought to use their Twolegplace friends again, against MireClan. But after the battle in the poppies, most of them had their fill of warrior life, hitting him with laughs, hisses, or just a hard no.

It didn't stop them from calling each other by their new 'warrior' names from across the lodge, jumbling them up or trading them between each other. Being a warrior, without the hard parts. How lovely.

And speaking of Sneezy, he would be waiting for them at the lodge. Goosebelly started off in the direction of Twolegplace and gestured his apprentice to follow with a flick of his tail.

They walked over paths of red and gold, and the leaves masking their pawsteps as they moved through the forest. It was Acornpaw who halted first, tail upright, that made Goosebelly pivot his ears and sweep his gaze around.

There was the rustle of movement in the brush, the shape of a gray-brown tabby and another golden she-cat following close behind. He could spy them some distance across the forest, slipping between gaps in the foliage and heading in the opposite direction back toward camp, a few scrawny morsels of fresh-kill in their jaws.

"Hawkwing and Tansyslip," Acornpaw said with a sharp point of his tail. By instinct, Goosebelly sidled up to a thin tree, as if to fade out of their eyesight and slip by undetected. It was the current gossip and worst kept secret of the Clan how Sunfire had clawed him over a rogue from Twolegplace, and Hawkwing seemed to blame him for every one of their new deputy's quirks.

"Wait close," Goosebelly hissed under his breath. "I don't want to talk to him."

"Who's that there?" Hawkwing's voice called out from the distance, making Goosebelly fully cringe from behind the tree. "Goosebelly?"

"Tell him I can't hear him," Goosebelly said, starting to back away. Enough distance, and he'd just bolt.

Acornpaw disappeared out of his view to meet the warriors halfway, waving his tail to Hawkwing and Tansyslip in greeting. "Sorry, you must speak louder. My mentor is deaf."

"I'm sure he is, to the hearing of anything good," Goosebelly heard Hawkwing say through the curtain of greenery. "Go pluck him by the tail. I must speak with him."

"Goosebelly!" Tansyslip hollered after him, climbing up the leaf-strewn path he had been walking with Acornpaw. He got maybe a tree-length away before Tansyslip caught sight of him, and came running after him with a trot.

He froze and turned around with tail upright. "A young rascal, and wasting time out in the forest, eh? Aren't there borders to mark, prey to catch, enemies to fight?"

Tansyslip flicked her ears, bemused. "You've got me wrong."

No sense of humor, this one. "What, did I say you were an honest warrior? Because ignoring my own warrior's honor, I'd be a liar if I said that."

Tansyslip bristled now. "Then set your 'warrior's honor' aside, and let me tell you, that you lie in your throat if you say I'm anything other than an honest warrior."

"Do I have to let you tell me that?" He twitched his whiskers, concealing a grin when he saw how the younger warrior fluffed up her fur. "I should get going."

"Hawkwing wants to speak with you," she urged again with an extra sharpness to her tone this time.

Sure enough, Hawkwing was starting up the path too, Acornpaw at his side. "Goosebelly, a word with you!" he called out.

"Oh, Hawkwing!" Goosebelly purred with all the over-abundant fake enthusiasm he could muster. "I hope StarClan has blessed you with a good day. It's good to see you out and about—I heard a rumor that you were sick. I sure hope Murkpool gave you his clearance to walk around in this weather."

Goosebelly looked the senior warrior up and down, taking note of the specks of dirty snow in his muzzle. "Although you're not so old, you're not so young, and I most humbly beseech you to have better care of your health."

"I have been trying to speak with you for days, and you keep ducking away from me," Hawkwing growled, cutting straight to the throat of the matter. A blunt instrument, as ever.

"And if you've noticed, Rowanstar himself has been in discomfort ever since the raid on HillClan."

"I'm not here to talk about Rowanstar," Hawkwing snapped with impatience. "Why did you—"

"And I hear, moreover," Goosebelly went on blithely, talking right over him, "Rowanstar has been suffering from other ill effects."

"Well, StarClan mend him," Hawkwing said. "Now please, let me speak with you—"

"It's a type of lethargy in the blood, so I hear," Goosebelly said. "An awful tingling."

"Why are you telling me? Be it as it is."

"This sickness, it comes from grief, stress, and disturbances of the mind. I've heard Murkpool speak about it. It's a kind of deafness."

"I think you've fallen into the disease, because you don't hear what I say to you," Hawkwing growled.

"It's possible, it's possible," Goosebelly granted with a singsong voice. "But rather, I think I have the disease of not listening, the malady of no attention span. That's what I'm troubled with."

"To scratch you open with my claws would amend the attention of your ears, and I don't care if I become your medicine cat," Hawkwing said, unsheathing his claws and sheathing them again as if to prove a point. "The truth is, you live in great infamy."

"He that wears my pelt can't live in anything less."

Hawkwing's hackles were up now. "LeafClan's means are slender, and your waste is great."

"I wish it were otherwise," Goosebelly sighed. "To have greater means, and a slender waist."

"You have misled our young deputy," Hawkwing growled.

"The deputy has misled me! I'm just caught up in his mischief."

Tail lashing back and forth, Hawkwing gave an exasperated sigh, sinking his head as if he'd given up on the conversation. "Well. I hate to gall a new-healed wound. Your day's service in the battle covers up your bit of prey-stealing with all those birds you brought to camp. You can thank LeafClan's troubled times for covering up that obvious code-breaking."

"I say," Goosebelly huffed. Yet it was true; he'd come away from the battle in the poppies with the reputation of a warrior. At least, he'd spent every Gathering since that day telling any willing ear his play-by-play re-enactment of the battle, and how he'd slain Nettlefang and some half dozen others in single fight. And who could say otherwise?

But where he'd expected praise, he was served drawbacks. Sorreltail and Owlswoop had tagged him for the war party. When they'd fight, who could say. It would have to be whenever he caught his convenient bout of whitecough.

"But since all is well, keep it so," Hawkwing said, leaning in. "Don't wake a sleeping badger."

"To wake a badger is as bad as to smell a fox," Goosebelly echoed with a nod of his head.

Acornpaw snorted again, with Tansyslip cocking her head.

Hawkwing grit his teeth. "You follow Sunfire up and down like a tick in his pelt."

"Not so. A tick is light, and I hope anyone that looks at me will acquit me without weighing." He flicked his ears dismissively. "But I suppose in some ways you're right. Virtue is of so little regard in these flea-bitten times that all our Clan traditions aren't worth a gooseberry, and the younger generation sees through it. Someone as old-fashioned as yourself, I already know why you'd disapprove."

"Do you set yourself down as part of the younger generation?" Hawkwing scoffed, not able to keep himself from laughing. "Don't you have a moist eye, dry pads, loosening teeth, a white muzzle, a decreasing leg, an increasing belly? Isn't your voice broken, your wind short, your neck rolls double, your wit single, and every part of you blasted with old age? And yet you will call yourself young?"

"I was born about sunhigh, with gray fur and a bit of a round belly. For my voice, I lost it from hallooing. To prove my youth further, I don't have to." Goosebelly kept a straight face, and that only made Hawkwing mald more, mouth opening and closing as if to interrupt. "The truth is, I'm only old in judgment, and understanding."

Goosebelly leaned in now. "For the box on the head that my old apprentice gave you, he gave it like a rude rogue, and you took it like a sensible, loyal warrior. I've checked him for it, and the young lion repents."

"Well, may StarClan send our deputy a better companion," Hawkwing said.

"StarClan send me a better deputy! I can't rid my paws of him."

"Well, Rowanstar will sever you soon enough. I hear you're chosen for Sorreltail's war party."

"Yes, I thank your pretty sweet wit for it," Goosebelly said, wincing at the bitterness of the reminder. "There's no danger that can pop out its head without me being thrust into the middle of it. Well, I can't live forever. It was always LeafClan's trick: if they have a good thing, to use it too often."

If I must be old, then StarClan give me some rest. If only his name weren't as terrible to the enemy as it was.

"Well, be honest," Hawkwing growled, and again for emphasis, "Be. Honest." He turned to pad away, Tansyslip behind him, back toward camp and his buried fresh-kill, but not before leaving with a quiet, polite, "And StarClan light your path."

"Do you think I could have one of those mice you caught?" Goosebelly called after him.

"Not a whisker!" Hawkwing shouted, not even bothering to turn his head or stop walking. "Not! A! Whisker!"

When they were gone, Goosebelly nudged his apprentice next to him. "Acornpaw, I have a special apprentice mission for you."

The runt stood upright and alert.

"I need you to find me a blue flower with red thorns," Goosebelly said. "I'm not well, and it's the only thing that will do the trick. Go on, about it. You know where to find me."

Acornpaw nodded, unquestioningly, and went scurrying into the woods. That would keep him occupied for some time; perhaps forever. Goosebelly wasn't sure if such a flower really existed, but if it did, he was quite certain Acornpaw would come back with it.

But it was true, at least, that he was not well. His bones ached, the leaves began to blur after a tree-length, and his hearing had dimmed. How far could he be from a limping elder, like Threefoot or Close-eye?

Well, not that it mattered, in the end. He could always say he got the limp in battle. If he had to live with it, he'd turn disease into a commodity.