Chapter 2

The forest flew by in a blur of grays, browns, and greens as Mistyfoot and Mousefur bolted after Spiderpaw. The leggy apprentice's stride was shockingly long, and Mistyfoot found herself once again falling back on advice she had been given on the chosen cat's journey - to control her breathing and extend her legs. Despite how things were between them today, she appreciated learning such a useful tip from Crowflight on their journey.

They barreled through thickets of bracken and bramble, ignoring the drag of sticks and prick of thorns. Mousefur eventually lagged behind, panting raggedly, but there was too much urgency in the air to slow down for her. Spiderpaw's trail of fear-scent was powerful, and as they drew closer to whatever she had found, the coppery stench of blood quickly overtook that sour smell.

What had Spiderpaw encountered, Mistyfoot wondered, worry mounting on her shoulders - was it some trouble with WindClan? The border wasn't far, and WindClan had set up ambushes on ThunderClan territory before...

Mistyfoot's ears pricked. She could hear a thin wailing coming from just ahead, behind a clump of brown, brittle ferns. The three of them burst through, shattering the delicate stems. As they came to a halt, spraying dust and dirt with their paws, Mistyfoot's eyes went wide - though thorns and plant matter were stuck in her coat, she barely felt them once she took in what lay before her.

They were in a small glade, near enough to the Divide for Mistyfoot to hear the sound of its waters but far enough to be out of sight of the border. The ground here was oddly clear of undergrowth but for a cover of old leaves, and there in the middle of them, thrashing in the mud, was a kitten.

He couldn't have been more than four moons, by Mistyfoot's estimate, with soft, cream-colored fur that darkened around his face and paws, though the mud he had ground up did its best to obscure him. He seemed to be caught by his tail, which was stuck firm in the leaves, and his whole back end was plastered with blood.

Surrounding him were two more kittens, a tom and a she-kit. The tom was white, with patches of pale gray, while the she-kit was gray, with patches of dull cream. They didn't seem to notice the newcomers, staring with rapt attention at their struggling brother with horrified expressions.

Finally, pacing around the whole scene with her tail lashing, was a lovely, long-furred queen, very obviously the kitten's mother by the faint sweetness of her milk-scent. Her fur was pale cream, her face and legs darker like her son, and her eyes were a gorgeous blue that shimmered with worry.

"Great StarClan, what happened here?!" Mousefur gasped, her breathing rough.

The queen stopped pacing and looked up, startled by the newcomers. The fur along her spine lifted, and she opened her jaws - but her eye caught on Spiderpaw, and whatever she was going to say, she swallowed. She mewed instead, her voice high-pitched and desperate, "This is all you brought?!"

Spiderpaw, panting, insisted, "It's okay! This is my mentor, Mousefur, and Mistyfoot, our deputy - there are no two smarter cats in ThunderClan!"

The queen looked momentarily baffled, staring at Mistyfoot and Mousefur as if they were birds, not cats.

Swallowing, Mistyfoot stepped forward and repeated Mousefur's question: "What happened?"

"We... We were chased over the river by some mean cats on the moors," the queen explained, gathering herself, "We'd stopped to take a break here after going over that horrible tree-bridge when suddenly, my dear little Berry got his tail caught in something!"

Berry, the kitten, thrashed some more, crying out in pain, his little sides heaving with effort. Mistyfoot's spine tingled at the sound. Her mouth felt dry. WindClan chased them off? How could they be so cruel? More important though was the young cat's desperate need for aid.

"Spiderpaw, go fetch Shadepool, quick!" Mistyfoot ordered. The black she-cat nodded and shot off, crashing through the undergrowth without question. Mistyfoot turned her head back to the queen and asked, "What's your name?"

"My name?" squeaked the she-cat. "Why does that matter right now?"

"Please," Mistyfoot insisted. Mousefur crept forward, placing her paws carefully on the ground until she reached the kitten and began to sniff.

The queen looked petulant, glaring at Mousefur as she edged closer to Berry, but eventually, she relented and answered, "Daisy. I'm called Daisy."

"Daisy," Mistyfoot repeated. She must be a loner. "Daisy, I sent Spiderpaw to fetch one of our medicine cats, but in the meantime, we're going to try and free your son. I need you and your other kits to stay calm. Okay?"

Daisy's fur fluffed, but she nodded and swept her plumy tail around her other two kittens, drawing them close to her and away from Berry. "Please help him," she pleaded, trembling. Her eyes shimmered, and she winced whenever Berry made a sound. It seemed like she was listening, for now.

"What're we looking at, Mousefur?" Mistyfoot asked, padding close to her friend.

"No idea," Mousefur admitted. "Whatever has the kit's tail has gone deep beneath his fur."

Mistyfoot drew close, sniffing. She smelled Berry's kit-scent and blood, overwhelmingly, but beneath it all was something alien but familiar: "Twoleg," she muttered.

"Twoleg?" Daisy repeated, confused. "You mean the Nofurs?"

Nofur? Mistyfoot considered the word - it must've been another term for a Twoleg. She'd heard Purdy, the old loner who had helped them through a Twolegplace, call them Upwalkers. Everyone must have a different one.

"Yes," Mistyfoot explained. "I think a Twoleg did this." Why, though?

Daisy's ears pricked. "Oh, no," she whispered. "Oh no, oh no, oh no..."

"Do you know what this is?" Mousefur asked. She lifted her muzzle to look at Daisy with cold eyes, her nose smeared with a little mud and blood from Berry's thrashing.

Daisy nodded, her fur fluffed up in alarm. "The Nofurs who took care of the barn I lived in talked a lot about how the Nofur who lived in the cabin in the pines laid these traps for foxes every few seasons," she whispered. "It upset them because sometimes their dogs or chickens would get caught, and not all made it out of them alive. I thought we had left in time to avoid this...!" She shivered. "Oh, the sounds those things make when they're caught! It's horrible..."

While the queen trembled, Mistyfoot considered her words. She's a loner from the barn on WindClan territory, then, she thought. She recalled hearing that there were kittens in the barn - why had she left such a safe, prey-rich place?

Not the time, she decided. Berry needs us to get him out of this.

"Look at this, Misty," Mousefur hissed.

The dusky she-cat gestured with a paw, and Mistyfoot hunkered down to get a better look. While she had been talking to Daisy, Mousefur had cleared away some of the mud and leaves around Berry's tail, which was ominously still.

What lay hidden there boggled Mistyfoot's mind for a moment - it was difficult at the best of times to figure out what a Twoleg object was, but this one was more bizarre than many of the things she had seen. The closest she could compare it to was a large, shiny butterfly with two strands of long, thin fence-web that clung to the back of its wings. That fence-web had captured Berry's tail, and the butterfly's wings were folded up almost in victory.

He must've sat on it without knowing and made it snap, Mistyfoot guessed grimly. Staring at this - what had Daisy called them? A trap? - she could imagine how easy it would be for them to snap shut around a fox's thin leg, shattering bone and muscle. She could also imagine what they might do to an unsuspecting cat, which made her queasy.

"How do we get it open, do you think?" Mousefur wondered. She glanced up at Mistyfoot, her pale eyes worried. "You've got way more experience with Twoleg nonsense than me."

Mistyfoot grimaced. "Give me a moment," she mewed. From the way Berry had stopped thrashing and mewling, she knew she didn't have long - he had lost so much blood, and shock could give way to unconsciousness. The poor mite just lay there now, trembling, his eyes unfocused.

She tried to imagine how this thing might work, and it seemed simple enough - step on it, and those wings would snap up and trap whatever they had caught. So, perhaps, pushing the wings down would release it - but with what? A cat's weight was probably not enough to accomplish that, or any animal might get out. There had to be another way, an easier way, for Twolegs to deal with this.

Mistyfoot peered down at the trap again and, paws trembling, reached out to feel for something, anything that might help her. She heard Mousefur hiss a warning, but Mistyfoot was pretty sure that since the trap had already caught something, it couldn't do it again.

There has to be a reason its base is so hidden...

Her claw caught on something. Mistyfoot's ears pricked. Belly deep in the muddy earth, she practically had her nose right in the trap's base as she tried to peer at what she had found - a small hole in the tiny little metal square hidden beneath the dirt and leaves. She could see something shiny and silver in there, like the wings that had caught Berry's tail.

"Mousefur, get a stick," Mistyfoot ordered. "One that's long and very thin."

Mousefur obeyed and, a moment later, returned with exactly what Mistyfoot was looking for - a long, thin stick. Mistyfoot repositioned herself, lining up the thinnest end of the stick with the opening she had found. Carefully, she began to push the stick into the snare until she felt resistance.

Mistyfoot prayed to StarClan that she had found something, otherwise this looked ridiculous, and worse, it might hurt Berry more. Planting her paws at the end of the stick closest to the snare, she pressed with all her weight. She heard Daisy hiss with worry.

There was a soft click, and, gloriously, the wings of the butterfly flapped down, and the fence-webs parted.

Daisy let out a yowl of delight, and sensing his freedom, Berry shot off, barreling right into his mother's paws and bowling over his siblings in a trembling heap. The queen captured her son in her paws and began to cover him with licks, purring as loud as a thunderstorm.

Trembling, Mistyfoot stepped off of the stick. The moment the pressure was released, the butterfly snare snapped shut again, but this time, it had caught nothing but the bloody fur it had torn from Berry's flanks and tail. Mistyfoot felt so relieved that she thought she might be sick again.

Before anything more could be said, Spiderpaw and Shadepool emerged from the undergrowth. Spiderpaw looked exhausted from running so far so fast, and Shadepool was winded, carrying a bundle of herbs in her mouth. She observed the scene with a calm gaze.

"You figured it out!" Spiderpaw gasped, looking at the trap. "What did you do?"

"That can come later, youngster," Mousefur rasped. She drew a shaky paw over her ear. "For now, we need to get this poor mite back to camp."

Daisy looked up from her son. "C-Camp?" she repeated, eyes darting between all the cats present. She curled her tail tighter around her kittens.

"Yes," Mistyfoot meowed. She looked at Daisy and willed her to understand. "We live not far from here - you'll be safe with us while your son recovers."

Daisy looked uncertain, and Mistyfoot didn't blame her - though they had helped, they were still strangers she knew nothing about. Mistyfoot knew from experience that Clan ways were strange to outsiders.

"Please come," Spiderpaw begged. Her tail twitched back and forth. "Where else is there for you to go?"

Daisy's expression softened into sorrow. Mistyfoot saw her gaze down at her kittens, and she licked each one between their ears, lingering on Berry most of all. She was clearly weighing her options, and Mistyfoot wondered if she regretted leaving her barn.

"Okay," she decided, finally. "We'll come with you."

Shadepool set down her bundle of herbs. "Before we go, let me just stop the bleeding..."

It was sunhigh by the time they returned to the camp, Mistyfoot leading the way through the thorn tunnel. Mousefur and Spiderpaw followed behind, each one carrying one of Daisy's exhausted gray kittens by their scruffs, and after them were Daisy and Shadepool - the queen had insisted upon carrying Berry on her back while Shadepool monitored him closely as he had finally passed out from the shock.

Nightfrost, washing beside the warrior's den, was the first to notice them. Leg still high in the air, he looked up and mewed, "Whoa!"

Soon enough, most of ThunderClan was crowding around Mistyfoot and the newcomers, the scent of strangers and blood drawing them out from the corners of camp. Daisy hissed, nervous, backing up towards the thorn tunnel as if to leave, her eyes wide to their whites at the sight of so many strangers.

"Who's this?" Whitewing mewed, head tilted curiously.

"Smells like the moors," grunted Snowstep, signing with his paws. "Are they WindClan?"

"They're not any WindClan cat I know," remarked Rainwhisker, signing back. "Loners?"

Mistyfoot thrust herself forward and meowed, "Everyone, give us space!"

The warriors obeyed, backing up, but gossip began to fly through the air like a cloud of flies. Rainwhisker and Ashfur bent their heads together, and Dustpelt had Cinderpelt's ear. Snowstep's tail was lashing. Mistyfoot fought to keep herself from bristling - couldn't they at least wait until Daisy was out of sight?

"Let's head to the medicine cat's cave," Shadepool insisted quickly. She wrapped her tail gently around Daisy's shoulders. "It's quiet back there, and like I was saying, Brackenfur and I can take a look at each of you..."

Mistyfoot thanked StarClan for Shadepool, and as they made their way to the back of the camp, she flicked her tail to beckon Nightfrost close. The small black tom looked so curious, and Mistyfoot knew that he was just dying to know what had happened and who these new faces were, but he was thankfully keeping his jaws shut.

"Is Tinystar's patrol back yet?" she asked.

Nightfrost shook his head. Mistyfoot felt worry bloom in her gut - what if WindClan had accosted her leader like they had Daisy and her kittens? "What about ShadowClan?" she wondered, hoping for better news.

"Quiet," Nightfrost remarked.

His tone was uncertain. Mistyfoot pressed, "Quiet good, or quiet bad?"

"I'm not sure, honestly," he admitted. His pale eyes wavered. "Their border seemed fine along the stream, but as soon as it broke into the woods near the greenleaf Twolegplace, it seemed faint, like they haven't bothered to keep that side of it up as often."

Mistyfoot's ears pricked, her pelt prickling. "The whole way?"

Nightfrost nodded. "From there and beyond," he elaborated. he shrugged helplessly. "I have no idea why - ShadowClan has always been really assertive about their borders."

It is odd... Ever since she was a kit, ShadowClan had kept their borders strong no matter what troubles they faced. Showing any sort of weakness was something that they had always staunchly refused to do.

"Anything strange about their scent?" Mistyfoot asked. "Sickness or fear?"

"It was hard to tell," Nightfrost admitted, shrugging. "We didn't run into a patrol; it's not like we could ask..."

Mistyfoot nodded in understanding. Great - problems on both borders now! she complained inwardly. With ShadowClan, she couldn't imagine that it was nothing. I can ask Stoneheart about it at the next Gathering. Her brother surely wouldn't keep something serious from her.

"So, what's going on with these new cats? Are they staying?" Nightfrost wondered, gesturing with his tail towards the back of the camp. Mousefur and Spiderpaw were emerging from the cave, Spiderpaw seeming to have found her energy again as she bounced around her mentor.

Mistyfoot mewed, "I don't know yet. We found them by the Divide; the queen said that WindClan had run them off. One of the kits was stuck in something she called a fox trap."

"A what?" Nightfrost repeated, eyes wide.

Mistyfoot waved her tail. "I'm sure I'll be explaining it soon enough," she sighed. She didn't look forward to that, but if those things were all over their territory, she needed every capable cat to deal with them. "I don't really know anything else. The queen's name is Daisy, and she said she was from the barn up by the Arrival."

"Whoa," Nightfrost breathed. "That's a long way!"

"It is," Mistyfoot agreed, nodding along. "I'm wondering why she bothered leaving, and with her kittens no less..."

The thorn tunnel shifted, and Mistyfoot lifted her muzzle. Tinystar strode into camp, followed by the rest of his patrol. Mistyfoot's gaze searched each one of them, looking for any sign of injury - blessedly, they seemed to be just fine. Graystripe, Cloudtail, and Swiftfoot parted ways with Tinystar as the small black tom approached. Both Mistyfoot and Nightfrost dipped their noses in greeting, and Mousefur sidled close, ears angled to listen.

"WindClan's border is quiet," Tinystar reported. "It was freshly marked on their end; we must have been just behind their dawn patrol. No signs of any trespassing, either - we checked all the spots they used before the battle."

"Good," Mistyfoot sighed. The WindClan dawn patrol must have been the group that had run off Daisy - the timing lined up. Mistyfoot wondered who was on that patrol. However far he might've fallen when he became WindClan's deputy, she had to hope that Crowflight wouldn't have run off a mother and her kits.

Tinystar looked equally pleased, unaware of Mistyfoot's thoughts. "Let's hope it stays that way," he mewed. "At least for now." He glanced around, his tail-tip flicking in thought as his nose twitched. The fur along his spine lifted. "Did something happen while I was gone? I smell strangers and blood..."

Nightfrost flicked his tail. "Well..." he looked to Mistyfoot.

Quickly, Mistyfoot and Mousefur explained again about Daisy. Between them, the story was streamlined and over quickly. "She's with Brackenfur and Shadepool now," Mistyfoot finished.

Tinystar sighed, relieved. "We must've just missed her," he breathed. His gaze darkened. "If we had run into one another, we could've avoided this mess. I'm glad they're all okay." Tinystar looked troubled, briefly. "I'll go and speak with her now, then. I've no problem with her staying until her son has healed - you can go ahead and tell the Clan as much." He glanced about. "I'm sure they're curious."

They definitely were. The scent of Daisy and her kits, both injured and not, had drawn out each and every cat, even pulling Sorreltail out from the nursery, and heads were bent in speculative gossip. Mistyfoot groaned inwardly and hoped she wouldn't have to repeat herself too much.

Pushing that aside, Mistyfoot dipped her head. "Of course, Tinystar," she meowed.

"And you can tell them that Spiderpaw's warrior ceremony will be tonight," Tinystar went on, looking at Mousefur. "She might not have finished her assessment, but her quick thinking helped save a kitten's life!" He purred, "A true warrior never ignores the sound of a kit in pain."

Mistyfoot's heart warmed. Good news, at least! Mousefur twitched her whiskers. "I shall!" she promised.

Tinystar stretched his forelegs, curling his tail over his back. "Well, off I go, then," he said. "Get something to eat and then some rest, Mistyfoot. You, too, Mousefur. You've both done well."

Mistyfoot watched Tinystar pad away towards the back of the camp, the warmth in her heart spreading to her toes. He thinks I did well!The idea was electrifying - it seemed to be further proof of what Mousefur had been saying, that Tinystar had chosen her for deputy because she was worthy.

As Mousefur padded away with a dip of her head, Nightfrost brushed against Mistyfoot's side. "Go and get settled," he mewed quietly. "I'll bring you something to eat, and I'll be sure to explain things to anyone who asks."