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Lightpaw ran to keep pace with Applecliff. He stood like a mountain over most their Clanmates: even when he slowed his walk Lightpaw took several strides to match one of his own. Now, as all medicine cats raced for the Mooncave, he had no time for the consideration. Sickness infected the Clans. Preying on the weakest and lingering long after they were gone. Known medicines didn’t work. Their last hopes lay with StarClan, either that their ancestors faced it before or knew the cure regardless.
Ottersplash reached the entrance first and stood aside for the rest of them. Sweetpaw, DuskClan’s medicine cat apprentice, clawed restlessly at the ground. “We’ll be okay, won’t we?”
Lightpaw tried for a reassuring purr. “It’s StarClan. They’ll protect us.”
Just inside the entrance, the cave opened wide. Above, moonlight shone through a gap in the rock. It turned the pale walls a blinding white. The cats spread out, crouching down and pressing noses to the walls of the cave.
Please, StarClan. Lightpaw begged as she closed her eyes. She opened them, and shivered at the dark. Next night was the new moon. There was a reason most Clan business took place during the brightest phases. Lightpaw pricked her ears as a starry cat padded from the dark. A cat she didn’t recognize, they carried the mixed-Clan scent of StarClan.
“Yes, Lightpaw?”
“Our elders are sick and our kits are dying,” she mewed without preamble. “Please, if you know a cure—”
But the StarClan cat already shook their head. “We cannot help you.”
“There’s no cure?” Lightpaw asked in disbelief.
Sorrow filled the StarClan cat’s mew. “The cure is out of our reach.”
“Our elders are sick. Our kits are dying.” Didn’t StarClan remember the need to care for them?
“I’m sorry, Lightpaw.” The StarClan cat began to fade.
“Don’t go! We need help! Don’t—!” Lightpaw jerked awake in the bright interior of the Mooncave. Before the silence broke, she knew none of them received knowledge of a cure. Her pelt felt too heavy and impossibly cold. StarClan hadn’t helped them.
Swallowtail sighed. “It is the night before new moon.”
“We left our Clans for nothing!” Sweetpaw spat.
Ottersplash lashed his tail. “We should have waited a few days.”
“We can’t wait!” Sweetpaw whirled to face him. “And now we have no cure!”
Applecliff set his tail across Lightpaw’s shoulders and led her from the cave. She plodded after him, head and tail low.
The cure is out of our reach. Did one exist somewhere? Why couldn’t StarClan tell them if one could be found? “What did StarClan tell you?” she asked Applecliff. Behind them, the others left the Mooncave, apparently in no hurry to catch up. What awaited them, other than breaking the hearts of their Clans?
“That the cure was out of their reach.” He looked over his shoulders. “Did they tell you any differently?”
“No,” her throat tightened, stopping her voice from becoming a wail. She shouldn’t cry like a kit. Applecliff swept her close with his tail. Lightpaw leaned gratefully into her mentor for support.
“For now, we’ll keep mitigating the symptoms. Maybe after new moon StarClan will have a clearer answer for us.”
The trek back through the territories was a solemn, defeated thing. She and Applecliff parted ways from the others in silence at the borders, dawn trodding the horizon. Crowstar sat at the camp’s entrance. One look at Applecliff and she hung her head and turned for her den.
“Go check on the elders,” Applecliff instructed gently before heading to the nursery.
Lightpaw poked her head in the den. “How are you all?”
Newtjaw had soiled his bedding. Gullthroat chewed through the entire stack of plants left for her and still ached. “Sagestorm is on their last leg,” Pricklethorn mewed hoarsely.
Lightpaw sent her sister, Vinepaw, to get Newtjaw more bedding while Lightpaw took the ruined bedding out of camp. She fetched more plants from their dwindling supplies for Gullthroat, and brought Pricklethorn water-soaked moss. There was nothing she could do for Sagestorm.
Their breathing was slow and shallow, and their eyes wouldn’t open. Lightpaw lay beside them and purred them on their way to StarClan. One by one, the other elders curled around them. Pricklethorn reminisced how Sagestorm had always been a favorite of kits. Gullthroat spoke of them as a proud senior warrior who fiercely defended the Clan from any threat. Newtjaw laughed, remembering a leaf-bare when Sagestorm got nose and tongue stuck to ice.
Goodbye, Sagestorm, Lightpaw thought as their breathing stilled. I’ll miss your stories.
Slowly, they all stood and took Sagestorm from camp.
Applecliff found Lightpaw in her nest that evening. He dropped a plump mouse before her. “You haven’t eaten since we left.”
“M’not hungry.”
He pointed his tail to the den entrance. “Go look and tell me what Crowstar is doing.”
Lightpaw peered outside. Crowstar and the deputy sat with a magpie between them. Lightpaw didn’t hear their words, but Crowstar appeared her usual unflappable self. “She’s sharing a magpie with Blazefire.”
“What are they doing with the magpie?”
One of Lightpaw’s ears flicked sullenly. “Eating it.”
Applecliff rolled the mouse towards her. “We have to be strong for others, even if it’s hard to be for ourselves. Eat.”
Obediently, Lightpaw bent and swallowed a few mouthfuls. Each one tasted like ash and went down like sawdust. “You can have the rest. Thank you.”
They curled together in the same nest to keep off the oncoming chill of leaf-fall. Deciding sleep wouldn’t come easy, Lightpaw rose and padded into camp. The two cats on guard waved their tails in greeting.
“Can’t sleep?” Sliverfish asked kindly.
“A lot on my mind, I guess.”
Brushfur nodded. “We’re here if you want to talk.”
Lightpaw dipped her head. They moved back a respectful distance when she walked away and settled her tail over her paws to gaze up at Silverpelt. The oldest cat in the Clans, DeepClan’s Tornear, had told Ottersplash and their leader of a story a Clan elder told him as a kit of a similar sickness. That elder had heard it from an elder, had heard it from an elder, and so on for several lifetimes. Any hypothetical cure existed beyond living memory, out of reach of StarClan. Lightpaw shivered in the cold air. For the Clans…it had to be worth it.
She looked to a blank piece of sky where the moon might have been. Our kits and elders are dying. If you have the cure, we need it. Please? If only for living kin you have.
If they had any. Lightpaw shooed the thought away. In the Clans, no cat was alone. They had kin, if only through the most distant of relations.
Lightpaw stayed looking at the sky as tiredness crept upon her. She waved her tail to Brushfur and Sliverfish and went back to her den. Turning at the entrance, she looked back at the dark patch of sky. Please, she prayed once more.
Gloom pressed in from all sides. Had Applecliff risen? Lightpaw shivered and tucked her nose beneath her tail. Just a little longer, and she’d get up and face whatever the sickness brought her Clan.
“Young one,” an unfamiliar mew roused her.
She blinked her eyes open and scrabbled to her paws, fur standing on end. StarClan near new moon was dark? Lightpaw had woken in a pit so deep it never saw the sun. Brambles crowded close, an impenetrable tangle of branches overhead. Gnarled trunks seemed to change shape in the shadows. Forcing her breathing to slow, Lightpaw swallowed and turned to face the voice.
A tom, not quite black but too dark to be called gray, with brown splotches on his face and shoulders like so many eyes.
“You heard me,” Lightpaw whispered in disbelief. The tom nodded. “Please, do you know the cure?”
“I can take you to the cat who does.”
Deeper into the Place of No Stars? Being here alone terrified her: going further might trap her forever. But, the Clans needed her to. She dug her claws into the ground to steel herself. “Please show me the way.”
The tom indicated her to follow with a thick-furred tail. Lightpaw stuck so close her nose kept brushing his tail tip. The scent of rot and maggots pervaded the air, and she couldn’t tell if it came from the forest or the tom himself. His path wound a great distance. Sometimes it doubled back on itself, at times she suspected they went in circles. Lightpaw felt they’d walked half the night when the tom finally stopped and yowled, “Shadowtooth!”
The forest swallowed the name, extinguishing the sound before it carried more than a few tail lengths. Still the tom waited for a response before once more calling, “Shadowtooth!”
“I heard you, old man.” Another tom slunk out of the shadows, dark gray with black stripes and a deep, vicious scar on his throat. Had that been what killed him? “What do you—” his amber eyes dropped to Lightpaw and widened in surprise. “What does a living cat want with me?”
“They need your cure,” the first tom meowed.
Lightpaw met Shadowtooth’s gaze. If he refused there was no hope. “Our elders are sick and our kits are dying.”
The hostility dropped from his shoulders. He still sounded contrite when he ordered, “Come with me.”
She looked up at her guide. They hadn’t shared a word as he led her, but she feared he was her tether back to the Clans.
“Hurry up!”
Lightpaw bolted after Shadowtooth. Her fur pricked as she followed him. Whenever she looked, she couldn’t see what watched her, but she knew something did. Shadowtooth didn’t seem the type to care if she got lost, however, and she did her best to ignore the persisting sensation and keep her own eyes on him.
Shadowtooth took a straighter route than the first tom had, though Lightpaw still found it impossible to track. After a relatively short distance he brought them to a halt before a giant tree. “You’ve seen these.”
At first, she didn’t think she had. Until she realized the dark hid the deep red of the bark. “…Yes!” They didn’t grow in the territories, but Lightpaw knew where a copse grew some distance from the path to the Mooncave. Hope began to rise in her. It would only take about half a day to get there and back.
Shadowtooth hopped between two protruding roots and pointed with his tail. “Dig.”
Lightpaw scrambled to where he indicated. You could at least help, she thought crossly.
When she’d dug down half her body length Shadowtooth asked, “Has it infected apprentices yet?”
“Yet?” she yowled in alarm, popping out of the hole. “N-no! Who else does it infect?”
He considered her carefully. “Over time, the illness grows stronger. It took the final two lives of a leader in my time.”
It killed a leader twice? Lightpaw gaped at him helplessly.
“Dig.”
Lightpaw eventually found herself so deep she had to kick dirt out with her back paws. As she dug, she came to a sobering thought. If the trees had never grown on Clan territory, Shadowtooth would have left after knowing the sickness infected the healthiest of cats.
A leader. Not our leader. A leader.
“Who did you lose?” Lightpaw asked quietly. Shadowtooth didn’t respond. Mousebrain! It was rude, and insensitive, and none of her business. They were doing each other a decency by pretending he hadn’t heard her.
In a mew softer than her own, Shadowtooth answered, “My parents.”
“I’m sorry.”
Finally she hit something hard that didn’t turn out to be a rock. Hefting the large seed in her jaws, she jumped from the hole. “Izissit?”
“Yes.” His tail curled in excitement.
Not so above it after all, are you Sourtooth?
Per his directions, she smashed the seed for the meat inside. “Why didn’t you teach your apprentice how to make this?” Lightpaw asked as she pulled out the hard, sharp edges of shell.
Shadowtooth rolled his eyes. “I wasn’t a medicine cat.”
“Then why didn’t your medicine cat pass it down and save us the trouble?”
His ears flicked, a look of concern on his face. “My brother was our medicine cat. There’s no reason he wouldn’t have taught Emberglow.” He squared his shoulders. “Pay attention. There’s a right way and a wrong way to prepare it.”
He drilled the steps into her until she repeated them multiple times without hesitation. Then he took her back to the older tom, who dipped his head and once more took her through the forest. It could have been the same route for the same amount of time, or a different route for longer. She barely noticed she no longer felt watched. Lightpaw whispered Shadowtooth’s instructions under her breath, paying no attention. She woke mumbling them.
“…for the patrol….”
“…separate hunting?”
“…bother hunting.”
“Ah, you’re awake.” Applecliff greeted. “Why don’t you check on the nursery while I—Lightpaw!”
She sprang from the nest, ignoring the exclamations of her name from her Clanmates. DarkClan lay the furthest from the Mooncave. Running as fast as she could, without stopping, it would still be past sunhigh by the time she returned.
The sun rose as she ran. Sun. Beautiful, warm, luminous sun. Dawn had never been so splendid.
As the sun topped the horizon and climbed into the sky Lightpaw burst out of the territories. She ran parallel to the route to the Mooncave. Not wanting to overshoot the copse, she gradually widened her distance from the familiar path.
There! she thought triumphantly as the trees came into view midmorning. Pouncing between the first set of roots, Lightpaw clawed frantically at the dirt. Only a few whisker lengths’ deep she hit seeds. Thank you, StarClan! Maybe the Dark Forest made good things harder to find. The thought gave her pause. StarClan weren’t the ones she should be thanking.
Lightpaw grabbed the seed in her jaws. Now wasn’t the time for introspection. She had to get back to the Clans.
Frustratingly, she’d lost the energy to run and had to trot. Little by little she slowed under the sun’s burning glare. The seed stretched her muzzle in a constant ache. Foam gathered at the edges of her jaws as she panted, swallowing to retain what moisture she could.
Get home and you can rest, she told herself countless times. Get home, make the cure, and you can rest.
Her dry tongue and dusty nose didn’t register when she reentered Clan territory. She startled when she heard her name. Sweetpaw stared at her. Halfpounce stood with them, his mouth full of various plants.
Perfect! Sweetpaw could watch her and bring the cure to DuskClan! Lightpaw flipped her tail for them to follow.
The two DuskClan cats looked at each other and hurried to catch up. Sweetpaw ducked her head to inspect the seed Lightpaw carried. “I’ve never seen a seed like that before. Is it…can it make a cure?”
Lightpaw gripped her teeth tighter and hurried her walk. Halfpounce’s mouth opened in a silent, surprised yowl.
“Don’t drop the plants!” Sweetpaw scolded. They turned back to Lightpaw as Halfpounce stopped to gather them. In a hushed mew, they asked, “Really?”
She pricked her ears forward.
The trio entered DarkClan’s camp long past sunhigh. Lightpaw’s Clanmates watched, baffled, as Sweetpaw told Halfpounce to wait before following Lightpaw into the medicine cat den. Lightpaw bashed the seed on a rock. “Help me pick out the bits of shell,” she rasped. “Quickly!”
Gratifyingly, the seed was packed with flesh. Applecliff ducked in as Lightpaw scooped out a pawful. “There you are! Where—”
“I need water, hawkweed, and borage,” Lightpaw mewed abruptly. Applecliff helped Sweetpaw bring them. Lightpaw repeated each step aloud as she did them, Applecliff and Sweetpaw watching avidly. When they were done, Lightpaw instructed, “The kits only need a claw tip’s worth. The elders can have a little more.”
“I’ll take it to your elders,” Sweetpaw offered.
Applecliff gave Lightpaw a lingering look as she started another batch before he headed to the nursery. She deposited the clump on an alder leaf, about to start a third when Sweetpaw reappeared with Halfpounce. Lightpaw nudged the leaf. “Here. It’s for DuskClan.”
“Thank you, Lightpaw!” Sweetpaw turned to Halfpounce. “Leave those and take this to Swallowtail. I’ll show her how to make it when I’m back.”
Halfpounce set the plants down and carefully picked up the leaf. He blinked gratefully at Lightpaw and left.
“You can have these,” Sweetpaw told her. “We were collecting for leaf-bare, but there’s more time. Is it alright if I take some of the seed to DeepClan and teach Ottersplash?”
“I think that’s a great idea,” Applecliff entered the den.
Sweetpaw picked up a large chunk, wiggling their thanks before dashing off. Lightpaw turned for the plants Halfpounce left. “I’ll—”
“You’ll rest,” Applecliff mewed firmly, gently nudging her towards their nests. “You’re shaking.”
Lightpaw didn’t feel like she was, but her nest quivered as she sank down. All at once the exhausting day caught up with her. She woke groggily when a vole plopped in front of her. She blinked her squinting eyes until Applecliff came into focus. “Why’s it dark?”
“It’s dawn again.”
Dawn? Lightpaw lurched up. “How’s—”
“They’re recovering.” Applecliff guided her back down.
Recovering…. Suddenly aware of how famished she was, Lightpaw tore voraciously at the vole. Applecliff waited until she licked her muzzle clean. “Crowstar and the other leaders want to send warriors to collect more of the seeds.”
“I can—!” Lightpaw’s legs crumpled when she tried to rise.
“You’ll rest. Where did you find them?”
“The trees we see on the way to the Mooncave, the giant red ones. They have to dig between the roots.”
Applecliff nodded. “I want you to stay in your nest until sunhigh. You can get up after that, but do not leave camp.” Lightpaw groaned pleadingly. He licked her ear. “Medicine cat’s orders.”
Lightpaw padded at Sweetpaw’s side, purring at one of their jokes. It felt so nice to be going to the Mooncave for a regular meeting. Shadowtooth’s cure worked like a miracle. In the half-moon since Lightpaw brought back the seed, all traces of the sickness vanished. The seeds themselves now sat with the other herbs in each medicine cat den. A few had been buried throughout the territories in hopes they might grow.
“Patchkit’s gotten so big!” Swallowtail mewed to Applecliff and Ottersplash. “You’d never imagine we almost lost him.”
One by one they entered the Mooncave, not quite ready to stop mingling their happiness to mingle with StarClan.
“Before we begin, I have an announcement to make.”
Lightpaw turned her head to Applecliff. Usually he told her if he planned to bring something up with the other medicine cats. He fixed her with a kind gaze. She was very suddenly aware of the moonlight twinkling off the walls of the cave. “Lightpaw. I would like to give you your name.”
Mrows of appreciation came from the other cats. Even Sweetpaw, several moons her senior, had eyes wide and tail fluffed in excitement.
“I-I’m still training,” she protested.
Applecliff purred. “And I’ll still be here to guide you. You’ve done all the Clans a great service.”
“It’s not unusual for medicine cats to receive a name while they’re still apprentices,” Ottersplash pointed out.
“It seems silly not to give you one,” Swallowtail agreed.
Applecliff approached her. “If you decline, I won’t. But it’s something you’ve earned.”
Lightpaw twitched her ears self-consciously, glancing about. She took a steadying breath and mewed, “Okay.”
Applecliff narrowed his eyes warmly and touched his nose to hers. “Then, with StarClan as witness, I name you Lightseed.”
Sweetpaw yowled her name enthusiastically, sending it reverberating off the rock. Ottersplash pinned his ears back as Swallowtail and Applecliff mrowed their amusement. Apparently it was a type of initiation for younger medicine cats to realize how much the stone echoed. They each found a spot on the wall and touched their noses to it.
Lightseed opened her eyes to the bright light of StarClan she was used to. The cat from her last visit stood before her. “Lightseed,” they greeted coolly. “Congratulations are receiving your name.”
“Thank you. Erm…?”
They dipped their head. “Elmstar.”
“Thank you, Elmstar.” What did it mean that she’d upset a past leader?
Elmstar sighed. “Lightseed. What you did was very brave, and in doing so you saved the Clans. But you must take care when it comes to the Dark Forest. The cats there…there’s a reason they’re not in StarClan.”
Lightseed hung her head. “I know. I’m sorry, it’s just….”
“Your Clan takes priority,” Elmstar finished for her. A leader understood.
“Yes. If there had been another way, I would have taken it.” And if you cared, you would have told us the cure.
She squashed the thought immediately. Of course StarClan cared for them. StarClan loved them.
Elmstar considered her carefully. “The Place of No Stars is a poison. Cats there feed it to others so sweetly they don’t recognize it for what it is until it’s too late. Be wary to stay as far from their words as you can.”
“Yes, Elmstar.”
They nodded warmly. “Congratulations again on your name.”
Lightseed blinked open her eyes to the bright walls of the Mooncave.
At the Gathering that moon, Lightseed found herself the center of attention of every cat in attendance. Flattering at first, it quickly became overwhelming. Vinepaw didn’t help matters; proudly, and loudly, boasting to every cat who hadn’t heard the news that Lightseed received her name. Lightseed tucked herself behind Applecliff, pelt twitching as she silently pleaded for the leaders to start.
Eventually all three made their way to the top of the stone slabs they addressed the cats from. Three, one for each Clan, leaning against the other. Remove or weaken one, and the other two fall.
Starting with DuskClan, they all told their losses. DuskClan: two elders and a kit. DeepClan: the entire nursery. Horrified gasps rippled through the Gathering at the news. Lightseed stared wide-eyed at Ottersplash, who kept his unblinking gaze on his leader. Stomach sinking, Lightseed realized he only remarked on how DeepClan’s elders were recovering at the half-moon meeting.
He doesn’t have an apprentice to split his duties.
Applecliff and Swallowtail hadn’t needed to divide their attention from a sick cat. Ottersplash was of an age with Applecliff, but where Applecliff had two apprentices before Lightseed, Ottersplash had yet to take one. Now who knew how long it would be before queens felt safe kitting again? Let alone if any of DeepClan’s kits would want to be a medicine cat.
Crowstar stepped forward. “DarkClan has faired somewhat better. Three of our kits died, as did the elder, Sagestorm.” She waited for the murmurs of sorrow to quiet down. “Of course, we have good news as well. Most of you have heard, but it bears repeating. Lightseed has earned her name for her services to the Clans.” Crowstar’s warm yellow gaze turned to Lightseed as the Gathering rang with her new name.
Applecliff nudged her encouragingly. “Let them see you.”
She inched her way past him, grateful to sink back into his shadow as the leaders’ time ended and the Gathering split into smaller groups.
The next half-moon meeting came with Lightseed’s favorite level of excitement: None.
No injuries, no diseases, just five cats going to the Mooncave to commune with StarClan. Lightseed didn’t realize how much she’d missed the peaceful solitude of the visits. As much a time for introspection and meditation as it was for communing with their ancestors.
Lightseed settled atop her paws, nose touching the bright wall of the cave, and let her mind drift. The usual chill of StarClan touched her, along with something else. A cold so deep it threatened to sink into her bones and freeze her joints. She turned her head to stare at the fringes of the Dark Forest.
A small stretch, only slightly dimmer than the surrounding stars. So innocuous as to be overlooked. If she chose, she could ignore it was even there.
Lightseed twitched her whiskers and, before she second-guessed herself, trotted towards the Place of No Stars. Whatever he’d done to be refused by StarClan, Shadowtooth had saved the Clans twice.
Soon the impenetrable tangle of brambles appeared. “Hello?” she called. Behind her, the sound carried. The trees of the Dark Forest swallowed it. Unsure if she should yowl again, Lightseed waited. A clump of heavy, foul leaves pulled apart, dragging at the thick pelt of the dark tom.
He appraised her neutrally. “This is unexpected. Not unwelcome, but unexpected.”
“I’d like to see Shadowtooth, please.”
The tom’s ears twitched. “Did the cure work?”
“Yes.”
His gaze softened. “That is a pleasure. Stay near.”
Lightseed stuck close, fur on end and the smell of rot in her nose. The winding, circuitous path seemed to be different. Not that Lightseed recognized anything. She wasn’t sure if he took her to the same spot as he meowed, “Shadowtooth?”
“StarClan, what? Can’t the dead rest in—” Shadowtooth appeared from a tangle of sharp branches. He broke off on seeing Lightseed. Seemingly at a loss for why she’d returned, his eyes narrowed and his tail lashed.
“Your cure worked,” she explained. “I wanted to thank you.”
“Of course it did.” His tone was curt, but his shoulders relaxed at the news. None of them uttered a sound until at length Shadowtooth asked, “Is that all you came to do?”
Lightseed tilted her had. Hadn’t that been obvious? “Yes.”
“You came to the Dark Forest just for a thanks?”
The older tom’s whiskers twitched in amusement. “It’s not the most laudable reason I’ve seen for coming here.”
Shadowtooth’s hackles rose.
“My name is in honor of your cure,” Lightseed piped up. “Ap—My mentor named me Lightseed.”
Shadowtooth scraped his claws along the ground. Satisfaction glinted in his gaze. A Dark Forest cat must find it a great joke that a cat in service to StarClan was named for something they did. “Isn’t that something?”
“It suits you,” the older tom meowed.
Her pelt warmed at the compliment. The Place of No Stars is a poison, Elmstar’s warning echoed.
There truly ended everything Lightseed had to say. She dipped her head farewell to Shadowtooth and followed the older tom out of the Dark Forest. “Thank you for showing me the way. You’ve been as big a help as Shadowtooth.”
“Be careful not to stray,” he cautioned her.
Realizing she’d never learned his name, Lightseed turned to ask. The tom was gone. StarClan’s light stretched all around her.