Barley was no stranger to the horrors of bloodshed, though. He had been born in Twolegplace among the cats of BloodClan. When he insisted on staying with his littermate Violet, against Scourge’s orders, he was forced to watch his sister being attacked by Scourge’s closest supporters—none other than Scourge and Violet’s remaining littermates. Violet barely survived and became a kittypet soon after. Barley escaped to the farm and lived in solitude until the happy arrival of Ravenpaw.
Neither of them forgot Ravenpaw’s Clan origins, and they helped the cats from the forest many times over, joining the battle against BloodClan with relish and then allowing all four Clans to hunt and rest at their farm before they embarked on the Great Journey. Ravenpaw was much missed by his ThunderClan friends, but not a single one of them would have forced him to return to the place where he had known such abject misery because of Tigerclaw.
SMUDGE AND PRINCESS
SMUDGE WAS THE WELL-FED, idle, black-and-white kittypet who first sensed Rusty’s obsession with the wild cats in the woods. While Smudge was in no hurry to meet dangerous creatures that feasted on bones and lived by some obscure code that kept them in the cold, wet trees, he was a loyal and courageous friend to Rusty, who would become Firestar. When Smudge started dreaming of strange, far-off cats that seemed in dire need of help, he left the safety of his backyard and ventured into the forest to find Firestar. Who knows why StarClan would have sent dreams of SkyClan to a pampered kittypet? Perhaps the warrior ancestors have learned to be less judgmental of cats with a different lifestyle than the living Clans.
Princess was the pretty, fluffy littermate of Rusty’s who went to live with different housefolk when they were still tiny kits. She had no idea what had happened to her brother until a chance encounter at the edge of ThunderClan territory. Although Princess had no wish to live by the rules of the wild herself, she was proud enough of her brother to give him her firstborn kit, Cloudkit, wishing for him the same noble life that Fireheart spoke of. The wisdom of her decision was questionable at times, especially in the beginning when Cloudpaw had difficulty settling into this tougher life, but it was a clear sign of Princess’s trusting and hopeful nature. Firestar often thought of his sister, even when he had taken his Clan far from the forest to their new home beside the lake. And Princess still thinks of him, knowing he and her precious son have traveled far away, but with no means of finding out if they are still alive.
SCOURGE AND BONE
SCOURGE WAS BORN ON the edge of Twolegplace, the kittypet son of Quince and Jake, who went on to father Firestar and Princess with another kittypet, Nutmeg. Initially named Tiny, Scourge was a puny, protesting kit who was treated with dismissive scorn by his littermates, Socks and Ruby. Determined to prove that he was their equal, Scourge began exploring the woods that lay beyond the backyard fence. An encounter with a ThunderClan patrol led to his first fight, with the powerful apprentice Tigerpaw. Scourge was soundly defeated—and he never forgot the injustice of the uneven battle. He decided not to return home, but instead to live wild in Twolegplace, finding his own food and shelter.
Scourge tried to rip off his kittypet collar using an ancient dog’s lost tooth, but the tooth got stuck in the fabric without loosening the collar one bit. If other stray cats chose to interpret this as a trophy from a fight with a dog that Scourge had killed, he had no intention of stopping them. His reputation grew among the Twolegplace cats, and Scourge felt the first seductive stirrings of power. He sought out the strongest, cruelest cats to support him and used them to punish weaker cats that disobeyed the rules he introduced. He called his disparate rabble of followers BloodClan, not that he had any interest in a code of honor like that of the forest Clans.
When a former BloodClan cat came to him with the leader of ShadowClan, asking for an alliance against the other Clans, Scourge recognized Tigerstar at once. He agreed to help, with no intention of falling in with Tigerstar’s plans. When Scourge led BloodClan into the forest, he declared his real aim: to take over the whole forest as extra territory for his Twolegplace cats. Tigerstar protested, so Scourge killed him, ripping all nine lives from him with a single blow.
But the Clan cats were braver than he anticipated and, in a ferocious battle, Scourge met his match in his half brother, Firestar, leader of ThunderClan. Scourge struck the first deadly blow, but Firestar had been given nine lives by his warrior ancestors and recovered to strike back. Without belief in StarClan, Scourge had only one life to lose and he died at Firestar’s paws, leaving his rogues to scatter back to Twolegplace in shame.
Bone was Scourge’s closest ally—never viewed by Scourge as his equal, but valued for his brute strength and absolute courage in the fiercest battle. He walked ahead of Scourge into the forest, and for a moment the Clan cats assumed that this huge, ferocious tom was the one who led BloodClan. He died in the same battle as Scourge, killed by a swarm of apprentices after he took the ThunderClan deputy Whitestorm’s life. No cat could have doubted Bone’s loyalty to his cruel leader, and perhaps it is a tragedy that he never had the chance to live the life of a true Clan warrior.
SOL
SOL WAS A GINGER, black, and white loner with a deep desire to destroy the warrior Clans. This anger came from an incident in his early life. An encounter with SkyClan cats led him to join their Clan in the gorge, but though he tried to fit in with his new Clanmates, he was too selfish, too impulsive to be guided by the warrior code. Trying to help Leafstar only caused more trouble and, in a last desperate attempt to impress her, Sol took three kits and hid them far from the gorge so that he could play a triumphant role in finding them. But his plot was discovered and Sol was banished from the Clan, and warned by Leafstar that he could never be a true warrior. From that moment on, Sol was determined to hunt down every Clan cat he could find and prove to them that their code was worthless.
Sol’s luck turned when he met Midnight, the badger with a deep connection to the Clans. He used her to glean information about the Clans and when he arrived by the lake, he was able to use that knowledge to appear mysterious and wise to the Clan cats.
He went first to ThunderClan, insisting he meant no harm and that he was only curious about the cats he had heard so much about. But he quickly began sowing seeds of discontent, telling Jaypaw and Leafpool that a terrible darkness was coming. This coincided with Jaypaw’s own vision of blackness descending upon the forest. But as Sol had no connection to StarClan, Leafpool was disinclined to listen to him, and Firestar sent Sol away.
During a ferocious battle on ThunderClan territory that involved all four Clans pitched against one another, the sun vanished, plunging the forest into the darkness that Sol had prophesied. His prediction of the eclipse was a fortunate guess: He may have foretold a “coming darkness” and the loss of the sun, but this could have been interpreted as any kind of momentous change to affect the Clans. The fact that the sun actually disappeared played monumentally to his advantage, and set Sol on the path that almost led him to destroy the Clans forever.
Sol soon found an able audience with Blackstar, who was already in the depths of despair because of the troubles faced by his Clan in their new home. Sol encouraged Blackstar to give up the warrior code, to let his Clanmates hunt for themselves and take care of their own ailments. Under Sol’s influence, Blackstar forbade his warriors from attending Gatherings, and his medicine cats from going to the Moonpool.
ShadowClan began to collapse from within, to the dismay of other Clans. It fell to Jaypaw’s faked StarClan sign to restore Blackstar’s faith and lead to Sol’s banishment. But that wasn’t the last the Clans heard of this cat. When the warrior Ashfur was killed in mysterious circumstances, many ThunderClan cats believed Sol was responsible. Brambleclaw led a patrol to track him down, and the ThunderClan cats eventually found Sol in the ruins of Purdy’s Twoleg den. They escorted both cats back to the hollow, where Sol was taken prisoner and accused of Ashfur’s murder. All this time, Sol remained calm, poised, unruffled, as if he knew more than the
warriors would know in a dozen lifetimes. The other Clans were outraged to learn that Firestar had brought the troublesome cat back to the lake and insisted he be exiled once and for all.
Seasons later, Sol came back to ThunderClan. Many ThunderClan warriors viewed him with deep suspicion, but others believed he had chased off a fox that had been about to attack a pair of apprentices, and welcomed him. Sol took advantage of the young cats who had barely known him before and encouraged them to plan an attack on WindClan. At the same time, he secretly visited WindClan to stir up anger toward ThunderClan. Luckily Dovewing and Ivypool overheard his plot, and ThunderClan was ready for the attack. In the battle, Hollyleaf took on Sol and defeated him, threatening to kill him if he dared show his face in the forest again. Sol left, but behind him lay fretful, disunited Clans, vulnerable to the influences of the Dark Forest.
Sol came close to destroying the Clans by the lake, but the code held strong, and Sol remained as alone and bitter as he had always been.
ROCK
ROCK WAS DISCOVERED BY Jaypaw in the tunnels beneath ThunderClan after they moved to their home beside the lake. Rock was an alarming sight, lurking in the darkness: hairless, hunched, with bulging, sightless blue eyes. No cat knew when he first entered the tunnels—if, indeed, he had ever lived in the open air. He was already a legend when a young cat of the Ancients, Fallen Leaves, entered the tunnels to begin his initiation as a sharpclaw. Rock kept count of the cats who survived the test and made it back out to the hillside, marking each success with a scratch on a piece of wood.
Rock watched Lionpaw and Heatherpaw play in the underground cavern, tolerating the disturbance because so much solitude could weigh heavy, even on him. When three WindClan kits got lost in the tunnels and Jaypaw and Hollypaw joined the others to search for them, Rock revealed himself to Jaypaw, recognizing in the blind medicine cat someone who would understand the messages he had to pass on. He helped Jaypaw find the kits and escape from the flooding caves, and he sent his scratched stick out with them, to remind Jaypaw of the history he had stumbled upon.
When Jaypaw traveled to the mountains to stay with the Tribe of Rushing Water, Rock walked in his dreams and took him to the Tribe of Endless Hunting, showing him that there were ancestors other than just StarClan. More than that, these cats were connected to the Clans, because they had come from the lake and then sent some of their kin to settle in the forest. Rock, together with the Tribe of Endless Hunting, had been waiting for Jaypaw to come for a long time, knowing that the future of the Clans lay in his paws.
Rock guided Jaypaw to walk among the Ancients as Jay’s Wing, where he played a crucial role in sending the cats to find a new home in the mountains. There was nothing Rock could do to prevent the battle with the Dark Forest, but he could show Jaypaw just how important it was that the cats beside the lake survived, keeping alive the circle of sharpclaws, prey-hunters, cave-guards, and warriors that had rolled out since the very first sunrise over the lake.
But he also blamed the very existence of the Three for the threat that faced the cats by the lake. If Jayfeather, Lionblaze, and Dovewing had not come, they would not have fulfilled the prophecy that involved the Dark Forest rising. In his rage, Rock blamed the Clans too, for clinging to the memories of the cats who had done them wrong, preserving their existence in the Place of No Stars and giving them enough power to walk in the dreams of restless warriors.
Rock didn’t take part in the Great Battle, but he watched from the tunnels, knowing that the prophecy had come true and the Three—with Firestar—had saved the cats that lived beside the lake in this age. There would be others, and others after them. And Rock would watch over them all, tireless, blind, and alone in his underground world.
FALLEN LEAVES
FALLEN LEAVES LIVED BESIDE the lake many, many seasons ago, before cats settled in the mountains or the forest, before there was any sense of a warrior code or the Clans. As a young cat, he was sent into the tunnels to find his own way out, the test that had to be passed in order to become a sharpclaw—the Ancients’ equivalent of a warrior, though without the rigid structure of patrols and duties that came with the code of the Clans. Fallen Leaves never escaped the tunnels; the river flooded, trapping him forever, leaving his mother, Broken Shadow, to grieve endlessly. His spirit stayed in the tunnels, restlessly searching for daylight and fresh air, watching the rare cats who strayed down that far, wishing he could join their games.
Hollyleaf escaped into a collapsing tunnel when the truth came out that Leafpool and Crowfeather were her parents. She fled into the darkness and wandered lost and hungry, until Fallen Leaves found her and brought her a fish to eat and soaked moss to drink. He treated her injured leg with comfrey and showed her how to survive underground, fishing in the shadowy river and learning the fastest ways out—although Fallen Leaves was unable to follow her into the open.
For several joyous moons, Fallen Leaves was happier than he had ever been. But Hollyleaf grew restless, and Fallen Leaves knew that her heart lay with her Clanmates. He encouraged her to be true to herself, to go back and trust the love of her kin and friends to welcome her back to her home. His heart broke when she left, because it was the sharpest reminder yet that he could not share a life in daylight.
When Dark Forest warriors burst into the forest, Fallen Leaves finally broke free from the tunnels. Running alongside his mother, Broken Shadow, he leaped into battle and fought alongside Hollyleaf. He was there when she died, struck down by Hawkfrost. Fallen Leaves realized she would never be able to keep her promise and see him again, because she would walk a different path from him forever now. But the battle with the Dark Forest had finally set him free, and when peace settled on the lake, Fallen Leaves stayed with Broken Shadow and the rest of the Ancients, lost in the mist of long-forgotten memories, but free from the confines of the caves.
MIDNIGHT
MIDNIGHT WAS FIRST MENTIONED in the dreams of four cats, one from each Clan, who were told to “meet at the new moon and listen to what midnight tells you.” Baffled, Brambleclaw, Crowpaw, Tawnypelt, and Feathertail set out on the quest, accompanied by Squirrelpaw and Stormfur. Eventually their journey led them to steep sandy cliffs beside the sun-drown-place, where they discovered that Midnight was not a moment of darkness but a living, breathing creature: a badger, enemy to all the cats. But this badger was different. She could speak their language, more or less, and she was only hostile until she realized where they had come from. She told them that all four Clans had to leave the forest before the Twolegs destroyed it. To find a new home, they must stand on Highrocks and follow “a dying warrior,” which turned out to be a falling star that led them to the lake.
Midnight appeared again when badgers attacked the ThunderClan camp in revenge for one that had been driven out when the cats first settled in the hollow. Midnight fought on the side of the warriors and helped defeat the badger hordes. Later, after Sol had come to the lake and done his best to cause trouble, Jayfeather met Midnight in his dreams and asked why she had told this loner so much about the Clans. Midnight replied that the Clans were about to face a challenge far greater than a curious stranger; she already knew about the threat rising from the Dark Forest, and had sent Sol to test the warriors’ faith in their ancestors. If they could resist Sol’s self-serving, destructive philosophies, they stood a chance of defeating the vengeful cats coming back from the dead.
She returned to the lake to help in the battle against the Dark Forest, fighting alongside the Clans to drive out their greatest enemies of all. Midnight was no ordinary badger: With Rock, she had watched the very first sunrise over the lake and had seen reflected in the fiery surface the futures of Clans, Tribes, Ancient cats, and more. Together, Midnight and Rock watched over the cats by the lake and prepared for the day that could have been the sunset of the ways of the Clans, but instead heralded a new dawn.
READ ON FOR AN EXCERPT FROM
DAWN OF THE CLANS
For many moons, a tribe of cats has lived pe
acefully near the top of a mountain. But prey is scarce and seasons are harsh—and their leader fears they will not survive. When a mysterious vision reveals a land filled with food and water, a group of brave young cats sets off in search of a better home. But the challenges they face threaten to divide them, and the young cats must find a way to live side by side in peace.
Chapter 1
GRAY WING TOILED UP THE SNOW-COVERED slope toward a ridge that bit into the sky like a row of snaggly teeth. He set each paw down carefully, to avoid breaking through the frozen surface and sinking into the powdery drifts underneath. Light flakes were falling, dappling his dark gray pelt. He was so cold that he couldn’t feel his pads anymore, and his belly yowled with hunger.
I can’t remember the last time I felt warm or full-fed.
In the last sunny season he had still been a kit, playing with his littermate, Clear Sky, around the edge of the pool outside the cave. Now that seemed like a lifetime ago. Gray Wing only had the vaguest memories of green leaves on the stubby mountain trees, and the sunshine bathing the rocks.
Pausing to taste the air for prey, he gazed across the snowbound mountains, peak after peak stretching away into the distance. The heavy gray sky overhead promised yet more snow to come.