Yellowfang’s Secret полностью

Yellowfang crept across the marsh, her pads sore from treading on rock-hard mud and ice-rimmed tussocks of grass. Though the snow had melted, the air was still bitterly cold, and Yellowfang’s breath puffed out in a cloud. Reeds poked up at the edge of frozen pools, the rattle of their feathery tops the only thing that broke the silence. There was no sound or scent of prey.

A moon had passed since the kittypet attack, and though the Clan cats’ wounds had healed, their strength hadn’t returned. It seemed as if leaf-bare would go on forever. Every cat was hungry all the time. Yellowfang could feel the bones jutting through her fur, and she couldn’t sleep at night because she felt the pangs of hunger in the bellies of her Clanmates.

We hunt all the time, day and night. And we still can’t find enough to eat. What’s going to happen to us?

She paused, watching Raggedpelt, who was padding along softly a few tail-lengths ahead of her. After a moment he stopped, his ears pricked to listen. Yellowfang slid toward him, following his gaze to a clump of grass about halfway between them. As she drew closer she heard a faint scratching among the brittle stems, and picked up the scent of a shrew.

Raggedpelt signaled to Yellowfang with his tail, then leaped at the clump of grass, swiping it with his forepaws. The shrew panicked and scuttled into the open, heading straight for Yellowfang. She dropped swiftly into the hunter’s crouch, but as she pounced one of her hind paws slipped on a patch of ice and she stumbled, landing awkwardly a tail-length away from her prey. Raggedpelt bounded forward, but he was too late. The shrew darted off, taking refuge in a tangle of scrubby thorns.

“Fox dung!” the tabby tom snarled. “Yellowfang, if that’s the best you can do, you’d better go back to camp.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Yellowfang snapped back at him. “Have you never lost a piece of prey? You know we have to keep hunting.”

Raggedpelt snorted, but said no more. As he and Yellowfang turned back toward the trees, Russetpaw and her mentor, Featherstorm, emerged from the shadow of the branches, heading toward the camp. Yellowfang bounded forward to meet them; as she drew closer she saw that Russetpaw was carrying a crow, her ears sticking up from behind a jumble of black feathers.

“You’ve managed to catch something!” Yellowfang meowed. “That’s great! There’s not so much as a mouse stirring out on the marshes.”

“Russetpaw found it,” Featherstorm responded, with an approving look at her apprentice.

Russetpaw’s eyes shone with pride, though Yellowfang noticed that Raggedpelt was bristling with a scowl on his face.

“The Clan will be pleased,” Yellowfang mewed, walking away. “We’ll see you later.” When Featherstorm and her apprentice were out of earshot, she turned to Raggedpelt. “There’s nothing wrong with Featherstorm praising Russetpaw. She deserved it.”

Raggedpelt sniffed. “That crow was a mangy old thing,” he muttered.

Impatience welled up inside Yellowfang and she let it spill over. “I’ve had enough of the way you always treat Russetpaw like a heap of mouse droppings,” she hissed. “It’s not her fault that Hal was her father, too. You have to find a way to deal with it. She’s not just your Clanmate, she’s your sister!”

Raggedpelt halted and stared at her. Too late, Yellowfang remembered that on the night of the battle he had headed for the camp with Boulder before Russetpaw had revealed that she was Hal’s daughter.

So? It won’t hurt him to face up to the truth.

“Don’t ever say that again!” Raggedpelt growled with a lash of his tail. “I have no father. Russetpaw is nothing to me.” He turned his back on her, then glanced over his shoulder to add, “You’re lucky I was there to defend you when he started to attack. You didn’t stand a chance.”

Yellowfang felt her neck fur rise in shock. That’s not how it happened! But she knew there was no point in trying to make Raggedpelt see reason. He was too desperate to distance himself from Twolegplace and the cats who lived there.

Raggedpelt began to stalk away, then stopped, angling his ears toward a nearby clump of reeds. Easing her way around the stalks, Yellowfang spotted a blackbird pecking at the ground with its back to her. Paw step by paw step she crept up on it, while Raggedpelt edged forward on the other side.

StarClan! Don’t let me miss this one. Yellowfang prayed as she dropped into a crouch. Leaping forward, she felt her claws sink into the bird as it fluttered up, then went limp between her paws.

“Great catch!” Raggedpelt exclaimed, padding up. His eyes gleamed; his bad temper had vanished. He bent to sniff the prey, then added, “I wonder when we’ll get our first apprentices. We must be ready to be mentors by now.”