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  Breezepelt was always desperate for some acknowledgment from his quiet, undemonstrative father. He had heard the whispers about Crowfeather’s past and was determined to prove that he would never be so disloyal. Breezepelt could have been a brave, fierce, and loyal WindClan warrior, but Crowfeather’s disinterest and his mother’s insistence that he had to answer to no one gave Breezepelt a dangerous arrogance that was mixed with fury against his father. On a journey to the mountains with ThunderClan cats when he was an apprentice, Breezepaw watched how Jaypaw and Lionpaw were treated with warmth and easy affection by Brambleclaw, and his fury burned brighter. His horror when he learned that Jayfeather, Lionblaze, and Hollyleaf were actually Crowfeather’s kits is not hard to imagine.

  When cats from the Dark Forest walked in his dreams, offering him a chance to become a better warrior than his Clanmates, Breezepelt accepted. He was one of the few cats who understood the true nature of the Dark Forest’s attack on the Clans—and he relished the thought of punishing those cats who had made his life so difficult. In the depths of the battle, he launched himself on Lionblaze, who seemed to represent everything that was wrong for Breezepelt. But Crowfeather pulled him away and chased him off, blaming Breezepelt for making his own choices and leading himself down the darkest of paths. With tragic irony, Breezepelt failed to get revenge, failed to even out the balance of injustice he struggled with every day, and gave his father a chance to acknowledge his ThunderClan son.

  HEATHERTAIL

  HEATHERPAW WAS A LIVELY, curious, impulsive WindClan apprentice who first encountered Lionpaw when she and her mentor Crowfeather took Jaypaw back to the ThunderClan camp after a mishap at the edge of the lake. She met Lionpaw again when his patrol came to the aid of WindClan after a dog strayed too close to the camp on the hill. The young cats fought side by side, and the invisible, Clan-bound border between them began to fade.

  Frustrated by the difficulty of speaking to Lionpaw at Gatherings, Heatherpaw suggested they meet at night on the boundary between their Clans. She saw no challenge to her loyalty by fostering this friendship, no reason it would make her any less of a warrior. When she discovered an entrance to the tunnels that burrowed beneath the woods and the hillside, she realized she had found the perfect hiding place for their blossoming relationship. Together, she and Lionpaw explored the underground world, playing games of DarkClan in the largest cave, neither of them aware of the ancient eyes that watched them from the shadows.

  Meanwhile, relations between their Clans deteriorated, with Onestar determined to prove he could be strong without Firestar’s help. Border clashes made Lionpaw reluctantly decide he could no longer meet Heatherpaw in secret. When three WindClan kits went missing, Onestar assumed that ThunderClan had stolen them. Heatherpaw and Lionpaw guessed that the kits had found their way into the tunnels, and went looking for them with Jaypaw and Hollypaw. Torrential rain flooded the underground river, washing the cats out into the lake, and they narrowly escaped with their lives.

  Heatherpaw knew her relationship with Lionpaw could never be rekindled. Their Clans were at war, and she had learned that her loyalty had limits, in spite of what her heart felt. The time came, moons later, when she had to face Lionblaze in battle, and her memories of what they had once shared were pushed aside by her duty to WindClan. But she never forgot him entirely and never found his equal among her own Clanmates.

  RIVERCLAN

  Introduction to RiverClan: Crookedstar Speaks

  RIVERCLAN CATS HAVE ALWAYS been viewed with suspicion by the other Clans because of our skill at swimming, and our fondness for getting our paws wet. We descend mostly from cats who did not come from the mountains to settle in the forest; those wind-tossed, open-air-loving cats had no wish to live among the close, whispering reeds, or dive underwater to catch fresh-kill. Instead, our first ancestors were those who saw the potential of the river for providing food in every season—food that would be safe from the other Clans because of its watery shelter. Our diet of fish made our pelts grow glossy and thick, better suited to keeping out the chill of the waves, and while other Clans scorned our plain, reed-rattled dens, we made them charming with feathers and moss and other trinkets we could collect along the shore.

  Our warriors can fight as bravely as any, but we are called lazy and cowardly by the other Clans because we rarely venture into battle. We have no need: If no cats are willing to soak their paws crossing the river to attack us, why should we pick battles with them? The exception was Sunningrocks. Those rocks were ours! When cats first settled in the forest, the river flowed on both sides, cutting them off from ThunderClan and leaving them a short swim from our camp. The river changed direction, giving ThunderClan dry-paw access to the rocks, and those greedy cats instantly claimed them as their own. More blood was shed trying to take them back than I care to remember. Sunningrocks was won and lost, won and lost, every season until we finally left the forest.

  Now every Clan lives beside water, although we are still the only cats that swim for our prey. At first we settled on the island, but when StarClan sent the tree-bridge, it was claimed as our new Gathering place, so we have made our territory around a stream that flows into the lake. We have been threatened by curious Twoleg kits and a poisonous pool, but RiverClan quietly endures, taking pride in our independence and our strong-swimming cats.

  CROOKEDSTAR

  WHEN CROOKEDSTAR WAS BORN, he was called Stormkit, but a fall while playing broke his jaw and his mother, Rainflower, renamed him. It seemed to Crookedkit that his mother never recovered from the disappointment of having a disfigured son. She showered attention on his brother, Oakkit, instead, leaving Crookedkit restless and discontent. He left the Clan when he was still a kit and lived with farm cats instead, learning to hunt through fields of wheat, free from the warrior code. But deep down, he was still a Clan cat, and he returned home, was given the apprentice name Crookedpaw, and eventually earned the warrior name Crookedjaw.

  In his dreams, he walked with Mapleshade, a cat with revenge in her heart, who let him assume she was from StarClan although she was confined to the Dark Forest. She agreed to make him the most powerful RiverClan warrior of all, if he vowed that nothing would ever be more important to him than his Clan. Crookedpaw could see no trickery in this and made the promise. Mapleshade trained him hard, honed his skills, but also expected Crookedpaw to stand by and watch as, one by one, the cats he loved most were taken away from him.

  Crookedjaw proved his worth many times over with his skill at hunting on land and in the river. He never seemed to be able to do enough to please his mother, but he soon won the affection of his denmate Willowbreeze. Mapleshade tested him by luring a Twoleg kit to Willowbreeze, allowing her to be captured and taken back to Twolegplace. Crookedjaw rescued her with the help of her sister, Graypool—and he knew exactly what Mapleshade had done. He was beginning to realize that he had made a terrible promise that would leave him isolated in the midst of the Clan, but Mapleshade would not release him.

  A stray dog in the RiverClan camp sent Crookedjaw racing to help, but he was faced with the dreadful choice of saving his Clanmates or rescuing his mother, who had been knocked into the river. Urged on by Mapleshade, Crookedjaw went to help the other warriors, and Rainflower died. Crookedjaw never forgot the moment when he lost his mother, and with her, the chance of ever winning her love.

  When Shellheart retired from Clan deputy, the broken jaws of a pike on the fresh-kill pile predicted that Crookedjaw should take his place, despite being so young. Mapleshade took the credit for damaging the fish, and that night Crookedjaw finally realized that he was being trained among Dark Forest warriors and dissatisfied, angry cats from other Clans, including Thistleclaw of ThunderClan. Horrified that he was being asked to kill to secure victory—against the warrior code—Crookedjaw vowed never to return.

  But Mapleshade reminded him of the promise he had made, and slowly Crookedjaw’s world fell apart. His brother, Oakheart, fell in love with Bluefur, a ThunderClan wa
rrior, and compromised his loyalty to RiverClan. An expedition to hunt rats in a nearby barn, suggested by Crookedjaw, led to the death of Hailstar, plunging Crookedstar too soon into leadership. And then greencough took Willowbreeze and two of their new-kitted daughters, leaving just one, Silverkit, for Crookedstar to raise alone.

  For a while Crookedstar thought Mapleshade’s curse had lifted, but his daughter Silverstream fell in love with Graystripe, a ThunderClan warrior, and died giving birth to his kits on the other side of the river, in the shadow of Sunningrocks. Thanks to Mapleshade, Crookedstar had achieved everything he had ever wanted—and lost everything that mattered. It is to his credit that he hid so much of his private torment and was regarded as a strong, fair-minded leader throughout the forest.

  MAPLESHADE

  BORN IN THUNDERCLAN, MAPLESHADE was a keen and loyal apprentice, and a bold, skillful warrior. Her single-minded pursuit of the warrior code, and the courage with which she faced every enemy—cat, fox, or badger—stirred up whispers among her Clanmates that she would soon be deputy, and then leader. Mapleshade reveled in their admiration and burned inside with ambition.

  But then she made the tragic mistake of falling in love with a RiverClan warrior named Appledusk. She managed to keep their relationship a secret, creeping out at night to meet him beside the river, until the moment she gave birth. None of her Clanmates stepped forward as the father of her kits, and the medicine cat recognized the proud, handsome RiverClan warrior instantly in the shape of the tiny heads and the way they held their stubby tails.

  Mapleshade was cast out by her Clanmates, banished for betraying ThunderClan and the warrior code. In desperation, Mapleshade tried to swim across the river with her kits, to seek refuge in their father’s Clan. But the river was swollen from leaf-fall rain, and her kits were swept away. Mapleshade almost drowned trying to save them, but they were already gone, whisked out of her grasp like sodden little leaves. She made it to the other side, but to her horror, Appledusk blamed her when he learned what had happened. He wanted nothing more to do with her, and RiverClan refused to let her stay, not even for one night.

  Cast out by the one cat she loved, and by the Clan she had hoped would give her shelter, Mapleshade became a rogue. Her hatred for RiverClan and ThunderClan festered and, unable to get revenge while she was alive, she plotted against them when she walked in the shadows of the Dark Forest. When she saw young Crookedkit—rejected by his mother, cut off from his Clanmates, restless with unfocused ambition—she pounced. She promised to make all his hopes come true in return for one thing: that he would hold his Clan more precious than anything else in the world. Crookedkit agreed, not seeing that loyalty to an entire Clan was not the same as loving a single cat.

  With the future RiverClan leader in her thrall, Mapleshade trained him to become the warrior she had been, while steadily stealing everything he loved most. She made him watch his mother drown, his brother fall in love with a ThunderClan cat, and his mate and daughters die of greencough. When his remaining daughter, Silverstream, fell in love with Graystripe and died giving birth to their kits on ThunderClan soil, Mapleshade rejoiced. Now another cat knew what it was to suffer the agonies of risking everything for love—and losing.

  When the Clans moved to the lake, Mapleshade followed and plotted with the other Dark Forest cats to use discontented warriors in the living Clans in the greatest battle of all. Mapleshade could never make the Clans suffer enough for what had been done to her.

  SILVERSTREAM

  AS CROOKEDSTAR’S ONLY SURVIVING daughter, with her mother Willowbreeze lost soon after giving birth, Silverstream was a feisty, headstrong young cat who could bend her father to her will with little effort. But her impulsive nature was tempered by gentleness inherited from her mother, and she was loved by all her Clanmates. Silverstream was a RiverClan warrior through and through, with freshwater running in her veins, and she never intended to fall in love with a ThunderClan warrior. She saved Graystripe from drowning not with any romantic notions, but because RiverClan cats were not in the habit of letting dead cats pollute their source of prey.

  When Graystripe begged to see her again, Silverstream agreed out of curiosity. Her fondness for the ThunderClan warrior grew in spite of all her instincts to stay loyal to her Clan. When they met in secret, it felt as if she were walking on thorns, and fish stuck in her throat when she returned to her Clanmates at the fresh-kill pile. But she could not deny the pull of her heart, and when she discovered she was expecting Graystripe’s kits, her fears were balanced by joy that she would raise a new generation for him.

  Tragically she bled to death giving birth at the foot of Sunningrocks, desperately trying to reach her mate. It is hard to know if Silverstream would have been happy to live in ThunderClan, closed in beneath trees and out of sight and sound of her beloved river. But if love could give her the courage to break the warrior code, it might have given her a chance of happiness with Graystripe.

  LEOPARDSTAR

  LEOPARDFUR, WHO WOULD ONE day become Leopardstar, was a young, keen, ambitious cat who was appointed deputy by Crookedstar because he saw in her a straightforward, loyal cat with none of the shadows that haunted his dreams. But Leopardfur’s black-and-white approach to the warrior code meant that she viewed her leader’s more tolerant attitude toward half-Clan cats—specifically Feathertail and Stormfur, kits of Silverstream and Graystripe—as a grave weakness. When Tigerstar took over ShadowClan and offered a way of making the forest pure Clan, with no petty fighting over boundaries because all cats would belong to one supreme Clan, and no loyalty blurred through half-Clan breeding, Leopardstar formed an alliance that nearly led to the destruction of every cat. Perhaps she also hoped that Tigerstar would invite her to be his mate and share the rule of the forest.

  She realized her mistake when Tigerstar combined their Clans into TigerClan and made himself leader, then made half-Clan cats fight to the death. Whatever Leopardstar had hoped for, this was not it. But she was trapped by her pride and couldn’t speak out against Tigerstar—not because she was scared for her own safety, but because she couldn’t face losing the respect of her Clanmates by admitting she was wrong.

  Leopardstar saved her Clanmates by agreeing to join LionClan on the eve of the battle with BloodClan; thanks to Firestar’s courage, she ended up on the winning side. But she never forgot how close she came to destroying her Clan. She led her cats on the Great Journey to the lake and supported them through the difficult days of shaping their new home. Her experience with Tigerstar had left her brittle and defensive when dealing with other Clans, but her loyalty to her own Clanmates could not be questioned. She died of sickness in her old age, knowing that RiverClan was safe and well settled beside the lake. It was a peaceful end to a life that had been more turbulent and sad than any other cat truly appreciated.

  OAKHEART

  CROOKEDSTAR’S BROTHER, OAKKIT, WHO would one day be Oakheart, was painfully aware that their mother, Rainflower, favored him over his littermate. Rainflower seemed unable to cope with the fact that one of her kits was disfigured from an accident, but it made no difference to Oakkit. He was fiercely loyal and protective toward his brother, so it was a great shock when, on the day they reached six moons, Crookedkit left RiverClan, and Oakpaw was forced to enter the apprentices’ den alone. He trained hard, proved his skills in fighting and fishing, and there were soon murmurs of leadership qualities. Crookedkit returned shortly before Oakpaw became a warrior, and it seemed that everything was as it should be.

  But then Oakheart met a feisty, troubled ThunderClan warrior named Bluefur. Her sharp tongue and cool wit fascinated him, and he began to seek her out at Gatherings. Crookedjaw warned him not to get too close to a cat from a rival Clan, but Oakheart saw no harm in what he was doing. He was still as loyal to RiverClan as a warrior could be. After an encounter beside the river, Oakheart suggested to Bluefur that they meet in secret that night at Fourtrees. There in the moonlight she taught him to climb one of the four Great Oa
ks, all the way to the very top. Beneath the starry sky, Oakheart knew he had fallen in love forever.

  They both understood that they could not be together, that one night was all they would have. They parted heartbroken but resolute. Not long after, Crookedstar became leader and asked Oakheart to be his deputy, but Oakheart refused. He was still torn between loyalty to his Clanmates and his love for Bluefur. To his delight, Bluefur came to him and revealed that she was expecting his kits. Oakheart began planning a future in which she would come to RiverClan or he would join ThunderClan. However, Bluefur said she was going to raise these kits alone, telling them nothing about their father except that he was a ThunderClan warrior. Oakheart knew he would never be able to change her mind, but he vowed always to be the kits’ father if they needed him.

  That time came soon after the three kits were born. Bluefur brought them to the river in deep snow, insisting that she had to give them up to save her Clan from Thistleclaw becoming deputy. One of the kits, Mosskit, died from the cold, but Mistykit and Stonekit survived. Oakheart gave them to Graypool to care for, and watched over them as they grew to be strong, proud RiverClan warriors, knowing nothing of their true mother.

  Perhaps mercifully, Oakheart died before he saw Tigerstar’s dreadful persecution of half-Clan cats. Oakheart himself was killed by a rock slide during yet another clash over Sunningrocks, a true warrior’s end for a cat with more courage and dignity than his Clanmates ever realized.