Cold mist pooled in the moonlit hollow. It swirled like water around the paws of the cats pacing restlessly beneath the oaks.
Clear Sky watched them from the edge of the clearing. Their pelts seemed to sparkle as though dusted with starlight. He shivered as he caught sight of Gray Wing, waiting at the far side of the clearing. The dead outnumber the living, Clear Sky thought, as he glanced toward the shallow mound at the edge of the hollow. Beneath the slow-settling earth lay the bodies of cats he had once hunted beside, killed in the Great Battle.
The spirit cats paused and glanced at him, then began moving once more, murmuring to one another in hushed whispers. Above them, the four great oaks creaked in the wind, their frost-whitened branches stripped clean by the cold.
Leaf-bare gripped the earth like a wolf holding prey. The earth felt like stone beneath Clear Sky’s paws. Couldn’t the spirit cats have summoned him to a greenleaf clearing, where warm winds could bathe his fur? After all, this was a dream.
A dark gray she-cat split from the others and padded toward him. “You came.”
“Yes, Storm. I came.” Clear Sky’s heart ached with familiar grief. How different his life would be now if he hadn’t let her leave the forest when she was heavy with his kits. “But why have you called me here?”
