oathkeeper ⚜ // warrior cats

Chapter Five

     They don't bring us herbs until morning, and by then, the blood on Cinderfoot's face is dry, and sour-smelling pus dribbles from the wound. He's stopped moaning, and barely twitches as I mash a slew of yellow flowers into a sticky paste. They're certainly marigold and celandine, to fight infection and to soothe the eyes, if I've been paying enough attention to Yarrowtail and her training in the last thirty moons. The trouble is, I don't know if they'll work. Will they help, so long after Dawnfeather attacked him? Cinderfoot can't even give me an answer, his typically sage advice contorted by pain, completely unintelligible.

     "Hold still," I whisper, gently smearing the poultice over his eye. Instead, he almost bolts upright, gnashing his teeth to bite back a yowl, and I can hardly blame him. The wound must sting enough without me slathering a gritty paste over it, but it has to be done. He fares marginally better as I wrap cobwebs into a crooked eyepatch, and only flexes his claws twice when I take the catchweed from his pelt and fix four burrs at the corners of his eye to kept the bandage in place. Nonetheless, he's in deep pain, and he laps the poppy seeds from the pad of my paw without hesitating, taking so many that a living cat would likely fall into a coma instead of a light nap.

     Soon, he's asleep on his side, the injured side of his face turned up so it doesn't scrape against the ground. This leaves me with the carcass of the finch from last night, two guards, and a nervous conscience that rattles around my skull.

     I still cannot sense an oath. All night long, waiting for the herbs to be delivered, I wished for two things: a way to ease Cinderfoot's pain, and a lead on the oath. The sooner we see it through, the sooner we can return to the fields of StarClan and beg their help and healing knowledge.

     Truthfully, though, once I realized StarClan could probably heal Cinderfoot, it was getting late, and my thoughts began to wander from my immediate fears to the future. Maybe, I thought, StarClan could send me back, after my service is complete. Reincarnate me.

     Now that the sun is up, the idea sounds more harebrained than plausible, but there's a stubborn part of my heart that thinks it can be done. What wouldn't I give for a second chance at life in DawnClan? Even if it means losing all that I was, all that I've been, to try again, even if it means six moons of kithood followed by all the rigors of an apprenticeship, I know I'd do it in a heartbeat because I still love my home. I love my family. I miss them.

     Pebbleclaw most of all.

     It does me no good to get lost in my memories of him, but there's little else for me to do. I miss the crooked tilt of his head when something confused him, and the way his eyes glittered when he got a water vole for dinner. He still does these things, I'm sure of it, but not with me.

     After that reminder, I try not to think of him again, and it's on to planning an escape.

     I need enough herbs to get us back to the stone circle, and I need more prey. We can't run on empty bellies, if Cinderfoot can run at all. And then there's the matter of all the cats who could pursue us. Between changings of the guards and glimpses of cats sneaking by, there's plenty of able paws to hunt us down and bring us back, more than I could ever hope to distract. We're doomed before we even start, if I'm going to be honest with myself.

     I fear our situation will only grow worse, too, when I spot Dawnfeather approaching.

     "Rowanheart says you know your medicine," she says without preamble, stopping just outside the mouth of the den. She gives the paste across Cinderfoot's eye a meaningful glance.

     "I might," I reply. Oaths are sworn when cats want something, and I've learned to recognize the shades of longing and greed in their varying forms. Standing before me, Dawnfeather drips with a type of desire I can only describe as precise, and I suspect I know what she's after. Without a medicine cat, in the face of an insurrection, cats will need healing.