Thunderheart's Past

Prologue

Wind rattled the branches of the willow trees and tore the reeds from their beds.

"Hailstar!"

Thick storm clouds swirled across the night sky. Rain battered the tightly woven dens where RiverClan warriors had been sleeping.

"Hailstar!"

The RiverClan leader flattened his ears as he heard his mate's terrified cry. He dug his claws into the mud, steadying himself against the water that swirled around his legs. The river had broken its banks and was streaming into camp. He twisted his head around, searching the shadows.

"Hailstar!" Echomist shrieked again. Her cry was muffled by the kit who swung in her jaws. Another clung to her back. She was staring at nest of twigs that was spinning away from heron the floodwater. A small kit was struggling to cling to it as the woven twigs collapsed like loose leaves.

Hailstar dived for the nest and grabbed the kit just before he disappeared beneath the water. He thrust his son at Timberfur, who was chasing another nest. "Take Volekit to to the elders' den!" The brown tom took the dripping scrape of fur and bounded toward the high end of camp where the elders' den was still untouched by the rising water. "Follow him!" Hailstar ordered Echomist. She nodded, her eyes huge with fear, her long gray fur flattened to her body by the rain. Hailstar scanned the camp. Gleaming pelts darted in the darkness like panicked fish.. A lithe ginger-and-white she-cat was clinging to the remains of the warriors' den, trying to claw together its fast-fraying walls. A stout tabby tom tried to block the foaming channel where nests swirled out int the river.

The sky lit up with a white flare as lightning blazed. Thunder crashed and wind hardened. A new wave of water surge through camp.

"Shellheart!" Hailstar called to his deputy. "What's your opinion?"

A dapple gray tom, peering upriver from a beech stump among the reeds, called back, "The water's rising fast, Hailstar! The elders' den won't isn't going to be safe much longer."

Hailstar lashed his tail. "We'll have to abandon camp!"

"No!" The ginger-and-white she-cat let go of her den and faced the RiverClan leader

"We must Brightsky!" Hailstar urged.

"We can't leave everything our ancestors left for us!"

"We can rebuild it!" Hailstar snapped

"It wont be the same!" Brightsky  plunged  through the floods and clamped her paws around a floating nest.

Shellheart bounded down from the stump and splashed toward his clanmate. "Together we can rebuild anything," he insisted. "Except cat who have drowned trying to save bits of twig."

Brightsky reluctantly let go of the nest and watched it spin away into the reeds and raced for the high end of camp. Black, bubbling water surged around the elders' den, making the woven willow stems sway with the flood. 

Hailstar bounded up the slope and shook the den with his paws. "Get out!" Echomist slid through the entrance. Three kits, like half-drowned mice, followed her. She stared at her mate. "Where should we go?

"Head of high ground." Hailstar flicked his tail uphill, where the riverbank climbed toward a group of trees and bushes. A tangled-furred elder slid out of the den. "I've never seen a storm like this. 

A tabby-and-white she-cat followed him. "Where are we going?" she rasped. The tom stroke her spine with his tail "Farther in land, Birdsong, where it is safe." Birdsong's eyes widened "Away from the river?"