Then, as he tried to steady his breathing and quiet his pounding heart, he realized that he was looking at the cats in the cave.

Is this another vision?

As he hesitated at the mouth of the tunnel, a young white she-cat raced across the floor of the cave and skidded to a halt beside him. Her jaws gaped with astonishment.

“Jay’s Wing!”

Jayfeather stared at her. “Half Moon!”

The cats in the cave started to look vaguely familiar as his gaze flickered from one half-remembered face to the next. His thoughts flew back to when he had emerged from the tunnels below ThunderClan in the time of the ancient cats, who had lived by the lake seasons upon seasons ago, whose paw prints dimpled the path that led down to the Moonpool.

While I was with them, they decided to leave because it was too dangerous to live by the lake. I told them they could find a home in the mountains…and now they’re here!

Half Moon was still gazing at him, her green eyes stretched wide as two small moons. “You disappeared when we set out on our journey from the lake. I thought you didn’t want to be with me—with us, anymore.”

Jayfeather fought back panic, while inside his head thoughts skittered like a mouse trying to escape from a hunting patrol. “I stayed behind. I was scared,” he blurted out. “But when you’d all gone, I was lonely. I decided to follow you.”

Half Moon blinked, and her eyes were clouded. “You…you didn’t even say good-bye. I thought I’d never see you again.”

Before he could answer, Jayfeather spotted Stone Song, the powerful gray tabby tom who had led the ancient cats away from the lake. He was standing in the middle of the cavern with Jagged Lightning by his side, close enough for Jayfeather to hear what they were talking about.

“I’m still convinced that coming here was the right thing to do,” Stone Song meowed. “Back where we came from, we were losing too many cats. Badgers, Twolegs—”

“That’s all very well,” Jagged Lightning interrupted with a flick of his black-and-white tail. “But are we any better off here? We’re all hungry and exhausted, and I’ve never been so cold in my entire life. It was all Owl Feather and I could do to get our kits here. And Dark Whiskers didn’t even make it,” he added with a note of challenge in his voice. “If we’d stayed by the lake, he wouldn’t have been blown off a ledge in the middle of an ice storm!”

Stone Song bowed his head. “Perhaps we should be grateful that we lost only one cat,” he murmured.

“Try telling that to Shy Fawn!” Jagged Lightning snapped. “She’s carrying Dark Whiskers’s kits! How is she supposed to bring them up in this icy excuse for a den?”

Stone Song looked blank, as if he didn’t know what to say. He was saved from the rest of the conversation when Rising Moon hurried up to him and began speaking urgently, waving her tail toward the cats who were lying beside the cave walls.