Warriors: A New Beginning #2: Midnight Rising

Chapter 34

"Midnightsky!"

Midnightsky was woken up by Ashheart's screech.

It had been three moons since she and Wavepelt had gone out in the forest. There was still no news about the rogues.

That's a good thing, I suppose. She stood up and walked out of the den. "What's going on?"

"Emberpaw needs your help!" Ashheart gasped. "She got her paw stuck in a Twoleg fox trap and it's bleeding badly!"

"I'm coming." Midnightsky raced inside the medicine den to grab her needed herbs, then went back out. "Show me where she is."

Ashheart nodded and dashed off, Midnightsky quickly following. Their paws chewed up the red and yellow leaves of leaf-fall as they went.

"Have they gotten her paw out of the trap?" Midnightsky asked.

"They're trying," Ashheart replied.

Then they reached the group of cats. Emberpaw was wincing, a metal hoop clamped around her right forepaw, which was puffy and bleeding.

"Get this StarClan-cursed thing off of me!" she kept yelling.

Patchfire and Rayfrost were frantically trying to do just that.

Midnightsky noticed a wooden stake planted in the ground near the trap.

"Is that stake doing anything?" she asked.

Patchfire glanced at the stake and her eyes widened. "Of course! We need to dig that up!" She ran over and started to dig furiously. Rayfrost joined her and soon the stake was pulled out of the ground.

The loop slackened and Emberpaw muttered a couple of things before hobbling out.

"I need to treat that," Midnightsky told her.

"I guess you do." Emberpaw slowly limped to her and Midnightsky examined the paw. It had swelled a lot when it had been in the fox trap and it was bleeding heavily.

"Get me as many cobwebs as you can find!" she exclaimed.

Multiple cats dashed off as Midnightsky chewed some goldenrod and horsetail into a poultice. She then spread it all around where the bleeding was.

"I found some cobwebs." Patchfire arrived with a pawful.

"Thank you." Midnightsky took them and wrapped them all around the wound, completely covering Emberpaw's forepaw.

"I wouldn't walk on that," she told the ginger apprentice. "It's still pretty tender so you'll need to go back to camp on three paws."

Emberpaw sighed. "Why did that mouse-brained trap have to be there in the first place?"

"Be glad it wasn't your head that got in there." Ashheart sounded worried. "You would be dead otherwise." Her eyes were wide.

Emberpaw didn't say anything, just started to hobble away on three paws.

"Will she be okay, though?" Ashheart asked Midnightsky.

"All her paw needs to do is heal, and it'll be perfectly fine," Midnightsky confirmed.

Ashheart let out a sigh of relief. "Thank you."

"All I'm doing is my job." Midnightsky shrugged and began to follow Emberpaw. The apprentice was mumbling something Midnightsky couldn't hear very well but the medicine cat could guess that it was about Riverpaw.

If she stays in her nest and doesn't go out of camp her paw will heal perfectly, she thought. But something tells me that won't happen...