The Sun Trail/Prologue

"Hunger might kill us all before the sun shines again, and there's no more room in the cave. Something must be done."

— Lion's Roar to Stoneteller in The Sun Trail, page 4

The Sun Trail
Chapter number:	Prologue (of 26)
Page numbers:	1-6
Point of View:	Stoneteller
Chronology

Below contains in-depth information for the prologue of The Sun Trail. If you are looking for a shorter summary of the entire book, please check the main article.

Chapter Number: Prologue (of 26)

Page Numbers: 1-6

Chapter description

Near the back of a cavern sits a white she-cat, her gaze traveling over the rest of the cats in the cave. A few tail-lengths away several kits are squabbling over an eagle carcass. An elder comes up to the kits and snatches away the bone they are fighting over. When one kit protests she tells him she caught prey season after season, and she deserved one bone. A kit runs to his mother, wailing, but instead of comforting him she snaps at him. The old she-cat is too far away to hear what the mother says but she sighs thinking that every cat was coming to the end of what they could bear.

The she-cat watches as the elder pads up to an even older cat and offers her the eagle bone. She tells Misty Water to eat; that it wasn't much but it might help. Misty Water's gaze flickers over the bone but she tells Silver Frost that she had no appetite, not since Broken Feather died. She says he would have lived if there had been enough prey to eat and now she was waiting to join him. The white she-cat is distracted from the elders by a group of cats coming into the cave. Several cats call out, asking if the group had caught anything and where the prey was, but the leader of the group says there wasn't enough to bring back.

A cat pads up to the old she-cat and greets her, calling her Half Moon. She tells the cat, Lion's Roar, that he shouldn't call her that since she had been the Teller of The Pointed Stones for many seasons. He tells her that he did not care how long the others had called her Stoneteller; that she would always be Half Moon to him. He tells her that he was born in the cave but his mother, Shy Fawn, told him about a time when the cats lived beside a lake. She sighs and tells him that she was the only cat left who remembered the lake but she had lived three times as many moons in the mountains than beside the lake and now the rushing of the waterfall echoed in her heart. Lion's Roar tells her that hunger might kill them before the sun shined again and there was no more room within the cave; something must be done. Half Moon protests that they can not leave the mountains and that Jay's Wing had promised; he had made her the Teller of the Pointed Stones because the mountains were their destined home. Lion's Roar asks if she was sure Jay's Wing was right and how could he have known what would happen in the future. She murmurs that he had to be right. Her mind goes back to when Jay's Wing had made her Teller of the Pointed Stones. She remembers the words he said and thinks that he would not have said them if he didn't mean for them to stay. She knows that Lion's Roar is right: something had to be done.

Gradually she realizes that the cold gray light in the cave was brightening as if the sun was rising behind the screen of the waterfall. She realizes that no cat can see it but herself and wonders what it means. She thinks that Lion's Roar might be right; that only some cats belonged in the mountains and maybe some should travel to the place where the sun rises to make a new home. She finds the certainty that she needed. Some of the cats would stay, a small-enough group for the mountains to sustain and the rest would journey toward the rising sun. She also thinks that she won't leave the cave; that she would see out the twilight of her days here, and then maybe she would find Jay's Wing again.

Characters

Major

• Stoneteller
• Lion's Roar

Minor

• Unnamed ginger kit
• Unnamed tabby she-kit
• Silver Frost
• Unnamed she-cat
• Misty Water

Mentioned

• Broken Feather
• Shy Fawn
• Jay's Wing