by Erin Hunter
Suddenly she realized she wasn’t alone. There was a cat bending over her, pushing something beneath her injured leg. Hollyleaf hissed in pain, and the cat apologized softly. “It’s just some feathers, to make you more comfortable. Lie still now.”
Hollyleaf stiffened. She didn’t recognize this cat’s voice or scent. “Who are you? Where am I?” She started to flail her front paws. “Let me go!”
A small, cool foot was placed on her shoulder, gently pushing her back down. Strong-smelling leaves were moved close to her muzzle. “Hush, it’s all right. You’re safe. Eat these, then go back to sleep.”
Hollyleaf allowed herself to be nudged back onto the floor. She swallowed the herbs—comfrey, from the scent of it—and two tiny poppy seeds. The feathers felt soft and warm against her wounded leg. With a small sigh, Hollyleaf closed her eyes and sleep dragged her away once more.
When she woke next, her head felt clearer and the pain in her leg had dulled to a nagging ache. Hollyleaf lay still for a moment, letting her eyes adjust to the near-darkness. This definitely wasn’t the ThunderClan medicine den. She was lying on a thin bed of feathers over cold stone. I’m still in the tunnels! Hollyleaf felt a jolt of relief, then alarm. Who was down here with her? Hollyleaf tried to recall the scent of the cat who had told her to go back to sleep, but her belly rumbled and suddenly all she could think about was how hungry she was. When had she last eaten? She tried to stand up but her hind leg crumpled and she flopped onto her side, frustrated.
“You’re awake!” A face loomed from the shadows. “How is your leg?”
Hollyleaf opened her eyes wide until she could make out ginger-and-white patches on the cat’s pelt. He smelled of stone and water and moss. “Who are you?” she asked, her voice hoarse from lack of use.
The cat ignored her. Instead, he pushed something toward her with one paw. “You must be starving. Here, eat.”
Fresh-kill! Hollyleaf bent her head, ready to dive in, then pulled back. A small, slimy minnow lay in front of her. “I don’t like fish,” she mewed.
The cat twitched his ears. “Down here, you don’t always have a choice.” His tone was mild, but Hollyleaf felt embarrassed. Her belly let out a loud growl as if it would be happy with anything, even crow-food. Holding her breath, Hollyleaf bit into the fish. Plump, tasty mouse, she told herself. Pine-scented squirrel. The first pigeon of newleaf.
She swallowed the last mouthful and drank from the moss beside her. The ginger-and-white cat watched her expectantly. “Thank you,” Hollyleaf meowed. “I... I guess it didn’t taste too bad.”
The tom was still studying her. “You’re Hollypaw, aren’t you?”
She blinked. “Hollyleaf, actually. How did you know? I’ve never seen you before, have I?”
The cat shook his head and his eyes clouded. “No, you’ve never seen me. But I saw you with your littermates when you came to rescue those kits, just before the river flooded.”
Hollyleaf stared at him. She would never forget the desperate search for the lost WindClan kits with Jayfeather and Lionblaze. They had been washed out of the tunnels and into the lake when the underground river overflowed. It had been a lucky escape for all of them. Now this cat was telling her that he had been here! “Who are you?” she mewed.
The ginger-and-white tom busied himself with the feathers underneath her injured leg, rearranging them so that they were spread evenly. “My name is Fallen Leaves,” he meowed quietly.
“You’re not from the Clans, are you?” Hollyleaf pressed. “Where do you live?”
Fallen Leaves padded over to a small bundle of herbs and started dividing them up. “Once I lived in the hills above the lake, but this is my home now.” He turned, pushing some herbs toward Hollyleaf. “Eat this comfrey; it’ll help your leg. I won’t give you any more poppy seeds unless you have trouble sleeping.”
Hollyleaf obediently chewed the fragrant leaves. “Were you a medicine cat?” she asked.
Fallen Leaves tipped his head to one side. “I don’t know what that is. We all learned about herbs and injuries so we could help one another. Is that what you mean?”
“Kind of.” Hollyleaf propped herself up on her front legs, feeling her heart beat faster. “Who were the other cats? Were you part of a Clan?” Was there another group of cats living near here, one that the Clans didn’t know about?
“No more questions,” Fallen Leaves ordered. “You need to rest. You haven’t broken your leg, just wrenched it. You’ll mend soon enough, and then I suppose you’ll want to go back to your friends.”
“No!” Hollyleaf yelped. “I can’t go back! Not ever!”
Fallen Leaves just shrugged. “That’s up to you. Lie down and stop wriggling. I’ll bring you something to eat later.” He picked up the scraps of fish bones and walked away.
Hollyleaf stared after him until the shadows swallowed him up. The walls of the tunnel seemed paler, as if more light was filtering in. When she’d been speaking, she’d heard her voice echoing from far away, which suggested that her first impression had been right and she was lying at the entrance to a cave. She couldn’t hear any water, so it wasn’t the cave with the river. Hollyleaf rested her chin on her paws and closed her eyes. She was lost and injured, but somehow a cat had found her and kept her alive with food and water, and herbs for her leg. Had he been sent by StarClan? Or was she just very, very lucky? Either way, she figured that she was safe, at least for now.
She woke from a doze to find another little fish beside her, as well as freshly soaked moss and some more comfrey. It was harder to see the walls of the cave, which meant it must have gotten darker outside. Was it night? Hollyleaf wondered how many days she had been down here. It had been a full moon when she... left. Perhaps Fallen Leaves could tell her what the moon was now. After eating her fish and masking the taste with the comfrey, Hollyleaf tried to stay awake, hoping that Fallen Leaves would come back. The cave grew darker until she couldn’t see a thing. Hollyleaf gave up waiting for her strange companion. He would come again in the morning, she was sure.
This time she was awake and half-sitting up to wash her chest when Fallen Leaves arrived. He was carrying something bulkier and fluffier-looking than a fish. Hollyleaf paused between licks. “Hey! You caught a mouse!”
Fallen Leaves deposited the fresh-kill at her paws. He looked flushed with triumph. “I heard it creeping into one of the tunnels,” he explained. “I hoped you’d like it.”
“I do!” Hollyleaf meowed. “Thanks!” She leaned forward to take a bite, then looked up. “There’s plenty here. Would you like some?”
Fallen Leaves shook his head. “No, it’s all yours.” While Hollyleaf continued eating, he gently prodded her injured leg. “Is it mending, do you think?”
Hollyleaf nodded with her mouth full. “Definitely,” she mumbled. “I can bend it now, and it doesn’t hurt so much when I move.”
“You can try walking on it when you’ve finished eating,” Fallen Leaves decided. “Not too far, but you need to start exercising it before the muscles waste away.”
Hollyleaf twitched her ears with surprise. Fallen Leaves sounded just like a medicine cat. He must have come from a Clan! Or something very close to a Clan—like the Tribe of Rushing Water. She swallowed and mewed, “Are you a Tribe cat? Did you come from the mountains?”
Fallen Leaves stared blankly at her. “This is my home now,” he replied. “There is nowhere else.”
Hollyleaf shivered as if a cold claw had run down her spine. There was something about Fallen Leaves’s voice that made her feel more alone and desperate than she could imagine. She straightened up and nudged away the scraps of mouse ears and tail. “Where should I walk?” she asked.
“Don’t get too excited,” Fallen Leaves warned. “Just a few steps today, that’s all.”
Hollyleaf used her front legs to push herself to her paws. A stab of pain ran up her injured leg, but she took a deep breath and kept her paw on the ground. Hesitantly, she took one step forward. Her hind leg h
eld, though it felt weak and not quite connected to the rest of her. Hollyleaf limped toward the place where the light grew stronger. The walls of the tunnel opened out on either side into a small cave, about six fox-lengths wide. A tiny hole in the roof blazed with light, so bright that Hollyleaf had to screw up her eyes to look at it. “The sun is shining today,” Fallen Leaves commented as he came to stand by her shoulder.
Hollyleaf turned to face him. “Do you ever go outside? How can you live here all the time?”
Fallen Leaves looked away. “This is my home,” he repeated. “Now, can you make it back to your nest?”
Hollyleaf started to walk back along the tunnel, frustrated that she hadn’t gone farther. But by the time she reached the dented pile of feathers her leg was aching badly, and she sank down with relief. “You can try again tomorrow,” Fallen Leaves meowed as if he could tell she was in pain. “Rest now.”
He turned to leave but Hollyleaf reached out with one paw. “Wait! I’m bored of being on my own. Can’t you stay and talk to me?”
Fallen Leaves viewed her with somber blue eyes. “Rest,” he mewed. “That way your leg will heal faster. I’ll see you again later.”
He padded away and Hollyleaf slumped down on the feathers. She willed her leg to get better soon. She’d wanted to escape from ThunderClan, but a life in the dark, dependent on another cat for food and water, was not what she had imagined.
CHAPTER 3
The slim beam of sunlight felt warm on her fur as Hollyleaf marched across the cave and back again on all four paws. “See?” she challenged Fallen Leaves, who was sitting at the entrance. “Good as new!”
It felt like whole seasons had passed before Hollyleaf had been able to walk all the way across the cave without limping, but Fallen Leaves assured her the moon wasn’t full again yet. He had insisted that she stay within the cave to exercise, walking in circles until she felt dizzy. He still left her on her own for most of the day and all night, but Hollyleaf didn’t want to start roaming the caves without him. She had been lucky once; she couldn’t rely on Fallen Leaves finding her again.
Fallen Leaves came over and sniffed her leg. “If you’re telling the truth about not being in pain, then it must have healed.”
“Of course I’m telling the truth!” Hollyleaf protested. How dare he suggest she was lying? The truth was the only thing that mattered, ever. But it didn’t feel like that when I spilled my Clan’s secrets at the Gathering.
Hollyleaf pushed the image of Squirrelflight’s horrified face out of her mind. “Can we explore now?” she asked.
Fallen Leaves traced a line in the stone dust with his paw. “You mean, you want me to show you the way out.”
“No!” Hollyleaf exclaimed. “I want you to show me around your home. Where is the cave with the river? How far do the tunnels reach?”
The ginger-and-white cat looked at her in surprise. “You really want to know? Most cats want to get straight out of here.”
There was such pain in his eyes that Hollyleaf felt a rush of sympathy. “I have nowhere else to go,” she mewed softly. “You’ve been a good friend to me, Fallen Leaves. Why would I want to leave you now?”
Fallen Leaves led Hollyleaf down a narrow tunnel on the far side of the cave, into darkness so thick that it seemed to lap at Hollyleaf’s fur like water. The floor felt smooth and cold under her paws, and she was only aware of the walls on either side when the tips of her whiskers brushed against them. At first she reacted too much and lurched into the opposite wall with a crash, but soon she learned to move her head just the tiniest amount when her whiskers tingled.
“The tunnel opens out down here,” Fallen Leaves called back over his shoulder. He must have heard her stumbling from side to side.
Hollyleaf realized she could see her companion’s outline against a paler shade of gray. The sound of water echoed down the tunnel, not exactly splashing but a soft liquid murmur that could only be the underground river. Hollyleaf broke into a trot, squeezing past Fallen Leaves and bursting into the huge cavern. It was filled with dusky light and to Hollyleaf, after being trapped in the dark for so long, it seemed as familiar and welcoming as her den in the hollow. In front of her was the river, tame and quiet between its shallow stone banks, and there was the ledge high up on the wall where Lionblaze had boasted of standing.
“Your brother and the she-cat played up there,” Fallen Leaves remarked, coming to stand alongside her.
He means Lionblaze and Heathertail. Hollyleaf felt a stir of discomfort. Was Fallen Leaves’s impression of the Clans based on cats hiding out of sight and breaking the warrior code? To change the subject, she nodded toward a tunnel on the far side of the river. “That leads to outside, doesn’t it?” It was strange to think that a short walk would take her back into the heart of ThunderClan.
“It used to,” Fallen Leaves meowed, “but it’s blocked by mud now. Do you remember that tunnel over there? That’s where you found the kits.”
Hollyleaf looked at the yawning black mouth, close to the edge of the river. She shivered as she recalled the desperate search for the lost WindClan cats, while far above them Onestar and Firestar prepared to wage war over their disappearance.
“The tunnels aren’t scary once you get used to them,” Fallen Leaves reassured her. “I’ll show you, but first you should eat.” He padded to the edge of the river and paused for a moment, his gaze fixed on the black water sliding past. Suddenly one of his front paws shot out and scooped a trembling silver fish onto the rock. It flapped madly until Fallen Leaves killed it with a single strike. “Here,” he meowed, pushing it toward Hollyleaf.
“Er, don’t you want to eat, too?” Hollyleaf suggested, hanging back from yet another fishy meal. If she’d been born in RiverClan, she would have chosen to starve by now!
Fallen Leaves shook his head. “No, this one’s for you. Eat it up; then we can explore.”
Grudgingly, Hollyleaf gulped down the fish. It didn’t taste too bad this time, and when she drank from the river, the cool, sharp tang of the water was refreshing. Fallen Leaves was waiting for her at the mouth of the darkest tunnel. He beckoned to her with his tail before trotting into the shadows. Hollyleaf followed more slowly, taking one last glance back at the half-lit cave before surrendering to the blackness.
She could hear paw steps ahead, ringing confidently on the stone. “It’ll get lighter soon,” Fallen Leaves called back to her. Hollyleaf broke into a trot, glad to get some warmth into her bones. Suddenly her nose brushed something soft, and she slowed down to avoid crashing into Fallen Leaves’s haunches. She sniffed, trying to get a fix on his scent, but all she could smell was cold, damp stone. Had Fallen Leaves been in the tunnels for so long that he’d taken on the scent of his surroundings?
Fallen Leaves put on a burst of speed and Hollyleaf ran to keep up with him. The walls of the tunnel emerged from the shadows and she could see the outline of the cat in front of her. Hollyleaf couldn’t tell where the light was coming from, and for once she didn’t instantly look down to check where she was putting her paws. She knew the floor was smooth and level here—no loose pebbles had tripped her up so far, and there hadn’t been any sharp inclines.
Fallen Leaves turned to look at her, his eyes gleaming in the semidarkness. “Okay to go a bit faster?” he meowed. There was a hint of challenge in his voice.
“Of course!” Hollyleaf replied. Her injured leg wasn’t aching in the slightest, and she was ready to use muscles that had been kept still for too long.
She hardly had time to take a breath before Fallen Leaves raced away. His ginger-and-white pelt was almost instantly swallowed up by the shadows beyond the reach of the pale light. This time Hollyleaf didn’t think twice about following him. Her whiskers quivered with the effort of feeling for the walls on either side, and she kept her weight low over her paws so that she could adjust to changes in the floor of the tunnel. It started to slope down steeply, so Hollyleaf rocked backward until her front paws were doing little more th
an feeling the way, keeping her balanced on her haunches. After a while her hind leg began to hurt, but then the tunnel flattened out and Hollyleaf was able to run at full-pelt again. She could hear Fallen Leaves ahead of her, and she was starting to know when the tunnel curved or hit an incline from the sound of his paws.
When they burst into a small cave that was filled with sunlight from a crack in the roof, Hollyleaf was almost disappointed. The cats stopped for a moment, panting.
“That was fun!” Hollyleaf gasped.
“You’re doing really well!” Fallen Leaves purred admiringly.
“Thanks!” Hollyleaf looked around. “Where are we? I mean, in relation to outside?”
“We’ve come to the other side of the hills,” Fallen Leaves explained. “That tunnel over there”—he nodded to a gap in the wall—“leads out if you follow the scent of trees when you reach the fork.”
Hollyleaf tipped back her head and stared at the ceiling. Pointed stone blades hung down, ringed with delicate lines. A drip of water clung to each tip. She didn’t know the territory above them, not if it was beyond Clan boundaries. But it was weird to think that caves like this, and long winding tunnels, had been beneath her paws all the time.
“We should head back,” Fallen Leaves meowed. “You don’t want to hurt your leg. Come on, let’s go a different way.”
Before Hollyleaf could protest that her leg was fine, he darted into a side tunnel. “Wait for me!” Hollyleaf squeaked playfully. She raced into the darkness, stretching her neck until her muzzle bumped against cold fur. “Caught you!” she teased.
Fallen Leaves chirped with amusement. “We’ll see about that!” He lengthened his stride and pulled ahead.
Hollyleaf leaped forward, but her toe caught on a loose stone and she stumbled. Regaining her balance, she stopped to listen. Fallen Leaves’s paws sounded faintly somewhere down the tunnel. Hollyleaf set off, but almost at once she crashed into the wall because she was so busy straining her ears for footsteps. She paused and shook her head. Focus! She straightened her whiskers with a flick of her paw and started trotting down the tunnel. She could definitely hear Fallen Leaves ahead of her. A breeze on her face revealed a tunnel leading off to one side. Hollyleaf instinctively turned her head to look but it was so dark she couldn’t see any change in the shadows around her. She fought down a pulse of alarm and sniffed the empty space where the side tunnel began. There was no trace of warmth or fur, no sign that Fallen Leaves had gone this way. Had he kept to the main tunnel, then? Hollyleaf pricked her ears. The silence pressed around her, heavy as water filling her ears. She forced herself to walk forward, and jumped as she heard the faintest sound of paw steps. She stopped, straining to listen. The footsteps had stopped. Hollyleaf looked down at her paws, even though she couldn’t see them. Mouse-brain! She’d been listening to the echo of her own steps. She was completely alone in the darkness.