“Why don’t you go down with the others?” Jayfeather suggested. “I’ll follow you in a moment.”
“Okay.” There was a trace of disappointment in Half Moon’s green eyes, but she headed down the cliff without protesting.
“What do you want now?” Jayfeather demanded.
Rock did not reply. For a moment they stood side by side at the edge of the cliff. Far away, a red glow on the snow showed where the sun would rise.
“So much is the same…” Rock breathed. Then he turned to Jayfeather. “You can’t stay here. You know that, don’t you?”
“Why not?” Jayfeather demanded, with a sudden tug of anguish.
“You are too powerful to be lost in the past.”
“I can be powerful here!” Jayfeather protested. “I could raise kits, teach them everything I know, and then go back to the Clans.” He stared at Rock. “I…I don’t want to leave.”
Chapter 18
“We have to get out of here!” Ivypool whispered, expecting hostile cats to leap out at them at any moment.
“We’re only exploring,” Blossomfall pointed out, padding up to the paw prints and giving them a curious sniff. “We’re not doing any harm.”
“Well, it doesn’t feel like that,” Ivypool retorted, annoyed by Blossomfall’s nonchalance. “It feels like we’re trespassing, and I want to leave.”
Blossomfall shrugged. “Okay, let’s find a way out.”
On the opposite side of the river, more tunnels opened up, leading away into darkness. Ivypool leaped across the stream and headed into the nearest one. But she hadn’t taken many paw steps when she was confronted by a solid wall of mud.
“No good,” she told Blossomfall, who was following her. “This one’s blocked.”
Retracing their paw steps into the cave, they chose another opening. This one seemed more promising at first, leading upward with the occasional chink in the roof to let in light. Then Blossomfall, who was in the lead again, halted abruptly when the tunnel took a sharp turn to one side.
“Mouse dung!” she spat.
Ivypool craned her neck to see past her Clanmate; in the dim light she could make out a tumbled heap of stones and rock stretching right up to the tunnel roof. Ivypool’s heart began to beat faster as they returned to the cave again. “We’ll have to go back the way we came,” she meowed, “and just hope that some cat comes along to help us out of the hole.”
Blossomfall heaved a sigh. “I suppose you’re right.”
But as they leaped back across the river, Ivypool noticed for the first time that several tunnels led away from the cave on this side. “Do you remember which way we came in?” she asked her Clanmate.
Blossomfall shook her head. “We’ll have to follow our scent trail.”
But no scent lingered on the damp rock, and away from the edge of the water there was no trace of their paw prints on the hard floor.
“We’re lost!” Ivypool yelped.
“We’ll be fine,” Blossomfall reassured her, though Ivypool could detect a hint of panic in her voice. “We’ll just pick a tunnel. Come on!” Racing across the cave floor, she dived into a wide black opening. Ivypool was almost sure it was the wrong one, but she bounded after her Clanmate, terrified that they would be separated.
“Wait!” she yowled. “We can’t—” She broke off at the clatter of falling rocks from up ahead. “Blossomfall!” she called. “What was that?”
There was no reply. Ivypool went limp with terror and she had to force her legs to carry her along the tunnel. A few paw steps farther, she made out Blossomfall in the dim light; the tortoiseshell warrior was lying motionless on the floor with rocks scattered around her. Looking up, Ivypool saw a fresh scar on the roof, and guessed that the rocks must have fallen from there.
“Blossomfall?” she whispered, crouching beside her Clanmate. StarClan, please don’t let her be dead!
A shudder of relief ran through her as Blossomfall’s whiskers twitched and her eyes opened. “Ivypool?” she murmured. “What happened? My head hurts.”
“I think a rock fell from the roof and hit you,” Ivypool replied. “Can you get up?”
Blossomfall scrabbled with her paws, raising her shoulders off the floor, then collapsed with a whimper of pain. “Everything’s whirling,” she complained, her eyes wide and scared. “Oh, Ivypool, do you think we’re going to die down here?”
“Of course we’re not,” Ivypool told her.
“But what if we do? Do you think Millie will miss me?”
Pity rushed through Ivypool from ears to tail-tip. “Of course!” she assured Blossomfall. “Millie loves you just as much as Briarlight.”
As she reassured her Clanmate, Ivypool guessed that this was how Hawkfrost had won Blossomfall over: by giving her the chance to get as much attention as her sister, Briarlight.
Just as he did with Dovewing and me.
She felt sad that Blossomfall was so jealous of her sister for the amount of time her mother and her Clanmates spent with her. Briarlight had lost the use of her legs!
But then, Ivypool thought, I don’t suppose Dovewing’s gift is always so much fun, either. Maybe we should both be grateful for what we have…
Blossomfall hesitated, then shrugged. “Maybe Millie loves me, when she remembers that she has more than one kit.” Stretching out one forepaw, she scraped it against the hard stone of the tunnel floor, so violently that Ivypool was surprised she didn’t wrench her claws out. “I hate myself for feeling jealous of Briarlight,” Blossomfall confessed, not looking at Ivypool. “I can’t bear seeing her suffer and I know Briarlight would give anything to be better and whole again. It’s all so unfair!” Scoring her claws across the rock again, she added, “But I can’t help what I feel, and that proves I’m not a good cat.”
“Of course you are!” Ivypool exclaimed, shocked.
“No. A good cat wouldn’t be jealous of an injured littermate. So that’s why I’ve ended up in the Dark Forest.” She gave Ivypool a sidelong glance. “I’m not stupid. I know it’s where cats go if they’re not allowed into StarClan. But I guess I won’t get into StarClan either, because I hate my sister for being injured. So the Dark Forest is where I fit in, and I’m getting good training, better than anything we get here.” She took in a long, shaking breath and looked around. “Will Hawkfrost come to get us, do you think?”
“I told you, we’re not going to die!” Ivypool put every scrap of conviction she could muster into the words. But what if we do? She couldn’t bear the thought of being trapped in the Dark Forest forever. “Blossomfall, do you think you could try again to get up?”
“Maybe.” Blossomfall gathered her legs under her and managed to stand, though she still looked shaky.
As Ivypool was wondering how far her Clanmate would be able to go, she heard the soft pad of paw steps approaching from behind. Every hair on her pelt rose; she felt as though icy water was creeping over her entire body. It took all the courage she had to turn around.
A strange cat padded out of the shadows, a scrawny tom with ginger fur and wide, haunted eyes. “Oh!” he gasped. “I was expecting the other one.”
“What other one?” Ivypool demanded, her voice cracking.
The stranger ignored her question; he was examining her and Blossomfall with puzzled eyes. “Two of you?” he meowed. “Are you all right?”
“No.” Ivypool was too scared to waste time wondering who this strange cat was, or what he was doing here. “We need to get out. My Clanmate is hurt!”
“But if I show you the way out,” the strange cat told her, “I’ll be on my own again. You always promise to come back, but you never do.”
Ivypool stared at him. “We’ve never been here before!” she meowed. “Please, you have to get us out of here.”