A pulse of alarm came from Leafpool, but she mewed, “I don’t remember that. When was this?”
“Oh, a long time ago.” Something told Jayfeather not to be too specific. He didn’t want his mentor to know that he had been asking questions about his birth. “Do you know what it was?”
Leafpool let out an annoyed hiss. “How am I supposed to know that? For StarClan’s sake, do you think I don’t have more important things to worry about?”
“I was just—”
“If you’re so bored that you have to start asking about something that happened last leaf-bare, I can soon find you something to do. We’re still short of moss in here, so you can get on with that.”
“Okay.” Jayfeather was glad to leave. But I never mentioned last leaf-bare, he thought as he padded across the clearing. He had sensed his mentor’s fear, too. Leafpool was lying. She knows what the herb was, and she knows it’s important. I must be getting close to the truth—and Leafpool doesn’t want me to find it.
CHAPTER 13
Hollyleaf blinked in surprise when she woke among the stone walls of the Twoleg nest instead of under the branches of the warriors’ den in the ThunderClan camp. Then she remembered their journey to find Sol, and how Jingo had brought them to this abandoned Twoleg nest to save them from the dogs.
As Hollyleaf sat up, her brother yawned and stretched. “I don’t like this place,” he muttered. “It’s time we left.”
Hollyleaf murmured agreement. It wasn’t right for warriors to be so close to all this Twoleg stuff, even though there were no Twolegs here.
The pale light of dawn flooded into the den through the gap in the wall. Looking around, Hollyleaf saw that Birchfall and Hazeltail were still asleep. Brackenfur was perched on the ledge under the gap where Hussar had sat the night before. There was no sign of Brambleclaw, but a moment later he sprang up from outside and squeezed through the gap to sit beside Brackenfur.
“All’s quiet,” he reported. “But there’s a strong smell of dog.”
Hollyleaf twitched her whiskers; she could pick up the rank scent even here.
“We have to get moving,” Brackenfur meowed. “Have you seen Jingo?”
Brambleclaw shook his head. Speckle and her kits were curled up in a furry heap on one of the soft boulders, while Fritz and Pod were sleeping on the other. There was no sign of the other Twolegplace cats.
“She’ll be here somewhere.” Brambleclaw jumped down inside the nest. “I think we can trust her.”
He padded over to prod Birchfall and Hazeltail awake. As the two younger warriors were blinking sleep away, Jingo padded in through the entrance to the den.
“Good, you’re ready,” she mewed, with a brisk nod of greeting. “Let’s go.”
She led the way into the Twoleg territory through the gap in the wall. “This journey’s going to be a bit different,” she warned the Clan cats when they were all in the raw, damp air of the leaf-bare morning. “We won’t be setting paw to the ground until we get where we’re going.”
Hollyleaf shot a startled glance at her Clanmates, and saw that they were all looking equally surprised. How could they get anywhere if their paws didn’t touch the ground? Was Jingo expecting them to fly?
“It’s not safe to walk around on the ground since the battle with the dogs,” Jingo explained. “The dogs lie in wait for us and hunt us like prey.”
Shuddering, Hollyleaf leaned closer to Lionblaze. “That’s exactly what happened to us yesterday.”
Her brother nodded; his amber eyes were gleaming and his claws flexed as if he was imagining his chance to slash a dog that attacked him or his Clanmates. Better to stay out of their way, Hollyleaf thought.
“So we’ve found a different way of moving around our territory,” Jingo went on. Gracefully she leaped up onto the top of the Twoleg fence. “Ready?” she called, glancing over her shoulder at the Clan cats.
Brambleclaw quickly leaped up beside her, followed by the rest of the patrol. Jingo set off, balancing easily on the narrow fence, then turning a corner to pad past several Twoleg dens, with a small Thunderpath on the other side.
Hollyleaf stiffened as the door to one of the Twoleg nests opened and a little white dog bolted out; its high-pitched yapping filled the air.
“It’s okay,” Jingo reassured the Clan cats. “That’s a housedog. It’s a stupid nuisance, just like all the others, but it’s not dangerous like the wild dogs.”
Hollyleaf had to take her word for it, but as she watched the dog bounding along the bottom of the fence and scrabbling about in the earth under a bush, she was glad that she wasn’t down below where it could get at her. She dug her claws more firmly into the narrow strip of wood under her paws and focused on the tip of Lionblaze’s tail.
The fence came to an end at a row of small dens with flat roofs. “These are monster nests,” Jingo told them, leaping up onto the nearest roof.
“Monsters have nests?” Hazeltail exclaimed.
“Sure.” Jingo waved her tail to where a Twoleg was approaching at the edge of the Thunderpath. “Watch.”
The Clan cats jumped up onto the roof beside her and watched the Twoleg as it opened the door of one of the dens and vanished inside. A moment later they heard the throaty growl of a monster. It nosed its way out of the den and headed down the Thunderpath, with the Twoleg in its belly.
“Great StarClan, this is where they sleep!” Birchfall’s neck fur was bristling.
“Yes, but they can’t climb up here,” Jingo meowed. “Let’s get on.”
The patrol easily bounded across the flat roofs until the cats came to another fence and more Twoleg dens. Daylight was strengthening and a stiff wind had sprung up; Hollyleaf gripped with her claws at every step, scared that she would be blown off her skinny perch. So this was what Jingo meant by not setting paw on the ground. Not flying, but staying high up, out of reach of the wild dogs. She tried to imagine not daring to set paw on the ground in the forest, and having to leap from tree to tree to avoid being chased and killed.
No cat should be forced to live like this.
At the next corner, the fence gave way to a wall built of red stone; the top was wider and it was easier to pad along. The Thunderpath here was wider too, with stone trees growing at both edges, and a few monsters prowling along it. Every so often the wall was interrupted by a lower section of wooden fence; Jingo slid down onto it, padded quickly across, and leaped up onto the wall on the other side. The Clan cats followed. Hollyleaf’s pelt prickled with fear as she remembered how the dog pack had leaped the low fence the day before; but no dogs appeared, and every cat reached the other side of the wooden fence safely.
Farther along the wall, Jingo halted; peering past her, Hollyleaf saw that one of the wooden sections had been swung back, leaving a gap between their stretch of wall and the next. As if at a signal, a flurry of barking broke out somewhere behind them, and a gust of wind brought the scent of dogs.
“We’ll have to jump,” Jingo decided. “Get back a bit; leave me space for a running start.”
Once the Clan cats had shuffled backward, Jingo bounded along the wall and took off from the end in a powerful leap, landing neatly on the other side. The Clan cats glanced at one another; Hollyleaf could see that Hazeltail and Birchfall were both looking nervous.
“I’ll go next,” she meowed, deciding it would be better to get this over with than to watch her Clanmates go ahead of her. She hurtled along the wall and into the air before she could think about the wide gap and the nearby dogs.