Outcast

Lionpaw scrabbled out of the apprentice den behind Hollypaw, still looking half asleep, and blundered across the camp to the dirtplace tunnel. Brackenfur and Stormfur emerged from the warriors’ den and headed for the fresh-kill pile.

Hollypaw jumped up and bounded over to her mentor.

“Are we going hunting?”

Brackenfur shook his head. “All the prey will be in their holes. Maybe later.”

But Hollypaw’s paws were itching to be doing something.

She didn’t want to spend the morning hanging around the camp. “Can I go out by myself, then?” she asked.

“If you want,” her mentor replied. “Stay away from the borders, though. We don’t want any more trouble like yesterday.”

“I’ll be careful,” Hollypaw promised.

“And be back by sunhigh,” her mentor added. “We’ll have a training session.”

“Sure.” Hollypaw dashed off.

As she prowled away from the stone hollow, senses straining for any sign of prey, the rain grew steadily heavier, pattering on the leaves, filling every dip in the ground with water.

Each branch and tussock of grass was loaded with droplets that soaked Hollypaw’s fur as she brushed past. She started to think that Brackenfur had been right, and she wouldn’t catch anything, but for once that didn’t bother her too much. She wanted to be out of the camp, and she wanted to think.

Everything seemed to be getting much more complicated.

She needed to concentrate on her training, but her mind was continually tugging her one way or the other—to the future and wondering if she could ever be Clan leader, or to the past and the traces of those ancient cats. She saw herself standing on the Highledge, calling a summons to her Clan…

Hollypaw realized she had stopped concentrating on prey.

She was just standing in the forest, getting wetter and wetter.

Flicking drops from her ears, she dived into a hole in a sandy bank and crouched there, watching the hissing screen of rain a mouse-length from her nose. Her tongue rasped over her fur in an effort to dry herself off and get warm. She froze when she heard a scuffling from farther down the hole where she was sheltering. Something big—at least as big as she was—was coming up the tunnel behind her. Stupid! she scolded herself. She had been so wet, she hadn’t bothered to check if she had the burrow to herself.

She tensed her muscles and took a gulp of air, expecting to taste fox or even worse, badger. Instead, the scent of cat flooded into her jaws. And it was a familiar scent, too. Limp with relief, Hollypaw twisted around in the entrance to the hole.

“Jaypaw! What are you doing down there?”

Her brother squeezed into the sheltered space beside her.

His pelt smelled of earth and stale fox. “Nothing,” he mumbled. “Sheltering.”

“No, you’re not!” Hollypaw was annoyed that he was so obviously lying. “Your fur is dry. You must have been here since before the rain started.” When Jaypaw didn’t reply, she added, “You’ve been trying to get down into the tunnels again, haven’t you?”

Jaypaw’s paws scuffled the sandy earth. “What if I have?”

“It’s dangerous!” Hollypaw protested. “Think what happened to Lionpaw when the roof of that badger set fell in.

And remember what it was like in the cave. We nearly drowned. And—”

“I know all that,” Jaypaw interrupted.

“You’re not acting as if you do. It’s raining hard now. The tunnels will flood again. And you just stroll down there as if you were strolling into camp! Honestly, Jaypaw, I don’t know how you can be so mouse-brained.”

“You don’t have to go on,” her brother grumbled. “Anyway, I couldn’t get in. This is just an old foxhole. It doesn’t lead anywhere.”

“But you tried.” Why couldn’t Jaypaw see the trouble he was getting into? “I don’t see what’s so special about the caves. There’s nothing down there.”

“Yes, there is!” He crouched in front of her; his blue eyes gazed up at her so intensely that Hollypaw could hardly believe he was blind. He hesitated, twitching his ears, then went on. “The ancient cats spoke to me. When I go to the Moonpool my paws slip into their paw prints. And I used to hear their voices on the wind. But since we rescued the kits, I haven’t heard them. That’s why I have to get back into the tunnels.”

Hollypaw stretched her neck forward and gave Jaypaw a sympathetic lick on his ear. She couldn’t bear to hear the sorrow in his voice; he sounded as if he had lost something precious.

Jaypaw jerked his head away. “You don’t understand.”

“Explain it to me, then.”

Jaypaw hesitated. His forepaws traced spirals in the earth.

“There were other cats in the caves,” he mewed at last.

Hollypaw was puzzled. “What do you mean?”

“Spirits of the ancient cats who lived here seasons ago.

One of them is called Fallen Leaves. He went down there in the ceremony to make him a warrior, and he never came out.

He showed me where to find the lost kits.”

Every hair on Hollypaw’s pelt rose. The ordeal in the caves had been bad enough without the thought of invisible cats watching them.