Sunrise

Jayfeather caught his breath. Beside him, he heard Lionblaze gasp, “You killed Ashfur?”

If Hollyleaf replied, Jayfeather didn’t hear it. Hating his power more than he ever had before, he had reached out to his sister’s memories. She was stalking Ashfur along the WindClan border stream, treading lightly, avoiding boulders where her claws might scrape or ferns that would brush against her fur. Ashfur, intent on hunting, never noticed she was there. Hollyleaf followed him like a shadow until they came to a place where the bank was steep and slippery, and the stream was a foaming snake far below. She pounced on him from a rock, gripping his shoulders with her forepaws and twisting her head around to sink her teeth into his throat. Inside the red mist that clouded her senses, Ashfur was nothing but prey, something that had to be killed to protect the warrior code and the future of her Clan.

Ashfur clawed feebly at her, but blood was gushing from his throat. His body went limp and Hollyleaf leaped away, letting it crash into the stream. She stood watching it for a while, until the swift-flowing water had washed away the blood. Then she padded up to a pool of water on top of the bank and rinsed her paws, turning the water red. Behind her, Ashfur’s body bobbed against the bank before floating away downstream.

“He should have been swept into the lake and never seen again.” Hollyleaf’s voice wrenched Jayfeather out of her terrible memories. “But they found him, and now everything is ruined. I can’t stay here.”

Despair vibrated in her voice. “I know I did the right thing, but no cat will ever understand.”

There was a patter of paws as she turned and fled down the tunnel. Running forward, Jayfeather could hear the roaring of the river underground, pounding hungrily against the stone.

“Hollyleaf, no!” he yowled. “We can figure this out together—” A deafening rumble interrupted him; it went on and on. He pictured wet soil and rock raining down as the tunnel collapsed, crashing onto his sister, knocking her to the floor, crushing her, burying her….

He darted forward. “Hollyleaf!”

Lionblaze charged into him, knocking him off his paws and pinning him down; Jayfeather writhed furiously underneath him. “Let me up!” he screeched. “We have to get her out!”

“We can’t help her,” Lionblaze growled. “The tunnel has collapsed. There’s no way we can follow her in.”

Jayfeather lay still, panting, as the tumult of falling earth and stones died away. In the silence, Lionblaze stepped back and let him clamber to his paws. Hollyleaf had seen the tunnels as a way to escape her Clan and everything that had gone wrong. Except she hadn’t escaped—not in the way she wanted.

“It’s over,” Lionblaze meowed, his voice shaking.

“I don’t understand.” Jayfeather was trembling with shock and grief. “She killed Ashfur to keep the secret safe. But then she revealed it to every cat at the Gathering.”

“It wasn’t the same.” Lionblaze pressed up against him until Jayfeather felt his brother’s dismay mingling with his own. “Hollyleaf couldn’t bear the thought of being a medicine cat’s kit. She couldn’t bear the idea that she was half-Clan. The warrior code meant everything to her, and our birth smashed it to pieces.”

“We should have done something,” Jayfeather insisted. “What are we going to tell the Clan?”

Lionblaze let out an exhausted sigh. “We can’t tell them she killed Ashfur. How can we let that be the only thing she’s remembered for?”

Jayfeather nodded. After all this, there was one more secret to keep, for Hollyleaf’s sake. “Let’s say that she chased a squirrel into the tunnel, and it collapsed on her. They can remember her for being a brave hunter, feeding her Clan. They don’t need to know the truth—that she was trying to escape from them.”

Slowly they began limping back to the camp. Jayfeather felt a fresh breeze ruffling his fur, and he drew in long, cold gulps of air. A new day was beginning, but all he wanted was to go back to his den, curl up, and try to escape into sleep. How could the sun rise today, after everything that had happened?

Suddenly he halted. “The prophecy!” he burst out.

Lionblaze, who had padded on a few paw steps, stopped. “How can you think about that now?”

“But don’t you see?” Jayfeather clawed at the grass. “What happens to the prophecy if Hollyleaf is dead? It said there would be three cats, and now there are only two!”

Jayfeather stretched his cramped limbs and turned his face up to the first feeble rays of the sun. All night his Clanmates had kept vigil for Hollyleaf, even though there was no body to be buried. Cats were beginning to stir around him, and a few fox-lengths away he could hear Brambleclaw quietly calling together the dawn patrol.

A full day and night had passed since the Gathering and the death of Hollyleaf in the tunnels. The day before, Firestar had addressed the shattered ThunderClan from the Highledge.