By the time she stopped, her breath ragged and her heart pounding, they had traveled a long way.
“How will we get back home now?” Hawk panted, looking around.
Tadpole’s ears twitched. “We just ran in a straight line,” he told Hawk. “If we go back, we’ll get to the nest that wasn’t Ken’s again. And then we can find our way home from there.”
“Sasha will be mad if we’re not there when she gets back from hunting,” Moth mewed in a small voice. “I don’t want to get in trouble.”
“We won’t be in trouble,” Tadpole told her. “We’re doing something nice for Sasha. We’re finding Ken.” Hawk and Moth exchanged a glance, and Moth saw her own doubt reflected in her brother’s blue eyes.
“Maybe we should—” Hawk began, but another, harsher voice interrupted.
“What do you kits think you’re doing?” A big gray cat, his ears notched with scars, padded out of the shadows. “Strangers aren’t welcome here.”
Tadpole stepped in front of his littermates. “We’re not doing anything wrong.”
The stranger sniffed and wrinkled his nose. “Is that the forest I smell on you? Three little scraps, straight out of the woods. You’d better tell me why you’re sneaking around here.”
Another tom, black-and-white and just as large as the first, slunk out of the shadows behind him, followed by a third, a tabby even bigger than the others.
“Um, we were just …” Tadpole was getting rattled. The gray cat narrowed his eyes as the other two cats circled around, coming up behind the kits. Hawk and Moth crowded closer to Tadpole. Moth could feel both her brothers trembling. Were these really the kind of cats who lived in a Twolegplace? From what Sasha had said, cats who lived with Twolegs should be nicer.
“Little cat skins, just walking around,” the black-and-white cat growled. “They think they belong here.”
“Let’s show them what we do to outsiders,” the tabby sneered, baring her claws.
Moth’s nerve broke. “Run!” she yowled, and took off, barreling past the gray cat. He let her go, purring with laughter, and her brothers raced after her.
They dashed down the path and cut across a patch of grass beside a Twoleg nest, then, dropping to their bellies, wiggled under a fence. A dog lunged at them, barking, and, with a squeak of terror, Moth scrambled over another fence. Everything was a blur: her heart pounded as she ran first one way and then another, crossing Twoleg paths and leaping over ditches.
At last, out of breath, they halted at the base of a tree.
“I think we lost them,” Tadpole panted.
Moth glanced back with a shiver.
“We’d better hide for a while,” Tadpole decided.
“Where?” Hawk asked. The three kits looked up at the Twoleg nest ahead of them. It didn’t look neat and solid like the other nests they’d seen, but lifeless and run-down. There were holes in the walls, and its colored skin was peeling off in long strips.
Moth shifted her paws. “I think it’s empty.”
“Look!” Tadpole yowled, gesturing with his tail toward an opening in the nest’s wall. “We can hide in there!”
Moth hesitated.
In RiverClan, older and dreaming, Mothwing half woke and murmured, “No. Don’t.” But she couldn’t change the dream, couldn’t change what her younger self had done.
“Okay,” she mewed finally. “Do you think it’s safe?”
“It’ll be an adventure,” Hawk answered cheerfully, and the three kits slunk through the overgrown grass. The hole was supposed to have clearstone over it, Moth saw, like the one the Twoleg had glared at them through, but the clearstone was propped open, a stick holding it up.
There was a drop below the opening, and they clambered down a pile of Twoleg stuff into a cold, gray place where objects rose around them like a strange forest. As Hawk passed through the hole, he knocked the stick away, and the clearstone closed with a heavy thud behind them.
“Uh-oh,” he meowed, looking up at it.
“Don’t worry—we’ll figure out how to escape when we’re ready,” Tadpole told him confidently. Big drops of rain had begun to spatter on the clearstone, and he added, “It’s raining out there, and we’re safe and dry in here.”
The kits explored. Sniffing, Moth smelled dry dust and the faint scent of mouse. There were tiny scratching noises coming from the corner, and she crouched, narrowing her eyes like Sasha did when she hunted.
Hawk gave a mrrow of laughter. “Your tail’s too high! You’ll lose your balance!” Moth glanced back, then guiltily lowered it.
Tadpole dashed past them both, and the scratching noises got louder and then abruptly stopped. He padded back to them. “Sorry. It got away.”
“If you’d just let me—” Moth began, irritated, but a loud gurgling interrupted.
All three kits whipped around to stare at the tall silver tube, like a branchless tree, that ran up the corner of the room from the floor to the ceiling. It had been silent and uninteresting, but now it was making terrible watery noises, as if a whole river were running through it.
“What’s that?” Hawk asked. All three kits backed away.
“It can’t hurt us,” Tadpole mewed uneasily.
The gurgling intensified. Then, with a sharp crack, the tube broke open. Water poured out, rushing across the floor. In moments, the kits were knee-deep. It was freezing.
“We have to get out of here!” Hawk yowled. Dashing to the pile of Twoleg junk beneath the clearstone, he began to scramble up.
“That’s closed, remember?” Moth wailed, but she followed him. A dusty round wooden thing slipped beneath her paw, and she fell a tail-length, landing in a tangle of soft pelts with a grunt. “Help me!” she yelped, struggling as the Twoleg stuff wrapped around her. Water lapped at her belly.
“Hold still, Moth!” Tadpole helped her untangle herself. “Come on!”
Together they began to scale the Twoleg junk again. Moth’s claws caught on another pelt, and she slipped with a squeal of terror.
“You can do it, Moth!” Tadpole called out. With his shoulder he pushed her forward, and she began to clamber up again. The water was rising fast. A wave lapped at her hind paws, and she looked back to see it washing over Tadpole’s shoulders.
“Hurry!” she meowed.
Hawk had climbed onto the narrow ledge where they had first come in. “I—can’t—get it—open,” he gasped, pounding his paws against the clearstone.
Moth was panting. Suddenly the ledge seemed so far away. Her paws slowed.
“Come on!” Tadpole yowled, and shoved at Moth’s hindquarters. Hawk leaned down, gently biting the scruff of Moth’s neck and tugging, urging her to rise. With a heave, she grabbed hold of the ledge and scrambled up beside Hawk. A familiar tawny form appeared outside the clearstone, looking in at them with frantic blue eyes.
“Sasha!” Moth cried, relief surging through her.
She turned to stretch out a paw for her littermate, just in time to see the rising water wash Tadpole away.