She took a few steps forward. The fox ran after her, then stopped and whined. Hollyleaf looked at the tunnel ahead. It vanished into blackness, compared with the pale light that filled this section. “It’s okay,” she told the cub. “This is the way out, I promise.” She padded into the shadows, but the fox stayed where it was. There was a soft thump, and Hollyleaf realized it had sat down. Sighing, she turned back and squeezed in beside it. “Get up,” she urged, nudging the cub’s flank with her muzzle. “You can’t stay here!”
She jabbed its haunches with her paw and the fox jumped up with a yelp. Hollyleaf gave it another shove with her nose. “Come on, I’ll be right beside you.” The cub took a cautious step and Hollyleaf stayed close, pressing against its flank. “That’s right!” she mewed.
Slowly, they inched their way along the tunnel. The fox stopped dead when they reached the junction with the woods-tunnel, but Hollyleaf nudged and shoved and encouraged it around the corner until they could feel the breeze from outside on their faces. The fox let out a cheerful-sounding yelp and broke into a trot. Overconfident, it crashed into the opposite wall and sat down with a bump, whimpering. Hollyleaf ran forward and licked the fox’s muzzle. She couldn’t taste any blood, so it wasn’t seriously hurt. “You silly thing,” she scolded. “Stay beside me until you can see, okay?”
She knew the fox couldn’t understand what she was saying, but it still walked more slowly as they rounded the curve in the tunnel. Gray light spilled in ahead of them, painfully bright like before. The fox blinked and whined, rubbing its eyes with a front paw.
“It’s because you’ve been in the dark for a while,” Hollyleaf explained. “Keep going; you’re nearly there!” She reached up and licked the cub’s ears, and a picture of Squirrelflight doing the same to her burst into her mind. She’d fallen into a puddle and her mother had whisked her back to the nursery to dry her off. Her mother. Suddenly Hollyleaf missed Squirrelflight with a physical pain.
The fox jumped up and trotted on. It picked up speed as its eyes grew used to the light, and Hollyleaf hung back, resisting the urge to stay pressed against its warm fur. The cub didn’t belong here. It needed to be back with its mother, in their den in the woods. Suddenly the cub stopped, right at the entrance. It looked back at Hollyleaf and let out a questioning bark.
Hollyleaf shook her head. “I can’t come with you, little one,” she meowed. “This is my home.” The words caught in her throat like a gristly piece of fresh-kill.
There was a loud yelp from beyond the mouth of the tunnel. The cub’s head whipped around, its ears pricked. It let out a yip, and there was another bark, confident and joyous. “That’s your mother, isn’t it?” Hollyleaf whispered.
The cub bounded forward and vanished into the circle of whiteness. Hollyleaf crept along the tunnel until she could see the trees outside. The tunnel opened into a wood much like ThunderClan territory, with a mix of trees and dense undergrowth. The light crashed into Hollyleaf’s eyes and she narrowed them as much as she could. Her ears rang with the sound of leaves rustling, birds singing, and the thunder of paws as cub and mother fox raced toward each other. Blinking, Hollyleaf watched as they collided in a tumble of russet fur. The cub let out a volley of excited yelps as its mother bundled it over, sniffing every part of its fur.
“You’re safe now,” Hollyleaf murmured, trying to ignore the lump of sadness in her chest. “You’re back where you belong.” The sight of the cub butting his mother’s belly for milk mixed with images of Hollyleaf squirming with her littermates in the Clan nursery, bathed in comforting scents of food. I was happy then, before I knew the truth, she thought. But that life is over now.
Chapter 6
Leaf-fall had settled over the woods and the ground was covered in a layer of brittle red-and-orange leaves. As Hollyleaf watched from the mouth of the tunnel, the breeze snatched another flurry of leaves from a beech tree and dangled them in the air before letting them float down to the floor. A voice behind made her jump.
“Are you looking for the cub?”
Hollyleaf spun around, her fur pricking with guilt. “Fallen Leaves! How long have you been there?”
“Long enough to see how much you want to be out there,” meowed the ginger-and-white tom.
Hollyleaf stood to the side, leaving room for him to join her at the entrance, but Fallen Leaves stayed where he was, with his paws hidden in shadow.
“Are you hoping the cub will come back?” Fallen Leaves teased, but his voice sounded hollow in the echoing tunnel.
“Of course not,” Hollyleaf meowed. “I know he belongs out there, in the woods, with his mother.”
“And what about you?” Fallen Leaves pressed softly. “Do you belong out there, with your family?”
Hollyleaf turned her face away. “I have no family,” she growled.
“We all have family,” sighed Fallen Leaves.
“Really? Then where are your kin?” Hollyleaf challenged. “You say you came from a large group of cats, but what happened to them? We’ve never seen any traces of other cats living near here.”
Fallen Leaves looked down at his paws. “They left,” he whispered.
“Then let’s go look for them!” Hollyleaf declared. “There must be some signs of where they’ve gone.”
To her surprise, Fallen Leaves’s eyes stretched wide with horror. “No! I must stay here! If I leave, how will my mother know where to find me? She’ll come for me one day. I know she will.”
Hollyleaf fought down a spurt of impatience. “But we could find her first! Come with me. I’ll look after you.”
“I don’t need looking after,” Fallen Leaves hissed. “I just need to stay here. You go if you want. I can’t leave.” He turned and stalked into the darkness. Hollyleaf stared after him, feeling wretched. So many things he said didn’t make sense. Why hadn’t his mother come looking for him before? She must have watched him go into the tunnels, so why didn’t she start searching for him as soon as he didn’t come out? But Fallen Leaves never gave a straight answer. He seemed determined to be as mysterious as possible, and sometimes Hollyleaf wondered if he even wanted company in his underground home. Well, I don’t have to stay here with him. She lifted her head and let the scents of the forest drift over her muzzle: earth, leaves, squirrel, and the musky scent of a vole hiding among some pine logs… What was she doing, lurking in the tunnels when she could be living outside, where she belonged?
Hollyleaf raced after Fallen Leaves. When she burst into the river-cave, he was curled beneath the rocky ledge with his nose tucked under his tail. He wasn’t asleep, though; his eyes were wide open, gleaming in the pale gray light.
“You saved my life,” Hollyleaf blurted out, skidding to a halt in front of him. “And I will always be grateful for that. But you’re right. I need to be outside, eating squirrels and mice instead of fish, where I can see the sky and feel the wind in my fur—”
“Then go,” Fallen Leaves interrupted her. “No one said you had to stay here.”
Hollyleaf stared at him. Did he care so little about her that he wouldn’t even try to make her stay? Well, she didn’t need him either! “Good,” she snapped. “I just thought I’d let you know that I’m going in case you wonder where I am.”