How do the other cats cope? she wondered. I can hardly catch my breath!
Dovepaw led the way up the old Thunderpath, then struck off into the trees where the blackbirds nested. Icecloud followed her closely, while Lionblaze and Spiderleg hung back, observing. Sliding into a hazel thicket, Dovepaw raised her tail to warn Icecloud to keep back, where her white pelt wouldn’t alert any possible prey. Her paws tingled with satisfaction when she spotted a blackbird, pecking at the ground underneath a hazel bush.
Dovepaw drew back. “Go that way, down the slope,” she whispered to Icecloud, signaling with her tail. “I’ll scare the bird and send it in your direction.”
Icecloud nodded and crept away, silent as a wisp of white mist. Dovepaw watched her until she was out of sight; without meaning to, she extended her senses to track the white she-cat even after she disappeared. Puzzled, she realized that Icecloud’s paws sounded different on the ground.
Something isn’t right.
Instead of stalking the blackbird, Dovepaw pushed her way through the thick hazel stems, heading after her Clanmate. Spiderleg let out a disapproving snort. Dovepaw barely noticed; Icecloud’s paws were thundering inside her head, blotting out everything else.
I shouldn’t be able to hear them like that. It’s as if they’re echoing a long way underground. Suddenly Dovepaw understood. Oh, no! The ground must be hollow!
She quickened her pace, thrusting her way out of the thicket and racing down the slope. The blackbird fluttered up into the branches.
“What in the name of StarClan—?” Spiderleg gasped.
Dovepaw heard an awkward mutter from Lionblaze as she streaked away. She burst through a tangle of brambles and spotted Icecloud farther down the slope. At that moment, Icecloud staggered with a screech of alarm, then began to disappear as the ground opened up underneath her paws.
“Icecloud!” Dovepaw yowled. “I’m coming!”
She leaped forward just in time to grab Icecloud’s scruff in her teeth before the white she-cat disappeared in a rain of loose earth. Icecloud scrabbled frantically with her forepaws, trying to haul herself out. But it seemed as if the whole slope was giving way, and there was nothing solid to hold on to.
Dovepaw tried to drag her Clanmate out, but the ground was sliding away under her paws as well, and Icecloud’s weight dangling down into the hole was too much for her. Icecloud’s scruff slipped from between her teeth. Dovepaw stared in horror as she watched the white warrior fall down and down into the darkness. Icecloud’s terrified wail was cut off as loose earth poured in to bury her.
Chapter 2
Lionblaze pounded around the bramble thicket, wishing he was small enough to head straight through it like Dovepaw. On the other side he halted, panting. Dovepaw was halfway down the slope, crouching at the edge of a hole. Suddenly she lurched backward. Lionblaze heard a shriek and caught a glimpse of a thrashing white paw as Icecloud vanished into the earth.
It’s one of the tunnels! Panic throbbed through Lionblaze as he remembered his sister, Hollyleaf. In his mind, he saw her again, darting back into the mouth of the tunnel, ignoring everything he and Jayfeather said to warn her, and then all he could see was the endless fall of soil and rocks that had buried her underground forever.
“What’s going on?” Spiderleg’s meow jolted Lionblaze back to the present.
The black warrior darted past and joined Dovepaw, who was peering down into the hole. Looking around, Lionblaze spotted a familiar gorse bush and a spot where a tiny spring welled up between two flat stones. He realized that they were a little way up the slope from the exact place where Hollyleaf had disappeared. Icecloud had fallen into the same tunnel!
Lionblaze’s belly lurched. Great StarClan, what might they find down there?
He rushed down the slope to the edge of the hole, shouldering Spiderleg out of the way. Dovepaw jumped back, clearly startled by the look of horror on his face. There was just enough light in the tunnel to show Lionblaze the walls and floor as he peered down. Several tail-lengths below, Icecloud was scrambling out of a heap of earth and stones, shaking soil from her pelt.
“Get me out of here!” she yowled when she looked up and saw Lionblaze.
“Are you hurt?” he asked.
“Not much. Just my shoulder.” Icecloud spat out earth. “Please get me out.”
Lionblaze leaned over the edge of the hole as far as he dared, and looked up and down the tunnel. Farther into the hill, it vanished into blackness. Lower down, a fall of earth and stones blocked the former entrance.
Is Hollyleaf under that? Lionblaze wondered, suppressing a shudder. “Spiderleg, go and fetch help,” he directed.
As the black warrior dashed off, Lionblaze gazed down again at Icecloud, who was crouching among the soil, her pelt ruffled and her eyes big and scared. “It won’t be long now,” he promised.
“Thanks, Lionblaze.” The young she-cat’s voice quivered. “It’s really dark down here.”
“I’ll try to make the hole bigger,” Dovepaw mewed. “That’ll let in more light.”
But as she began scraping at the edge of the hole, more earth started to rain down on Icecloud.
“No! Stop!” she wailed.
“Sorry.” Dovepaw stopped scraping and sat at the edge of the hole.
Lionblaze leaned over to hiss close to her ear. “No other cat is to go into the hole except me. Got it?”
The gray apprentice’s eyes widened with surprise, but she nodded. Lionblaze let out a tiny sigh of relief. He knew that if there were any dark secrets to be discovered down the hole, he needed to be the first cat to find them. His belly churned as he waited. For the first time in many moons, he wondered if his Clanmates really believed that a passing rogue had killed Ashfur, and that Hollyleaf’s disappearance had nothing to do with it.
I don’t want the Clan to start thinking about those times again. I have to protect Hollyleaf’s memory!
At last he heard the sound of paw steps hurtling through the undergrowth. Spiderleg reappeared at a run, with Cloudtail, Birchfall, and Foxleap just behind. Foxleap dashed up to the edge of the hole, leaning over to see his littermate.
“We’re here! We’ll get you out soon,” he encouraged her.
Icecloud blinked up at him. “Hurry!”
“We need something to pull her out with,” Birchfall thought out loud. “Maybe a long, thick tendril. Not bramble, but something like ivy or bindweed.”
“There’s ivy on that tree.” Cloudtail whisked his tail around to point at an ancient oak tree whose trunk was covered in glossy dark green leaves. Foxleap scrambled up the tree and bit off a long tendril; as soon as it was loose Cloudtail tugged it free and bounded back with it trailing behind him.
“Wrap one end around that sapling,” Birchfall directed, angling his ears toward a young ash tree that grew near the hole. “Then we can drop the other end down to Icecloud.”
When the ivy tendril was secure, Foxleap dangled the free end down to his sister. Icecloud gripped it in her teeth, but as soon as the other cats started to haul it up she let go and dropped back onto the mound of earth.
“I’m too heavy!” she gasped. “I can’t hold on.”
“Wrap it around yourself, then,” Lionblaze suggested.
Icecloud tried, but it was obvious that her injured shoulder was hampering her. “It’s no use!” Her voice rose to a wail. “I’ll be stuck down here forever!”
“Nonsense,” Lionblaze mewed. “We’ll think of something.”
“What if we drop more earth and stones down the hole?” Spiderleg suggested, peering down. “We could make that heap big enough so she can climb out.”