Hollyleaf’s Story

Chapter 1

Thunder crashed, louder than anything Hollyleaf had heard before. There was a ripple overhead and a strange cracking sound. The sky is falling! And then it was all around her, sharper and harder than Hollyleaf expected, throwing her to the ground and crushing her bones. I can’t breathe! She struggled frantically, feeling her claws rip, but the sky was too heavy, too cold, and she let the endless dark sweep her away.

Hollyleaf was standing on the edge of a cliff. Behind her, the hollow yawned like a hungry mouth. Flames, hissing and orange, filled the air with smoke and bitter ash. Hollyleaf’s littermates, Lionblaze and Jayfeather, crouched beside her; she could feel them trembling against her fur. In front of them, Ashfur stood at the end of a branch that would lead them through the fire. Squirrelflight stood next to him, fury blazing in her eyes. Hollyleaf stared at her mother, waiting for her to move Ashfur out of the way.

“Enough, Ashfur,” Squirrelflight hissed. “Your quarrel is with me. These young cats have done nothing to hurt you. Do what you like with me, but let them out of the fire.”

Ashfur looked at her in surprise. “You don’t understand. This is the only way to make you feel the same pain that you caused me. You tore my heart out when you chose Brambleclaw over me. Anything I did to you would never hurt as much. But your kits… If you watch them die, then you’ll know the pain I felt.”

Squirrelflight met his gaze. “Kill them, then. You won’t hurt me that way.” She took a step away from him, then looked back over her shoulder. “If you really want to hurt me, you’ll have to find a better way than that. They are not my kits.”

The ground lurched beneath Hollyleaf’s paws. Squirrelflight is not my mother? Hollyleaf was Clanless, codeless. She could be a rogue, even a kittypet. There was no way Hollyleaf could let Ashfur tell the four Clans about Squirrelflight’s confession. She and her littermates would be driven out! Everything they had done up till now, all their loyalty to the warrior code, would count for nothing.

The silence was deafening, pressing more heavily on Hollyleaf’s ears than the stones that pinned her to the cold floor. Dust filled her mouth and nose, and pain stabbed through one of her legs. I’ve been buried alive! Hollyleaf thrashed and bucked against the weight of the rocks. Her head broke free with a shower of small stones. There wasn’t a sliver of light from the mouth of the tunnel. She was trapped in the dark.

“Help! Help me! I’m stuck!”

She stopped. Who was she calling to? She had no Clanmates now. She had left that life behind—on the other side of the rocks, as far away as if it were the moon. Her brothers and Leafpool knew that she had killed Ashfur. And now Jayfeather and Lionblaze probably thought she had died in the rockfall. Maybe it’s better that way. At least they won’t come looking for me. Hollyleaf closed her eyes again.

Hollyleaf had followed Ashfur to the WindClan border. She had stalked him like she would a piece of prey, treading softly, claws sheathed to keep them from catching in brambles or scratching on stone. When he reached the bank of the stream, with the water foaming far below, Hollyleaf sprang on him, twisted his head to one side, sank her teeth into his fur and skin, telling herself over and over: This is the only way! Ashfur dropped to his belly and Hollyleaf jumped back as he rolled into the stream. She washed the blood from her paws, letting the cold water chill her legs, her flanks, all the way to her heart. I did it for my Clan!

Hollyleaf forced the images from her mind with a shudder. Taking a deep breath, she wriggled her front paws free and pushed away the stones that were pressing against her chest. Then she reached out as far as she could and started to haul herself out. She hissed when one of her hind legs moved. It was so painful, her leg felt as if it might be broken. Hollyleaf pictured the well-stocked medicine den, with comfrey to mend the bone and poppy seeds to help her sleep through the worst of the discomfort. As far away as the moon, she reminded herself. Gritting her teeth, she dragged the rest of her body out of the stones. Her wounded leg bounced agonizingly onto the floor.

“Great StarClan, that hurts!” Hollyleaf growled. Speaking aloud seemed to help, so she carried on. “I’ve been down here before. I know there are other ways out. I just need to follow this tunnel until I find a source of light. Come on, one paw in front of the other.” In spite of her fear, in spite of the pain in her leg, the memories kept flooding back…

“I am your mother, Hollyleaf,” Leafpool had whispered. Hollyleaf shook her head. That was impossible. How could she be the daughter of a medicine cat, when medicine cats were forbidden to have kits? Worse than being a rogue or a kittypet, her own birth had broken the code of the Clans.

Hollyleaf unsheathed her claws to give her a better grip on the stone. To her dismay, several of them had already broken off in her struggle to get out, and the tips of her pads felt wet and sticky. She smelled blood and pictured the trail she was leaving as she crawled along the tunnel. If Lionblaze and Jayfeather dug through the rockfall, they’d know she’d survived and would follow the trail to find her. Suddenly her front paws thudded into stone. She yelped with pain and swiveled sideways to follow the curve of the wall. It was so dark, she couldn’t even tell if her eyes were open. If I can just find some light. If, if, if…

Jayfeather had figured out who their father was. “It’s Crowfeather.”

Hollyleaf stared at him in disbelief. “But… Crowfeather’s from WindClan! I’m a ThunderClan cat!”

“Yellowfang came to me in a dream,” Jayfeather insisted. “She told me it was time we knew the truth.”

For Hollyleaf, there was nothing left. Half-Clan? She stood in the mouth of the tunnel and felt the scent of stone smooth her ruffled fur. She could disappear down here and emerge somewhere far from the Clans. She could begin a new life, away from all these lies and broken promises.

Hollyleaf turned and ran into the tunnel. She heard Jayfeather calling to her—and then the thunder came, and the sky fell in, and she was swallowed up by the dizzying black.

Hollyleaf kept going. Breathe, scrape, haul. Over and over. She longed to stop, to sleep, to wait for a StarClan warrior to come for her. But did StarClan even know she was here? Her birth had broken the warrior code. She had killed another cat. And she had given up her place in ThunderClan. No ancestors would be watching over her. Had they been watching when Hollyleaf spilled all her Clan’s secrets at the Gathering?

“Wait!” Hollyleaf leaped to her paws. “There’s something that I have to say that all the Clans should hear.” There had been too many lies, too much damage done to the warrior code, for her to keep quiet any longer.

The clearing was so quiet that Hollyleaf could hear a mouse scuttering among the dead leaves under the Great Oak. “You think you know me,” she began. “And my brothers, Lionblaze and Jayfeather of ThunderClan. You think you know us, but everything you have been told about us is a lie! We are not the kits of Brambleclaw and Squirrelflight.”

“What?” Brambleclaw shot to his paws from where he sat with the other deputies among the roots of the Great Oak. “Squirrelflight, why is she talking such nonsense?”

“I’m sorry, Brambleclaw, but it’s true. I’m not their mother, and you are not their father.”

The Clan deputy stared at her. “Then who is?”

Squirrelflight turned her sad green gaze on the cat she had always claimed as her daughter. “Tell them, Hollyleaf. I kept the secret for seasons; I’m not going to reveal it now.”

“Coward!” Hollyleaf flashed at her. Her gaze swept around the clearing, seeing the eyes of every single cat trained on her. “I’m not afraid of the truth! Leafpool is our mother, and Crowfeather—yes, Crowfeather of WindClan—is our father.”

Yowls of shock greeted her words, but Hollyleaf shouted over them. “These cats were so ashamed of us that they gave us away and lied to every single one of you to hide the fact that they had broken the warrior code. It’s all her fault.” She whipped her tail around to point at Leafpool. “How can the Clans survive when there are cowards and liars at the very heart of them?”

Her words seemed to echo from the walls of the tunnel. Hollyleaf wished she could go back to the start of the Gathering, take back the terrible truth she had spilled, spare her Clanmates the pain and shock she had seen in their faces. What have I done?

The constant dark was making her eyes ache. She had been searching for a chink of light for so long that she imagined one had appeared up ahead. The faintest line of something paler than black, like the first hint of milky dawn above the trees. Hollyleaf blinked and shook her head, trying to clear her vision. But the gray stripe was still there. Maybe it was light? She limped faster, ignoring the burn in her hind leg. The light grew stronger. It was seeping from a gap in the wall: another, smaller tunnel leading off. Hollyleaf dragged herself around the corner. Was it her imagination, or could she see the walls of a cave opening out ahead? In her excitement, she tried to stand up. Her hind leg buckled beneath her and stars exploded in her head. The last thing she saw was the stone floor rushing up to meet her.