Long Shadows

Chapter 14

Every muscle in Jaypaw’s body was yowling with exhaustion as he finished sniffing around the elders’ den to make sure that every scrap of the tainted bedding had been removed. He stumbled back into the clearing and padded up to Leafpool.

“It’s okay,” he reported.

“Why don’t you get some rest?” his mentor meowed.

“Brambleclaw and Cinderheart have just brought us some fresh moss.”

Jaypaw opened his jaws to protest that he could keep going as long as any cat, then thought better of it. His job and Leafpool’s was finished for now; there was no reason why he couldn’t catch up on his sleep. But tired as he was, his paws were itching and his mind whirling; he knew his thoughts would keep him awake.

“Thanks,” he replied, “but I’d like to go out for a while.”

“Fine.” Leafpool sounded faintly surprised. “Be careful, won’t you?”

“Sure.” Jaypaw wished she wouldn’t keep trying to mother him. He had Squirrelflight for that; Leafpool was just his mentor. He took off at a trot through the tunnel, where he passed Whitewing and Birchfall returning with bundles of bedding, and headed for the lake.

Pushing through the last of the undergrowth, Jaypaw paused at the top of the bank overlooking the water. He could hear the soothing lap of waves on the shore, and the faint scrape of pebbles. Scenting carefully, he made his way to the hollow under the tree roots where he had hidden the stick.

As he laid his paws on the scratch marks, the whispers of the long-ago warriors rose up around him. He strained to hear them clearly, but just as before, they stayed out of his reach.

“Rock, don’t you have a message for me?” he meowed aloud.

His head spun with thoughts of everything that had happened: the mysterious appearance of Sol, and the fake sign that had become real and driven him from ShadowClan; the terrible sickness, and Firestar taking the sick cats away from the stone hollow… Jaypaw felt as if he were a leaf spinning in eddies of wind.

It’s all escaping from me, like prey running too fast. I’m supposed to have power, but I can’t control anything.

“Has it always been like this for the Clans?” he murmured.

“Fighting one battle after another? And some battles no cat can win. I wonder if it was sickness that drove the first cats away from the lake?”

Yet again he ran his paws over the scratches, the record of the cats who had emerged victorious from their test in the tunnels, and of those who had never come out. The whispers wafted around him like faint puffs of breeze, but Jaypaw still couldn’t make out their meaning.

“What’s the use of you if I can’t hear you?” he protested.

“Speak up a little, please. Tell me how to fight the sickness, or what I can say to Lionblaze to make him fetch the catmint.”

But the gentle whispering didn’t change. Sighing, Jaypaw lay down with his chin on the stick, and closed his eyes.

Damp soaking into his belly fur woke Jaypaw. His muscles felt stiff and cramped with cold as he raised his head and looked around. He was in the underground cave, lit by a trickle of daylight from the roof far above his head. The river f lowed past him a couple of tail-lengths away.

Jaypaw staggered to his paws. He expected to see Rock, but the ledge where the ancient cat usually crouched was empty, and there was no sign of him anywhere in the cave.

Soft paw steps sounded behind Jaypaw; he spun around to see a ginger-and-white tom standing at the entrance to one of the tunnels. His green eyes looked haunted and somber, as if he couldn’t shake off the memory of drowning when rain flooded the tunnels.

“Fallen Leaves!” Jaypaw exclaimed.

“I didn’t think you would come back.” Aching loneliness vibrated in the ancient cat’s voice. “Are you going to stay with me this time?”

Sympathy stabbed Jaypaw, sharp as a thorn in his pad. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be trapped down here, alone, for countless seasons. The last time he had seen

Fallen Leaves, the ancient cat had saved his life, and the lives of his littermates and WindClan cats, when floodwaters had risen while they were looking for the lost kits.

“What happened to your Clanmates?” Jaypaw asked. “Why did they leave the lake?”

Fallen Leaves looked down at his paws. “I don’t know. I only knew that they had gone. Sharpclaws stopped coming into the tunnels, and the only sound from the moor was the wind. I have been on my own here for so long, I have lost count of the moons.” He raised his head, his green eyes pleading. “You and your friends were the first cats I had seen down here since… since I came in.”

“I have to know why they left!” Jaypaw meowed; he couldn’t explain it, but he was certain that the fate of those long-ago cats was bound up with the prophecy. Meeting Rock, finding the stick, feeling the whispers of ancient cats around him when he went to the Moonpool: None of that had happened by chance, he was sure.

He bounded toward the tunnel that led up into ThunderClan territory, brushing aside Fallen Leaves, who stared after him in dismay.

“Wait!” Fallen Leaves called out. “I thought you were going to stay with me.”

“I have to know what happened,” Jaypaw insisted with a last glance over his shoulder. The drowned cat was standing at the end of the tunnel, his eyes wide and distressed.

Jaypaw forced anger to stifle his pity. “How can I stay with him?” he muttered as he padded forward into the thick blackness of the tunnel. “There are too many things I need to find out. I can’t spend all my time hanging out with a dead cat!”

He expected to emerge in the woods above the hollow, awake and blind once more, or perhaps find himself on the lakeshore with the stick. Instead, daylight began to gleam on the walls ahead of him, growing stronger as he padded on. He could hear the sound of leaves rustling in the wind.

“I must be still dreaming,” he whispered.

His paws tingling, Jaypaw headed for the light. Rounding a curve in the tunnel, he saw a circle of daylight ahead of him.

Excited voices broke the silence.

“Is it him?”

“He’s later than I thought he’d be.”

“Do you think he got lost?”

Jaypaw slowed his pace. Even if he was coming up inside

WindClan, he should have known some of the voices, but they were all strange to him. And he didn’t recognize any of the scents drifting toward him from the tunnel mouth. Where was he, and who was waiting for him?

Then another voice reached him, making his paws freeze to the floor of the tunnel.

“Jay’s Wing? Jay’s Wing, is that you?”