Your time is now
Chapter NineteenHolly doesn’t know if she’s been this angry in her life. This angry, this scared or this lost.
One moment, she’s with Lion and Squirrelflight and Brambleclaw, her family beginning to piece itself back together around the hole that Leafpool left. The next, she’s blinking open her eyes to crushing, empty darkness. She guesses at once that Sol’s shifted forks, but it isn’t until she talks to the other cat that lives here in the tunnels, Fallen Leaves, that she realises how much has changed.
All that progress lost. And worse, all of Holly’s dreams of being part of ThunderClan taken from her and twisted, like a thorn pulling in a wound. A world where Holly was a warrior, and threw her status away. A word where Leafpool was alive, and Holly rejected her.
“Is there anything I can do?” Fallen Leaves asks, concern darkening his green eyes.
Holly shakes her head, then thinks better of it. “Actually, yeah. Are there any other cats living in the tunnels right now? A tortoiseshell tom?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Then can you show me the way back to ThunderClan?”
He looks taken aback for a heartbeat. “Are you sure that’s wise?”
From what Fallen Leaves has told Holly about her other self’s mistakes, that’s a reasonable question. But whatever the consequences of rushing into this situation, Holly can’t bear the idea of failing to act in time.
“I’ll be fine,” she says, her voice certain even if the rest of her isn’t. “Thanks for your help. But this is something I need to deal with.”
-
“Is it really-”
“What happened-”
“What in StarClan do you think you’re doing, showing your face here after what you did?”
Holly fixes her gaze on the muddy ground as she follows Ivypaw and Cinderheart into the ThunderClan camp, but she can’t block out her Clanmates’ voices. She can feel their gazes on her, equal parts concerned and judgemental. Maybe she made a mistake coming back here, knowing what Fallen Leaves told her. But what else could she have done?
“Go find Lion and Jay,” she whispers to Ivypaw. “Tell them what’s happened - Jay will be able to tell you’re not lying.”
Ivypaw’s expression is conflicted; Holly can tell that the apprentice hasn’t forgiven her for her outburst back in the woods. But she nods regardless and slips off through the crowd.
That leaves Holly and Cinderheart. “Don’t think you’re getting rid of me that easily,” Cinderheart says after Ivypaw leaves. “I want to know everything that’s going on, okay?”
“I won’t, don’t worry,” Holly says truthfully. “But - can it wait a few minutes?”
Cinderheart looks like she’s - understandably - about to protest, but when she sees where Holly’s looking her expression softens. A tabby-and-white she-cat, petite and hunched like she’s trying to take up as little space as possible, sits at the edge of the crowd. Her gaze is as fixed on Holly as Holly’s is on her. Holly’s never seen the she-cat before, but when she entered the ThunderClan camp she recognised her instantly.
“Do you want me to deal with them?” Cinderheart asks, waving her tail at the gathered cats.
“You’re a lifesaver, you know that?”
“Oh, I know,” Cinderheart says, and raises her voice to project across the hollow. Holly wishes she could remember her friendship with Cinderheart in this fork - the grey she-cat is truly magnificent. With a grin at Cinderheart, she slips through the crowd and, for the first time she can remember, Holly finds herself standing in front of her mother.
Leafpool.Leafpool’s tabby pelt is more reminiscent of Ivypaw than anyone else. But her eyes are amber, Lion’s eyes, and bright with emotion. “Hollyleaf,” she says. Holly doesn’t even mind the strange name; it’s all she can do to hold back tears. “You’re here, thank StarClan you’re here.”
“Yeah, I’m here,” Holly says. In the spirit of what Fallen Leaves told her, she adds, “I’m really sorry. For what happened.”
Leafpool sighs. “You have nothing to be sorry about. Do you want to walk somewhere?”
"Um," Holly says. On one hand, she'd take any excuse to get out of the crowded, curious hollow. On the other, she isn't who Leafpool thinks she is - a solo trip could get difficult for both of them.
Taking her hesitation as a yes, Leafpool dodges round the edge of the crowd to the camp entrance, which leaves Holly little choice but to follow. They walk through the woods in near silence except for the squelch of their pawsteps on the muddy ground before Leafpool turns to Holly. “Hollyleaf, you have no idea how good it is to see you. Or - Holly, isn’t it?”
Holly feels her mouth drop open. “Um… Yeah, how did you-?”
“I’ve known since early this morning,” Leafpool says. “I’m sorry to drop this on you like this, but I’m guessing it wasn’t a coincidence that you decided to come home today?”
“No, it wasn’t,” Holly admits. “Wait - you
know? How much?”
“That things changed,” Leafpool says. “I remember leaving with your father, and you being born, and, well, not a lot else. Being in pain, and a little of StarClan, and then waking up this morning.”
“That’s-” For a moment, Holly’s lost for words. She picks her way across a treacherous patch of mud before saying, awkwardly, “That sounds pretty horrible.”
“Yes, well,” Leafpool says. “I guess that’s why I remember it, though. When I told Squirrelflight, she could get flashes, but nothing else.”
"Does anyone else know?”
“I haven’t been able to check. Your brothers, maybe, or Crowfeather.”
“Ivypaw knows,” Holly says. “I think - she wasn’t the cat who did this, but I think she was responsible for it, somehow.”
“You don’t know what happened?”
“Some of it. Did you ever meet a rogue called Sol?”
As they walk on, their path meandering up and downhill through ThunderClan's tall, leafless trees, Holly tells Leafpool everything that happened since the tree fell. “So what do we do?” she asks, worn out with unburdening herself after so long. “Everything’s - I don’t know if I can keep going like this, with everything so different. You saw how they looked at me out there. In the other fork, I was so close to finally belonging somewhere, and now…”
Leafpool stops walking and lays her tail gently over Holly’s back, pulling her close. Holly returns the embrace. Her mother is so much smaller than her, two or three paw-lengths shorter and small-framed to boot, but her embrace is as firm and comforting as a queen consoling a newborn kit.
“Holly, I promise you, it’s all going to be okay. I know it looks bad, I know how hard this is for you, but it’s going to be okay.”
“How do you know that?” Holly asks.
“I might not remember much of StarClan,” Leafpool says. “But I remember that whenever I could, I watched over you and your brothers. And you’re brave, Holly, you’ve always been brave. There isn’t anyone who I’d trust more to pull through this.”
“Thank you,” Holly says. “I - I wish you could’ve been there. Not just watching, but there with us.”
“I know. And so do I, more than you could imagine.”
“So what do we do now?” Holly asks, her eyes misty again.
“We keep going. We make the most of the time we have.”
-
The forest is too cold and muddy to stay out in long, so Cinderheart leads all seven of them to the abandoned Twoleg nest to plan.
It’s the first time Holly’s been in the Twoleg nest; despite the midday sunlight, she suppresses a shiver as she clambers through its dark opening. Places like this aren’t meant for cats. The rotting wood floor creaks under her paws, and dust cascades from every surface she so much as brushes against. And for a cat who grew up on the open moor, the dark, enclosed space is more than a little unnerving.
Cinderheart takes charge of the meeting, as the most neutral cat present. Leafpool and Squirrelflight sit down close together in one corner of the cavernous room, while Jay and Lion - Jayfeather and Lionblaze - head to a different one. Holly hovers between the two pairs for a while, then settles next to her brothers. Close to them but slightly apart; it seems fitting. Ivypaw walks straight to the back of the room and plonks herself down on her own.
“How was Leafpool, anyway?” Jayfeather whispers, a little archly. On the way over, he got annoyed at Holly for talking to Leafpool before him and Lionblaze, which Holly thinks is a little unfair. With Leafpool, the difficulty was only that Holly didn't know her; with her brothers, it's how well Holly knows their other selves that's the problem.
Holly sighs. “Fine. She was fine.”
Cinderheart clears her throat to get the group's attention, her voice echoing against the nest's high walls. “The way I see it, we have two problems. The Dark Forest, and Sol. So I think the important thing is…”
“No,” Holly says. Her anger, dampened by her conversation with Leafpool, returns as violently as a smouldering forest fire stirring into an inferno. “The important thing is, Ivypaw needs to explain what under StarClan happened last night. And fast.”
Holly can feel everyone’s eyes on her - Ivypaw’s fearful, most of the others concerned - and she doesn’t care. She’s sick of doing this on her own. “I know you had something to do with last night. The cat who attacked me outside the tunnels - was that your fault too? The Place of No Stars attacking ThunderClan?”
Ivypaw nods then shakes her head, her panicked gaze darting around the nest. “Tigerheart, yes. But not attacking ThunderClan, I didn’t know they’d do that!”
“Why would you have known? Are you working with the Place of No Stars?”
Holly’s on her paws now and so is Lionblaze, poised to stop her if she attacks Ivypaw. “Go easy on her,” he warns. “The Dark Forest are good at manipulating cats onto their side. She won’t’ve known what she was getting into.”
Lion’s confession just before the shift - was he recruited in this fork, too? Holly keeps falling into the trap of thinking these are the brothers she grew up with, and then remembering that she knows nothing about them. “Fine,” Holly says. “Explain to me.”
“It was like he said,” Ivypaw says. “They seemed nice at first. Tigerstar offered me a deal, to get rid of Sol.”
“Tigerstar,” Jayfeather mutters, his ears flicking back in disgust. Ivypaw ignores him.
“I was trying to protect the Clans, okay? And it would’ve worked too, only Sol’s power started going crazy when everyone started attacking him. And then…” Ivypaw falters, the newly gained confidence fading from her voice.
“And then what?” Squirrelflight asks.
“And then me and Sol were - somewhere else, and he told me… he told me that he was fighting the Place of No Stars. That they were the ones trying to kill everyone, and he kept rewinding when they won.”
“That’s-” Holly’s the first to speak, her mind reeling. “That’s not possible. Why would Sol be trying to help the Clans?”
“She said he was trying to stop the Dark Forest, not help the Clans,” Cinderheart says.
“I know, but - have you guys
met Sol?” Changing other cats’ realities to suit his own whims. Ready to abandon Ivypaw to the tunnels for the crime of being worried about him. Equally quick to threaten or to make a deal.
“Ivypaw’s telling the truth,” Jayfeather says. “Plus, Sol has no reason to be on the Dark Forest’s side. StarClan’s nothing to him, so it makes sense the Dark Forest would be the same.”
“Then why put all that effort into a battle that doesn’t concern him?” Squirrelflight asks.
“I think he thought it’d be worse for him if Tigerstar wins,” Ivypaw says.
For a moment they’re all quiet; Holly can hear the gentle creaks from above them as the Twoleg nest settles. It’s not a comforting sound. “I mean, there’s an advantage to this,” Cinderheart says. “Solve our Dark Forest problem and we might solve our Sol problem at the same time.”
“Is Sol a problem?” Jayfeather says. “If he has the same goal that we do, couldn’t we ally with him?”
“On what terms?” Holly asks. “Whatever his exact goal, he’s clearly trying to go it alone. In the old fork, he threatened to kill me and Ivypaw so we wouldn’t tell anyone about him.”
“I agree,” Ivypaw says, not that Holly’d let her anywhere near Sol whatever they decide.
Lionblaze nods firmly. “I agree with Hollyleaf - Holly, I mean. We need to focus on the enemy we can fight.”
“So what do you suggest we do?” Jay says. “Sol must know more about the Dark Forest than any other cat, and he hasn’t managed to defeat them yet.”
Holly glances around the nest, trying to gauge the others’ expressions. Jay’s is stubborn, Ivypaw’s mutinous, most of the others’ somewhere between skeptical and contemplative. “We need information,” she says, “but not from Sol. Jay, you need to talk to the other medicine cats. Find out as much as you can about what their Clans’ plans are. And have you been to the tunnels in this fork?”
“What do you think I was doing before you got here?” Jay says. “Fine, I’ll do it. And I went to the tunnels ages ago.”
“Me and Leafpool can talk to Firestar,” Squirrelflight offers. “He must know something, right?”
“That’s a good idea,” Holly says. She catches Leafpool’s gaze from across the nest, her mother’s amber eyes brimming with pride. “We need to make sure cats are prepared without raising suspicion, so anyone with friends in other Clans should try and talk to them. Lion, if you know any way to get yourself back in with the Place of No Stars, you should try that. And, um, Ivypaw…”
Ivypaw unsheathes her claws - Holly’s not sure if it’s deliberate - and draws herself to her full height. “You want me to spy on them, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I do,” Holly admits. “I know it’s dangerous, but - you might be the best asset we have. Assuming that they remember what happened last night, they’ll trust you more than anyone.”
“I don’t -” Ivypaw starts, but when Holly says best asset we have she rallies. “Okay. I can try that.”
“Thank you,” Holly says, and means it. Ivypaw returns her smile.
“Sounds like a plan,” Cinderheart says. “But Holly, what are you going to do? I tried to calm everyone down back at the camp, but you’re going to have a hard time settling in. Especially since you’re… not exactly the Hollyleaf who left.”
“Yeah, I know,” Holly says. She’s thought about this, in the background to everything else they’ve been discussing. “I think it might be best if I stay away from the Clans for a bit.”
“Are you sure?” Leafpool asks, which makes Holly’s heart twist. In a kinder world, she’d like nothing more than to spend the next few days in ThunderClan’s hollow, catching up with Leafpool.
“We can make it work for you in ThunderClan,” Squirrelflight adds. Jay, Lion and Cinderheart nod their agreement.
It’s comforting to have their support, but Holly shakes her head. “I’ll be back soon,” she promises. “I have an idea of where to go. Sol might not want to work with us, but he mentioned this badger, Midnight, who knew about his power. I think you know her, Squirrelflight?”
When she mentions Midnight, Squirrelflight’s ears prick up. “Actually, that’s a good point. When I went to visit her with Brambleclaw and everyone, she seemed really wise. Strong connection with StarClan, too.”
Jay adds, “And if she knows about Sol’s power, she probably knows about what he’s fighting, too.”
“Great,” Holly says. “Then it’s settled. You all gather as much information as you can here, and I’ll go and find Midnight.”
Chapter Twenty"Ivypaw,” Holly says a few minutes later, pulling Ivypaw out of her thoughts. “You there? We’re just about finished here - do you want to walk to the border with me?”
The honest answer is
not really, but Ivypaw’s pretty sure that’s not the one Holly’s looking for. “Fine. Is anyone else coming?”
“I’ve already said my goodbyes,” Holly says. “But I want to talk to you. I know how you must be feeling, and I want to apologise for yelling at you earlier.”
“‘Salright,” Ivypaw says. “I - I guess it’s been even worse for you, the change.”
Holly half smiles. “Tell me about it. Finding out that everyone thinks I’m dead - not the best start to my day.”
“Yeah, I can imagine.” Ivypaw could cut the tension between them with a claw - and would do, maybe literally, if this forced conversation wasn’t so obviously Holly’s idea of an olive branch. No point alienating the only cat with half an idea of what Ivypaw’s been through. “So, shall we go?”
“Sounds like a plan.”
Leafpool - Ivypaw still can’t get over the fact that the cat from the rumours, Firestar’s mysterious dead daughter, is here in the flesh - Leafpool descends on Holly as they’re leaving, and Ivypaw waits through several minutes of motherly well-wishings and admonitions. When the two she-cats break apart, Holly’s green eyes are misty. “I’ll be back,” she tells Leafpool. “I promise.”
Watching them, Ivypaw wonders if it’s a promise any of them can make.
Ivypaw follows Holly through the muddy, dripping forest towards the upper border. The pale, distant sun hangs low over WindClan’s moor, warm enough to melt the snow but not to heat the chill air. Holly leads the conversation, waiting until they’re out of earshot of the others before she asks her first question.
“How much do you know about the Place of No Stars?”
“Um, I-” Ivypaw wasn’t expecting Holly to be quite so direct. “A lot? You heard what I said at the nest.”
“You didn’t really give details, though. How long were you training with them?”
Were. “I’ve been training with them since all the fuss over Dovepaw’s power last greenleaf. Before you arrived.”
“That’s a long time,” Holly says, unoriginally. “Ivypaw - are you going to be okay with this? Spying? I know it’s an ask, but-”
“I’m the best asset you have, I know.” The words come out more bitterly than Ivypaw intended. “Look, I’m trying not to be mad but it’s a lot to take in. Hawkfrost and the others - they’re my friends.”
Holly sighs. “You know they were manipulating you, right?”
“Probably? Yeah.” It hurts, admitting even that much. “I know - I guess I knew it was unlikely from the moment I stepped into that forest. Cats like them don’t act out of the goodness of their hearts, blah blah blah. I guess I just hoped that for once, the universe was looking out for
me. Not just Dovepaw.”
“Ivypaw, nobody’s comparing you to Dovepaw. You’re both your own cats.”
“Yes, they are! For StarClan’s sake, this is why I kept training with Hawkfrost, because he was the only one who dared to say I was being treated unfairly.”
“I’m sure nobody meant-” Holly says, more hesitantly. Ivypaw cuts her off with a glare. “Fine, this is getting off track. How often do you train with them?”
“Pretty much every night,” Ivypaw says. “You don’t need to keep
looking at me like that. You must know how it feels - your brothers are part of the prophecy, too.”
Holly shrugs. “I mean, yeah, I was a little jealous. Felt like they were part of a club without me. But I didn’t have the same experience as you. Nobody else really knew about Jay’s and Lion’s powers.”
“And everyone knew about Dovepaw.” The weirdest thing about this fork, Ivypaw’s decided, is that Dovepaw’s power is a secret - and, judging by Dovepaw’s reaction this morning, Ivypaw isn’t in on it. “It was just exhausting. Everyone was making a fuss about her, and I was just - normal.”
“Normal’s not all bad,” Holly says. “I could go for normal.”
“It’s better than today, sure.”
“You think?” Holly cracks a smile. “No, but seriously, I haven’t exactly blended in since coming to ThunderClan, and now… A power would just be one more thing.”
Ivypaw looks suspiciously at Holly, but the black she-cat is straight-faced.
“I’ll make you a deal,” Holly says. “You’re gonna - we’re gonna prove that having a power isn’t the be-all and end-all. The prophecy, Sol, anything. This whole mess might’ve been started by dead cats and cats with powers, but when it’s over nobody’s going to be able to say that us regular cats weren’t the reason it was finished. Deal?”
It’s the cheesiest, most impractical sentiment Ivypaw’s ever heard, but she can’t help smiling. “Deal,” she says. “One thing though - if I’m going to do the whole spying thing, you can’t keep treating me like a new apprentice.”
To Ivypaw’s surprise, Holly laughs, wrinkling her nose. “Oh StarClan, I was, wasn’t I? Comes of Crowfeather raising us in the middle of nowhere - I have no idea how to act with younger cats. Sorry about that.”
“It’s fine. I’m - I’m sorry for being petty about it.”
They stop for a rest at the border. Fresh ThunderClan scent swirls around the thinning trees, evidence of the sunhigh patrol that must’ve just passed. “I should be going,” Holly says. “See you in… a few days, I guess? Hopefully with a badger.”
“Will you be okay?” Ivypaw asks. “Out there on your own.”
“If you’ll be okay in the Place of No Stars.”
“I think I have to be.” Seeing concern darken Holly’s green eyes, Ivypaw adds, “I can’t go back to how it was, not with everything that’s happened. I have to at least find out if what Sol says is true.”
Holly hesitates. “That’s… Well, good luck. Talk to Jayfeather when you get back. He has a few ideas, it’s your decision whether they’re helpful or not.”
Ivypaw nods. “See you on the other side?”
“That’d better be a promise,” Holly says. “See you soon, take care!”
And with that, she dashes off, across the border and into unclaimed territory. Glancing up at the sun, now dipping in the sky, Ivypaw sets off back towards the ThunderClan camp. Unless Cinderheart’s
very lenient over skipped training, Ivypaw’ll have to hurry to talk to Jayfeather before dusk.
-
No matter what else changed when Sol shifted forks, Hawkfrost’s starless forest is the same. Dense, towering trees, sickly luminous fungi, the sludgy flow of the river visible through the trees ahead of her. Purposeful shadows slink along its banks, residents and visitors alike making their way to the night’s training. Only last night, the scene represented freedom, an escape from Ivypaw’s waking life. But tonight her stomach is twisted up and full of butterflies - each ready to escape and cause its own hurricane.
What Ivypaw finds out tonight could change everything.
“Ivypaw,” Hawkfrost says, coming up behind her. She jumps around, hoping she looks excited rather than panicked or guilty. “Excellent work last night. We’re all very proud of you.”
“You are?”
"You might not remember, of course," Hawkfrost says, smiling. "Sol tends to have that effect."
"No, I do, I just-"
"What's eating you? You did a great job - Tigerstar wants to reward you himself."
Jayfeather's advice echoes in her mind.
Act natural. They won't suspect you. "I guess I'm not sure why you're so happy. We failed, right? We didn't kill Sol."
"Always wanting to do better, that's the reason I chose you," Hawkfrost says. He lays his tail over her shoulders, steering her towards the river; she tries not to flinch away. “But no, if you had killed Sol we’d be celebrating somewhere more pleasant than this. None of us have managed to get rid of him yet.”
“You knew about Sol before?” Ivypaw doesn’t have to fake her surprise. Not so much at what Hawkfrost said - so far, so close to Sol’s side of the story - but that he admitted it so easily.
“Knew him? Did nobody tell you?”
She shakes her head. “That was important information, and you
forgot to tell us?”
“Fine,” Hawkfrost says. “I want you to know that I was in favour of telling you from the start. But Tigerstar insisted. He thought it’d distract you from the mission if you knew.”
“So you let us go in unprepared? Is it even possible to kill Sol?”
“Hey, it wasn’t my idea. But you ask for our help, you play by our rules.”
“Apparently, I helped
you,” Ivypaw mutters.
Undergrowth swishes behind them. Ivypaw freezes at the sight of tortoiseshell fur, but luckily Mapleshade’s not in the mood to talk. The spectral she-cat pushes past Ivypaw and Hawkfrost without a greeting, plunging across the river and vanishing into the trees on the other side. She mutters to herself as she goes, and the black patches on her fur are so indistinct that they look more like holes than cat.
Hawkfrost waits to speak until Mapleshade’s gone, watching after her pointedly. “Careful, Ivypaw. Not every cat in this forest is as tolerant as I am.”
How did she do this, night after night? How did she not
see?
Steeling herself for what she's about to do, she meets Hawkfrost’s eyes. "I don't want to be tolerated. I want to be part of this, and I want to be told what's going on. What do I have to do?"
Hawkfrost's smile is as hard as his icy blue eyes. "I was hoping you'd say that."
A short walk along the slimy riverbank, breathing shallowly to avoid the stench of the water, and Ivypaw and Hawkfrost reach the clearing where the meeting was held. This time only a few cats are present. In the shadow of the tall, striated rock, Tigerstar and Brokenstar are absorbed in conversation with a dark grey tabby Ivypaw thinks is called Darkstripe. Hawkfrost heads straight to join them, leaving Ivypaw to approach the fourth cat in the clearing, who stands alone on the riverside.
“Hi, Antpelt.”
"Hey, Ivypaw," Antpelt says. His wounds from the night before are gone, wiped away by the shift, but the usual cuts and bruises from a hard training session criss-cross his brown pelt. “That was something last night, huh?”
“You can say that again.” Ivypaw’s only half paying attention, watching Hawkfrost break into the other three’s conversation, his gestures expressive although his voice is too low for Ivypaw to hear. She can only hope that what he’s saying is to her advantage - and that it’ll persuade the other cats.
“And what he did, as well!” Antpelt continues. “I didn’t know even Sol was that powerful. There are two new cats in WindClan now, and I’m the only one who remembers they weren’t there yesterday.”
“Yeah, there’s-” Ivypaw stops mid-sentence as Hawkfrost returns, his eyes gleaming with satisfaction.
“Ivypaw, you’re wanted. Brokenstar says he’ll hear you out.”
Ignoring the puzzled look Antpelt shoots her, Ivypaw follows Hawkfrost over to the main group. They all turn to look at her - Tigerstar’s expression considering, Darkstripe’s sneering, and Brokenstar’s unreadable. She swallows and raises her chin defiantly.
“Ivypaw,” Brokenstar says. “Hawkfrost says you want to be a warrior. Is this true?”
She nods. “Yes. Whatever you’re doing about Sol, I want in.”
“A bold wish, for an apprentice,” Tigerstar says.
“You said that if we were successful last night we could become warriors.”
Tigerstar and Brokenstar exchange glances. “Fine,” Brokenstar says. “But you have to show us you mean what you say. That you’re truly loyal.”
“Of - of course.”
Brokenstar waves a tail at Antpelt, still contemplating the river. “Then kill him.”
Ivypaw’s stomach feels like someone dropped it from the top of the Sky Oak. “What- I mean, why? Why him?”
“Do you have an objection?” Brokenstar asks.
Darkstripe sneers. “He’s a full-grown warrior, and Sol bested him easily. We have no use for him.”
“Fine, no problem.” She takes a step towards Antpelt, unsheathing and resheathing her claws. Her paws shake. She’s never killed a cat before, never seriously wounded one even. Antpelt’s bigger and stronger than she is; she doesn’t like to think of what will happen to her if she loses this fight. And what if she wins, but can’t bring herself to strike the killing blow?
What if she’s making a fatal mistake?
Imagine he’s Sol, she tells herself.
You didn’t have any problems last night, with trying to kill him.
Imagine he’s Brokenstar.She leaps.
“Ivypaw,” Antpelt shouts as she lands on top of him, her unsheathed claws digging into his flesh. “What in StarClan are you doing?”
She doesn’t reply. Antpelt fights back, shaking her to the ground and blocking some of her blows with his own, but she can tell he’s trying not to hurt her. Ivypaw doesn’t care if she gets hurt. She drives Antpelt towards the boulder until a lucky blow to his chest sends him toppling backwards. His head collides with the stone with a sick crack.
For a moment, Ivypaw hesitates. She’s proven her strength; maybe if she stops now, Brokenstar will let her off. But the three other cats are silent, waiting for the outcome of the battle.
Antpelt groans; she can see him about to push himself back upright.
“I’m sorry, Antpelt,” she whispers, quiet enough that the others won’t hear, and drags her front paw across his throat.
-
Other cats' blood doesn't travel back from the Dark Forest with you, only your own, but Ivypaw knows her claws will never be clean again.
Chapter Twenty-OneThe sky over the sun drown place is dark, an hour or so before dawn, and the sea below it is hungry and expansive: high tide. Holly's been moving since she left Ivypaw at the border yesterday, stopping only to hunt and eat a snatched meal. Her legs ache and her eyes droop, but any moment Holly spends sleeping, the Place of No Stars could use to attack the Clans again, or Sol could use to shift Holly's entire reality. So she runs. Throughout the short, rainy leaf-bare afternoon, the chilly evening, and the cloudy, starless night, until the black sky glows grey ahead of her and she finds herself here, on a lonely cliff before an endless ocean.
The waves thunder below her, crashing against the cliff like they're trying to bowl it over. Salt spray mingles with the drizzle that soaks her pelt. Her heart beats almost as violently as the waves, and her ears strain, listening for any sign that another creature lives here.
“Is anyone there?” she calls, her voice drowned out by the waves. “Midnight? Somebody?”
A cry - more of a bark - echoes back to her from below. Barely audible, but it’s enough for Holly. She edges towards the edge of the cliff to peer at the beach below. The narrow ribbon of sand looks deserted - but so is the clifftop, and Holly doesn't have any better ideas.
Feeling her way with each pawstep, she picks her way down the water-slick rock. The crests of the incoming waves are a mere tail-length below her, a fox-length away to her side. Spray soaks her every other heartbeat. And the path - more of a rabbit track, one that must be risky even at low tide and in broad daylight - grows narrower and narrower as she clambers downwards.
But finally Holly's down, her paws finding a foothold on the wet sand. Letting out a huge, relieved breath, she lifts her gaze from her paws to see the dark-furred figure watching her from the shadow of the cliff. Too tall and bulky to be a cat, with a white stripe down the centre of its triangular face like a lightning strike.
It seems impossible that Holly didn’t see the figure on her way down the cliff. She whirls towards it.
“Need there is not to fight,” the figure says, its voice guttural and amused. If Holly hadn’t guessed who it was before, she’d know now; surely, there’s only one badger on this coastline who can speak Cat.
"You're Midnight, aren't you?"
Midnight nods her head. "Yes. Good it is that you came, Hollyleaf. Much there is to discuss."
-
Hawkfrost’s forest seems gloomier than ever as Ivypaw steps back from Antpelt’s now limp body, its form already dissolving beneath her claws. Without the shouting and thudding sounds of the fight, the clearing is quiet but not silent. Illusory prey rustles in the thick, barbed undergrowth. The battle cries of the other trainees echo in the distance. The tall, twisted trees loom overhead as they always do, their roots alight with fungi and their tangled upper branches shrouded in dense black shadow.
Hawkfrost is first to break the silence, his chilly blue eyes watching Ivypaw closely. “Not the cleanest of fights, but that was good, Ivypaw.”
“Um, thanks.” It's the best Ivypaw can do, given that she's fighting the urge to throw up. She presses, “So, I did it, right? Does that mean you’ll tell me about Sol?”
“Of-”
“Possibly,” Brokenstar interrupts. His crooked tail twitches with what looks like impatience. Ivypaw wonders why he doesn’t just
go, if the fact that she killed a cat is so uninteresting.
(Ivypaw doesn’t know what happens when a cat dies in the starless forest, and if she’s honest, she doesn’t want to think about it. Antpelt’s body in the shadow of the rock behind her has faded to nothing, leaving only a faint bloodstain on the slimy ground. Will he wake up murdered, his wounds carried back with him? Or will he simply vanish for good?)
Tigerstar rumbles, “How much do you want to know?”
“All of it," Ivypaw says. “Why do you care so much about Sol? How do you know about the other forks? What's he stopping you from doing?”
“That’s a lot,” Brokenstar says. “Hawkfrost, has your apprentice done enough to deserve this information?”
Ivypaw steps forward, her fur spiking in outrage. “Hang on, I literally just-”
“Leave my apprentice alone, Brokenstar,” Hawkfrost says. He rests his tail over Ivypaw’s shoulder, like Birchfall would. “Ivypaw's one of us, now. She deserves to know what she’s dealing with.”
-
“So, what are we dealing with?” Holly asks Midnight.
It's dawn, the sky over the wide, rolling moor glowing a thousand shades of pink and orange and gold. After meeting Holly on the beach, Midnight invited her into her cosy, earthy den to warm up and snatch some much-needed sleep. But the badger soon insisted that they had to be on the move again, back to the Clan territories.
"Rest you need, but speed you need more, yes?"
Holly's been awake all night and most of the one before, but she forces herself to her paws regardless. She feels a little light-headed as she and Midnight hurry across the endless grassland - but that could be as much because of the unreality of her situation as anything else. If someone had told her half a moon ago that she'd be racing against time with a badger to stop the mess caused by a time-altering rogue and a bunch of villains from Crowfeather's stories, she'd have laughed in their face.
"You recognised me," she says to Midnight. "Does that mean I've already met you in this fork?"
"Many times we have met,” Midnight says, which Holly is beginning to recognise as Midnight’s particular brand of helpfully unhelpful. “In your fork, no. In this, I think yes. This is what you wanted to know?"
"No," Holly says. "I mean, yeah, but not just that. I - You helped Sol, right?"'
"Helped is strong word, with Sol," Midnight says. "I advise, maybe."
Holly walks for a little while, her tired muscles jarring with each pawstep, while she considers what to ask next. "Can you tell me how it works? Why can Sol do what he does? Why can my brothers do what they do? Why is it my life that got messed around when Sol switched forks?"
"You and your brothers are important in both future and past, hard to change much without affecting you. For other questions, look around you."
Holly looks. They've travelled further together than she thought - about halfway across the moor, close to where Holly grew up. There's the tumble of limestone boulders where she and their brothers taught themselves to climb. Somewhere to her right must be the fox den where Holly left Crowfeather in the greenleaf, and which is now occupied by no-one. And ahead of them… A shiver runs down Holly's spine as she recognises the gap in the sea of grass, the perfect circle where solid ground once dropped away into nothing.
"But that's just a story," Holly says. "There isn't actually a ghost here, right?"
"Story is for scaring kits, that is true," Midnight says. "But ghost is real. Met him, you have. Name is Fallen Leaves."
"
He's the ghost?" Holly thinks back to a day ago, waking up in the tunnels to find another cat looking at her with concern. Midnight’s revelation makes sense, in an odd way. Now she thinks back, without the confusion and disorientation of waking up in an entirely different
timeline, there was definitely something off about Fallen Leaves - how easily he grasped Holly's predicament, how cagey he was about his own past. Although, nothing to suggest he was dead. That, Holly thinks, ought to've been more obvious.
She asks, "What does he have to do with Sol?"
-
“We found out about Sol - Well, in terms of your time, a few moons ago, but for us it was season-cycles ago,” Hawkfrost says.
He and Ivypaw and Tigerstar walk, three abreast, down one of the forest’s twisting paths. The path is more defined that the one that Tigerstar chose on the day they went to kill Sol. The leaf litter at its edges has been trampled into the ground, as if many cats have walked this way. Probably they have. Ivypaw’s been hearing the voices of other living trainees among the trees all night.
“I’ve forgotten who came up with the original plan now,” Hawkfrost continues. “Maybe it was Tigerstar, maybe it was Mapleshade or one of the older ones. We were tired of the way we were being treated, you see, stuck in this forest.”
Tigerstar’s amber eyes glow in the shadows by the side of the path. “So we made a plan to invade the lake.”
“It was a last resort,” Hawkfrost says. “Convince some cats from around the lake to join us, wait until our ranks were strong enough, and then pay a visit to the lake. All we wanted was for StarClan to listen to us. But that piece of fox-dung, Sol, he got the wrong idea. No sooner had we arrived by the lake and claimed victory, but he swept in and turned it all back. We hadn’t even come across him until then - he wasn’t part of your sister’s little group of do-gooders.”
Ivypaw does startle at that. Hawkfrost notices and smiles, a little patronising. “Sol’s not the only thorn in our side. But she’s not important; she and the others always lose. They have to.”
“They have to lose?” Ivypaw asks, frowning.
Tigerstar answers her. His voice is low, authoritative - the sort of voice that gives out orders at a Clan meeting or barks commands in the midst of battle, not the sort that debates fate and magic. Which is why Ivypaw's surprised when he asks, “How much do you know about the prophecy, Ivypaw? Just what Firestar told you?”
-
Midnight walks to the very edge of the sinkhole, picking her way across the scattered limestone around it, and beckons for Holly to join her. Holly follows gingerly, stopping a good fox-length from the edge. Even now, with new sunlight sparkling off the dewy grass, the hollow has an ominous air. It's all too easy to imagine the dirt and rock tumbling on top of her, like it did in her nightmare. Like it did in the waking world, in the fork that everyone but Holly remembers.
"Long ago," Midnight says, her black gaze fixed on the hollow, "other cats than Clans lived around lake. Talked to ancestors, they did not, but had other ways of foreseeing future. Had prophecy of three cats, with power beyond anyone else, who are reborn over and over."
No prizes for guessing what
that refers to. "The prophecy's that old?"
"Older. But had different meaning, then. When the three cats were born together, that would be end of cats by lake. Fallen Leaves’ cats managed to change prophecy. Twolegs for first time had come to lake, and two of three cats were born. Could not break prophecy, but could make sure when all three cats came there would be fourth cat, with power to mend what the three’s coming would break.”
-
“Sol was never meant to be part of this,” Hawkfrost says. His long, sharpened claws scrape into the leaf-mulch of the path; Ivypaw imagines those claws digging into Sol, into an unsuspecting Clan cat, and shivers. “The prophecy was on our side, not the Clans’. But something interfered, and now we’re stuck like this.”
-
“Is stalemate,” Midnight says. “Not how it was supposed to be. Your three cats can escape fate only with fourth. But fourth cat cannot defeat Place of No Stars alone.”
-
“How do you break the cycle?” Ivypaw asks. When neither Hawkfrost or Tigerstar answers straight away, she pushes, “That’s what you’re trying to do, isn’t it? To stop Sol from rewinding?”
“Among other things,” Hawkfrost says. “Ivypaw, you’re a warrior of the Place of No Stars now. How do you think we break the cycle?”
“Um - oh.” Ivypaw catches herself. “You don't, do you? You - we can’t win unless we kill Sol.”
“It’s worse than that,” Tigerstar says with a curl of his lip. The acid hatred in his voice is even more pronounced than when he mentioned Firestar.
Hawkfrost clarifies, “Until Sol dies, we can’t even lose. The fox-heart’s got so paranoid that until he’s rid of, he’ll keep rewinding to make sure we can’t bounce back. That’s why I’m so proud of what you did, Ivypaw, and why you have to waste no time in tracking Sol down again. Until he’s dead, chances are there’ll never be a final fork.”
-
“So what can we do?” Holly asks, frustration leaking into her voice. She's so tired. There's still so much of the moor left to cross, so much for her to do once she’s crossed it. “We’re stuck until we can persuade Sol to join us - what sort of advice do you call that? Is there nothing else we can do?"
“Many things there are that you can do,” Midnight says, her expression unreadable as she stares out across the wide, rolling moor towards the Clan territories. “If advice you want, remember - Clans must work together, even StarClan. All are needed.”
“And that's not going to be difficult at all,” Holly says. “It’s always the hard way with this kind of thing, isn’t it? There’s no way we can just, like, announce at the next Gathering that the Dark Forest’s trying to kill us all, Sol’s trying to stop it, and go from there?”
Midnight’s dark eyes twinkle. “Try, you can. Interesting, the results would be.”
“But it wouldn’t work,” Holly says. She drops her gaze her paws, wet with dew and muddy from snowmelt. The ground beneath them is solid, hard-packed frozen earth all the way down to the bedrock, until it isn’t. “How are you and Sol so sure that the Clans even can win this? Like, at some point don’t you just have to admit that the Dark Forest is stronger?”
“That is what you think?” Midnight asks. “They are stronger because they win?”
Holly lets out a long breath before she allow herself to answer. "How else do you define strength, exactly?”
Midnight’s gaze flickers across the empty hollow, now lit brightly by the yellow morning sun, and back to Holly. Her triangular face curves into a smile. “Answer that, and this might be the last fork after all.”
Chapter Twenty-TwoLate afternoon finds Holly almost back where she started - the rolling moor above WindClan territory. The sun hovers on the horizon, almost swallowed by the short leaf-bare day. Thick, red-tinged clouds block out the fire-coloured sky. Holly shivers. The air's no warmer than when she was leaving the sun drown place at dawn, and her sweat-slicked pelt does almost nothing to keep out the cold.
Midnight left Holly not long after the sinkhole; apparently she has somebody to talk to before they got to the Clans. She doesn’t invite Holly to come with. Holly doesn’t ask to. Midnight’s been helpful - ish - but Holly isn’t sorry to have some time alone before she launches herself back into ThunderClan.
"Halt, rogue!"
The voice comes from Holly’s left and hits her like a heavy stone to the gut. She spins around to see two cats heading towards her from the direction of the lake. In the lead is a mottled grey tom; Holly guesses that he's Kestrelflight, the WindClan medicine cat. And the dark grey tom following him - the cat who spoke - is Crowfeather.
When, frozen, she doesn’t reply, Crowfeather launches himself forward. Holly braces every one of her muscles to run. If it comes to a fight - it can't come to a fight... "Identify yourself-"
He stops, dead in his tracks. "Hollyleaf. You're alive."
His voice is almost emotionless; you'd think he was simply stating a fact. "Yeah," Holly says. Her voice wobbles a little; she swallows, hard, before continuing. "Yeah, I'm alive. Good to see you, too."
"For StarClan's sake," Crowfeather says again. His long tail flicks with irritation. "What are you doing here? You must know that you're not welcome here."
Kestrelflight hurries to catch up with Crowfeather. His green eyes dart between Crowfeather and Holly. "Cool it, Crowfeather. She's not doing anything wrong."
"Maybe she isn't now." Crowfeather says. Holly's not sure if he intends for her to hear, but the words sting anyway. This is worse - far worse - than arguing with him back in the greenleaf. Then, she at least knew that his wrath was a sign that he cared.
"Nice thing to say about your daughter," she says.
"I don’t-" Crowfeather starts. Kestrelflight stops him with a tail over his mouth.
"Nobody say anything they're going to regret. Crowfeather, we have things to do. Hollyleaf, we can give you safe passage to ThunderClan, if that's what you want."
"Where are you going?" Holly asks before she can stop herself.
Crowfeather glares at her, but Kestrelflight answers easily enough. "The Moonpool."
Holly narrows her eyes. Unless Sol somehow managed to change the phases of the moon, it's only a pawful of days to the half moon. "Why are you trying to contact StarClan? Is something wrong?"
"That's none of your business," Crowfeather explodes. His dark grey fur fluffs out aggressively.
Holly says, "Is it to do with the Place of No Stars?"
The two WindClan cats exchange glances; Kestrelflight’s wary, Crowfeather’s furious. "We're trying to stop them," Holly says. "Kestrelflight, you should talk to Jay - Jayfeather, I mean."
Now they look puzzled. "We?" Crowfeather asks.
"Yeah, I've been back a while," Holly says. "I'm surprised you didn't know. Although not very surprised, since apparently you don't care at all."
"We're agreed on that, then," Crowfeather says.
"Oh, for-" Holly forces herself to stop, although unlike their arguments back at the abandoned fox den she knows she's not the one in the wrong. She meets Crowfeather's cold gaze. "Look, I know you're not going to believe this, and I don't care a whole lot if you do, but - I'm not from this timeline, not originally. Things happened another way, once, and you - you and Leafpool stayed on the moor together, and then she died, and you were the one who looked after us. And I'm not gonna lie and say things were perfect, but you tried, and - you were a good father, Crowfeather. Can you honestly tell me you don't remember any of that?"
He stares at her. Kestrelflight's watching her too, his green eyes concerned.
"It's the truth," Holly says. "I swear."
"You should go," Crowfeather says, his voice heavy. It's not much of a change from his previous tone, but it's enough for Holly to hope. Which is the worst option, really.
"Crowfeather, please." There was a time in the past when Holly, Jay and Lion had called him Dad, but that habit had dropped seasons before the littermates left for the Clans. "Think about it, okay? Try and remember."
He breaks eye contact . "Maybe it would've been a better world if I'd raised you," he says. "But that's not what happened. Go talk to Leafpool, if you want someone to yell at."
"I have," Holly says, raising her chin. "She remembers. I hoped you would, too."
"Well, I don't," Crowfeather snaps. "Now leave. You're not supposed to be here."
He stalks away, heading uphill towards the Moonpool. With an apologetic look back at Holly, Kestrelflight follows him. Neither of them say goodbye. Holly waits for a while until they're out of earshot. The Moonpool is in the same direction as ThunderClan territory; although she's in a hurry to get back, she doesn't want to be accused of following Crowfeather either. She isn't going to let him have that.
Around her the moor is silent, frozen, empty. No birds, no rabbits, no predators. No insects. Just the whisper of the wind, now whipping up into storm speeds, and the smell of snow on the cold air, mingling with the drifting scent of the WindClan scent marks. The fiery sky fading to dusk. It’s almost eerie, how little life there is here.
Holly stands there, in the midst of the empty, ominous moor, until her anger at Crowfeather drains away. He isn’t really
him, she reminds herself. He might share her father’s face and voice, but he isn’t the same cat who raised her. Something in this fork changed her brittle, grieving but always loving father into something hard. Something unsaveable. The paltry amount of emotion he showed at the end of their conversation was nothing compared to the care that the real Crowfeather showed Holly and her littermates.
No, what Holly needs to do is to get her real father back. To defeat the Place of No Stars, and force Sol into ending the madness of the different forks once and for all.
-
"Hollyleaf? Holly? Are you awake?"
Holly blinks open her eyes to pale afternoon sunlight streaming through the gaping window of the abandoned Twoleg nest. She's curled up in a shadowed corner, wedged behind some ancient Twoleg debris. The uneven blocks of the wall dig into her back. Vaguely, she remembers arriving at the nest the evening before and choosing the corner where she'd be least obvious to a passing ThunderClan patrol. Right before she passed out for an entire day.
Jay’s voice sounds close to her ear; that must’ve been what woke her up. “Holly?
“Wha’d’you want?” she murmurs blearily. And then, waking up enough to register what he just said, “Holly? Why did you-?”
“We’ve both remembered some things,” Lion says. He’s grim-faced, extending and retracting his claws so fast that Holly imagines she can hear the click of them. “Not everything, but enough. We can talk about it later. Firestar and Brambleclaw think we’re helping Jay grab some herbs - we don’t have much time.”
“Onestar and most of his best warriors showed up at camp about an hour ago,” Cinderheart says. She’s standing behind Lion, the two’s pelts brushing and tails interlinked. “He and Firestar are talking now, but - we don’t think that’s what he came for. One of his warriors is missing, he knows you're back somehow, and he's not listening to anyone who think that's a coincidence."
"Plus," Jay adds, "he wants to know what we know about the Dark Forest.”
"Mouse-dung." Their words are enough for Holly to uncurl into a sitting position, shaking the last remnants of sleep from her mind. The movement sets off a chorus of aches throughout her body. She winces. “Look, you guys know I don't know anything about that WindClan warrior, right?"
Lion and Cinderheart nod. She narrows her eyes at them, but they seem to be sincere.
"I told Firestar you wouldn't've done it," Jay says. "But for some reason, that didn't convince Onestar. Especially since you went and let him know you're back."
"It wasn't my fault, okay? I ran into Crowfeather and Kestrelflight on the way back yesterday, well past the border, and-"
“So you yelled at them about the Dark Forest?"
“You know how annoying Crowfeather can-” She cuts herself off. “You probably know a whole lot better than me how annoying Crowfeather can get in this fork.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Cinderheart says. She reaches out with her left forepaw to gently smooth down a sticking-up clump of fur on Holly’s forehead. Holly rolls her eyes and starts grooming herself. Sweating all the way to the sun drown place and back, plus getting herself soaked in ocean spray, hasn't done her pelt any favours.
"We'd better get going," she says to the others betweencks. "How did you know I'd be here, anyway?" She hadn’t told any of the others what her plans were after her trip to find Midnight. She hadn't known what they were herself.
Jay shrugs. “Midnight told us you were around. Showed up this morning actually, but she said you needed sleep.”
Lion adds, “And then Onestar showed up, and we thought you needed to be awake more.”
“You thought right,” Holly says. She smooths down her last clump of fur. Maybe not smart enough to face a Clan leader, but she doubts that Onestar will care that much about her appearance anyway. "What was you guys' plan? About Onestar?"
Lion and Cinderheart exchange looks. "We don't really have one," Cinderheart says. "It's your choice - get away from the lake until this all blows over, or talk to Onestar now."
"Lion, do you have an opinion?"
He shrugs. "Onestar's pretty convinced you did it. But if you leave now, he'd be even more convinced. So, your choice."
"Jay?"
"You didn't do it, did you? So stay."
Holly breathes in, and out. Despite the amount of time she slept for, she could easily sleep for the same amount again. She'd hoped that her trip to the sun drown place would leave her much more prepared than she actually is. That it would smooth over the Clans' reaction to her return, not cause yet another complication.
Why did Antpelt have to choose
now to disappear?
"I'm staying," she says. "We can't - I can't afford to be on the run anymore, not when there's so much on the line."
"Are you sure?" Cinderheart asks, concern in her blue eyes. "You'll probably have to answer for whatever the other Hollyleaf did."
"Probably," Holly says. "Hopefully not. I already told Crowfeather pretty much everything. So I do the same thing with Onestar. Maybe he'll start accusing me of insanity instead of murder."
"And maybe hedgehogs will fly," Jay says. "I still can't believe you told Crowfeather everything. How much do I have to explain about the prophecy?"
Holly stands, and the four of them walk towards the door of the Twoleg nest. Holly sticks close to Jay as he navigates the steps at the nest's entrance, but he keeps his balance without her help.
Ivypaw’s outside the nest when Holly and Jay emerge, keeping watch. With a stab of guilt, Holly notices that the apprentice’s silver tabby pelt is criss-crossed with fresh wounds, gained since Holly last saw her, and her blue eyes look almost as exhausted as Holly feels. Holly waves with her tail, and Ivypaw grimaces in return.
"You can say as much as you want about the prophecy," she tells Jay once they're back on solid ground. "But before we get back to camp, I have to tell you something about it. Apparently, someone added in a fourth cat."
Chapter Twenty-ThreeIvypaw tries to listen as Holly explains about Sol's role in the prophecy, but it's mostly the same story as Hawkfrost's and Tigerstar's. Jay and Lion react predictably badly to learning that they're supposed to end the world. Cinderheart and Jay ask curious, probing questions, narrowing down Midnight's exact words and speculating about different possible meanings. Ivypaw could answer some of their questions herself - but to do that, she'd have to explain how she got the information, and that would come dangerously close to explaining what happened to Antpelt.
Antpelt’s dead - there’s no possible way he isn’t - and Ivypaw’s the one who killed him. She keeps remembering how he fought with her against Sol, the shock in his voice as she turned on him. Antpelt wasn’t a bad cat. There are probably cats in WindClan, right now, who cared about Antpelt and don’t know what happened to him.
She remembers what Holly told her the morning after Sol switched forks:
actions have consequences, Ivypaw. But she isn't ready for the consequences to happen now, when there's still so much else going wrong. She isn't ready for the consequences to happen to
Holly.
"So apparently we need to figure out what strength means," Holly finishes.
"Well, that's helpful," Cinderheart says. "Ivypaw, you got any ideas? What are the Dark Forest's strengths?"
"Um," Ivypaw hesitates, trying to get her thoughts in order. It would be easier to list what the Dark Forest's strengths
aren't. "They have a lot of fighters. And Clan cats on their side - I know some of them, but there's probably more."
"And they can see through Sol's changes, right?" Holly asks. Ivypaw nods. "Maybe that's what Midnight means by strength, then? We have cats on our side who can do that too, now."
"How would that help, though?" Lion asks. "They remember all the forks. We remember one extra fork - or half of it."
Jay and Lion are the half, of course. The day before, Jay burst into Lion and Cinderheart's training session, talking about memories, forks and
I knew Holly was up to something. When Jay finally shut up, Lion admitted that some of his memories had also returned. Squirrelflight's remembering more as well, and even Dovepaw's used
Lion rather than
Lionblaze at least once.
Ivypaw wonders if, eventually, everyone's going to remember the old fork. And, if they did, what would happen to this one.
Jay says, "Not if we can get Sol on our side..."
"Not gonna happen," Holly says.
"Here's another strength," Cinderheart says. "They attack us in our territory, right, Ivypaw? And only the cats they choose can get there."
"That's a good point," Lion says. "So what, we take a patrol? Attack them in their own territory?"
"That's not even slightly how the Dark Forest works," Jay says. "Even I've only got there twice, and that was with StarClan helping me in this fork, and Rock in the other one."
"Rock?"
"You remember, Lion, when we went in the tunnels?"
"Not really. Wait, we were with Sol, weren't we?"
"We were. Then when Dovepaw saw the Dark Forest show up, you left and I went deeper. I met this cat called Rock. He showed me the Dark Forest, then he showed me the cats that lived by the lake before the Clans."
"The ones who changed the prophecy?"
Jay nods. "He was going to show me more, then Sol's power went crazy."
Cinderheart asks, "How did Rock show you the Dark Forest? Was it like the Moonpool?"
"No, we just walked and there we were."
Something about the way he says it jogs something in Ivypaw's mind. "Jay," she asks, feeling everyone's attention on her as they turn towards her. "When you were walking in the tunnels, did you follow a river? Like, an underground one?"
"Yeah," Jay says slowly. "Yeah, we did. Why'd you ask?"
Ivypaw raises her chin. "Then I think I know how to get us into the Dark Forest."
-
All of ThunderClan - and half of WindClan - are squeezed into the central part of the hollow, below the Highledge. On the Highledge, Firestar stands next to Onestar. Firestar's pose is conciliatory, his fellow leader's aggressive. Ivypaw can't see Midnight anywhere, although Brambleclaw invited the badger to stay in ThunderClan as long as she wanted. Midnight must not've fancied getting in the middle of an inter-Clan scrap.
The gathered cats turn to watch as Holly, Jay and Lion push their way through the crowd to the Highledge. Cinderheart hangs back, motioning for Ivypaw to stay with her.
“Hollyleaf,” Onestar snarls, as the littermates approach him. Ivypaw cranes her neck to watch him from the back of the crowd, then wishes she hadn't when she sees his expression. The WindClan leader looks
furious. “Tell me what you did with my warrior.”
"I didn't hurt him," Holly says. "I know what it looks like, but I swear to StarClan I didn't do anything. I don't know anything about what happened other than what I've been told."
"Then why did Antpelt disappear the day you came back?"
"I didn't even know who Antpelt was, until today," Holly says. "Why would I want to hurt him?"
"The same reason you'd want to hurt any of my warriors," Onestar says. "Crowfeather and Kestrelflight reported that you were distressed when they met you. Similar to your state the night you supposedly died."
"Okay, I'm sorry for yelling at Crowfeather. But that doesn't mean I'd hurt a random WindClan cat."
"Are you sure? Then what about this Place of No Stars you're supposedly fighting? Would you have taken Antpelt if you thought he was working with them?"
Onestar, Ivypaw notes, is a good guesser. She fidgets from paw to paw, but it doesn’t quell the butterflies that are attacking her stomach.
"Actually-" Jayfeather says, but Onestar cuts him off.
"Firestar, I don't think your warrior is in her right mind. Whatever reason she had for harming Antpelt, it's clear she's a danger to all of us."
"So what do you want us to do, Onestar?" Firestar asks, his voice mild. "However convinced you are, as far as I can see we have no proof that Antpelt's disappearance is suspicious, let alone that Hollyleaf's behind it."
His words send a wash of relief through Ivypaw. If Firestar’s on their side, then they have a hope of - not of getting Holly’s name cleared and Onestar lined up to fight the dark forest, maybe, but something. But Onestar is relentless.
“Whether or not there’s
proof of what she did, the fact that she’s dangerous is obvious. And since you’ve been hiding her, I want her surrendered to WindClan custody until the matter is resolved.”
“What?” Cinderheart mutters under her breath. When Ivypaw glances around the packed hollow, she hears similar sounds of surprise among her Clanmates. But not everyone is as dismayed as Cinderheart or Ivypaw. Berrynose shouts, “Let WindClan deal with her!”, which prompts a raucous cheer from several other warriors.
“You can’t do that” Lion shouts. “There’s nothing in the warrior code-”
The rest of his words vanish amid the clamor. Everyone’s shouting over each other, their voices a roar in Ivypaw’s ears. She can't pick out any individual words, can't think, can't focus on anything other than that Holly’s being treated like a murderer and it’s all Ivypaw’s fault.
Breaking away from Cinderheart's side, Ivypaw barges through the crowd until she’s right below the Highledge, next to Holly. “You can’t do that,” she says - shouts. “You can’t take Holly, she's telling the truth. She didn’t kill Antpelt. I did.”
“What in StarClan do you mean?” If she thought Onestar was angry before, it’s nothing to what he is now. A vein bulges on his forehead, visible beneath his pale brown fur. In Ivypaw’s mind’s eye, Hawkfrost snarls.
Ivypaw raises her chin. “I said, I killed Antpelt.”
“Ivypaw, no!” Holly digs her in the side, fear and anger flashing in her green eyes. “You don’t - What are you doing?”
“Telling the truth.” She turns back to Onestar. “You were right, Antpelt was working for the Place of No Stars, or the Dark Forest, or whatever. So was I. They told me to kill him, so I did.”
The hollow is almost silent, only a few hushed whispers breaking the quiet.
“In that case,” Onestar begins, a little less assertively than before, “WindClan should take this apprentice into our custody, so her claims can be verified.”
“I don’t think-” Firestar begins, but Ivypaw doesn't wait to hear him out. Any cover she once had, about anything, is blown. Hawkfrost and his allies aren’t going to like what she told Onestar. Time’s running out for this fork anyway, now so many cats remember the old one. Actions have consequences.
“We’re out of time,” she says, and bolts.
-
Ivypaw doesn't run back through the crowd, but forward, to the empty, shadowed corner of the hollow where Sol’s path is. A couple of WindClan warriors spring after her, but they’re too late to catch her as she scrambles up the cliff, hitting the ground above the hollow at a run.
She hears shouting behind her as she sprints uphill, her heart pounding from both fear and exertion, but she doesn't dare glance back. Her paws slip on the muddy forest floor and her lungs scream for air. She propels herself onward; Hawkfrost trained her for this, forcing her to run or fight in the starless forest long after her energy was spent. At some point, the shouts thin out and fade away, but she can’t tell if her pursuers have let her go or just shut up. She still doesn’t look around.
It seems like forever until the trees around her thin out and she reaches the familiar hollow, the grass around it straggling and studded with rocks, the opening at its end yawning darkly. Ivypaw darts inside the tunnel entrance and sinks to the sandy floor of the tunnel.
As her breathing steadies, she risks a glance through the tunnel entrance. Nobody. She lets out a long sigh of relief, and turns her back on the empty hollow, only to startle as someone hisses her name.
"Ivypaw, wait up!"
It's Holly, her black fur dishevelled but otherwise unaffected by the fast run uphill. And following behind her, distinctly more out of breath, is Leafpool. Ivypaw edges down the tunnel to make room for them.
“Ivypaw, what were you thinking?” Holly hisses. “Why the - why did you say that to Onestar?”
“Because it’s the truth,” Ivypaw says. She avoids Holly’s gaze, instead sinking back down to the tunnel floor. After a moment, Holly and Leafpool sit down too. Ivypaw keeps her gaze fixed on the damp stone of the tunnel wall as she says, “I didn’t mean for - what happened. Didn’t think you’d get in trouble for it.”
She can hear the frown in Holly’s voice. “That’s not really the point. When we had that conversation - what, yesterday? The day before? At what point did I tell you that it was okay for you to
kill someone while I was gone?”
“I told you what Hawkfrost and the others are like! And you asked me to spy on them. You said you’d stop treating me like a kit!”
“I agreed that you could look after yourself. And look what happened when I did! Why in StarClan did you kill him, Ivypaw?”
“Like I told Onestar.” Ivypaw doesn’t want to elaborate. “I was trying to find out information about their plans, like you asked. And then Brokenstar said that I had to kill Antpelt to get it.”
“Let her be, Holly,” Leafpool says. Her gaze - and Holly’s judgement - make Ivypaw feel more claustrophobic than the tunnel walls pressing in on them.
"I'm sorry I didn't tell you, okay? And I'm sorry about Antpelt too. I’ve regretted it since I did it. I should've found some way to save him."
"Fine,” Holly says. “Whatever.” Her voice rises, in both pitch and volume, echoing down the tunnel. Ivypaw glances nervously towards the tunnel entrance. "I killed someone in this fork too, apparently, so who am I to judge? What's one more death on our paws? We're Team Good, aren't we?"
"Holly-" Leafpool presses closer to her daughter in the cramped space. Holly shrugs her off.
"No, it's fine. I'm fine." Holly heaves in a deep breath as if to compose herself. She still won't look at Ivypaw properly. "We're doing the river plan, right? Let's go take down the Place of No Stars."
Chapter Twenty-FourTaking down the Place of No Stars, Holly reckons, needs more than three cats to pull off - no matter how determined the three of them are. Since Holly and Ivypaw are technically on the run, Leafpool returns to the ThunderClan camp to gather the others, leaving Holly and Ivypaw to wait in the darkness beyond the first bend of the tunnel.
Now the shock of Ivypaw’s confession has worn off, Holly feels her anger drain away as quickly as it boiled up. “I’m sorry for saying you couldn’t be trusted,” she tells Ivypaw.
Ivypaw’s voice is too quiet even to echo. “S’okay. I’m sorry for - for everything.”
“I’m not exactly the one you should be apologising to,” Holly says softly. Ivypaw doesn't answer for a long time, so she adds, “Are you okay with doing this? You don’t have to go if you don’t want to.”
“I want to,” Ivypaw says. “After Antpelt… He was a good warrior, he’d’ve helped them, and they threw him away for some stupid test. I’m not waiting for them to do that to me.”
“Well, that’s one mistake they’ve made,” Holly says. “Letting you get away.”
“Ha,” Ivypaw says. “Not that it’s gonna help us much. They’ll all be mad at me now, anyway, since I told Onestar about them.”
“You think they saw that?” Holly asks, surprised.
“I think they see everything.”
There's a discomforting thought. Holly opens her mouth to reply, but freezes at the sound of pawsteps by the tunnel entrance. A moment later, she relaxes as Lion’s voice floats down the tunnel. “I heard you guys needed a fighter.”
“Or two,” Holly calls back. “Or twenty, really. Got anyone else with you?”
“Not twenty others, but I hope we’ll be helpful.” It’s Cinderheart’s voice this time; Holly can see her and Lion making their way down the tunnel. Leafpool follows, panting a little from her journeys between the camp and the tunnel entrance, then Squirrelflight and Brambleclaw, their scents and voices travelling down the tunnel one by one. And then the pawsteps stop.
Anxiety squirms its way into Holly’s stomach. “Where are Jay and Dovepaw?” she asks.
“Jay’s talking to Firestar,” Lion says, which is mostly reassuring. “They reckon they’ll both be more useful trying to prepare the Clans for the Dark Forest attack.”
“Apparently Firestar knew about the Dark Forest all along,” Squirrelflight cuts in. “Which would’ve been helpful to know two days ago, but never mind.”
“Thanks to him, about half the Clan’s already onside,” Brambleclaw says. He sounds like he only half approves; Holly wonders what he thinks of Firestar's revelation. “Cloudtail and Brightheart are organising a backup patrol if we manage to get ours through.”
“Firestar made Dovepaw stay in camp,” Cinderheart adds. “Speaking of which-” Holly can’t see Cinderheart’s expression in the darkness, but she knows the other she-cat is looking at Ivypaw.
“I’m coming,” Ivypaw says, before Cinderheart can finish her sentence.
Holly might regret this, later but she speaks up anyway. “She’s coming. She was part of this before the rest of us.”
“If you’re sure,” Cinderheart says. Holly expects someone else to object, but the only sound is everyone's breaths echoing off the stone walls.
“If this doesn’t work,” Lion says, “we’ll all come back in the next fork, right?”
“Don’t be so sure that’s a good thing,” Leafpool says. “But yes, probably.”
“Well, then,” Holly says, as the seven of them start walking down the narrow tunnel. There’s still a lot that could go wrong - the river might not lead them to the Place of No Stars, their hasty plan might not work - but she feels more sure of this than anything she’s done in a long time. Her heart beats fast with anticipation. “Let’s do this.”
-
To Holly’s relief, the river is nowhere near as full as it was during the storm, although its waters still churn and foam alarmingly as the river flows through the cave. Ivypaw leads the way to the edge of the cavern where the river gushes from a crevice in the rocky wall. The opening’s no taller than Holly, the roar of the water rushing through it louder than a hundred Twoleg monsters. Spray hits Holly’s face from a fox-length away, cold and smelling of decay.
"Jay went down here?" Holly asks, out loud. And then, "Ivypaw, are you sure this is the way?"
Ivypaw glances around the cave, then nods. “We should - it should work. Hawkfrost told me, every direction leads to the river eventually.”
“Well, if Hawkfrost says so,” Squirrelflight murmurs, disapproval clear in her voice.
Ivypaw steps through the opening first, the water lapping around her shoulders. Holly’s bent head scrapes against the tunnel roof as she follows. The seven of them string out into a long line: Ivypaw and Holly; Leafpool and Squirrelflight; Lion and Cinderheart and Brambleclaw. The splashes of their pawsteps echo along the tunnel - Holly could almost believe there was a whole Clan of them, marching into battle. She only hopes the battle is one they can win.
“Ivypaw,” Holly says, to keep her mind off how close the tunnel roof is above her head, “Is there somewhere in the Place of No Stars that’s, like, their camp?”
A series of splashes sound further down the tunnel as Ivypaw stumbles; Holly waits for her to right herself before she starts walking again. “I dunno, I guess there’s the meeting place. There’s usually someone there.”
Brambleclaw’s voice sounds from somewhere behind them, barely audible thanks to the sound of the river and the distorting effect of the echoes. “Do we have a plan for when we get there?”
“Maybe the cats who used to train in the Dark Forest could pretend they want to come back?” Squirrelflight suggests. The tunnel’s completely dark now; Holly can’t even see as far as Ivypaw in front of her. The slimy, water-smooth walls scrape against Holly’s left flank, and then her right. Some kind of mist rises off the water, thick and choking.
“That sounds like a-” Cinderheart says, her voice cutting out abruptly. Holly opens her mouth to call out to her, but chokes on the fog. Leafpool coughs, and the sound echoes back and forth down the tunnel, loud enough that it makes Holly stumble. And then even Leafpool’s voice vanishes, and Holly’s alone in the darkness.
She doesn’t know how long she wades like that, pushing against the underground river’s inexorable current with every step. Every part of her is icy cold, her fur soaked by the river water that rises to her shoulders, and then her chin. With a twinge of worry, Holly wonders if Ivypaw, so much shorter, is managing to keep her mouth out of the water.
She wonders if someone’s already tried getting to the Place of No Stars this way, in another of Sol’s forks. She wonders what happened to them.
Holly’s not sure when the walls change. One moment, cold stone presses in on each side of her, the next - it’s just as slimy, but warmer and no longer smooth. After a while, she realises what the regular pattern of bumps reminds her of - the tightly woven walls of the dens in ThunderClan's camp. Although, the dens don’t have thorns left on the branches, like the huge, claw-like ones now pulling on Holly’s fur.
The water’s different, too; it’s thicker, like wading through mud. The smell of rot has congealed into something more putrid. And in front of her, where before there was nothing but darkness, Holly now sees a faint, sickly green glow.
Ivypaw's voice sounds unexpectedly through the darkness, confirming Holly's suspicions. “We’re here.”
-
The thorn walls of the tunnel recede into a straggling bramble thicket, opening up to give Holly her first glimpse of - wherever they’ve arrived at. She immediately understands where both of its names - the Place of No Stars and the Dark Forest - came from. Not only does the forest not have any stars, it also has no sky - just claw-like tree branches interlacing to block out whatever’s above them. Holly can’t tell if it’s night or day, or if such concepts even exist here.
Thrusting her head and shoulders out of the brambles, Holly breathes in huge gulps of air. It tastes rotten, although fresher than the stale air of the tunnels. The bramble thicket they arrived in clings to the bank of a river of dark-coloured, sludgy water. The same water coats Holly’s fur; she shakes her head and shoulders to dislodge as much of it as possible. On either side of her, Leafpool and Ivypaw are doing the same.
“Oh, good,” Leafpool says, noticing Holly emerge. “I thought - the others are with you, aren’t they?”
Holly’s relief at escaping the tunnel sours. She shakes her head. “Did you two get cut off too?”
“They’re trying to split us up,” Ivypaw says. “That’s what this place does. I think it knows we don’t belong.”
Holly exchanges glances with Leafpool; her mother’s amber eyes are bright with panic. “How long have you two been here?”
“A few minutes,” Ivypaw says.
“Then the others might arrive in another few,” Holly says, trying hard to keep her tone light. Shouldering the brambles out of her way, she climbs onto the riverbank. Leafpool and Ivypaw follow her lead. The ground’s soft - spongy, almost - and plastered with slimy dead leaves. Walking on it makes Holly’s pads crawl.
The three of them stand together on their riverbank, their gazes glued to the bramble thicket. “So much for backup,” Leafpool says, but her tone sounds more worried than annoyed. Holly knows how scared Leafpool must be for the cats they’ve left in the tunnels; Holly herself is terrified.
How have things gone wrong so soon?
“We’d better get moving,” she says. "Ivypaw, which way’s the meeting place you talked about?”
“Along the river.” Ivypaw hasn’t tried to clean her fur, instead glancing up and down the river - Holly isn’t sure whether the apprentice is looking for their missing companions, or for the cats she knows here. “It’s pretty obvious - there’s a clearing on both sides of the river, and this huge rock they use for meetings.”
They walk briskly along the riverbank. Holly’s gaze darts around the forest. Everywhere she looks is the same - tall trees with grasping branches, clinging luminescent fungi, the sluggish flow of the river. No cats - friend or foe - are visible among the trees, but as the three cats head further downstream, voices echo between the trees. They're accompanied by the familiar thuds and shouts of cats training for battle, reminding Holly uncomfortably of the swarm of savage warriors that attacked the ThunderClan camp.
“Ivypaw, how many cats live here?”
“I’ve met maybe twenty. But there’s-” Ivypaw’s eyes widen as black and orange flashes among the trees on the opposite bank. “Quick, behind that tree!”
The three of them duck behind the broad trunk of a tree a few fox-lengths back from the river. The tree looks diseased, its dark, ridged bark peeling off in strips to reveal spongy wood beneath. Ivypaw whispers, “That’s Mapleshade. She’s one of the oldest spirits here. If she catches us-”
Holly flattens herself to the trunk of the tree and peeks around it. She watches as a sleek tortoiseshell figure emerges from the trees and starts swimming across the river.
“Ivypaw - I don’t think that’s Mapleshade.”
“Huh?” Ivypaw peers around the other side of the trunk. The figure emerges from the river at a run, its neck fur splaying out like a lion's mane as it shakes the dark-coloured water from its pelt. The cat meets Holly's gaze for a second, flashing her a cold smile before vanishing back among the trees.
“I can’t believe it,” Ivypaw murmurs, an expression of disgust on her face. “What’s Sol doing here?”
“I don’t think that’s our biggest problem,” Leafpool says, as two more cats appear amid the undergrowth across the river. The first is the huge dark tabby tom who Holly fought alongside Squirrelflight - Hawkfrost. The second is a white tom Holly doesn’t recognise. They shout to each other as they splash across the river - shouts which intensify as Hawkfrost points with his tail to the rotten tree and the three she-cats peering out from around it.
Holly swears under her breath. “We need to run. Now!”
Chapter Twenty-FourIvypaw exchanges a desperate glance with Holly and Leafpool as they take off running along the riverbank, back in the direction they came. The first of the forest cats is barely a fox-length behind them, a white tom with a scar snaking down his belly. Snowtuft - the cat who startled Ivypaw at the meeting. There’s no trace of fellowship in her green eyes as she charges towards Ivypaw. Hawkfrost follows, the sickly light of the fungi glinting off his sharp fangs. The sight of them sends fear spiking through Ivypaw.
“You two - go,” she says in between gasped breaths. “I’ll talk to them.”
“Don’t be an idiot, Ivypaw,” Holly says. “We’re in this together. I’m not having another Onestar situation.”
“You’ve got to at least let me try,” she hisses. “I’m one of them, they’ll listen to me.” She can feel Snowfuft’s breath on her heels, hot and rancid. Her legs ache from all the running she’s already done today; there’s no way she’s going to outrun her pursuers in their own territory. As she turns to face Hawkfrost and Snowtuft, she hopes with every fibre of her being that her words are true.
Hawkfrost and Snowtuft halt just before they crash into her, surprise on both of their faces.
“Let them go,” Ivypaw says, waving her tail at Holly and Leafpool, who’ve - typically - stopped running away and are hurrying back towards Ivypaw. She sighs inwardly, her mind spinning as she tries to think of a convincing story. “They have nothing to do with this - I tricked them into coming here with me, in case there was trouble in the tunnels.”
“Did you, now?” Hawkfrost says. Ivypaw nods, forcing herself to meet his ice-blue eyes. “That was fast thinking for someone who ran away as soon as she saw us. Why?”
“I needed to get back here. To -” in the nick of time, the right words come to her - “to warn you about ThunderClan. Firestar knows about you, that you’re going to attack. He’s sending a patrol down the underground river, right now.”
“I suppose your display in the ThunderClan camp was all part of your plan, too.” Hawkfrost meets Ivypaw’s gaze steadily, the tip of his brown tail flicking against the muddy riverbank.
“I - I panicked,” she says, willing away the guilty tremor in her voice.
“Interesting,” Hawkfrost says. “If the Clans know about the river, that could be useful for them. So useful, of course, that any Clan cat who came by this information couldn’t be allowed to leave this forest. Thanks for telling me this, Ivypaw.”
For a moment, she dares to let out her breath, hoping that he believes her story. That at the least, she’s bought herself and Holly and Leafpool some precious time - time the others can use to help them.
Then Hawkfrost jerks his head in signal, and Snowtuft attacks.
-
“What does she think she’s doing?” Leafpool asks, agast.
Holly shakes her head. She’s already overrun Ivypaw by several fox-lengths when she notices that the apprentice has stopped. Horror churning in her stomach, she pivots and sprints towards her. Ivypaw’s talking to Hawkfrost - at least they’re talking, she thinks, not fighting - but that small relief vanishes when the white tom attacks Ivypaw.
Holly’s struck by the same feeling she had when she first saw the tunnels - like she’s been in this exact situation before, and it did not end well.
Ivypaw and the white tom are a furious blur of teeth and claws. Hawkfrost is right behind; Holly leaps at him, scoring a line of claw marks down his flank. He snarls, his breath hot on her face as he swipes a huge paw towards her.
Holly jumps backwards in the nick of time, and risks a kick at the white tom before taking another swipe at Hawkfrost. She misses by a whisker. Hawkfrost’s claws scrape painfully against her foreleg as he yanks it out from under her. Holly’s head slams hard onto the forest floor.
She struggles to her paws. The side of her head throbs from the impact, but she has no time to check if she’s been injured further. Hawkfrost bears down on her, close enough that she can see the glint in his icy blue eyes. Holly scrabbles backwards, holding her uninjured forepaw across her face - but before either she or Hawkfrost can strike, someone else barges past her to land a flailing blow on Hawkfrost’s face. Leafpool.
“Thanks,” Holly gasps. Leafpool is… far from an expert fighter, but Holly’s still glad to see her. Holly’s back-to-back with Ivypaw as well as Leafpool now, the three of them against the two enemies.
If Leafpool counts as a fighter. And if Holly and Ivypaw can keep pushing through after everything they’ve already done today.
Leafpool cries out, a spray of scarlet arcing through the air as the white tom’s claws connect with her shoulder. Incensed, Holly launches herself at the tom. Her paws meet his chest one each side of his grotesque, worm-like scar. He falls backwards with a satisfying
thud.
Hawkfrost bellows for reinforcements. Leafpool turns as if to run, but Hawkfrost lunges for her before she can make it more than a few paces. The tom’s on his feet again, barrelling towards Holly with fury in his blue eyes.
They’re not going to win this fight. They have to win this fight.
-
“You’re not going to win this fight, Ivypaw,” Hawkfrost says. His blue eyes are cold and dispassionate; if she didn’t know better, Ivypaw’d think that this was another training fight against an over-ambitious choice of opponent.
“How would you know?” Ivypaw spits. “You trained me to be the - ow!”
While she’s focused on his taunts, Hawkfrost deals her a hefty blow to her side. Gasping at the sudden pain, Ivypaw rolls away from the attack. She lunges to strike again - but Hawkfrost taught her this sequence, and he bats away her attack like a kit tearing down cobwebs. Holly swipes at him instead, her claws scoring a red line across Hawkfrost’s muzzle. He rears back, roaring.
“You alright?” Holly whispers, as she helps Ivypaw steady herself.
Ivypaw grimaces. “I’ve been better. You should’ve kept running.”
“You shouldn’t have stopped to fight.” Holly’s tone is light, though, almost affectionate. She turns away from Ivypaw to fend off a rain of blows from Snowtuft. Ivypaw envies the strength behind Holly’s blows.
Not that that matters. The soft floor of the Place of No Stars shakes as more warriors race to the scene, summoned by Hawkfrost’s shout. Ivypaw thinks about ducking past Hawkfrost and slipping away into the forest, but there’s no way she’d escape without them seeing her. And there’s no way she’d escape with Holly and Leafpool.
Hawkfrost smiles, slow and cruel. “Why don’t you just stand down now? You’ve been an excellent trainee, Ivypaw. I’m sure you don’t really want to betray us.”
“You’re the ones who betrayed me,” Ivypaw says, the truth of it heavy and bitter in her stomach. She darts up to Hawkfrost, ducking low and raking her claws across his soft underbelly.
He roars, pushing her downwards with his front paws as she tries to wriggle away. “I took a chance on you! I taught you when everyone else thought you were just a nobody apprentice, remember?”
She bucks, trying to escape his grasp, but he holds her tight, his claws digging into her back. “You took advantage of me. You tricked me into finding Sol for you, you made me kill Antpelt.”
“No,” Hawkfrost says. “I think you’ll find that you decided to do those things yourself. Face it, Ivypaw, if you died right now you’d end up right here with the rest of us.”
“I’m nothing like you,” Ivypaw hisses. Hawkfrost leans over her, leering. She flashes back to what it felt like to kill Antpelt, the way his terrified amber eyes met hers and the way his body faded into nothingness. As if he can sense where her thoughts are going, Hawkfrost’s grin stretches even wider.
“See, Ivypaw. Join us or die, we get a new warrior either way.”
-
Holly throws the scarred tom off Leafpool and spins around, only to see that Ivypaw isn’t beside her any more. Her heart in her mouth, she scans her surroundings. Hawkfrost’s reinforcements have gathered by the riverbank in a rough semicircle - she’s no longer sure if they aim to stop the living cats from escaping, or just to watch the battle.
Among the scarred, muscular warriors stand younger, more timid figures. These must be the trainees Ivypaw described. Holly makes brief eye contact with the ShadowClan tabby she fought outside the tunnels.
She turns her attention back to the battle. Ivypaw’s fighting Hawkfrost, both cats exchanging vicious blows. Holly thinks of the underground river, how Ivypaw quoted Hawkfrost’s words with a confidence she never gave to her waking mentors, and feels sick. She sprints towards them, ready to prise Hawkfrost away from Ivypaw claw by claw, if that’s what it takes.
“I will never join you,” Ivypaw hisses. Her voice cracks with pain and effort. Hawkfrost continues to pin her to the ground, his forelegs shaking with the strain. The white tom has followed Holly to the fray; he raises a forepaw like a viper, preparing to strike.
Time seems to freeze around Holly. Memories overlay her true vision, all of them too late to help her - she’s fought this battle with Ivypaw and Hawkfrost a thousand times. There was never a series of choices that wouldn’t lead Holly to this moment. This choice.
Holly leaps forward. The back of her neck takes the brunt of the tom’s blow, pain sparking through every nerve in her body. Hawkfrost grins - he must remember, too, all the times this has happened - and releases Ivypaw, his unsheathed claws glinting as they arc towards Holly.
The world fizzes out into bright white light.
-
“She’s not dead,” Ivypaw says. “She - there isn’t a body. There wasn’t one for Antpelt either. Onestar said.”
She and Leafpool are running again, weaving through the towering tree trunks of Hawkfrost’s forest with no discernable direction other than
away. Ivypaw had begged to stay, but as soon as Holly’s still form faded away, Leafpool abandoned the pawful of rotten leaves she’d been pressing to her daughter’s wounds and forced them both to run. Ivypaw knows it makes sense, knows that the two of them haven’t a chance against so many enemies - but she still itches with every fibre of her body to go back there, to shred the fur off of Hawkfrost and Snowtuft and all the others. To show them what it feels like to
really hurt.
Tears spill from Leafpool’s amber eyes, flung backwards as the two she-cats run onwards. “Ivypaw, that’s - this place doesn’t work like the living world. There doesn’t need to be a body.”
“We can get her back, then,” Ivypaw says, inspiration striking her. “You came back, didn’t you?”
“I did, but that was a side effect of Sol erasing over two season cycles worth of decisions,” Leafpool says. “Even if we found Sol again, he might not be willing to help us. ”
“But we have to try!” Ivypaw says. “It shouldn’t have been her. She was trying to protect me, to protect both of us.”
Maybe if Ivypaw had managed to negotiate with Hawkfrost instead of turning and fighting, Holly wouldn’t have got hurt. Maybe if Ivypaw hadn’t argued with Sol, the Dark Forest cats would never have chased them in the first place. Maybe, if Ivypaw hadn’t forced everyone’s move by running away from Onestar, if she hadn’t brought trouble at every move by killing Antpelt and hunting down Sol and accepting Hawkfrost’s training in the first place -
Back on the mist-shrouded hillside, Sol explained to her about butterflies and hurricanes, and Ivypaw hadn’t truly understood, not until now. Ivypaw’s a butterfly who beats her wings over and over until the whole world’s been washed away.
“We need to find the others,” Leafpool says. “StarClan knows what’s been happening to them all this time.”
“No,” Ivypaw says, startled by the intensity in her own voice. She wanted to do this the way Holly said, without using powers. She wanted to stop Hawkfrost and save the Clans; she wanted to prove that she was capable of something as great as Dovepaw.
And that wanting got Holly killed. Holly’s put herself in danger for Ivypaw over and over; Ivypaw has to follow her example now.
“We need to stop this. We need to find Sol.”