Erin Hunter - Dawn

“Be careful!” Leafpaw gasped.

The voice of a rogue beneath them called anxiously up.

“There’s blood dripping through the top of my cage! That cat’s badly hurt.”

Leafpaw’s heart beat faster. “Coal! Are you okay?”

“It won’t stop bleeding,” Coal replied, his voice trembling.

“Take the cobweb from Cody!” Leafpaw ordered. “Press it against the wound for as long as you can.”

She heard Cody breathing hard as the kittypet passed the cobweb through to the next cage, followed by the sound of Coal’s paws scrabbling on the blood-soaked floor.

“Don’t panic, Coal!” she mewed. “Just press the cobweb onto the wound.”

“It’s already soaked with blood!” Coal panted.

“That’s okay,” Leafpaw reassured him. “It’ll still stop any more blood coming. Just hold it in place!”

She waited. Silence gripped the nest. Leafpaw’s head began to spin, and she forced herself to take slow, deep breaths.

“Is he okay?” Brightheart called after a while.

“The blood’s stopped dripping on me!” reported the rogue from underneath Coal’s cage.

“Coal?” Leafpaw called. “How is it?”

A ragged sigh came from Coal’s cage. “That’s better,” he murmured. “It didn’t even sting.”

Leafpaw felt a rush of relief. “Keep the cobweb there for a bit longer,” she told him. “Then you can give the cut a gentle lick to clean it. Not too fierce—you don’t want it to start bleeding again.”

“Well done, Leafpaw,” Cody whispered from her cage.

Leafpaw blinked. For the first time since she had been captured, she didn’t feel entirely helpless. Closing her eyes, she sent a prayer of thanks to StarClan. She had never helped a rogue before, but she knew her warrior ancestors would approve. Loyalty to one Clan alone was no longer the way to survive.

She realized her belly was growling with hunger. She might as well follow Cody’s advice and keep her strength up.

Trying not to breathe in the horrible stench, she nibbled at a few of the foul pellets the Twoleg had left. I suppose I should be grateful for the easy meal , she thought as she forced herself to crunch the dry morsels.

“These are disgusting,” she muttered.

“Not the best I’ve tasted,” agreed Cody. “My housefolk tried to give me something similar once, but I soon let them know what I thought, and they never gave them to me again.”

Leafpaw nearly choked with surprise. “You can make your Twolegs do what you want?”

“They’re not so hard to train,” Cody mewed. She sat up and began washing her paws.

Sasha called across the nest, “Can you train the mongrel that hurt Coal to be gentler?”

“I doubt it,” Cody answered. “These workfolk are nothing like my housefolk.”

Leafpaw saw Brightheart’s face appear behind the mesh of her cage. The ginger patches on her white fur looked almost black in the dim light, and it was impossible to see that one side of her face had been terribly scarred by a dog attack many moons ago. “What do you think they’re going to do with us?” she whispered.

“Perhaps they’re going to turn us into kittypets?” Leafpaw suggested. Much as she disliked the idea, at least that might give them a chance to escape and return to the Clan.

There was a snort from Sasha’s cage. “I don’t think so,” she rasped. “We’re hardly the sort of fluffy, pampered cats that Twolegs go for.”

Leafpaw glanced at Cody, hoping she wouldn’t take offense, but to her surprise the kittypet was nodding.

“Sasha’s right,” she agreed. “These folk don’t care about cats—Clan, rogue, or kittypet. Trust me, I know the sort of—what do you call them? Twolegs?—that make good housefolk.

These just want to get rid of us.”

Leafpaw tried to swallow, but her mouth had suddenly become too dry, and the pellets she had eaten seemed to be lodged halfway down her throat. Trying not to bring them up again, she lapped a few mouthfuls of slimy water. She fought the urge to curl up in the back of her cage and lose herself in dreams. She could not rely on StarClan to get her out of this place. She had faith that her warrior ancestors were watching the destruction of the forest, but her instincts told her they were powerless against Twoleg cruelty; it was her own wits she would have to rely on now. She had to find a way to escape. She couldn’t let Cody or her Clanmates down.

She remembered Gorsetail stretching his paw out of his cage to reach the cobweb. “Cody,” she mewed. “You told me you tried reaching the catch that keeps the cage locked.”

“Yes, but I couldn’t get a grip on it,” Cody confirmed.

“What about the rest of you?” Leafpaw called out to the other cats. “Can anyone undo his catch?”

“Mine’s too stiff,” replied Gorsetail.

“My web is ripped,” Cloudtail reported. “I can almost get two paws out, but I can’t reach the catch.”

“You’re all wasting your time,” Sasha growled. “Face it, there’s no way out of here.”

Outside, the noise of the Twoleg monsters rumbled on, making the nest shudder. Leafpaw couldn’t believe there was no way out of the nest, whatever Sasha thought. If she gave up, there would be no hope left at all. As she listened to the Twolegs calling gruffly to one another in the growing dusk outside, she reached through the web at the front of her cage and began to claw at the catch that held it closed.

The waning moon cast just enough light through the leafless branches to make the forest glow with eerie silver. Frost traced the outline of the dying ferns as Squirrelpaw padded through the trees beside Brambleclaw.

“It’ll be cold at Fourtrees,” she fretted, hoping that her sister was warm, wherever she was.

“But at least it’s clear,” Brambleclaw answered in a low voice. “Silverpelt will be shining.”

They were following Firestar and Cinderpelt through the forest. The pace was slower than the two younger cats had been used to on their long journey, but Cinderpelt was still struggling to keep up. Cold and hunger had made her limp worse than usual.

“If there is a sign,” Squirrelpaw wondered out loud, “how long do you think it’ll be before we go?” She wanted a chance to find her sister before the Clans left the forest.

“I don’t know,” Brambleclaw replied. “You saw what happened last night. Firestar can’t force the Clan to leave. He’s bound by the warrior code as much as any cat, and even though he’s our leader, he has to obey the will of the Clan.”

Squirrelpaw’s belly tightened as she remembered the Clan’s reaction. Beneath the stars, huddled against the icy wind that whipped the rock, Firestar had told them the message she and Brambleclaw had brought back from StarClan.

A shocked cry had rippled around the gathered cats.

“We can’t leave the forest!” Frostfur had wailed. “We’ll all die.”

“We’ll die if we stay!” Sorreltail had pointed out.

“But this is our home.” Speckletail’s rasping mew had cracked as she’d raised her voice.

At least Shrewpaw had sounded eager. “When are we going?” he’d asked.

But the memory of Hollykit’s piteous mew made Squirrelpaw’s pelt prickle even now. “We don’t have to go, do we?” the kit had cried.

“What if Dustpelt is right?” Squirrelpaw hissed to Brambleclaw as they leaped over an abandoned foxhole, a yawning black mouth amid the shadows. “What he said in the den made sense—why should any cat follow the advice of a badger they’d never met?”