Erin Hunter - Dawn

Stormfur crouched on the far side, bracing his claws against the rock. “Come on,” he called to Weaselpaw, a WindClan apprentice. “It’s safe on this side. You can jump it easily.”

Weaselpaw stared down at the shadows, his eyes stretched wide.

“The others will freeze waiting for you,” Stormfur growled, losing his patience. “Just jump!”

Weaselpaw looked up and blinked. He crouched, keeping his weight well back on his haunches, then leaped across with his front legs outstretched. Stormfur caught him by the scruff as he landed, grunting with the effort. He gave him a nudge up the path and turned to the next cat.

“My kits can’t jump that!” Tallpoppy shrank back.

“Can you pass them over?” Stormfur meowed.

Tallpoppy flattened her ears. “It’s too far!”

“I’ll take them.” Crowpaw squeezed carefully past Stormfur and jumped the gap to land in front of Tallpoppy. She stared at him, her eyes filled with fear. “I won’t drop them,” he promised. He picked up the smallest and padded to the edge of the hole. The kit struggled beneath his chin, its terrified mewls echoing around the chasm. Tallpoppy watched, huge-eyed, as Crowpaw jumped. Pebbles showered from the ledge as he landed beside Stormfur, but he kept his footing.

Leafpaw was amazed by his agility.

“Make sure he stays put,” he meowed, placing the kit gently on the ledge. Then he turned and leaped back for the next.

When all three were safely over, Tallpoppy followed, clearing the gap easily with her long legs. “Thank you,” she breathed.

She pressed her muzzle against each of her kits before nudging them gently onward, up the slope.

“Let’s get the others across,” Crowpaw mewed to Stormfur. “You stay on this side; “I’ll go to the other.”

When it was Leafpaw’s turn, her paws trembled so hard that she was afraid they would shake her right over the edge.

“It’s okay,” Crowpaw murmured. “It’s not as hard as it looks.”

Leafpaw felt his warm breath on her fur and tried to concentrate on that instead of the gaping hole before her. She knew that back home, with nothing but the soft forest floor beneath her, she would leap this far without thinking. But here, the gap seemed to drag at her like a black river, pulling her down, down, down…

“Don’t think about it!” Stormfur called.

Leafpaw screwed up her eyes, feeling the lip of stone under her paws. StarClan, help me! She crouched down and sprang, landing in a skid that made her paws sting.

“Well done!” Stormfur yowled.

Leafpaw shuffled around and saw Sorreltail waiting to jump. She shrank back as Sorreltail hurtled toward her and skittered dangerously near the edge. Leafpaw lunged and grabbed her scruff.

“Thanks,” Sorreltail breathed shakily.

“That’s okay,” Leafpaw muttered through a mouthful of tortoiseshell fur.

“Hurry and catch up with the others,” Stormfur mewed.

“We’ll make sure the rest get over in one piece.”

They padded gingerly up the slope. Tallpoppy had already disappeared through a narrow ravine, and Leafpaw followed her, eager to be away from the ledge. The ravine opened into a sloping valley that fell away toward another ridge. On one side, a great rock cliff soared toward the sky. On the other, a slope swept more gently upward to where heather and grass fought for space among the jutting stones. The other cats hovered like shadows among the rocks. Cinderpelt was already weaving among them, checking that everyone was all right.

Leafpaw’s stomach growled. She hoped the hollows and crevices would conceal some small prey. The cats had hardly eaten since they had entered the mountains. The prey-rich fields of Twolegplace seemed a distant memory, and there didn’t seem to be enough food here to feed one Clan, let alone four.

“It looks like some of the cats are already hunting,” Sorreltail meowed. Tawnypelt was leading a small patrol up one side of the valley. Blackstar was heading for a rocky outcrop a little farther down, flanked by a pair of ShadowClan warriors.

“Leafpaw! Sorreltail!”

Leafpaw heard her father calling and bounded down to him.

“Brambleclaw’s organizing hunting patrols,” he meowed.

“You two can join him.”

“Shouldn’t I help Cinderpelt?” Leafpaw asked.

Firestar glanced over to the gray medicine cat. “No cat is hurt, though a few are in shock. Cinderpelt told me she could manage.”

“Okay,” Leafpaw mewed. She hurried to join Brambleclaw, with Sorreltail beside her.

“Is Birchkit okay?” Leafpaw paused as they passed Ferncloud.

“He’s fine,” Ferncloud assured her. She looked at the clouds. “But once the snow starts…”

Birchkit narrowed his eyes when he saw Leafpaw. “Why couldn’t Cody come with us?” he whined. “Did you tell her to go away?”

Leafpaw shook her head. “She has a home of her own,” she told him gently.

“But she was fun!”

“There’ll be plenty of time for fun when we get to our new home,” Ferncloud promised.

“If we ever get there,” Sorreltail muttered as they padded away.

“Of course we’ll get there,” Leafpaw told her, hoping she sounded as if she believed it.

Squirrelpaw looked up as they approached. “Brambleclaw’s explaining how the Tribe hunts,” she whispered. “We thought it might help.”

“Up here, you need to rely on stillness rather than stealth when you’re hunting,” Brambleclaw was meowing.

“But we’re not Tribe cats; we’re Clan cats!” argued Rainwhisker. “Why should we be expected to hunt like them?”

“This isn’t the forest,” Brambleclaw snapped. “Without the cover of undergrowth, prey will spot you in an instant. Here, you have to wait, and keep so still that you blend into the mountain. Then the prey will come to you.”

“What prey is going to be that stupid?” snorted Weaselpaw.

“That’s what the Tribe taught me!” Brambleclaw’s eyes flashed. “If you don’t want to starve, you’re going to have to learn to hunt like them!” He flicked his tail. “Spiderpaw, come with me. Squirrelpaw, you go with Rainwhisker, and you two”—he looked at Leafpaw and Sorreltail—“you two stick together.”

“Where shall we hunt?” Leafpaw looked around the valley, at its perilous ledges and shadowy crevices, and thought with a shudder of the giant cat that had killed Feathertail. “Will we be safe?”

“If you’re sensible, yes.” Brambleclaw pointed with his tail to a ledge jutting out above them. “Try up there first,” he suggested.

Sorreltail nodded and scrambled up the slope, sending a shower of dust and stones down onto the cats below. Leafpaw shook the grit from her fur and followed. Her tired legs ached, but she kept going till she reached the ledge. Sorreltail flicked her tail, signaling to her to be quiet, and Leafpaw smelled at once the familiar scent of mouse. She crouched beside Sorreltail to stare at a patch of coarse grass that sprang from a crack in the ledge. Stay still . She recalled Brambleclaw’s advice, but it was hard to wait patiently when she was this hungry.

When the grass began to tremble, Sorreltail pulled herself slowly forward. Suddenly the grass shivered and the mouse darted out, heading for a crack in the rock. With a jolt of horror, Leafpaw watched Sorreltail leap after it and tumble straight over the edge.

Leafpaw’s mind filled with the memory of Smokepaw vanishing into the gorge, and she had to force herself to look down the side of the valley. To her relief, Sorreltail was very much alive, wailing in terror as she half fell, half skidded down the steep slope. She came to a bone-jarring halt against a stunted hawthorn bush that buckled and quivered under her weight, but stopped her from sliding any farther.