CHAPTER 13

Hollyleaf blinked in surprise when she woke among the stone walls of the Twoleg nest instead of under the branches of the warriors’ den in the ThunderClan camp. Then she remembered their journey to find Sol, and how Jingo had brought them to this abandoned Twoleg nest to save them from the dogs.

As Hollyleaf sat up, her brother yawned and stretched. “I don’t like this place,” he muttered. “It’s time we left.”

Hollyleaf murmured agreement. It wasn’t right for warriors to be so close to all this Twoleg stuff, even though there were no Twolegs here.

The pale light of dawn flooded into the den through the gap in the wall. Looking around, Hollyleaf saw that Birchfall and Hazeltail were still asleep. Brackenfur was perched on the ledge under the gap where Hussar had sat the night before. There was no sign of Brambleclaw, but a moment later he sprang up from outside and squeezed through the gap to sit beside Brackenfur.

“All’s quiet,” he reported. “But there’s a strong smell of dog.”

Hollyleaf twitched her whiskers; she could pick up the rank scent even here.

“We have to get moving,” Brackenfur meowed. “Have you seen Jingo?”

Brambleclaw shook his head. Speckle and her kits were curled up in a furry heap on one of the soft boulders, while Fritz and Pod were sleeping on the other. There was no sign of the other Twolegplace cats.

“She’ll be here somewhere.” Brambleclaw jumped down inside the nest. “I think we can trust her.”

He padded over to prod Birchfall and Hazeltail awake. As the two younger warriors were blinking sleep away, Jingo padded in through the entrance to the den.

“Good, you’re ready,” she mewed, with a brisk nod of greeting. “Let’s go.”

She led the way into the Twoleg territory through the gap in the wall. “This journey’s going to be a bit different,” she warned the Clan cats when they were all in the raw, damp air of the leaf-bare morning. “We won’t be setting paw to the ground until we get where we’re going.”

Hollyleaf shot a startled glance at her Clanmates, and saw that they were all looking equally surprised. How could they get anywhere if their paws didn’t touch the ground? Was Jingo expecting them to fly?

“It’s not safe to walk around on the ground since the battle with the dogs,” Jingo explained. “The dogs lie in wait for us and hunt us like prey.”

Shuddering, Hollyleaf leaned closer to Lionblaze. “That’s exactly what happened to us yesterday.”

Her brother nodded; his amber eyes were gleaming and his claws flexed as if he was imagining his chance to slash a dog that attacked him or his Clanmates. Better to stay out of their way, Hollyleaf thought.

“So we’ve found a different way of moving around our territory,” Jingo went on. Gracefully she leaped up onto the top of the Twoleg fence. “Ready?” she called, glancing over her shoulder at the Clan cats.