many ThunderClan warrior scents. “The warriors come this way a lot.”
“I can’t see anyone,” Hollykit mewed.
“We’d better be careful, though,” Jaykit urged. “What if we bump into a patrol?”
“If only it were greenleaf!” Lionkit spat. “Then there’d be loads more undergrowth to hide in.”
“What about over there?” Hollykit mewed. “The trees are thicker . . .”
“. . . and there are brambles!” Lionkit finished.
He darted forward with Hollykit and Jaykit following, away from the strong-scented bracken and into the trees beyond. The air was clearer here, less laden with ThunderClan scents. The muscles in Jaykit’s shoulders began to relax.
And then he heard a familiar sound—Stormfur’s rumbling yowl.
“Brook?” The gray warrior was calling to his mate.
“Get down!” Jaykit hissed.
Instantly the kits crouched. Jaykit pressed his belly to the cold earth, aware of his heart thudding against the leaf mulch.
The ground vibrated with approaching pawsteps.
“They’re coming this way,” he whispered. How would they explain being this far from camp?
“Let’s hide under that holly bush,” Hollykit suggested.
Lionkit was already padding toward it, and Jaykit felt Hollykit nudge him from behind, urging him forward. He hissed crossly and shot forward after Lionkit. Prickly leaves scratched his nose and ears as Hollykit shoved him under its low branches.
“They won’t see us in here,” she whispered.
Stormfur’s call sounded again. “Let’s head to the ShadowClan border.” The warrior’s voice sounded frighten- ingly close.
Brook answered him, her low mew only tail-lengths away.
“Do you think they might be using the old fox den?”
“Probably not,” Stormfur meowed. “It still reeks of that she-badger Squirrelflight chased off. But it’s worth checking.”
“If only Stormfur and Brook smelled like ThunderClan cats, it would’ve been easier to detect them!” Lionkit complained.
“We’d never have smelled them whatever their scent,”
Jaykit pointed out. “The wind was blowing the wrong way.”
“Sh!” Hollykit warned.
The warriors’ pawsteps were heading straight toward the
holly bush. The branches quivered as Stormfur’s pelt brushed against them. Jaykit flattened himself against the ground and closed his eyes.
“Come on; let’s be quick!” Stormfur urged his mate. “Then we can head back and patrol the top of the hollow.” The warriors’ pawsteps faded away.
“Let’s get out of here,” Jaykit whispered.
“Which way?” Lionkit asked.
Jaykit smelled the air, once more tasting the fresh wind from the lake. “Over there,” he mewed, pointing with his tail.
The kits set off again, keeping low. Lionkit led them along a winding route through swathes of bracken and tangled undergrowth. “Through here,” he urged.
Jaykit squeezed after him into a clump of bracken, its stems so knotted that he could only just manage to haul himself through the narrow gaps. “I bet no warrior’s ever gotten through here,” he boasted.
“They should take us out on patrols all the time!” Lionkit mewed.
“We could explore places they’d never get close to,”
Hollykit agreed.
They scrabbled under the arching roots of a sycamore, tunneling a path through the leaf litter bunched beneath it.
Jaykit stopped. He could scent the fresh mark of Spiderleg.
“Wait!” he ordered. “Thornclaw’s patrol has just passed this way.”
Immediately the kits scrambled back into the shadowy hole they had burrowed beneath the sycamore’s roots.
“We must be heading in the right direction,” Hollykit whispered.
“That must be the Sky Oak over there,” Lionkit mewed.
“It’s the tallest tree in the woods by a long way.”
“Where’s the patrol?” Jaykit asked.
“Listen!” Hollykit commanded.
Jaykit could hear the patrol thrashing around in the bracken several fox-lengths away. Then his fur bristled. He tasted the air, recoiling at the stench that bathed his tongue.
It was a smell he’d never met before, but it sent a shiver down his spine.
“Can you smell that?” he asked Lionkit and Hollykit.
“Ugh!” Lionkit wrinkled his nose.
“It must be the dead fox!” Hollykit guessed. “We’re near the trap.”
“Can you see it?” Jaykit asked.
Hollykit wriggled away from him. “I can see over the root!” she whispered from just above his head. “The dead fox is lying under the oak. The patrol is beyond it, searching the bracken.”
“They’re looking in the wrong place,” Jaykit mewed. He suddenly realized that despite the scents of the patrol and the dead fox, he could smell a far subtler and sweeter smell—
milk. It was right here beneath the sycamore. “The fox came past this tree,” he told the others. “I can smell her milk-scent.”
“We’ve found her trail!” Hollykit mewed.
Lionkit scrabbled out from under the root. “Let’s follow it!
It’ll lead us to her cubs!”
Jaykit turned away from where Thornclaw, Spiderleg, Poppypaw, and Mousepaw were plunging through the frost-blackened undergrowth. Heading out from the sycamore roots, he padded along the scent of the milk- trail.
“Watch out!” Lionkit warned. “There are brambles ahead.”
His senses trained only on the milk-scent, Jaykit had not noticed the spiky bush.
“I’ll find a way through!” Hollykit offered. She pushed into the lead and wriggled into the branches.
“But the trail leads around it,” Jaykit objected.
“We can’t afford to stay in the open,” Lionkit told him.
“We can pick up the scent on the other side, once there are brambles between us and Thornclaw’s patrol.”
Reluctantly Jaykit followed Lionkit as their sister found a narrow tunnel through the tangle of branches. He was relieved when he picked up the fox’s scent quickly on the other side.
The trees were more widely spaced here. Jaykit could feel the wind in his fur, and sunlight reached down to the forest floor, mottling his pelt with warmth. The fox’s milky scent grew stronger and as they neared a clump of bracken that shielded a small lump in the ground, Jaykit scented a new smell. The cubs?
“Wait here!” Hollykit ordered.
“Why?” Lionkit objected.
“Just wait while I take a look behind this bracken!”
“I’m coming too,” Lionkit insisted.
“We don’t want the cubs to know we’re here,” Hollykit mewed. “If all three of us go blundering in, they’ll know something’s up and we’ll lose the element of surprise.”
“My golden pelt will blend in better against the bracken than your black fur,” Lionkit pointed out.
“What about me?” Jaykit mewed.
“We won’t attack the den without you,” Hollykit promised. “But first, you and I will wait here while Lionkit
