DARK
Hollypaw was afraid of the dark.
Ever since she was a kit, her brothers would tease her about her fear. She knew it was unreasonable, and that the darkness couldn't hurt her, but still she had nightmares about suffocating blackness and became afraid if she couldn't see any light in the den. She tried to argue to herself that it wasn't the dark that she was afraid of, rather something that could be hiding in it, but deep down, Hollypaw knew that it was the darkness, the blackness, the lack of light, that chilled her heart.
She was a ShadowClan apprentice. Her brothers, Ochrepaw and Coniferpaw, sneered that she was supposed to like shadows and darkness. All their Clan were supposed to, apparently. She was hurt by their remarks, but as she grew older and she and her brothers drifted apart, she separated from them as well and no longer had to endure their taunts.
Ochrepaw and Coniferpaw had never liked her, not from the moment of her birth. Ochrepaw's muddy golden-brown fur and sharp gray eyes never seemed to miss anything, and he took every chance he could to make fun of her. Coniferpaw was slower-minded, but far more handsome, with a glossy black pelt and rich amber eyes. He went along with his brother's plans easily, and delighted in violence, despite being the smallest of their litter.
Hollypaw herself had a gray pelt. It was not glossy and smooth, but messy and dull like Ochrepaw's. She was the largest of the litter, though only mediocre at warrior life. She would not have preferred being a medicine cat, but she wished she could master her fear of the dark and be a better warrior as well.
Their father, Paleclaw, died when they were small, in a battle with RiverClan. Hollypaw barely remembered him, but she did remember their mother. Darkfur—what irony!—was a strong, youthful warrior who should not have fallen ill with a disease most commonly caught by the elders. She never did recover, so now Hollypaw and her brothers were orphans.
Still, parents were not the whole world, and Hollypaw's life went on. Her mentor was a big, strong she-cat named Greentail. Greentail was distant and detached from her, but Hollypaw did not mind. Her mentor taught her all she needed to know, and she didn't expect much else.
Moons and seasons passed. Hollypaw was a senior apprentice now, she was on the verge of being made a warrior. So close, so very close.
Yet so far.
It was a misty, wet, leaf-fall evening. The night was coming, and Hollypaw—still with her absurd fear of the dark—was about to come in to camp after a day's hunt. As long as she did her work and followed orders, she was spared the torment of having to go out at night, Maplestar being a lenient leader and Greentail not really caring. She had hunted well today. Three frogs, a pigeon, and a mouse were what she had to add to the fresh-kill pile.
She stopped outside the camp to collect her thoughts before going into camp to be teased by her brothers. She, Ochrepaw, and Coniferpaw were ShadowClan's only warriors-in-training apart from the newly apprenticed Frogpaw, and Frogpaw was too distracted and jittery, not to mention annoying, to back her up when her brothers bullied her.
As she sat quietly outside camp, listening to the breeze in the trees and watching the sunset between the pines, she noticed something rather odd. A hole in the dark undergrowth surrounding the hollow of the camp. She set down her prey and padded toward it.
A chilly wind blew from the hole. It was darker and blacker than anything Hollypaw had ever seen before, and she did not want to go in it. She would report it to Greentail, or maybe even Maplestar, but there was no way she would enter the hole—well, it looked more like a tunnel, really.
She turned to go back to her prey. The wind from the black tunnel whistled and howled around her, tugging on her fur. Hollypaw growled and stubbornly padded on.
Then there came a noise, under the whistle of the wind, that made her freeze. Moaning and cold, a voice that chilled her to the very bone.
"Hollypaw... Hooollllyyypaaaww..."
Her mother's voice. That made her turn right around, it did, and walk right back to the tunnel, green eyes wide with fear.
The freezing wind pulled so hard at her that she stumbled forward and into the black, dark tunnel. Immediately, panic enveloped her. Hollypaw's fur bristled, her eyes widened, and she let out a pitiful mewl of fear. Behind her, the fading light abruptly vanished, and she was completely surrounded by the darkness.
Hollypaw lost it at that point. She turned and ran away from the point in front of her. Visions of bloodstained corpses and grinning skeletons danced in her mind's eye, horrors beyond anything her crazed imagination had come up with before. On and on she ran in the suffocating blackness, until finally she crumpled to the ground, out of energy.
The voice had been silent all this time, but now, as Hollypaw hyperventilated, her brain feverish, a faint, dry chuckle ran through the air. She moaned and tried to cover her ears with her paws, but still she heard the voice of her long-dead mother whisper through the air, "Don't fret, my kit."
"M-m-mother?" she stammered.
She thought she felt a tail whisk across her sides, and shivered. It was still so dark, so very, very dark. Hollypaw did not like the dark. She liked to be able to see, and feel, and know what was around her. She was blind in this cavern.
"Hollypaw..." the voice sighed. "I had such high hopes for you, my daughter... And look what you have become."
Something inside her broke. She missed her mother, and mourned her early passing every day. She had often wondered if her mother was watching over her from StarClan, and hoped that she was proud of her.
This hurt more than any of her brother's taunts.
Tears welled up in her eyes, and she choked out to the blackness, "Mother... please—why?"
Two eyes materialized in front of her. Two bright, pretty, holly green eyes—the eyes that her mother had when she was alive, the eyes that she had passed onto Hollypaw. Ochrepaw had their father's dark gray eyes, and Coniferpaw had the handsome amber of their father's father, but Hollypaw alone had Darkfur's eyes. She had always been proud of them, her last link to her mother, her one claim to beauty.
Darkfur's eyes were filled with anger and hate and disappointment. Slowly, the darkness lifted just a little bit, enough that Darkfur's blacker than night fur was outlined. Hollypaw could now see her paws below her, and was acutely aware that her mother could as well.
"Why?" Darkfur hissed. "Why, you ask? How long did it take for the Clan to forget me, I ask you?"
"We grieved you for moons!" Hollypaw exclaimed.
"And did not bother sending Olivepelt—" (that was, the ShadowClan medicine cat) "—looking for me in StarClan? Did not bother to visit my grave? Did not bother to remember me for who I was?" There was hurt and pain in Darkfur's voice, beyond anything Hollypaw had ever heard.
The darkness around them seemed to disappear for just one moment, when Hollypaw felt a surge of pity for her long-dead mother.
"Mother... I missed you. Even Ochrepaw and Coniferpaw missed you, and they—"
Harsh delight came into Darkfur voice as she interrupted Hollypaw. "Ah, yes, Ochrepaw and Coniferpaw! They were not disappointments! Ochrepaw is clever and skilled, Coniferpaw strong and handsome. You are just a nobody, a nothing. Not good at anything, afraid of your own shadow—afraid of the dark, for StarClan's mercy!" Darkfur chuckled hollowly. "But StarClan doesn't have mercy, I'm afraid..."
"What do you mean?" Hollypaw asked in a small voice. Those remarks had wounded her deeper than anything else. She had yearned for a mother who comforted her, a mother that would put an end to her brother's taunts—and here was her mother, large as life but still certainly dead, approving of her misery, tearing her down. She felt awful, like the whole world had been yanked out from under her. But her mother obviously had been through a lot since she had last seen her, so maybe she could fix this, show some sympathy...
Darkfur let out a slightly crazed, slightly despairing laugh. "I mean that StarClan would not accept me. They wouldn't take me in... not even the Place of No Stars, the afterlife of the evil, would let me in. I was left here, in the mortal world, because of this..."
Darkfur lifted a paw. Hollypaw gave a gasp of horror as she realized that her mother's paw was a black hole of nothingness, a void of darkness, a pit of despair.
"Exactly," Darkfur spat. "What you see is the Pathway to Despair. A terrible weapon, in the wrong paws—that is why I thought the Place of No Stars could give me a home, they could use it to destroy the Clans once and for all—but no, they were too afraid of losing themselves, as I have lost myself..." Hollypaw's mother's voice was filled with complete and utter hopelessness, the loss of any confidence.
"I am this way because I died at the precisely wrong moment," Darkfur continued, spitting her words out with an unimaginable fury akin to the despair that had filled her just a moment ago. "The disease that took my life sucked away at me until I was but a husk of a body, and my soul began to wander even before I died. I ran across a tunnel of blackness much like the one you walked into in my journeys, and met a spirit just as love-starved as I am now. Only, Emberclaw was much more cunning...
"He took me in and befriended me, telling me he had been sent to ease my way into StarClan. He trapped me in a web of lies, for the Dark Paw, the Pathway to Despair, knows all... The dark holds many secrets. Emberclaw knew of my predicament, he knew of everything, but still he had to walk in the shadows, biding his time as I have bided mine for moons and seasons...
"Emberclaw tricked me. Upon my death, he captured my soul, forcing me into the Pathway. But such was his cunning that he forced me into it but not through it... and the Pathway became my curse. His spirit was set free, to go where, I do not know."
Darkfur sighed, a exhalation full of longing. Hollypaw was quiet, for a sudden thought had come to her, and she was dreading what would come next.
"But as Emberclaw left, he told me his secret." Darkfur eyed her daughter hungrily. "I must do the same, to free myself, but it must be on a certain leaf-fall day: the Eve of Death. The day before the veil between life and death is thinnest and StarClan visits the Clans. That day is the last day, the strongest day of the forces of death, before they overwork and fail utterly..."
"Today is that day, and the yellow moon hangs high in the sky. The red-brown leaves are falling, the prey is preparing for leaf-bare. Today is the Eve of Death, and I have waited far too long to be free."
"You would do this to me?" Hollypaw whimpered. "To your own daughter?"
"What better candidate?" Darkfur snarled. "Ochrepaw and Coniferpaw are my pride and joy, you know. While I dwell in the darkness, the secrets of the world come to me, for the dark is where secrets hide. I know of your plights, of your unreasonable fears, of your so-called love for me. If you loved me, you would have prevented this..."
"You, Hollypaw, are my ultimate disappointment. And you must be punished."
Hollypaw tried to escape as her fear blinked out the faint light around them, leaving only the despairing, hate-filled, crazy green eyes hanging in the air. She turned and ran, but the air was as thick as honey and as cold as ice and she could barely move. Darkfur's cackles of wicked amusement rang through the air.
"You're insane!" Hollypaw cried out as her mother neared her, holding that awful paw up higher.
"Well," she whispered, nearing her prey, "what did you expect? I've been in the darkness for so long, I've forgotten what it's like to be happy... anyone would be insane after that long, as you'll find out."
"No!" Hollypaw sobbed as the paw grew nearer and nearer. At last Darkfur stopped in front of her.
Thoughts rushed through Hollypaw's brain. Her mother's ghost was about to kill her and doom her to being stuck in limbo. Who would miss her? Ochrepaw and Coniferpaw certainly wouldn't. Greentail, her mentor, would shrug it off and go on; the rest of ShadowClan would be shocked but quickly move on. Maplestar, who had often helped her in a difficult time, would grieve for a while, until she got too busy with being leader and forgot her.
And if she lived? What then? She would be alone, unloved, ridiculed for the rest of her life... Maybe the Paw was a better fate than life, after all.
The darkness enveloped her. Her panic returned. No, of course the Dark Paw was a bad thing! She wanted to live her days out in peace—show her brothers that she was worthwhile, please the Clan, maybe even mate and have kits! She would be a good mother, not like Darkfur.
Darkfur's green eyes glittered down at her. There was a malice, a hunger, a longing in them, telling her that she would never escape. Hollypaw fought her invisible bonds, but to no avail.
Just before dooming her to an awful fate, Darkfur whispered in her daughter's ear, voice as cold and dead as her rotted, earth-covered body, "Have a nice time with the Dark Paw, Hollypaw..."
And then there was a sharp pain across her neck, and she was thrust into a howling void of despair.
If anyone had been in the woods to see it, a shadowed cat spirit bounded out of a hole in the undergrowth. She looked up into the fading sunlight and smiled dreamily. Years seemed to disappear from her as she bounded across the pine forest and toward the sacred place of the cats she once belonged to.
At last, free...
Three days later, the stiff, battered body of Hollypaw was found buried among leaves near the entrance of ShadowClan camp. The expression of the body's face was of pure terror, and there were no visible marks on her fur or flesh, aside from the slash of a claw across her neck. Dried blood adorned the ground around her, as well as her thick grey fur.
The warriors of ShadowClan were grieved at the loss of such a promising young apprentice. Her brothers, Ochrepaw and Coniferpaw, were stunned and sorrowful, remorseful of their taunts and snide comments, thinking it was because of them that she had, seemingly, killed herself.
Greentail, Hollypaw's mentor grieved for a long time. She had treated her apprentice gruffly, as she was not one for affection, but surely Hollypaw knew that she cared for her!
ShadowClan's leader, Maplestar, also missed the young apprentice. She had been sweet and melancholy, and Maplestar had loved her as a daughter. The whole Clan thought of Hollypaw for the next few moons, until the growing problem of food shortage distracted them.
The seething spirit that haunted ShadowClan territory watched them in hope that they would find her and free her, but to no avail. She built up hatred and grudges and bitterness, succumbing to the Dark Paw, the Pathway to Despair. There was nothing left but hate and hunger; hunger for freedom, for sunlight...
Sunlight most of all. Warmth, heat, light, being able to see... those things were nonexistent in the shadowy wasteland that was Hollypaw's new home. The secrets came to her in the dark, telling tales of treachery and deceit... Through the secrets, she chose her victim, as her mother had chosen hers.
When Ochreflame and Coniferheart were returning from a hunting patrol eight seasons from her death, Hollypaw was waiting. The dark tunnel was waiting, too.
"I thought I saw something over there... No, Coniferheart, you go on ahead, I'll be fine. What's going to hurt me—the dark?"
Waiting below, Hollypaw chuckled.