Rubblepaw's paws pounded against the forest floor, sending a spray of slushy snow in his wake. In the bare patches where the snow had melted away, black spruce needles felt soft under his pads. He kept his gaze fixed ahead, alert and on the lookout for any Alliance cats that could have been lingering around. Where was Honeypool?!
A thousand scenarios played through his mind- things that could have happened to her. She could have been caught by the Alliance: captured; tortured; killed on the spot… dragged by Coal and Trixie back to their hidden den and fed to their kit. She could have run into a fox, or a badger, or… even if bears should be hibernating, they could wake up early. It wasn't likely, but what if? She could have stumbled into the Alliance camp by mistake… or been hit by a monster while running across the thunderpath. She could have slipped on the ice; fallen out of a tree; had a tree fall on her…
Rubblepaw knew he was being paranoid. But as long as he didn't know that Honeypool was safe, he couldn't help but be paranoid. If Strikestar hadn't been there in the camp to hold him back, he would have run off looking for Honeypool the moment he learned she was missing. But if Fishleap hadn't seen her either, and Darkstep apparently hadn't been able to track her down, then the possibility that Honeypool was in danger seemed a lot more plausible, and Rubblepaw had to go look for her.
A cracking noise sounded above Rubblepaw. He skidded to a halt and looked up, his fur spiking when he saw a branch half-torn and slowly splitting from the trunk of a maple tree. To his shock and confusion, there was a screeching ball of fluff clutching it. Rubblepaw could hardly believe it when he noticed a miniature black collar with fangs jutting out around the neck of the tiny white kitten. This kit couldn't have been any older than Yellowkit and Daisykit, but it was part of the Alliance?!
A wail sounded from a spruce tree next to the one with the splitting branch. A downy gray she-cat was crouching in the branches. She leaped from branch to branch like a squirrel, reaching for the kit. Rubblepaw knew he had to keep searching for Honeypool, but something inside him needed to see how this played out. The gray she-cat jumped just short of her kit, but her weight made the branch buckle and rip off the trunk entirely. Rubblepaw watched as she hopped off the branch, holding the kit in her mouth. Flailing, she crashed to the ground, wincing. Her paw was bent at an odd angle, but her kit was safe.
"A-are you okay?" Rubblepaw asked.
The Alliance she-cat glanced up in alarm. Holding her kit protectively, she scooted back, terror flashing in her eyes.
"You're one of those awful RogueClan cats," she whimpered. "Are you going to hurt me?"
Rubblepaw blinked.
"No, I won't hurt you," he whispered. "If you don't hurt me, I won't hurt you. You won't hurt me, will you?"
She shook her head. Silently, she picked up her kit and ran off. Rubblepaw stared after her, confused. Why had a tiny kit been up in a tree like that? Surely the Alliance didn't force kits to join their ranks and serve alongside adult cats. And from the downy cat's reaction, he guessed that she had the idea that RogueClan were the aggressive ones. Mist really must keep the lower-ranking cats in the dark.
Well, that fascinating little encounter may have been eye-opening, but it was just a delay. He had to go find Honeypool. Rubblepaw took off again, sniffing the air and checking for pawprints.
The wind shifted, and Rubblepaw picked up a faint trace of Honeypool's familiar scent. He sighed with relief, although he knew it was premature. The scent was several minutes old. He followed the scent and the trail of pawprints in the snow, coming up to a little frozen stream. Water ran beneath the ice, visible in places where the ice covering it had melted away. The scent trail stopped there. Rubblepaw looked down at the pawprints in front of him. They continued on the other side of the stream, with drops of mud sprinkled around them. Honeypool must have disguised her scent by rolling in mud to throw off a pursuer.
Rubblepaw hopped over the stream and continued following the trail of prints. Up ahead, he saw a smudge of red on the snow and dread settled in his belly. He ran up to a bramble patch, where drops of blood splatter lay around it. A tuft of honey-coloured fur was snagged on the brambles. The pawprints continued on, but splayed apart and uneven. Rubblepaw trotted along, concern growing in him.
Finally, he came to a tree. The trail of prints stopped there. Rubblepaw wondered for a moment if Honeypool had climbed up the tree, but then he heard a soft whimpering coming from below the tree and he noticed the roots were raised. He ducked between a gap in the roots, wrinkling his nose at the heavy stench of crowfood. He hadn't been expecting to smell rotting meat under a random tree. But when he padded forward, he realized that the ground was sloping. This must have been another tunnel entrance! The whimpering noise he'd heard echoed through the empty tunnel, amplifying until Rubblepaw reached a small chamber.
The chamber was dark and shadowy, but there was an opening overhead that cast just enough light for Rubblepaw to see Honeypool crouched in the corner, shaking.
"Hey." Rubblepaw padded closer, brushing past a plant and stepping over an odd lump on the chamber ground. "Are you feeling all right?"
Honeypool slowly lifted her head, her eyes vacant. Her fur was matted in bloodstained clumps, and her nose was glistening. What was she doing down here, and what had happened to her to get her so… like this?
"Honeypool, it's okay," Rubblepaw whispered coaxingly. "It's me- Rubblepaw. What happened? Are you hurt?"
"Rubblepaw…" Honeypool's mew was coarse. "What are you doing here?"
"I came looking for you."
"Well, you shouldn't have," she hissed, backing away. "You shouldn't want anything to do with me."
"What do you mean?" Rubblepaw asked. "There's nothing you could do that would make me stop liking you."
She faced him, her eyes wide and hollow with anguish. She slowly padded out from the shadows, and Rubblepaw noticed how wet her paws were. They were covered with bloodstains.
"I can't wash it off," she whispered. "I've licked and licked my paws, but the blood scent won't come off."
"If you killed some Alliance cat, no cat will hold it against you," Rubblepaw promised; he suspected that was what was troubling her. "A warrior shouldn't kill unless they have no choice, but in the heat of battle, you're not to blame if that's what you did. Besides, the Alliance isn't a Clan. They don't have such rules, so-"
Honeypool cut him off with a hiss. She bared her fangs, which glistened with blood just like her paws.
"You don't understand," she spat. "They were so young. None of them could have been older than you. One of them was a gray tabby tom who looked so much like you… I swear I thought he was you for a second. Even when I saw he had both eyes, I couldn't reverse the connection in my mind. It makes no difference who a cat is, Rubblepaw, don't you see? This pointless battle will destroy us all. And I won't play a part in it."
Rubblepaw regarded his friend sadly. He had never killed another cat before. And he guessed that Honeypool hadn't either before today. He rested his muzzle on her head comfortingly, but she turned her head away. Rubblepaw backed off.
"Come back to camp," he whispered. "They don't know if you're dead or alive. Darkstep went out looking for you. You have to come back with me so Strikestar and the others will know you're all right."
"I know that Darkstep went looking for me," Honeypool murmured. "She saw me standing over the body of a cat who couldn't have been more than six moons old. She stared at me with a question in her eyes. She was asking me, 'Honeypool, did you kill these cats?' And I knew the answer was yes and when I took off running I knew she knew the answer too. She didn't follow after me."
"Well, Darkstep may not have gone after you, but I will," Rubblepaw proclaimed. "Even if you try to avoid me, I'll make sure you get back to camp safely. You don't have to face Strikestar and the others if you don't want to. You don't have to tell them what you did. But you have to come back to camp, Honeypool. You're my mentor and my friend, and I don't care what you did to those young Alliance cats, because you're still a good cat. You need to believe that you're still a good cat."
Honeypool's eyes watered.
"Thank you, Rubblepaw," she sighed. "I really mean it. Thank you so much for saying that. I just wish I could believe you…"
Honeypool closed her eyes for a few seconds, her jaw moving as though she were chewing something. Then she took a few staggering steps forward and collapsed, her legs giving out. She sprawled on the ground, her paws twitching and her breath coming in ragged gasps. Rubblepaw was about to ask what was wrong when he saw the bright red pulp inside her mouth. He gasped. Sure enough, there was a pile of red berries on the ground next to her. Overhead, the sun shone down between parting clouds, casting the cavern in light to reveal the source of the crowfood stench. There were many, many bodies of dead cats in the chamber. Most of them were no more than skeletons, but some looked like they'd only been dead for a matter of weeks, perhaps days. Piles of shriveled red berries were everywhere, and a large plant that they grew from sat near the centre. Rubblepaw had thought it was just a random shrub at first.
This was a place where cats came to kill themselves. Rubblepaw realized that now. But as disgusting as it was to look at the countless remains piled inside the dirt cavern, it was one of those things that Rubblepaw couldn't peel his eye from. And he noticed that they all had fang-studded collars.
"Honeypool, why did you do that?!" Rubblepaw cried. "C-come on, spit out those berries right away!"
Honeypool groaned, fluid leaking from the corner of her mouth. Rubblepaw's heart leapt in panic. This couldn't be happening! He pried open her jaws and smacked the back of her head, trying to force her to cough up the berries. The ones she'd chewed up slid out of her mouth, but she kept spasming, her breath slowing. Desperately, Rubblepaw tried to remember what kind of herbs made cats throw up. He knew that he'd eaten some poisonous twoleg food that he'd found on the walking trail once, and Boss had used an herb to make him sick. What had it been?!
Was it... yarrow? Yes, that was definitely it. But what had it looked like? Struggling to remember, Rubblepaw scrambled up the side of the chamber and pushed himself up through the gap in the roof. There was a clump of dead plants by a tree… would dead plants work? He doubted it. One of the plants looked like it could be yarrow. He grabbed a bundle and hopped back down into the chamber. He stuffed the dried-out stalks into Honeypool's mouth.
Nothing happened. Rubblepaw forced the stalks down her throat and she began to gag, coughing up a bit of berry pulp. Encouraged, Rubblepaw went to get some more. He brought it back and tried to get Honeypool to swallow it.
But it wasn't working. The plants themselves weren't doing anything. Rubblepaw didn't even know whether they were actually yarrow or not. Sure, sticking them down Honeypool's throat may have activated her gag reflex, causing her to spit up some of the berries, but it wasn't good enough. Her spasms were giving way to stillness, and her pulse was fluttering. Rubblepaw smacked her on the back. There had to be something he could do! It was too late to go back to camp now. It would take too long. By the time he got there she'd already be gone.
Suddenly he heard a sickly crunching sound coming from behind him. He turned to see a familiar yellow-pelted tom, the bones of a long-dead cat crumbling beneath his paw.
"Ray?!" Rubblepaw stared at the Alliance tom in confusion. "What are you doing here?"
"That's not important right now," he huffed. "Your little lady there needs this."
He dropped a bundle of herbs at Rubblepaw's paws, seeming unbothered by the corpses surrounding him. Rubblepaw stared at the herbs, unsure whether to trust Ray, who had already made his loyalty to the Alliance perfectly clear.
"Well, hurry up and feed them to her!" Ray grunted. "What've you got to lose?!"
He was right. Rubblepaw stuffed the herbs inside Honeypool's mouth, forcing her to swallow. Within moments she began convulsing. Rubblepaw looked away, grossed out but also glad to hear the sounds of her being sick. It meant that the herbs had worked.
After a few seconds, he heard Honeypool mew weakly, "It's okay, Rubblepaw, you can look now. I'm done vomiting... heh." To his surprise, she started to laugh. "I guess that was a kind of dumb move, wasn't it?"
Relief washed over Rubblepaw, but it was followed by outrage. He stood over Honeypool, who was still lying on her side, a puddle of vomit next to her head. In it were the pulpy remains of the red berries she'd eaten.
"You mean trying to kill yourself? Yeah, I'd say that was a pretty dumb move, all right." Rubblepaw felt guilty for a second when he saw Honeypool's expression of shame, but then he remembered what she'd just done and knew without a doubt that his anger was justified. "Why didn't you listen to what I was telling you, Honeypool? So you killed some Alliance cats. So what? If you're really a warrior, you shouldn't be afraid to get your paws dirty. Sure, peace is the best way to handle things, but if you think that you deserve to die for what you did, you're wrong. It won't solve anything. It will only make things worse for the rest of us!"
Honeypool looked away. She didn't make any move to rise to her paws.
"Well?!" Rubblepaw demanded, a fire burning behind his words. "What do you have to say for yourself?"
"I'm sorry," Honeypool muttered numbly. "I don't know what I was thinking. I'm sorry you had to see that, Rubblepaw. I promise it will never happen again."
Rubblepaw nodded to Ray thankfully. But Ray had already left.
"C'mon, Honeypool, get to your paws," Rubblepaw mewed, his voice cracking. "It's time we get back to camp. Strikestar will be worried about me, and I know your parents will be worried half to death about you- Emberfur too. I know I was."
They walked back through the woods, Honeypool keeping her gaze fixed on the ground. Rubblepaw kept his straight ahead. They had to look out for any potential dangers.