River of Secrets Read online

  It was only as she was reaching for the next paw hold that she felt the rock underneath her jolt, in a new and horrible way. She looked down just in time to see fractures spidering across its surface, and then it shattered under her paw. She was falling. She grabbed out wildly.

  “Left!” she heard Dasher yell from below. She threw out her left paw and it caught. Pain jolted up her leg as the jagged surface pressed into her pads, but she held on tight and braced herself as the shards of rock tumbled down and down. She had come so far. If she fell now . . .

  “You can reach that black one, up above you!” Dasher called. Leaf looked up and saw that he was right: There was a big black stone just close enough to grab on to. She reached for it, tested it, and then pulled herself up. It was solid. She felt safe enough to turn and look down at the others.

  They were far below her now, their worried faces just blobs against the white snow. She was close to the top of the pile. She was going to make it.

  But what will you do when you get there? The others can’t make this climb, especially not Plum. Will you push this wall down all by yourself, one stone at a time?

  Well, perhaps she would. She steeled herself for the hard work as she pulled herself up the last few teetering rocks.

  If I’m meant to get to the mountain, then I will, even if I have to move a small mountain of my own. . . .

  Finally she reached the top of the pile. Up here, the rocks shifted beneath her with every shuddering breath. She gingerly put her front paws on the very top boulder and pulled herself up to peer over it.

  The Dragon Mountain was still there, at the end of the path, but the sun had gone behind a cloud now, and unlike the fiery light, the clouds seemed dark and ominous. The feeling of certainty was gone. She thought she could make out the mouth of the cave, impossibly wide and black.

  “You did it!” Dasher cried.

  “Well done, Leaf!” shouted Plum. Leaf looked down and risked giving them a wave with her paw. They waved back.

  Rain was looking up at her silently, eyes wide. She cleaned her ear nervously with one paw and didn’t say anything.

  Leaf leaned carefully against a big, solid boulder and tried to catch her breath. The ache in her legs seemed worse now that she had stopped climbing. She looked again at the Dragon Mountain, and saw . . .

  Something was different. Had the cave mouth moved? No, it wasn’t the cave. Was it the clouds? There was something dark moving near the mountain, and from this distance, if she could see it clearly, it must be huge. . . .

  Leaf’s breath caught as she remembered what she’d seen on the slope when the pandas and red pandas had been lost: the shadow of a dragon, a black shape that was both formless and scaly, that moved past her in a moment and left a trail through the pine needles.

  Could she be looking at the Dragon right now?

  The thing peeled away from the mountain and seemed to spring into the air. It was coming toward the pandas. Leaf saw an undulating body, twisting like a swimming snake. The shape seemed to shift, so one minute she would see legs, and the next they would be gone, and then she would make out a long head fringed with wild fur, and then it just looked like a cloud once more. Her heart began to beat even faster, so she could feel the blood thumping in her ears. It had to be a sign! The Dragon was telling her something—but what?

  “What is it, Leaf? What are you looking at?” she heard Rain call. Leaf couldn’t answer—she wasn’t sure what it was. It moved too purposefully and too fast to be a cloud, but surely too chaotically to be the Great Dragon itself . . . and there was a sound coming from it, like the noise of hundreds and hundreds of squeaking, high-pitched voices. . . .

  “Bats!” she gasped.

  They came closer and closer, sometimes forming the twirling, serpentine shape of a dragon and sometimes clustering into a thick cloud. Leaf realized, too late, that they were heading right for her, not slowing or veering from their path but speeding up. She gripped the boulder in front of her. She couldn’t get down. If they flew into her—

  She just had time to hunker down, covering her ears with her paws, before the cloud of tiny bodies reached the rock wall. They swirled all around her, chattering in their piping voices, too fast and high for her to make out the words. She looked up, cringing as a tornado of bats passed over and around her, thousands of tiny wings beating the air until it thrummed. The rock underneath her wobbled, and she shut her eyes and pressed herself against the boulder.

  All of a sudden, the bats stopped chattering. There was no sound but the rustling of wings. And then Leaf heard a roar all around her, like the warning roar of an angry creature. For a second she thought it might be another earthquake, but the stones underneath her didn’t shake.

  The Dragon . . . the bats . . .

  But the noise was so loud that she couldn’t think straight.

  The roar went on and on, and then stopped as abruptly as it had begun. Pale light flooded in as the cloud of bats suddenly dispersed. Leaf looked up, blinking, as they flew away from her, away from the mountain, piping and chattering once again.

  “Wait,” she gasped. “What should I do? Should I . . . follow you? Please . . .”

  She stood, and stepped forward with one paw.

  The rock underneath her tipped.

  Leaf panicked. She tried to throw her weight back, to twist so she could dig her claws into the rocks, but it was too late. The rock slipped out from under her, and the whole pile shifted with a sickening crunch and rumble. Even as she fell, Leaf knew that the sound would echo in her mind for a long, long time.

  The shock was worse than the pain, as she tumbled and twisted down the rocks. Stones struck her paws, her flank, her face. She felt fur yanked out of her tail and another claw snapping. She heard Rain, Plum, and Dasher all screaming her name as she rolled, fell through the air, and slammed into the freezing snow at the bottom of the pile.

  She didn’t have time to even look up before the snow around her exploded from the impact of rocks and dirt, and then a boulder struck her side. The air was knocked out of her lungs, and the world went dark.

  Chapter Five

  “WHAT ABOUT DOWN HERE?” Shiver called. Ghost walked to the edge of the mossy rock and looked down to see her sniffing at a little hollow between two trees.

  “That might do,” Ghost said. He started to walk around and find his way down the mossy slope to her side, and almost treaded over a sleeping panda. The panda snuffled, turned over, and opened one eye to glare at him. “Oh . . . sorry,” Ghost said.

  The other panda huffed and put her paws over her eyes.

  Ghost sighed, and tried to look where he was going even more carefully as he hurried to join Shiver. He didn’t really understand the Prosperhill pandas’ tendency to fall asleep at a moment’s notice, especially after they’d just eaten. The weirdest thing about it was that their sleeping nests were out in the open, a few of them up in trees, some of them just in the grass or on top of the moss-covered rocks. If there was any kind of pattern to which panda had claimed which territory, Ghost couldn’t figure it out.

  “It’s sort of sheltered,” Shiver said uncertainly as Ghost found his way to her. She curled herself in against the side of the hollow and looked up at the tree canopy.

  “It’s . . . better than nothing,” Ghost said.

  “Not really a den, though, is it?” Shiver sighed. “Come on, let’s keep looking. There must be a cave or something, somewhere on this silly wet mountain.”

  They walked in a widening circle around the clearing at the top of the hill where Sunset had introduced them to the Prosperhill pandas, sometimes following the well-trodden panda paths, other times striking out into the undergrowth looking for hidden spots where they might make a den. They climbed down and pushed through a curtain of vines, and found themselves near where a male panda was sitting beside a snoozing female, gently play-fighting with a small cub.

  “Good Long Light, Ghost, Shiver,” said the adult panda, a little stiffly. Ghost c
ouldn’t remember his name, but he managed to recall that the cub was called Maple.

  “Good Long Light,” he said. “Hello, Maple.”

  “Hello,” said Maple. His eyes were wide and slightly fearful as he looked up at Ghost. “Why don’t you have any black fur?”

  “Maple,” the adult male said quickly, “that’s not very polite.”

  “It’s all right,” Ghost said. I just wish I had an answer. “I was born like this,” he told the cub gently.

  Maple’s eyes widened even further and flickered to Shiver. “And is . . . is it . . . is it true you eat other pandas?” he said, all in a rush.

  “No!” Ghost gasped loudly, and Maple flinched slightly. Ghost made himself step back and calm down. “No, not at all. Why . . . why would you think that?”

  “You smell like predators,” Maple whispered.

  Ghost nodded. “We were predators. But we never ate pandas.”

  He said it confidently, because it was true. But he hoped the cub wouldn’t ask him any more about it. When you needed to kill to survive, almost anything you could beat in a fight could be a meal. . . .

  “I eat bamboo now, just like you,” he added. “And Shiver would never attack a panda. She eats small birds and mice, that’s all.”

  “But . . . but mice can talk,” said Maple, horrified fascination growing in his face. “What happens when—”

  The male panda hurriedly put a big paw on Maple’s back and said, “I think that’s enough questions.” Ghost was a little relieved—the conversation was sniffing around the edge of distressing territory, and he didn’t want to explain it to Maple any more than the other panda did. “We should let our new friends get going.” The panda gave Ghost a hard stare, and Ghost understood that he was asking for Ghost to please take Shiver and go.

  “See you for the next hunt,” said Shiver, giving Maple a bright smile.

  “You mean the next feast,” Maple corrected her, wide-eyed. Shiver’s ears twitched back in embarrassment.

  “Yes. Obviously.”

  “See you then,” said Ghost, and nudged Shiver into a walk. They gave each other a slightly awkward look as they headed down the panda path toward the river.

  “Pandas really don’t understand what it’s like to be a hunter, do they?” Shiver said quietly. Ghost shook his head.

  There were so many pandas here, it wasn’t long before they came across another pair—two females sitting together by the path that led to the Egg Rocks, looking down toward the river.

  “Have a little faith, Dawn,” said one, who Ghost thought was called Horizon. “Speaker Sunset knows what he’s doing, I’m sure.”

  “Oh, I’m sure the Speaker has his reasons,” said Dawn. “But have you ever seen a white panda before? It’s just a little bizarre, isn’t it?”

  Ghost froze. The pandas clearly hadn’t heard them coming. He didn’t want to stand here and listen to their conversation about him, but he also didn’t want to make a sound that would make them look around and see him. . . .

  “Do you think he lost his markings somehow? Who do you think his mother and father were?” Dawn went on.

  “No pandas I’ve ever met, I’m sure. He said he was raised by leopards. Leopards,” said Horizon.

  “And, speaking of leopards . . . it’s all very well having that cub here, but what are we going to do when she’s grown? Do you want a full-sized adult leopard living here?”

  “I—I’m sure that Sunset has a plan. He’s the Dragon Speaker for leopards, too, you know. Maybe he’ll . . . teach her how to not be a predator, or something,” Horizon said, but her voice was uncertain and uneasy.

  Ghost glanced at Shiver. She was pulling a face of distaste, similar to the one she’d made when she’d eaten the bamboo.

  His heart felt heavy as he quietly tugged her away from the two pandas, but he tried to ignore it. These pandas just needed a few days to get used to him and Shiver—he still fit in here better than he ever had on the mountain, and Shiver would show them she was their friend. It would be fine.

  They headed back uphill and upriver, until Shiver stopped in her tracks. Ghost instinctively looked around for a cave and didn’t see one.

  “What about there?” Shiver trotted toward a large clump of bamboo, and Ghost saw that the thick green canes were growing in a circle around a hollow space. “Break down one or two of these, and we can curl up inside. It might be the best shelter we’re going to find around here.”

  “Let’s do it!” Ghost said, excited to have found territory he felt they could claim at last. He leaned over, just like Sunset had shown him, and snapped off two bamboo canes at the root. His mouth watered a little as he tasted the nice green insides—he would bring these to the feast clearing later. Then he and Shiver both squeezed inside the hollow space, and he sat down and leaned against the strong canes. They bent just a little, so he was reclining at a comfortable angle. Shiver sniffed all around the space and then turned around on the spot four or five times before curling up against his side.

  “I like this,” she said. “It’s sheltered from the wind, and if nothing but a panda’s jaws can break these things down, it’ll be pretty safe.”

  They sat in peace for a while. Ghost enjoyed the distant sound of the river, and he was even starting to find the constant noises of birds and other creatures quite relaxing. Now that he had his own territory, he thought he could understand why these pandas spent so much time napping. It was actually very tempting to lie back and shut his eyes, just for a little while. . . .

  A loud crack woke him up with a start, and he sat up fast and looked behind him, afraid the cane he was leaning on had broken. It was fine, but all around him the bamboo’s leaves were wavering, even though there was no wind. Beside him, Shiver’s ears were pinned back and she was sniffing the air.

  “Panda! Someone’s eating our den!” she growled.

  Ghost pushed out through the gap and immediately came nose to nose with a large female panda, her jaws full of bamboo. She gave him a look of annoyance. Ghost remembered that her name was Blossom, and he noted that the two canes he’d left outside, meaning to take them to the feast, had been moved and stacked a few bear-lengths away.

  That’s . . . fine. I did just leave them there. She must not have known we were here.

  “Um, hey,” he said. “You probably didn’t realize, but Shiver and I have made our den in here, so it’s our territory now. Can you go somewhere else next time?”

  “Don’t tell me where to get my feast,” Blossom snarled. Ghost’s heart sank. “You should respect your elders! And, yes, I scented you in there. Strange place to sleep, but then I suppose nobody ever taught you how to act like a real panda.”

  For a moment Ghost just stared at her. He could see three other clumps of bamboo on this hill without even moving his head! Why wouldn’t she just go there, when he’d asked her nicely?

  Sure enough, Blossom bent her head toward the bamboo again. She was going to take another bite out of the den! Ghost couldn’t just stand by and let her do this.

  What would Winter do?

  He took a deep breath, and then let it out as a loud growl.

  “I said, this is my territory!”

  Blossom just smirked at him, and then closed her teeth around the bamboo cane.

  He couldn’t let this happen. Ghost pulled his paw back and smacked it into Blossom’s jaw, knocking her away from the bamboo. He was careful only to hit her with the flat of his pads, but Blossom reeled back and yelled as if he had drawn blood.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” she roared.

  Ghost took half a step back, but then forced himself to stop. He faced Blossom, even though he was suddenly fully aware of how much larger she was, how sharp her teeth were.

  “I told you,” he said, clenching his jaw. “This is my territory now, and there’s lots more bamboo, right behind you!”

  Blossom was clearly not going to stop making a fuss. But instead of attacking, she sat back on her hau
nches and howled, “You clawed me! You beast!”

  “I didn’t—I barely smacked you!” Ghost growled back.

  “What is going on here?”

  Ghost looked up to see several more pandas approaching, some from the rocks above and some along the path from the river. Many of them were dragging large bamboo canes behind them. The two cubs, Frog and Fir, were awkwardly trying to move one between them, but they dropped it and stared at him, mouths open.

  He turned to face them.

  “I claimed this bamboo as my territory,” he said. “It’s only small, and there’s lots of other bamboo here, but she wouldn’t stop.”

  One of the other female pandas stepped forward. It was the one called Peony.

  “Ghost,” she said, in a voice that sounded strangely tired, “We don’t have territories like that here. You shouldn’t have struck Blossom.”

  “I don’t know how you treated the leopards on the mountain,” said a large female called Yew, with a lot less patience. “But we won’t have violence on the Prosperhill.”

  “It was bad,” added Horizon—slowly, as if she thought maybe Ghost hadn’t understood what the others had said. “Blossom’s hurt. Do you see? We don’t hurt pandas.”

  Ghost frowned. Why was she talking to him as if he were a tiny cub? All he’d been doing was protecting his territory! He glanced at Shiver, whose ears were pinned back in worry and anger.

  “No one takes a leopard’s territory,” she growled under her breath. “You only did what Mother would have wanted.”

  Ghost saw Horizon and Yew exchange a glance.

  “We won’t have violence here,” Yew said again. “If you can’t keep to that . . .”

  Then what? You’ll drive me away? Ghost opened his mouth to protest, but before he could say anything, he heard the sound of heavy paws padding on stone, and looked up to see Sunset appear higher up the slope.