Clover Wanderpaw's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Clover Wanderpaw clawed at the rubble until her paws bled, and still the wall of dirt did not move. Three weeks ago she had a market by a river, a baker, a raisin bun each morning. Now she had this: a collapsed tunnel in a strange warren, and folk buried behind it who would die if she stopped. The Elder had made the deal plain. Dig out three sections, then search for the warren she was stolen from as a kit. But one rabbit could not shift a mountain of earth in time. She heard them before she reached the second section. Faint scratching. A voice calling a name through the packed dirt. Clover pressed her ear to the wall. Air, but not much. She dug faster. Her arms shook. A stone the size of her head would not budge, and behind it the scratching grew slower. "Stop clawing at it like that." A gray rabbit stood in the tunnel mouth, hood up, watching. Clover had not heard her arrive, which frightened Clover more than the collapse. This was Clover Longear, another lost one the Elder had taken in. Her ears turned toward the buried voices, sharp, reading the dirt for sound. "Two folk. First section. Weak breathing." Longear knelt and set her palm flat on the wall. "The big stone holds the rest. Pull it and everything falls inward on them." "Then help me brace it," Clover said. Longear did not answer. She closed her eyes and listened. Then she pointed left of the stone, where the dirt looked no different to Clover. "Dig here. Softer. The old path runs behind it." Clover remembered then what Tsuki had given her before the ghost faded. The knowledge of old rabbit paths, carried in her like the drumbeat. She shut her eyes and felt for it. A hollow. A seam in the earth the diggers had forgotten. Longear was right. It ran behind the collapse, around the killing stone. They dug together. Longear worked in silence, listening between each pull, calling out when the breathing changed. Clover matched the old drum's rhythm in her paws, steady, not frantic. The seam opened. Dirt fell away into a pocket of air, and two rabbit folk crawled out coughing, then a third, then a whole trembling cluster of them, pressing close, wide-eyed and wistful, calling each other by name. By dawn all three sections were clear. Fourteen folk, alive. The Elder came to the garden where the freed rabbits huddled. Clover stood, filthy and shaking, waiting for the promise to be kept. "You dug them out," the Elder said. "The debt is paid." A pause. "But the paths you used are Tsuki's paths. Old paths. They lead toward the warren you lost." The Elder's eyes narrowed. "They also lead through the Shadow Cavern. Nothing that walks in comes back the same." Clover looked at Longear. Longear looked at the dark mouth beyond the mound, and said nothing.