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.

By morning the freed rabbits had cleaned themselves and gathered in the earthen mound. Fourteen faces watched Clover, gentle and grateful, some still trembling. She should have felt done. The debt was paid. But the dark mouth beyond the mound pulled at her, and Tsuki's paths hummed under her paws, pointing past it toward the warren she had lost as a kit. She gathered the moon-faced drum and turned to leave. The Elder blocked the tunnel. He was old and tall, his robe knotted with living twigs and green leaves, his eyes lit like small lamps. Roots curled around his feet where he stood. He had brought Clover into Hollowburrow, but he blamed her drum for drawing the shadow that broke the walls. He did not move. "You are leaving," he said. "I kept my end," Clover said. "Your folk are safe." "They are safe because you stayed." He looked at the huddled rabbits, then back at her. "Three tunnels fell. More will fall. The warren still shakes." His voice dropped, quieter, stiller. "I felt the old digger die under the east root. I feel every heartbeat in here. I cannot lose more." "Then let me go before I draw worse to you." Clover held up the drum. Its pale face caught the light. "You said this sound brought the shadow. Every day I stay, I risk them again." The Elder went silent. His eyes flicked to the drum, then to the frightened folk pressed against the walls. "Stay," he said. "Help us shore the tunnels. Then talk of leaving." "There is no then." Clover stepped closer. "The paths I carry lead to my warren. They pass through the Shadow Cavern. If I wait, I forget the way. Tsuki gave it to me before she faded. It goes quiet if I don't walk it." One of the freed rabbits, a small one in a red scarf, tugged the Elder's sleeve. "Let them find their own," she whispered. "Like they found us." The Elder looked down at her a long moment. Something in his shoulders gave. When the warren chose him, he had told Clover, the choosing stripped away his fear. Now Clover saw what was left underneath it. Not anger. Grief. "The cavern changes what walks in," he said. "You know this." "I know." He reached into his robe and drew out a folded strip of bark, marked with old scratches. "The last of us who went east carved this. It is little. It is all I have." He pressed it into her paw. "Do not sound the drum near soft ground. The shadow listens for stillness. Keep moving." He stepped aside. The tunnel opened before her, and past it the dark mouth of the cavern waited. Clover tied the drum to her back and took the bark. The freed rabbits called her name as she passed. She did not look back. The Elder had let her go, but the cavern would take something from her before it gave the warren back.