Chapter One

LEAF ROLLED OVER AND stretched her paws out in front of her, raking the thin soil with her claws, then rolled again onto her back and slowly opened her eyes. The sky above was a soft gleaming gray, pale and unmarked by clouds. All she could see was the very top of one tall tree at the edge of her vision. Leaf felt almost as if she could tumble into the sky.

Her stomach rumbled.

There’ll be time for sky-gazing after the First Feast, she thought, letting out a huge yawn and flopping back onto her stomach again. She got to her paws and loped over to the big tree and scratched the back of her ears against its gnarled trunk.

Through the sparse trees that grew on the northern slopes, she could see Aunt Plum and all the other Slenderwoods rising from comfy piles of leaves and clambering down from flat rocks, heading over to the thin bamboo stalks that pushed up between the trees. Leaf shook herself and padded toward the place where she had seen some growing the night before. Sure enough, every few paw-lengths she was able to break off a bunch of tender shoots with thin green leaves sprouting. But she stopped before she had gathered them all.

Greedy cub now, hungry cub later, Aunt Plum always said, and she was right.

Leaf held the bunch of shoots tightly in one paw and hurried across the forest floor to the big clearing. The other Slenderwood pandas had all gathered there already, each sitting with their back to a tree, a respectful distance away from one another.

“Come along, Leaf,” said Plum, with a yawn. “The Great Dragon won’t wait for you.”

She said that a lot too. Leaf grinned and sat down at the base of the same tree as little Cane and his mother, Hyacinth. Cane wriggled on his stomach toward the small pile of shoots in front of Hyacinth, but she gently reached out a paw and rolled him away.

“Not quite yet, little one,” she said. Cane squeaked in disappointment, and Leaf knew how he felt. The bamboo in her paws smelled delicious, but no panda could begin to eat before the blessing.

Aunt Plum scratched her back against the tree trunk and cleared her throat. “Great Dragon,” she said, holding her own shoots out in one paw. “At the Feast of Gray Light your humble pandas bow before you. Thank you for the gift of the bamboo, and the wisdom you bestow upon us.”

Leaf bowed her head, and so did all the other pandas in the clearing, including Cane, who dropped his muzzle until his nose rested on the forest floor. There was a short pause before they all looked up again, and the sound of happy crunching filled the clearing. Leaf brought her bamboo to her nose, smelling the fresh, cool scent, and then started to pick off the leaves. She formed them into a small bundle before chomping down on the tasty green ends. Hyacinth stripped the tougher bark from the outside of her bamboo, and passed the softer green shreds from the inside down to Cane, who gobbled them up with gusto.

“The Dragon could be a bit more generous with his gifts,” one of the older pandas grumbled, his mouth full of bamboo splinters.

“And you could be more grateful for what you have, Juniper Slenderwood,” said Plum, eyeing him sternly through the pawful of green leaves.

“Juniper Shallowpool,” Juniper muttered.

“There is no shallow pool now, Juniper,” said Hyacinth gently. “We’re all Slenderwoods now.”

“Yeah, if you won’t be a Slenderwood, you ought to be Deepriver, or Floodwater,” said Grass, with a snide look over her shoulder toward the edge of the river. Juniper got to his paws with a huff and turned his back on the other pandas, settling on the other side of his tree and chewing on the woody stems of his First Feast.

Leaf watched him with a pinched feeling growing in her heart. That was mean of Grass. Juniper was a crotchety old panda, but she couldn’t exactly blame him—she couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have her home there one day and vanished the next, swallowed up by the rising river. She had never known any home but the Slenderwood, with its tall, wavering trees and sparse bamboo.

“All of you are stuck in the past,” Grass snorted, rolling over onto her back and licking her muzzle. “Nine times a day we thank the Great Dragon for feeding us, but why? Who has seen so much as a dragon-shaped cloud since the flood? Juniper’s right—the Dragon has abandoned us.”

“Not what I said,” grumbled Juniper, without turning around.

Leaf turned to look at Plum, and so did several of the others. Leaf half expected her to snap at Grass, but she just shook her head.

“That isn’t how it works, Grass,” she said calmly. “The Dragon cannot abandon us. The Great Dragon is the Bamboo Kingdom. As long as there are pandas, and there is bamboo to feed us, the Dragon is watching over us.” She held up the next long stem of her feast, as if that settled the matter. For a while there was silence, only broken by crunching.

“Do you remember that summer,” Crabapple put in, using a long black claw to pick a bamboo shoot out of his teeth, “before the flood, when Juniper’s pool dried up? The Dragon Speaker warned us all. You found a deeper pool in plenty of time—remember that, Juniper?”

Juniper just grunted again, but Hyacinth smiled to herself as she nudged a pawful of leaves toward Cane. “Oh, remember the time with the sand foxes?” she said. “Old Oak Cragsight had to take the message to them by foot, right up to the White Spine peaks. Only just made it in time to warn them about the avalanche.”

“I thought it was a blizzard?” said Grass, her cynical expression melting a little.

“No, it was an avalanche,” grumbled Vinca, wriggling his back against the tree to scratch between his shoulder blades. “Beware the white wave—that was the Speaker’s message. I remember it distinctly.”

Leaf wriggled onto her back again, trying to take her time over the last mouthfuls of her feast. Once they started on this topic, the older pandas could go for hours—they would still be here reminiscing when it was time for the Feast of Golden Light, and the Feast of Sun Climb after that.

Leaf knew that Plum was right, that the Great Dragon was still out there, watching over them. She believed it, truly, she did. But when Plum and the others told their stories of the time before the flood, when the river had been calm and narrow enough to cross, the bamboo plentiful, and every panda had had enough food and space to have their own territory, Leaf couldn’t help wondering why things weren’t like that anymore.

Oak Cragsight would have gone to the sacred spot on his territory and received the Dragon Speaker’s message about the danger to the foxes, as all the pandas would have. That was how Plum said it had worked—the Great Dragon would send its prophecies to the Speaker, and the Speaker would pass them on to the other pandas, who would spread the word of the Dragon to all the other creatures of the Bamboo Kingdom. The pandas were special, the Dragon’s chosen messengers.

But still, not one of them had known about the flood until it was upon them. Why had the old ways failed? Had the Great Dragon not warned the Dragon Speaker, or had the Speaker known and just not warned the other pandas?

“What do you think happened to the Dragon Speaker?” Leaf said. She knew it was a question without a real answer—no panda knew where Sunset Deepwood had gone.

“I think it’s obvious,” said Vinca with a heavy sigh. “It’s been a year, and we must face the truth: Speaker Sunset must have died in the flood.”

Leaf expected at least some of the other pandas to disagree with him, but to her dismay none of them did. Even Aunt Plum hung her head in quiet grief.

“I met him once,” said Hyacinth. “I was only a cub, but I’ll always remember how he talked to me as if I were a full-grown panda. He told me that one day I would see the signs too, and maybe I’d be the one to stop an illness from spreading or save a nest or . . . He made it sound as if I could be a hero.”

“He was one of the wisest Dragon Speakers,” said Plum softly.

“But if Sunset is dead,” asked Grass, “why hasn’t a new Speaker been chosen? Unless we truly have angered the Dragon so much that it’s left us all alone.”

Plum shook her head. “We must not lose faith. The Dragon will send us a new Speaker when the time is right.”

The silence that followed this was gloomy. Leaf suspected that all the Slenderwood pandas were asking themselves the same question: How much longer?

Leaf got up and shook herself from head to tail. The feast was over, and she didn’t really want to stay here and chew over the past any longer.

“I’m going to find Dasher,” she announced.

“If you’re away for the Feast of Golden Light, don’t forget—” Aunt Plum began.

“I’ll do the blessing,” Leaf reassured her. She trotted across the clearing and bumped her nose against the older panda’s cheek as she passed. “Don’t worry.”

As soon as she was out of the clearing and on her way, Leaf felt a weight lift from her shoulders. So there was no Dragon Speaker—that didn’t mean life was all bad. She still had Aunt Plum, and she had her friends, too.

She walked for a few minutes until she’d left the Slenderwood and entered Goldleaf, the territory of the red pandas. There was very little bamboo here, but the trees grew thicker and sturdier.

Leaf sniffed at the trunks she passed for any sign of Dasher, but before she caught the scent of her friends, she heard their voices above her. She looked up. The branches of the trees were shaking as small flashes of red and black ran along them, laughing and hiding between the leaves.

“Dasher!” Leaf called up. One of the red creatures looked down, draping himself over a branch so his head was upside down and his tail dangled over the other side.

“Leaf! Come up here!” cried Dasher Climbing Far. Two more red panda faces also appeared in the thick canopy.

“Hi, Leaf!”

“Come on up, Leaf!”

Leaf grinned up at them and turned to sniff the trunk of the closest tree. It would do nicely. She was so much bigger than her red-panda friends that she had to be a bit more careful where she put her paws, but once Leaf Slenderwood started to climb, there was no panda in the Northern Forest who could match her. She quickly found purchase, digging her claws into the bark, and began to climb the tree, lifting herself up onto one branch and then using a thick knot as a paw hold to stretch across to the next. Soon enough she was high above the ground, and then she was in the canopy itself, where the swaying of the trees was enough to make a less sure-footed creature panic. The first sunlight glimmered through the leaves, lighting the world around her in green and gold.

“We’re going to climb the Grandfather Gingko! Race to the very top,” said Jumper Climbing Far as Leaf pulled herself up onto the same thick branch as the red pandas. “Ready?”

Chomper Digging Deep shook her head. “That’s not fair to Leaf,” she said. “She’s just climbed a whole tree while you’ve been sitting on your butt eating acorns!”

“Well, that just gives you two a fighting chance—right, Leaf?” Dasher said, turning on the spot, his deft little paws dancing on the thick branch.

“Right!” Leaf huffed. “I’m ready when you are!”

“Go!” squeaked Jumper, and he and Chomper both took off, giggling to themselves as they leaped to another branch.

Dasher and Leaf exchanged a grin.

“Let’s get them!” Dasher waved his tail and charged off, and Leaf followed him. She knew she couldn’t go as fast or jump as far as her red-panda friends, but that didn’t matter—she could see that the other two had hastily run out onto a branch that was too short and would have to turn around, whereas Leaf’s more considered approach would always get her where she needed to go.

The Grandfather Gingko was the tallest tree in the whole Northern Forest, towering above the rest of the canopy like a bright golden sunrise. She made for it, sticking carefully to the thickest branches, hugging the trunks, and pulling herself higher and higher. She almost slipped when she accidentally put her back paw into a hollow where a jay was nesting. The bird squawked and pecked at her paw pads. Leaf gasped and slid a little way back down the trunk, and as she did she looked down and saw a long, long fall down to the ground below her . . . but she used her claws to dig in, slow, and stop her slide.

“Sorry!” she said to the jay as she climbed up again, careful not to put any paws inside its nest this time. The jay just chattered at her and puffed up its smoke-gray neck feathers in disgust.

The last ascent to the top of the gingko tree was one of the trickiest bits of climbing in the forest, but Leaf had made it before, and the Grandfather tree only seemed to get taller and stronger every time. She knew just which branches to follow to the very top. Dasher was right by her side, clinging on to the thin twigs that would snap under Leaf’s paws, and the other two red pandas weren’t far behind. Leaf pulled herself up onto the crook of the tallest branches and settled there in triumph, catching her breath as she looked out through the gold leaves and down to the forest below.

The Northern Forest surrounded the tree, its patches of tall and strong trunks broken up by thinner places like the Slenderwood clearing, where the bamboo grew in sparse clumps. Beyond the trees, she could see down into the valley where the river ran, so wide that no creature could swim across. Its swift and dangerous currents made ripples that looked like shimmering snakes—or dragons—as the sun rose.

Beyond the river was the Southern Forest. Its slopes were just as steep as on Leaf’s side, but where the Northern Forest was gray and sparse, the trees there looked lush and green. Even from so far away, if Leaf stared for a long time she thought she could see bamboo growing in enormous bushes, so big that even the hungriest panda couldn’t eat it all.

The thought of the bamboo made her stomach rumble, and she licked her muzzle as she looked up at the rising sun. It was time for the Feast of Golden Light. She had no bamboo, but she couldn’t miss a feast, so she cast around until she found a cluster of small yellow fruits hanging from one of the gingko branches. They were nowhere near as tasty as bamboo, but they would have to do. She picked one and held it in her paws as she hung her head.

“Great Dragon, at the Feast of Golden Light your humble panda bows before you,” she said. “Thank you for the gift of the bamboo—I mean, this stinky yellow fruit—and the strength you bestow upon us.”

The red pandas sat in the branches around her, swinging their tails as she took a bite of the fruit, tearing through the soft yellow flesh to the crunchy nut hiding inside. It really wasn’t much compared to bamboo, but the important thing was to eat something.

“I heard Scrabbler saying the river’s calmed down a bit since the last rain,” said Jumper, once she had swallowed all of the fruit she could bear to eat.

“Really?” Leaf’s ears pricked up and she peered down the northern slope toward the glistening water again. It still looked to her like the currents were very fast, but maybe, maybe this would be the time . . .

“Well . . . Scrab says a lot of things,” Dasher said. “He’s probably imagining it.”

“We’re going to do it,” Leaf said firmly. “Maybe not today, but we’ll get across. I believe we will.”

“Not going to be so much about believing as swimming,” said Jumper, dangling upside down from his branch. “Can you swim?”

“I can!” Leaf snorted. Not . . . brilliantly, she added to herself. Not like I can climb. But we’ll find a way!

“Do you really think they’re over there?” Dasher asked, a hint of skepticism in his voice. “Your mother and your twin?”

Leaf stared at the Southern Forest until its deep green trunks began to blur and swim in front of her eyes.

“Yes,” she said. “That’s what Aunt Plum always told me. She said her sister Orchid came to her with two cubs—she asked Plum to keep me safe, and then she left with the other one. Where else could they have gone?”

The red pandas didn’t answer her, and Leaf was glad. She knew, obviously, that it was possible that they weren’t in the Southern Forest at all—that, apart from Plum, all her family had gone the same way as Sunset Deepwood.

But she refused to believe it, not while there was a whole forest just over the shimmering water.

“One day, Dasher,” she said again. “We’ll cross over the river, and I’ll find my family.”