Chapter Twenty

LEAF SAT BACK ON her haunches, letting the morning sun warm her fur, though up here on the mountain even the brightest sunshine was forced to fight against the chill in the air. Her ears were warming up, at least, and the black stripe of fur across her back.

She held the small tuft of Plum’s fur carefully between her paws. With Shadowhunter’s help, they had managed to find their way back to the place where they had been separated from the other pandas and red pandas, and Leaf had found the fur still hanging from one of the thorny bushes.

She couldn’t believe that she was traveling with a predator, let alone a tiger. He was no less frightening in the daylight, although having fallen asleep right beside him and woken up unharmed had been reassuring.

It hadn’t reassured Dasher quite so much. He’d slept pressed between Leaf and the stone wall, and she’d been happy to let him. It wasn’t her uncle the tiger had devoured, after all.

A little way away underneath a tree, Shadowhunter yawned, his mouth splitting wide enough to fit Leaf’s whole head inside, his enormous tongue lashing out and curling between his massive teeth. Then he reached up to rake his claws down the tree’s trunk.

Leaf tried to ignore him, and instead sniffed at the scrap of Plum’s fur. The scent was almost gone now, after the rain overnight and the dust from the shaking earth, but Leaf could still make out the warm, familiar smell of her aunt. It made her heart ache.

“She was here,” she said. “And if she didn’t go the way we went yesterday . . . perhaps she went down the other side here and up the next hill instead?”

Dasher sighed. “The tiger did say he hadn’t scented any panda on that slope but you.”

Leaf gave him a sympathetic look. His ears had been pinned back, as if they were stuck to the sides of his skull, ever since he’d woken up and found Shadowhunter’s gently snoring form still blocking the exit from the cave.

“Come on,” she said. “It’s time for the Feast of Golden Light. Let’s find something to eat.”

There was still some bamboo strewn across the slope—it wouldn’t be particularly tasty, but it would have to do. There hadn’t been anything at all to eat at the Feast of Moon Fall. Leaf had had to stare up at the cloudy sky and ask the Great Dragon for its blessing, even though she had no bamboo to be thankful for.

Dasher managed to find a fallen trunk full of small insects, and set to work picking them out and crunching on them while Leaf thanked the Great Dragon for her strength. She suspected she would need it today. Afterward, Dasher seemed a little happier, though he still stayed several steps behind her as she stood and approached Shadowhunter. The tiger had curled up and was washing between his paw pads.

“Look at those claws,” Dasher muttered. “What happens to us when he decides he’s hungry? He won’t be satisfied with leaves and insects, will he? We should stay close to the trees, so we can climb out of his reach if he decides to come after us after all.”

I think he can probably climb any tree we can get to, Leaf thought, but she knew it would do neither of them any good if she said it out loud.

“I really don’t think he will break his promise,” she murmured instead. “He wouldn’t have gone to so much trouble to find us, and tell me everything he told me, just to eat us now.”

Dasher made an unconvinced hmmm noise.

Shadowhunter saw them coming and got to his feet, stretching out his long, striped back and lashing his strong tail.

“Are you ready, Dragon Speaker?” he asked.

Leaf hesitated.

Ready to be called that? Absolutely not.

She had never met a Dragon Speaker, but the Slenderwood pandas had told stories of the great wisdom and kindness of Sunset Deepwood and his predecessors. They had saved the Bamboo Kingdom over and over again, ever since the pandas and the Great Dragon had come into being. They cared equally for all creatures. They always had an answer to any problem, and if they didn’t, they would not rest until they found one.

How could Leaf be one of them? And how could her siblings be Dragon Speakers too? She’d never heard of there being more than one at a time. For that matter, she had never heard of pandas giving birth to triplets, either. Could the tiger be mistaken after all? What if he was lying to her, or had just gotten mixed up?

“I need to find Aunt Plum,” she said at last. She held the tuft of fur out to the tiger. “I think you’re probably better at tracking than I am. Can you use this scent to find her?”

Shadowhunter sniffed at the fur, almost lifting it from Leaf’s palm.

“I shall do my best,” he rumbled, standing up. He walked to the bush where it had been hanging, and sniffed there, too. Then he looked over his shoulder. “The trail is faint. We should hurry.”

Leaf’s heart leaped. They were going to find Aunt Plum, at last! Then she hurried after the tiger, who had taken off at a fast trot and was almost at the crest of the hill already.

Dasher scampered beside her as they followed the swishing tail of the tiger, up and over the hill, down into the little valley on the other side and up the next slope, circling a broken column of rock that stuck up from the side of a hill like a single claw pointing toward the sky. As soon as Leaf made it to the top of that next ridge, she could see that this was a better way to get to the Dragon Mountain—that nearly unclimbable rock wall they’d come up against last night would be below them if they went this way.

There was little shelter, the higher they went, and now the snow on the ground was only broken up by the edges of sharp rocks or small scraps of leafless vegetation. Leaf kept her eyes peeled for tracks, but the snow must have been freshly fallen, because she didn’t see any apart from the large cat prints of Shadowhunter.

“I think you’d make a good Dragon Speaker,” Dasher said suddenly, as they climbed up a rough slope of snow and loose shale. “I don’t know if the tiger’s telling us the truth, but I reckon you’d be good at it.”

Leaf shook her head. “I don’t know. I’m just—I’m so ordinary! I like bamboo and climbing trees and hanging out with you. I’m not a leader. Plum would make a much better Dragon Speaker than I would; she’s the one who made the decision to go to the Dragon Mountain and find out what was happening.”

“Yeah, but you’re the one that the Dragon showed the way, when it was dark and we were lost,” Dasher said. “No red panda ever got a vision like that, and you can’t argue with visions! Anyway, if you want leadership, look at us right now: You’ve got me following a tiger up a mountain. Aren’t many pandas I’d do that for.”

“I . . . Dasher, I . . .” Leaf’s eyes widened and her heart swelled, but she couldn’t seem to find the words to respond. Instead she bent down and licked the top of Dasher’s head.

“Come on,” Dasher said, and head-butted her affectionately in the leg. “Or we’ll lose him, and a tiger you can see is definitely better than a tiger you can’t.”

They hurried after Shadowhunter, their paws crunching in the snow.

It was Sun Climb now, but Leaf decided not to stop their journey for a feast. She wasn’t sure if that was good Dragon Speaker leadership or more proof that Shadowhunter was mistaken, but she said the blessing privately in her head, thanking the Dragon for the gift of honesty.

It would be dishonest not to admit that finding Plum is more important than feasting right now, she thought. She hoped the Dragon understood that.

“Leaf,” growled Shadowhunter suddenly. “Something’s here.”

Leaf put on a burst of speed and ran up the snowy slope to a patch of ferns where the tiger was sniffing intently at the ground. There was a cliff a little farther up and to the right, with a few dark splits in the rock that could have been openings to caves. Was Plum in one of them?

She reached the tiger’s side. “What have you found?” she asked him. “Is it a new trail?”

“Blood,” said Shadowhunter.

Leaf’s heart dropped into her paws as she looked down and saw a spatter of red drops on the white snow.

“Is it . . . does it smell like . . .”

“She was here.” Shadowhunter began to pace back and forth quickly, crossing bear-lengths in a few strides, up and down the slope. He stopped and sniffed, came back and sniffed again. Leaf watched him, her heart in her mouth. She wanted to run to the caves. Plum could be in one of them, injured, dying. . . . But she forced herself to trust her strange new ally.

The wait was short but agonizing, until Shadowhunter returned to the spot where she stood frozen.

“She came from the caves, bleeding,” he said. “She went that way.” He pointed with his nose, through the ferns, toward a clump of leafless trees that jutted out from the side of the hill.

Leaf turned toward them and ran, pushing through the ferns, her eyes on the ground so she wouldn’t fall. She saw more spatters of blood pass under her paws as the trees grew closer. Dasher overtook her, his little legs a blur as he scampered ahead.

“Plum!” Leaf roared. The mountain echoed with it. “Plum, are you there?”

Dasher vanished around the side of a big rock, and into the space between the trees, and then—

“Leaf, come quick—she’s here!”

Leaf put on a burst of speed. She pushed through another clump of ferns and around the rock and saw what she had been dreading: Aunt Plum, lying still on the ground, blood matting the fur across her face. Leaf’s legs felt like snow crumbling in the sun, and she fell forward with a moan of grief.

Then Plum groaned, and looked toward her.

“Leaf . . . ? Is it you . . . ?”

“Plum!” Leaf sprang to her paws and ran to her aunt’s side. “You’re alive!”

“Yes . . . ,” Plum said, but her voice was faint. “I’m alive, I’m alive, yes . . . and Leaf is here, at the end. . . . That’s good. . . .”

“It’s not the end! I’m here. I can help you,” Leaf said. She began to lick the wound on Plum’s face, but as she tasted the blood, she shuddered. It smelled bad, like a dead thing that had been left in the sun.

“I was following,” said Plum quietly. “Following my heart, following the Dragon . . . I followed to the cave; I followed and waited. There was going to be a sign. But then, in the dark . . . the monster. The white monster. Muscles and teeth, white, like death, like a bear . . . It saw with the eyes of death. . . .”

“Her wound is addling her mind,” said Shadowhunter’s voice, from behind Leaf. He had climbed up onto the big rock and was lying there, looking down on them with genuine sadness in his eyes. Plum tried to turn her head in the direction of the voice, but she couldn’t seem to make him out. “She may last another day, but soon she will be gone. You should say goodbye, while she still knows you.”

“No,” Leaf moaned.

But at the same time, Dasher said, “No,” with stern determination in his small voice. He padded up to Plum’s face and sniffed at her wound.

“Dash?” Leaf said, swallowing hard. “Please, is there anything you can do?”

“I—I’m a Climbing Far; I’m no Healing Heart,” he said. “But I’ve seen Forager give red pandas purple leaf, when they get like this. It’s a kind of bamboo. . . .” He groaned, and shook his head. Leaf’s heart, which had been climbing into her throat, crashed back to the pit of her stomach. “But it only grows by the river. We can’t get back to the Slenderwood in time to find it and get back here before . . .”

Before Plum dies. The words hung in the air around them. Leaf let out another moan of grief and licked Plum’s ear softly.

“You don’t need to return to the Slenderwood,” said Shadowhunter.

Leaf looked up. “What?”

The tiger got up and sniffed the air. “The Slenderwood is not the closest part of the river. We’ve traveled far from there, but the river bends and flows. I have walked these mountains for some time, searching for you. The closest bank is . . .” He turned on the rock, looking back the way they had come, and down the hill to their left and right. Finally his ears swiveled, and he pointed down a steep, almost cliff-edge slope in the direction of the sunrise. “That way. Run, Dragon Speaker, run, and follow the downward path through the valleys, and you shall reach the water before the sun sets.”

Leaf was already up on her paws. “Thank you, Shadowhunter. Will you stay with her? Will you make sure the monster doesn’t come back?”

“I will.” Shadowhunter walked down the side of the rock and sat by Plum’s side, curling his tail over her. He licked her wound with his huge, rough tongue, and Plum gasped as she finally saw him, terror and confusion in her eyes.

“What . . . are you . . . ?” she groaned.

“A servant of the Dragon,” replied Shadowhunter. “Be still.”

“I’ll be back soon, Plum,” Leaf gabbled. “I’ll be back and we’ll make you better, I promise.”

“The Dragon is with us,” Plum sighed, and shut her eyes.

Leaf turned and ran, with Dasher at her heels.

The first descent was the most terrifying. Snow and rock slid under Leaf’s paws, and more than once she found herself tumbling, rolling to a stop, getting up and running again. Terror gripped her and she almost couldn’t force herself to go on, but then she thought of Plum. If they didn’t make it back in time, Plum would die, and Leaf hadn’t told her any of the things she wanted to—that she loved her, that she had two siblings, that the Dragon had shown her the way. She hadn’t even told her goodbye.

That thought got her up again, every time she fell. It gave her the strength to ignore the bruises, the ache in her lungs, and the cuts on the pads of her paws.

The slope eventually became easier, and the ground warmer and more earth than rock. They ran down between cliffs and along valley floors, sometimes having to pick their way past trees and rocks that had been shaken loose from the higher slopes when the earth growled. They splashed through freezing-cold snowmelt as it streamed down to join the river, and made their way around and past huge columns of rock that seemed to be the last remaining evidence of some much older mountain peak that had once stood there.

High Sun passed, and Leaf gasped the blessing under her breath and kept on running. By Long Light she was starving and weak. She tried to stumble on, but Dasher stood in front of her, and she no longer had the energy even to step around her small friend. She sank to her belly on the ground. Dasher ran off and found a bamboo stalk, dragging it back to her in his teeth. She spoke the blessing aloud, thanking the Dragon for his gift of endurance, and almost collapsed into howls of grief as she spoke the words. But then they ate, and after they had, she got back to her stinging paws. Soon after that they turned a corner and found themselves looking down the valley toward a lush, wooded slope and, beyond the wavering branches, a glimpse of glittering water.

The sight of it put strength back into Leaf’s heart.

The journey between the trees was slower, exhaustion creeping back into Leaf’s limbs as she had to pick her way between the trunks and over rocks and down slippery, moss-covered slopes. But at last, at Sun Fall, Leaf and Dasher burst out onto a wide, stony bank that sloped gently down to the edge of the water.

Leaf stumbled to an unsteady halt, kicking up pebbles. She looked around for purple leaf, and with a relief so intense it made her dizzy, she saw a stand of distinctive purple bamboo growing out from between two rocks.

But she saw something else, too. At the edge of the water, sodden and still, there was a black-and-white-furred shape.

She ran toward it.

It was a panda cub, half-grown, about Leaf’s own age. The panda was lying on her back in the water, paws splayed, her chest rising and falling shallowly. She was still alive, but sleeping, while the river lapped over her back legs and almost up to her chin.

“Got to pull her away from the river,” Leaf said, and bent down to try to grab the scruff of her neck so she could drag her back. But as she did, she saw something on the panda’s paw.

Her pads were black, except for one. Her grip pad was as white as the snow on the mountain. As white as Leaf’s was.

“No,” Leaf said. “It can’t be . . .”

But it is.

Shadowhunter sent us here. Shadowhunter is a servant of the Dragon.

The Great Dragon brought me to this spot, just in time. . . .

There was no other explanation, and certainly no time to seek one. Leaf grabbed the other panda and pulled her back out of the river. As she did, the panda groaned and coughed. After a few paw steps, she wriggled out of Leaf’s grip and flopped over onto her belly.

“Hey! Lemme go . . .”

Leaf backed away, as the panda spat water onto the ground. She staggered upright, taking two attempts but finally standing on four shaking paws. Her fur was matted and sopping wet, and she looked up at Leaf and Dasher with confused anger in her eyes.

“What’s . . . who are you? Where am I—is this the Prosperhill? I don’t know you. Where’s Sunset? I need to . . . he’s . . .” She trailed off, catching her breath. Then she blinked, and shook her head, and when she looked back at Leaf, her eyes seemed clearer. “Oh. I remember.” She sat back on her haunches. “Where am I? Who are you?”

“You—you aren’t going to believe this,” Leaf said. Despite the panda’s annoyed demeanor, and Plum’s desperate situation, and her own bruised and aching body, Leaf’s heart was filling up with a kind of joy she had never felt before. She looked into the eyes of the other panda, and then she sprang forward and nuzzled her cheek. “My name is Leaf. I’m your sister!”