Bamboo Kingdom #4 by Erin Hunter

Author:Erin Hunter [Hunter, Erin]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2023-07-30T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

LEAF PANTED AS SHE ran along the valley floor, between tall rock columns. The valley ended in a steep slope up into the foothills of the White Spine Mountains, and Leaf did her best not to slow her pace as she started up the rocky hill. Dasher trotted alongside her, his little legs working hard to keep pace.

Leaf saw her breath starting to mist in front of her muzzle as they climbed higher, and by the time they reached the top there was frost on the grass that covered the slope and a thick mist visible in the valley behind them.

They carried on along the edge of a ridge, and then paused to catch their breath. Leaf looked out over the rolling slopes and columns, searching the landscape, her heart squeezing with worry. Would they be in time to stop the monkeys? Would they even be able to find the place the pangolins had spoken of?

“I wish we could have brought Coiling Cloud with us,” she said.

“He wouldn’t have been able to keep up, and we couldn’t carry him,” Dasher said, flopping down on his side and looking up at the mountains.

“I know,” said Leaf. “But he’s the one who saw this hill, or sensed that it existed, at least. He might have been able to help us.”

“Maybe we’ll find Ghost,” said Dasher. “We’re right on the edge of the mountains now.”

Leaf hoped so. She didn’t know what was happening in the Prosperhill, but if Coiling Cloud was right and the monkeys were about to destroy the Great Dragon at a hill in the mountains that looked like a skull, it didn’t make much sense that no one would be told but her. They couldn’t be destroying the Great Dragon right under Ghost’s nose, could they? She hoped he was on his way to the same place, right now, but her stomach twisted as she thought about it. Brawnshanks could have hurt him, or stopped the message getting through somehow.

“We have to keep going,” she told Dasher.

They hurried on, swapping the soft mists of the Northern Forest for crunching frost under their paws and hard scrambles over rocky terrain. Leaf was glad of her climbing skills, and glad they hadn’t tried to bring the pangolin, as she led Dasher in scaling a cliff, to save the time it would have taken them to find a way to walk to the top.

At last, she pulled herself up over the lip of the rock and gasped.

There it was, unmistakable.

Thank the Dragon. . . .

Two large black hollows stared out from the side of a hill, like empty eye sockets looking over the Bamboo Kingdom. A smaller hillock in front poked out like the shape of a muzzle, with boulders for fangs, and a sharp gap where a nose would be. It looked just like a skull.

“Hurry,” she told Dasher, reaching down to help him over the edge. “Coiling Cloud said we had to get to the top.”

The skull-like effect was made even sharper by the fact that the hill was covered in a thin, undisturbed blanket of snow.

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