Mapleshade’s Vengeance

Chapter 9

Appledusk took a step back. His eyes clouded and he suddenly looked weary. “Mapleshade, I don’t want to fight you,” he meowed.

“I’m not giving you a choice!” Mapleshade hissed. She bunched her hindquarters beneath her and lunged at him.

Appledusk dodged away. “Just leave!” he gasped.

There was a crackle of stalks behind him and Reedshine appeared. “What’s going on?” Her gaze fell on Mapleshade. “What’s she doing here?”

Half-blind with fury, Mapleshade hurled herself at the orange she-cat. “You and your kits must die!” she screeched. “Appledusk is mine!” She unsheathed her claws, aiming for Reedshine’s face.

There was a thud of paws, then silence, and a solid brown shape flashed in front of Mapleshade.

Her claws struck home, piercing fur and flesh, and a spurt of blood leaped out at her. With a grunt, Appledusk dropped at her feet, blood pouring from his throat.

In the same moment, a heavy weight struck Mapleshade from behind. Perchpaw gripped her with his paws and bit down hard on her neck. Mapleshade staggered forward and almost fell. Perchpaw slid off her back. Mapleshade could feel him trembling against her flank; then she realized that she was the one shaking. Why? I’m not frightened.

“He’s dead!” Reedshine shrieked, crouching beside Appledusk. She stared up at Mapleshade, her horrified eyes ringed with white. “You killed him!”

Mapleshade tried to take a step forward but her legs felt strangely heavy and her vision was blurred. Is it raining? she wondered. Something hot and wet spilled down her front legs, and there was a dull ache behind her ears. She shook her head and bright red droplets spattered the ground like tiny fallen leaves.

Something small and ginger and white stirred beside Appledusk’s unmoving body. “You killed him, Mama!” shrilled Patchkit. His little tail was held high with triumph. “We are all free now!” He started to fade against his father’s light brown fur.

Mapleshade stumbled toward her son. “Wait!” she gasped. “Don’t leave me!”

Reedshine rose up from behind Appledusk and hissed at Mapleshade. “Don’t come any closer!

What you have done here is more terrible than anything a Clan cat has done before. But you have not won, Mapleshade. Appledusk will live on in his kits, and in their kits, and their kits in turn. His spirit will not die. He will be part of RiverClan forever!”

Mapleshade swayed, feeling the soil sticky beneath her paws. “Then I will watch over all your kin and punish each one for what you did to me,” she rasped. “My vengeance is not finished yet. It will never be finished!”

She lurched toward the bushes behind the willow tree. She dimly heard Perchpaw start to follow her, but Reedshine called him back. “She has done enough harm,” Mapleshade heard her mew. “Let her crawl away to die alone.”

Mapleshade forced her way through the undergrowth. She felt no pain, just a strange numbness that seemed to be spreading through her body. She reached the edge of the bushes, and the walls of the Twoleg den where she had slept on the first night of her exile loomed up in front of her, but Mapleshade was too weak to go any farther. She slumped to the ground, feeling dirt and tiny stones grind into her blood-soaked fur. She closed her eyes, waiting for the faces of her kits to appear and thank her for everything she had done.

But there was nothing behind her eyes except swirling darkness, battered by an icy wind and unbroken by even a glimmer of stars. Mapleshade felt the first stirrings of fear. “StarClan, where are you?” she wailed into the endless night. “Where are my kits?”

A small furry face appeared blurrily in front of her eyes. “Patchkit?” Mapleshade gasped. She tried to reach out with one paw.

“It’s you!” exclaimed the cat. “Do you remember me? I’m Myler. We met once before.”

Mapleshade felt his nose press along her flank. “You’re badly hurt,” mewed the little cat. “You poor thing. Come on, let’s get you inside.”

With surprising strength, he boosted Mapleshade to her feet with his shoulder and guided her into the Twoleg den. Mapleshade collapsed onto a pile of hay. I have lost everything, she thought. What do I have left to live for?

There was a bustle of movement beside her and the black-and-white cat started dabbing at her fur with a piece of wet moss. Mapleshade was too weary to push him away. She half opened one eye and saw blood flowing freely down her shoulder, pooling beneath her.

“There’s too much, too much,” fretted Myler. He dabbed more frantically. “Did a Clan cat do this to you?”

Mapleshade closed her eye again and nodded.

The little cat sighed. “Ah, there is no end to their wildness and thirst for blood,” he muttered.

“You should have left while you had the chance.”

Leave? How could I ever leave? I swore to avenge the deaths of my kits, and that’s what I have done. And yet that vengeance is not over, because Appledusk will live on in Reedshine’s kits. I will never be finished.

Myler curled up beside her, hardly flinching as his fur pressed against her bloody body. “I’ll stay with you,” he promised. “You’re safe now.”

Mapleshade unsheathed her scarlet, broken claws. “Leave me alone,” she rasped, forcing herself to lift her head and glare at her companion. “I don’t need anyone.”

The black-and-white cat stood up and looked down at her with sadness in his eyes. “I think you are wrong,” he whispered. But he turned and padded into the hay-scented darkness.

For a moment Mapleshade longed to call him back, but sleep was dragging at her, heavier than stones, stronger than the river. She closed her eyes and watched her mind fill with churning shadows, pierced by shrieks of terror that made her jump. She realized that she could feel ground beneath her paws, cold and sodden and stinking like the river. Somehow she could walk again, strength flowing back into her limbs and her vision clearing.

She emerged into a half-lit clearing surrounded by gray tree trunks. Although she felt no fear, she was aware of being watched by unseen eyes. “Am I dead?” she meowed out loud, listening to her voice echo between the trees. “Is this StarClan?”

She looked up, but there were no stars in the thick black sky above her, not even a glimmer of silver beyond the rustling leaves. Instead, what light there was seemed to come from fleshy fungus growing on the roots of the trees, and from the slimy trunks themselves.

“Not StarClan,” whispered a voice from somewhere behind her. “This is the Dark Forest, the Place of No Stars. We welcome you, Mapleshade.”

Mapleshade spun around. “Who are you? Show yourself!”

“Never,” hissed the voice. “You have come here to walk alone in your blood-soaked memories.”

Instead of dread, Mapleshade felt a surge of triumph. If she was here because of what she had endured, then there would be other cats like her, cats who would understand what she had gone through, who knew what it was to stand up to their enemies and dole out immeasurable pain.

She would find these cats, whatever that voice had told her, train them to be as strong and fearless as she was, and use them to cause more trouble for the Clans than the warriors could imagine in their worst dreams.

Mapleshade had found a place where she truly belonged. From here, she could cause more suffering than when she had been alive, and fighting her battles alone. For all eternity, Appledusk’s kin would mourn the day he had destroyed the life of a ThunderClan warrior. Just as she had promised to Reedshine, Mapleshade’s desire for vengeance would never sleep.