Serafina and the Splintered Heart Read online

  As evening came, Mr. and Mrs. Vanderbilt and their many guests gathered in the Banquet Hall for dinner. More newcomers were arriving every day for the ball, and now some sixty people sat around the long oak dining room table, displayed in sparkling fashion with its fine Biltmore-monogrammed porcelain settings and silver candelabras.

  She scanned the room. There was an empty chair next to Mr. Vanderbilt, but she didn’t see Braeden. She wondered what had become of him after he put on the cloak.

  Finally, just before dinner began, Braeden came into the room. He was still limping with the metal brace on his leg, but he appeared fresh and clean, and he was wearing a fine dinner jacket.

  She studied him carefully, trying to understand what he was thinking and feeling at that moment, but she couldn’t read his face. What had been going on in that head of his? Had the despair of losing her driven him to the Black Cloak?

  His dog, Gidean, followed several yards behind him, not at his side. When Braeden took his seat at the table next to his uncle, the dog went over to a distant corner out of Braeden’s line of sight and lay down, his head on his paws.

  Serafina thought Braeden must have hidden the Black Cloak away somewhere in the house or back in the flume under the pond, but she wasn’t sure.

  As she watched him talking with the others at the table, it reminded her of watching Mr. Thorne months before in this very room as he lingered among the guests and their children. There was something in the look behind Braeden’s eyes that she could not quite fathom, not just the sadness and detachment that she’d seen, but as if he was going through the motions of his life, biding his time, waiting to get to what was important. But that was the question. What was important to him now? Was it using the cloak each night? Is that what he longed for, the dark embrace of its power?

  She watched him all through the evening, looking for signs. Was his skin flaking off his hands as it had with Mr. Thorne? Did he watch the children in the room with particular interest? You have to resist it, Braeden, she kept thinking.

  She looked for signs of good and evil in her friend, of truth and deceit, wondering which side was winning. She could see him doing the things he was expected to do, but was it truly him? Or was he like one of those weird horned beetles that wears the shell of another beetle on its back to hide itself?

  But then something happened.

  When he thought no one was looking, Braeden slid his hand under the table, and he tapped his fingers lightly on the wooden edge of his chair.

  In the corner across the room, Gidean sat up and tilted his head in curiosity.

  Braeden tapped again.

  Gidean rose to his feet and moved quickly toward Braeden. The dog slipped under the table and put his nose against Braeden’s hand to let him know he was there.

  Without anyone noticing, Braeden slid the food from his plate and gave it to Gidean beneath the table. The surprised Doberman gobbled the food down in an instant and looked up appreciatively for more.

  Serafina smiled. This was new. Something was changing in Braeden. She didn’t know if using the cloak had turned him evil or not, or to what degree he could control his use of it, but for the first time in a long time, this was the Braeden she knew, the one who fed his dog from his plate, the one who would fight for his friends no matter what. This wasn’t the cloak’s doing. This was something else. Somehow, someway, he was still in there, deep down inside, at least a little bit. And this was the Braeden she held on to in her heart.

  When the final course was done, Braeden politely excused himself from the table and said good night to everyone. They all wished him a pleasant good night in return.

  As Serafina followed him out of the Banquet Hall and around the Winter Garden, she was glad to see Gidean walking with him. But then Braeden took Gidean over to a side door, let him outside, and continued on through the house without him.

  “That’s strange,” Serafina said, and followed Braeden up the Grand Staircase to the second floor.

  As Braeden entered his bedroom, she thought he was going to go to sleep, but then he got down on his hands and knees and dragged a heap of outdoor clothes from under the bed. They were dry, so they weren’t the clothes he’d worn in the flume, but the shirt, trousers, and boots were stained with dirt. They’d been used before without being washed. He quickly pulled the clothes on and then grabbed the rope out from under his bed.

  “Here we go again,” she said as he went out the window.

  Serafina climbed down the rope to the terrace below and then followed him through the gardens. “Back to the Black Cloak again?” she asked him.

  But then Gidean came running toward him out of the darkness. Instead of going toward the pond, Braeden and Gidean followed a path into the forest. It was a path she knew well. And clearly so did Braeden.

  He was heading for the graveyard where she was buried.

  Serafina followed Braeden through the forest at a distance, uncertain how her presence might affect him. That first night she came to him, he had suffered such anguish. She wasn’t keen on driving him afoul again, so she let him get a fair piece in front of her.

  She made her way through the darkened cemetery on her own, following the path that she thought Braeden was on. But she could no longer hear him and Gidean walking ahead of her. Either she’d let them get too far up the path or something else had happened. Suddenly, she felt very much alone.

  As she crept past the weathered headstones marking the graves, the graveyard’s swampy moist air clung to her skin like leeches. A low chorus of crickets, cicadas, and other buzzing insects pulsed around her. Long, wispy trails of mist oozed across the ground at her feet. The twisting roots of the old trees weaved through the damp earth beneath her bare feet, and vines hung down from the trees’ crooked, dangling limbs.

  She had already read many of the epitaphs chiseled in block letters on these gravestones, and she had no desire to do it again tonight, but as she moved among them, the voices of the dead came alive.

  Here lies blood, and let it lie, speechless still, and never cry, one said, but she tried not to look or listen.

  Our bed is lovely, dark, and sweet. Come join us now and we shall meet, said the two sisters lying in the ground side by side. It felt as if they were talking to her, inviting her back to where she belonged.

  She hurried past the cloven man and through the six-sixty crosses of the buried Confederate soldiers. When she finally made it through the graveyard, she came to the small open area of the angel’s glade.

  She found Braeden lying stretched out facedown on the dirt mound of her grave. His body was flat to the ground. His left leg was straight, but his right leg was bent beside him, clenched in the metal brace. His arms were up around his head, the fingers of his hands splayed, as if he had been holding the earth. Gidean lay flat on the ground a few feet away, just as still as he.

  Serafina’s heart filled with fear, for it looked like they were both dead. She couldn’t breathe.

  But then Braeden’s head moved and Serafina exhaled in relief.

  Braeden’s eyes were closed and his face filled with sadness, but he was alive. He had come to visit her, to sleep there on the ground, stretched out on her grave.

  She noticed the dried stains on his trousers and the old dirt on his boots. He’d been here before. Many times. He hadn’t been sneaking out of the house every night to use the Black Cloak. He’d been coming here.

  She imagined him coming out here night after night, sleeping on her grave when his family thought he was home in his bed.

  Had Mr. Vanderbilt come during the night with a search party and looked upon his nephew in dread? Was that why Mr. Vanderbilt had been so concerned about him? Was that why he’d told Braeden that he had double-locked Biltmore’s doors?

  As Braeden lay on her grave, his shoulders moved with a slow and troubled breathing.

  She gazed upon him in sadness, pursing her lips as she felt a thickness catching in her throat.

  For a long time, h
e did not speak or move from the grave. He just lay there in the dirt. It was as if his thoughts had overwhelmed him and he’d collapsed there.

  She moved closer to him, her chest rising and falling, slow and steady, with every breath she took, and she knelt down beside him.

  She could see that his hands were trembling.

  She studied his face, and his closed eyes. When he squeezed his eyes shut even tighter, she watched a tear roll down his cheek, fall, and drop into the dirt. Tiny specks of dust floated into the air around where it fell.

  She pulled in a sudden, heaving breath of emotion, and tried to let it out with a measured calm, but her sigh was ragged.

  When he finally lifted his face, he looked up at the stone angel. “I gave her to you,” he said, his voice shaking. “But what have you done?”

  Serafina felt a storm of dizziness passing through her. Tears welled up in her eyes.

  As she looked around the gravesite, she noticed that the mound of dirt he was lying on seemed strangely undisturbed. She was surprised that the broken boards of the coffin weren’t sticking up out of the ground where she had crawled out.

  “What do you want me to do?” Braeden shouted desperately at the angel. “Tell me what to do!”

  She wished she could reach out to him, somehow touch him, somehow talk to him. “I’m here, Braeden,” she said. “I’m here!”

  She put her hand on his. She could not truly feel the living warmth of his hand, and it was clear that he could not feel her, but the closeness of her spirit seemed to rack him with new grief. His face contorted with a dark and terrible sorrow.

  Horrified by what she was doing to him, she quickly rose to her feet and stepped back. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice weak.

  “I’m not going to leave you, Serafina,” he said, getting himself up onto his feet. “I’m not going to abandon you!”

  He hadn’t heard her words, he was still speaking to her in the grave, but it pulled at her heart. She desperately wanted to show him a sign that she had heard him. No matter what had happened, they were still friends, they were still together. Her death wasn’t going to be the end of them. It couldn’t be.

  She looked around her, determined to find a way to communicate with him.

  Dust to dust, she thought. Of earth they were made, and into earth they return. That was what was happening to her. She was returning. But for the moment, there was still a little trace of her that lingered in the world.

  Harmless as a fly, Serafina thought. But even a fly can do things. And now she had an idea.

  Wanting to make as big a movement as possible, she stepped onto the mound of the grave and spun around in a circle, shouting and kicking, jumping up and down, trying to make every kind of wild commotion she possibly could.

  But nothing happened. The dirt didn’t move.

  She was useless.

  But then she remembered. Play the flute…

  She got down onto her hands and knees, leaned down, pulled some air into her lungs, and blew out a gentle, perfect breath just like she’d practiced.

  Suddenly, a tiny flurry of dust swirled up into the moonlight in front of Braeden.

  She cheered with a great shout. She’d done it just the way she’d practiced, and at just the right moment!

  But Braeden did not see it.

  She had accomplished nothing.

  More discouraged than ever, she flopped to the ground. The whole thing was hopeless.

  But then she noticed that Gidean had sat up and was looking in her direction. His ears were perked and his eyes alert. He wasn’t looking at her, but at the dust she had stirred.

  He was staring straight at it.

  He tilted his head quizzically.

  “It’s me, Gidean!” she shouted.

  She blew into the dirt again, and another little cloud of dust curled up.

  Gidean rose slowly to his four feet. He tilted his head, trying to understand what he was seeing.

  “I’m alive, Gidean!” she shouted.

  Finally, Gidean barked in recognition. And then he started digging.

  Serafina pulled back in surprise, startled. She wasn’t sure what she had been expecting, but she definitely didn’t think the silly dog would dig! But she didn’t know how to stop him.

  Gidean dug furiously with his front paws, throwing a rooster tail of dirt behind him.

  Startled, and spitting out the flying dirt hitting his face, Braeden scrambled out of the way.

  “What’s going on?” he asked in confusion. “What are you doing, boy?”

  But Gidean just kept digging straight down into Serafina’s grave, throwing dirt like he was a steam-powered digging machine.

  “Stop, Gidean. Don’t!” Braeden commanded him. He grabbed the dog by the shoulders and tried to hold him back, but the boy was no match for the dog’s strength.

  “What are you doing?” Braeden demanded, his voice filled with worry and fear. “Don’t do this! We can’t do this!”

  Serafina knew he was scared of what anyone would be scared of digging up a grave, that he’d find her grotesque, putrefied body.

  But Gidean didn’t stop. He just kept digging.

  Braeden stepped back, obviously unsure what to do. He watched as his dog dug a deeper and deeper hole.

  Serafina could tell by the horrified look on Braeden’s face that he didn’t think he was prepared to see what he was about to see. And yet, at the same time, there was something tearing at him, some macabre curiosity, some overwhelming desire for Gidean to keep going. They had to change the dark and terrible world they’d been living in, they had to do something, and now Gidean was doing it!

  Braeden dropped down to his knees and started digging at Gidean’s side. He clawed rapidly at the earth with his bare hands, throwing the dirt behind him.

  Serafina didn’t know what they were going to find in the grave. Would there be an actual body? But she’d crawled out! She’d been walking through the world. There couldn’t be a body in the grave! But was there? Were they going to find her corpse rotting in the dirt? She could imagine her gray, decaying skin hanging from the broken white bones of her earthly remains.

  When Braeden and Gidean finally reached the coffin, Serafina was surprised to see that the lid was unbroken and still in place. Brushing aside the last of the dirt, Braeden pried the coffin’s lid away.

  Serafina gasped in astonishment at what she saw.

  Her body was lying in the coffin. She knew she should have expected it, but there was no way to prepare for it. She closed her eyes and shrunk away from the sight of it, bending at her waist and grabbing on to a tree to keep from falling over or collapsing to her knees. She covered her face and eyes with her other hand and struggled to pull in steady breaths of air—but with what lungs, what air? It felt as if her whole world was collapsing in on her. How could this be? How could she be in the grave?

  She didn’t want to look at the body, but she knew she must.

  She slowly turned and looked again, her nose and mouth wrinkling as she expected to see her body’s rotten skin peeling back from her bones.

  But her body wasn’t rotten. Her body was facing upward, with her eyes closed, her hands neatly lying one over the other on her chest, like someone had laid her there with respect and care. As she looked closer, she could see that some dirt had spilled into the grave onto her, but her face and body were not rotted. She was not a grotesque corpse. She appeared to be in some form of suspended animation, as if she lay in eternal spring. Braeden had brought her here to the angel’s glade, where decay and seasons and the cycles of the universe had no sway.

  Serafina stood over her own grave and stared down into the coffin at her body in disbelief. Braeden and Gidean stood beside her.

  Her body was clearly dead in that there was no life in her, no breathing or movement, and yet, her body was not blue or grayish of skin or decayed in any way. It seemed perfectly protected there, as if nothing would ever harm it.

  Serafina studied Braed
en’s expression. He did not seem surprised that her body was in the coffin. He seemed to expect that. He had put it there. But his eyes were wide and his face filled with shock about something else.

  “All the wounds are healed,” Braeden said in amazement. Her dress was badly torn and stained with old blood, but her body was in perfect condition.

  He turned and looked up at the angel.

  “You healed her,” he said, almost apologetically after the accusations he’d slung at her earlier that night. “You’ve been protecting her,” he said, as he wiped tears of relief from his eyes.

  Serafina gazed all around at the angel’s glade, with its beautiful, peaceful willow trees and its lovely green grass. It had always been this way, winter, spring, summer, and fall.

  Braeden looked up at the angel again and spoke to her as if she was not only a living, sentient being but a true friend. “But what do I do now? How do I help her?”

  He looked at the angel expectantly, but after a long time, his excitement faded, and some of his old sadness returned.

  “Don’t give up hope,” Serafina whispered.

  Finally, he laid himself down on the dirt next to her open grave like he himself was dead.

  “I’m not going to lose hope, Serafina,” he said. “Somehow, I’m going to get you out of here.”

  She knew he hadn’t truly heard her. They had been feeling the same thing at the same time.

  Serafina gazed down at Braeden lying beside the grave and she tried to understand it all. Her human body lay in the coffin. Her panther body was out in the forest, a wild animal. Her restless spirit had crawled out of the grave, carrying with it all the trappings and constraints she remembered of the physical world—the steadiness of the earth, the challenges of physical obstructions, the essence of sight and sound and feeling, pain and hunger and sleep. But it had left her body behind, like a cicada crawling out of its dried shell. Her spirit had made it all the way to Biltmore and haunted those within. And now she was back again. Her spirit was here once more.

  For a long time, she just tried to understand the difference between thought and action, between dream and waking, between the physical world and the spiritual, between perception and reality.