Serafina and the Splintered Heart Read online

  She tore through the forest, gasping for breath, but pushed herself on, looking over her shoulder for signs of the storm-creech and the black shapes.

  As the rain and wind slowly died down, and the storm faded behind her, she kept going at a hurried pace.

  Finally, she was relieved to see the glow of the moon peeking through the clouds. Day folk knew that the sun rose in the east and set in the west, but many didn’t realize that the moon did as well. Its black shadows among the trees were like arrows pointing the way home. As soon as she got her wits about her, she figured out what direction she needed to go, and went as fast as she could. She had to warn the people of Biltmore about what she had seen.

  But just as she began to make progress, she came to the edge of a river blocking her path. She scanned the surrounding area in confusion.

  “Don’t tell me you’ve gone and gotten yourself lost,” she scolded herself.

  She had thought she was close to home. She remembered a creek near here, small and shallow, just a quick leap across. But what blocked her path now was a powerful river, turbulent and strong, ripping through the trees. Its shores weren’t the rocky edge of a normal river, but the flooded forest.

  It was strange how so much had changed. If the little creek she remembered was now this churning river, then there must have been many other storms like the one she’d just fought her way through. A knot of worry bunched in her stomach. There were few things in the mountains more powerful and damaging than the rushing waters that had formed them.

  Knowing she had to get home, she stepped into the dark water of the river to cross it. The current felt like tiny shards tearing at her bare skin. She’d waded across plenty of rivers, but this was a strange and alarming sensation that she’d never felt before. When she took another step, it became very clear that the river was far too deep and turbulent for her to cross. It seemed like it wanted to suck her in and pull her under.

  Looking out across the river, she was amazed to see an entire tree—branches, trunk, and roots and all—floating downstream, tumbling through the current, like a great, leafy leviathan. Many of the largest and oldest trees at the edge of the river had toppled into the current, the earth beneath their roots ripped away by the powerful pull of the rushing water.

  She stepped back out of the flooded river and away from the edge, convinced that the dark, malevolent water wanted to consume her. She couldn’t cross here. But if she was anywhere near where she thought she was, there were no roads or bridges for quite a while.

  “We’re in a real pickle now, girl,” she said, talking to herself the way her pa did. “What we gonna do about it? That’s the question.”

  Then she had an idea.

  She made her way upstream along the shore until she found one of the tallest trees hanging over the river, its great, spreading boughs almost reaching across and touching the trees on the other side. She knew the relentless current tearing at its roots would soon bring the tree crashing down into the river, but for now it was her path.

  She climbed up the trunk and then outward on the limbs, high up over the river’s tumbling flow, moving from branch to branch, her goal to cross over the river the way she’d seen squirrels do it, using the canopy of the trees as her bridge.

  But as she crawled farther out, the tree’s branches became slender green saplings bending and whipping in the wind. It felt like the wind was going to sweep her away. Every muscle in her body clenched as she bobbed and swayed in the upper branches. She could see the closest tree on the other side, a great pine with sturdy branches thick with needles, but she couldn’t leap across such a great distance. It was just too far.

  Looking down, all she could see a hundred feet below her was the swirling black water of the river. If she lost her grip here, or tried to jump to the tree on the other side, then she’d go plummeting down. She’d either die when she hit the water or get swept away in the current and drown. One way or another the river would have her, just like it wanted.

  As she was trying to figure out what to do, she heard a stick break on the forest floor down below her, back in the direction from which she had come. She swiveled, scanning the forest for danger. Had the storm-creech followed her scent and tracked her here? But then she spotted a robed figure moving slowly through the trees.

  What kind of devil-spawn is comin’ now? she thought in exasperation. I just want to get on home!

  She squinted her eyes and peered down through the branches of the trees, trying to make out who or what was down there.

  It was a man wearing long robes, and a hood of some sort covered his head, like one of the old Celtic druids from ancient Britain that she’d seen depicted in Mr. Vanderbilt’s books.

  As he made his way through the forest, the robed man opened a pale and delicate hand in front of him. Suddenly, a glowing, hissing torch of blue light, like a tiny ball of lightning, rose up from his palm and hovered over his shoulder, lighting his way through the darkness.

  Some kind of sorcerer, Serafina thought as she crouched lower. Her heart began to pound in her chest. The storm-creech, the floating black shapes, the storms…They were all his doing. Everything she had seen must have been the sorcerer’s conjurations. Had it been the sorcerer who attacked her on the Loggia? Had he already taken over Biltmore? She had to get home.

  But how? She was stuck up in a tree a hundred feet above a raging river.

  When the dark-robed sorcerer stopped walking, the hair on the back of Serafina’s neck stood on end. Her whole body began to shake. Every sense inside her was telling her to fight or flee. Flee, her mind kept telling her. Flee before it’s too late!

  The sorcerer slowly lifted his head and looked up into the trees in her direction.

  Serafina scurried for cover, pushing herself farther out onto the thinner branches of the tree even as they bent and twisted in the wind, lifting her and dropping her in sudden movements that made her stomach feel like it was floating.

  She scanned the branches on the opposite side of the river. A moment before, it had been too far to jump, but her muscles were bursting now, her whole body filled with panic.

  She focused her eyes on the branch she had to jump to, tilted her head to study the angle, then leapt for it with a mighty grunt.

  As she flew through the air she envisioned herself as the black panther deep inside her soul and tried to shift her shape. She could see her panther form clearly in her mind. This was the moment. She was in midair. She had to do it now!

  But the shift didn’t come.

  She reached out desperately with her thin, human arms as she sailed through the air, trying to grab hold of the branches of the pine tree on the other side. When she felt her hands touch the branches, she grabbed hold. She had made the distance! But her body swung too hard, and she immediately lost her grip and continued to fall.

  Her arms flailed, reaching out in all directions as she tried to catch hold of something, anything, on the way down.

  She slammed into a thick branch. It knocked the wind out of her with a painful crack. She twisted around and frantically tried to hold on to the branch, but couldn’t.

  She fell again, hit the branch below her, reached out, fell, grabbed, fell, slipped again, reached out, slipped, then grabbed hold with an infuriated snarl and finally held fast.

  She found herself clinging to the bough of a pine tree some fifty feet lower than where she’d started. Her arms and legs were scratched and bleeding. The long, curving spine of her back, usually so supple and strong, hurt something fierce. Grabbing at the hard branches on the way down had jammed her measly human fingernails painfully into her fingers.

  Frightened to make any more racket than she already had, and still wincing from the pain of the crashing fall, she gritted her teeth and quickly crawled into the cover of the pine tree’s inner branches and hid.

  She peered out from her hiding spot, sure that the sorcerer must have heard her. She expected to see him staring up at her, or casting a spell, or sum
moning one of the black shapes to finish her off.

  Instead, the smoking, hissing blue ball of burning light came toward her, floating up into the trees, illuminating everything around it in a bright halo as the sorcerer looked on from below. Serafina cowered into her hiding spot in the thick cluster of pine needles as the eerie blue light came closer.

  The buzzing, burning light smelled like a lightning storm, and made her hair float up around her head. But she stayed hidden where she was, her skin tingling.

  Finally, the light floated on, and the sorcerer continued his journey through the forest.

  Serafina let out a deep sigh of relief and started breathing again.

  She watched as the sorcerer made his way through the ferns that grew along the edge of the river. He leaned down and pulled some sort of plant from the ground, then moved on.

  Suddenly, Serafina noticed something out of the corner of her eye, something moving much closer to her. Snapping her head toward it, she saw a large, silvery spiderweb glistening in the starlight, its eight-legged spinner lurking on the outer edge with its many eyes watching her. As the spider moved, tiny droplets of dew on the web shimmered in the light, some jostling loose and falling to the forest floor below, others moving like quicksilver along the strands. Serafina knew it was impossible, but she swore she could not just see, but hear the droplets sliding along the strands of the web. She could actually feel them skittering along, like a shudder down her spine.

  Startled, she climbed away from the spider’s web and looked back down into the forest. The druid-sorcerer, or whatever he was, had gone down onto his knees now. The burning blue orb hovered over him like a lantern, giving him light to work. He dug through the boggy area at the edge of the river, gathering the tall, pitcher-shaped carnivorous plants that grew there.

  Just as she was about to creep away, the sorcerer spoke. He did not stop his work or look around him. He didn’t speak in a deep and frightening man’s voice like she expected, but a surprisingly soft, calm, steady tone. It was as if Serafina wasn’t hidden in a tree a hundred feet away but concealed in the bushes beside the hooded figure.

  “I can’t see you, but I know you’re there,” the voice said.

  Serafina burst out of her hiding spot and fled. She leapt from branch to branch down through the tree. As soon as she hit the ground, she ran, her bare feet thrashing quickly across the forest floor. When she looked over her shoulder, she didn’t see any sign of the sorcerer, but she kept running.

  Putting the dark river behind her, she fled way up into the rocks and trees of a high ridge, then through a wide, forested valley. When she finally slowed down, she could tell by the type and age of the trees that she was getting closer. She could see a soft glow of light in the distance, and it drew her home like a beacon.

  As she made her way along the edge of Biltmore’s bass pond, she noticed that the little stream that normally trickled into it was swollen with rain, filling the pond with more water than usual. The storms are coming, Serafina thought.

  The calm, flat water of the pond reflected the light of the stars and the moon, but she didn’t linger to admire it. She was anxious to get home, to make sure Braeden and her pa were all right, and to warn them about what she’d seen in the forest.

  She followed the garden path up through the pink and orange azaleas, which were blooming as bright as the moon itself. When she saw a faint green glow up the hill toward the rest of the gardens, she paused, uncertain. She knew Biltmore’s gardens well, but had never seen a greenish light like this before.

  Her first thought was that the sorcerer was already here, had already taken over and made Biltmore his domain. Then she heard the murmur of many voices.

  As she approached more closely, she saw that the green glow wasn’t a sorcerer’s spell, but the Conservatory all lit up for an evening party, the light shining through the leaves of thousands of orchids, bromeliads, and palms, and out through the greenhouse’s many panes of glass.

  She crept along the edge of the building and looked into the Walled Garden, where she saw hundreds of ladies in formal summer dresses and gentlemen in black tailcoats gathered for the party. The windows of Biltmore House blazed above, the south walls and towers of the mansion rising like an enchanted castle into the night.

  The Walled Garden had been strung with the kind of softly glowing Edison bulbs that her pa used. And smaller lights hung along the wooden arbor that covered the central path of the garden, the lights tucked among the leafy vines and flowering blooms like little faeries taking refuge among the leaves. She had never seen so many beautiful lights in her life.

  Hiding in the bushes near the rose keeper’s stone shed, she scanned the crowd for Braeden, but she didn’t see him. He was a reserved boy, not always the center of attention, but his aunt and uncle usually encouraged him to attend the estate’s social events. She and Braeden had shared so many adventures. And they had been through so much together. He was her closest and most trusted friend. She couldn’t wait to see him.

  The fancy folk were mingling about on the perfectly manicured paths of the garden, holding champagne flutes in their elegant, flawless hands, chatting and sipping lightly as they promenaded among the roses, dahlias, and zinnias. Bathed in the Conservatory’s glow, a string quartet played a beautiful song. Footmen in their formal black-and-white livery strolled among the crowd serving custard tarts, cheeses, and freshly baked cream puffs from their trays. Serafina suddenly felt pangs of hunger.

  But everything about this party flummoxed her. It must have taken weeks of planning to arrange all this, and yet she hadn’t heard anything about it. And why wasn’t Braeden here? There were so many strangers. Where were Mr. and Mrs. Vanderbilt?

  A few of the more adventurous adult guests and a coterie of their fancifully attired children huddled together and lit candles inside small paper lanterns, then held them aloft. As if by magic, the rising heat of the candles lifted the lanterns upward out of their hands into the nighttime sky. Serafina watched with the other children as the lanterns floated slowly up into the heavens. She couldn’t help but smile at the sight of it, but then a sadness swept through her. She knew it was foolish after everything she’d been through, but she felt so sad that she hadn’t been invited to this wonderful party. It was an evening party. And she was a creature of the night! If anyone should have been part of it, she should have been! It felt like so much had changed, like the whole world had been slipping by without her.

  After destroying the Black Cloak and freeing the estate’s lost children from its dark imprisonment, she had entered the daylight world upstairs. The Vanderbilts had welcomed her into their home. She had become part of Biltmore now. Hadn’t she? So why wasn’t she at this party? It made her qualmish in her stomach thinking about it. What had happened? What had she missed? Hadn’t anyone noticed that she wasn’t there?

  It was hard to understand how all these fancy-dressed people could gather for this lovely party, when just a few miles away a storm had raged through the forest. A short distance down the hill the inlet stream was quietly flooding the pond. A dark force was coming, but they seemed to have no idea.

  When she heard Mrs. Vanderbilt’s gentle laugh in the distance, Serafina turned hopefully toward the sound. She saw right away that Braeden wasn’t there, but Mr. Vanderbilt and Mrs. Vanderbilt were standing together with several of their guests near one of the rose trellises.

  Mr. Vanderbilt was easily recognizable with his black hair and mustache, and his lean, shrewd face with dark, inquisitive eyes. He was dressed in a handsome black tux with tails and white tie. Many of the men she’d spied on over the years were loud of voice and boisterous of manner, but Mr. Vanderbilt was a quieter, more refined, thinking kind of gentleman. Usually, if he wasn’t reading in his library, he was watching and learning from those around him. He was always kind and welcoming in spirit when he spoke to people, whether they were guests or servants or workers on the estate, but he also seemed to enjoy watching people from a d
istance at parties, taking everything in.

  Mrs. Vanderbilt was more outgoing, more talkative and social with the guests. She had dark hair like her husband, and a similar spark of intelligence, but she had an easy charm and a gracious smile. She wore a lovely, loosely flowing mauve dress, but what truly stunned Serafina was that Mrs. Vanderbilt’s belly was large with her baby. The last time Serafina had seen her, she couldn’t even tell that she was with child.

  It hasn’t just been twenty-eight days, Serafina thought. She felt as if she were being lowered into a deep, dark well. I’ve been gone for months…They’ve all forgotten about me…

  “And where is that dear nephew of yours tonight?” one of the lady guests asked Mrs. Vanderbilt.

  “Yes, indeed,” said the lady’s husband. “Where is Young Master Braeden?”

  “Oh, he’s around,” Mrs. Vanderbilt said lightly, but Serafina noticed that the mistress of the house didn’t actually look around her when she said these words. It was as if she already knew her nephew wasn’t nearby. She was acting cheerful in front of her guests, but Serafina could hear the twinge of concern in her voice.

  As Mrs. Vanderbilt and her friends continued their conversation, Mr. Vanderbilt stepped back from them and looked up toward the Library Terrace. Serafina could see the wrinkles of worry around his eyes and mouth.

  “So, how has Braeden been doing?” one of the guests asked Mrs. Vanderbilt.

  “Oh, he’s fine,” Mrs. Vanderbilt said. “He’s fine. He’s doing well.”

  One he’s fine was enough, Serafina thought, but two was too many. There was definitely something wrong.

  “If you’ll excuse me for a moment,” Mr. Vanderbilt said. He touched his wife’s arm, and then left them.

  As Mr. Vanderbilt walked quickly through the crowd, several people tried to talk to him, for he was host of the grand party, but he kindly gave his regrets and kept moving.

  Ducking through the hedges, Serafina followed him. After being away for months, the sight of her was no doubt going to startle him, but as soon as he was alone, she was going to tell him about the dangers she’d seen in the forest. She could show him the rising water of the pond as evidence of it all. But she sensed the urgency in his movement.