Serafina and the Splintered Heart Read online

Then, as if in reply, Braeden reached back around his shoulders and gathered the material of the Black Cloak’s hood into his fingers.

  “Don’t you do it!” she shouted at him. “Don’t put on the hood!”

  But then he slowly pulled the hood up onto his head. His face flashed with terror and revulsion. A storm of torment wrenched through him. As he turned toward her, the hanging pieces of the cloak’s shredded fabric went wheeling outward, ripping the air with splintering black shadow, tearing through everything around her.

  She knew the black tears were at least as much in her world as they were in his, the connection, the uncrossable bridge between the two planes. She didn’t know if he could see her now, or if he even had any idea she was there, but the twisting tears of blackness riving through the air struck her like a physical blow, slicing her with a blaze of searing-hot pain, and knocked her to the rocky ground.

  Filled with nothing but blind panic, she belly-crawled frantically over to a tree for cover. But when another black shadow tore through the space around her, the tree made no difference. The blackness cut right through it, bursting a section of the trunk to pieces and bringing the top of the tree crashing down.

  Seeing another black shadow coming toward her, she ducked down and tried to scramble away, but she tripped hard and tumbled head over heels. She splashed into the cold depths of the swollen river. And in that moment, she came to understand that sometimes the key to survival wasn’t resisting, but giving in.

  “Water,” she commanded herself, and she disintegrated instantaneously into millions of droplets of water and flowed away downstream.

  In that moment of pain, confusion, and fear when she fled Braeden and fell into the river, Serafina grasped one thing: she was a shape-shifter. Whether in body or spirit, a living whole or a wisp of elements, she was a shape-shifter.

  She flowed down the river for a long time, knowing only movement, a constant, sweeping, pulling force that carried her along through the current.

  She tried to pull herself back together again into spiritual form, but she couldn’t do it. She had shifted into the water, but now the water didn’t want to give her back. She could feel her droplets spreading apart, blending with the rest of the water, slipping into eddies, swirling behind rocks, seeping back into the universe.

  “Spirit!” she commanded forcefully, using the word to focus her mind, and finally pulled her spirit back together again. She crawled from the river several miles downstream from where she began.

  She didn’t know exactly what she had done when she splashed into the river, or how she’d done it, except to let herself fade into the water, to will herself into it, to envision herself becoming one with it, but now she clambered up onto the rocky ground and looked around her at the river and the forest. It was still dark and raining. She checked her arms and her legs. She flexed her hands, turned herself around, and moved her head back and forth. She was whole again. Maybe whole wasn’t the right word. She definitely wasn’t whole, she knew that, but she was the spirit she had been before.

  An idea leapt into her mind. “Body!” she said excitedly.

  But nothing happened. She did not change. Some part of her was broken. Her body was gone. Was this what death was, to be pulled back into the elements that made up the world? But if that was true, and she was dead, then why wasn’t she already gone? Why hadn’t she already disintegrated back into the world? What was her spirit clinging to?

  Finally, her mind turned back to Braeden and what she’d seen that night. Picking a direction, she headed into the forest, her only thought to put as much distance between her and the darkness-spewing Black Cloak as she could.

  When she was miles away and the rain finally stopped, she slowed down and caught her breath, but she kept moving. Every few steps, she checked the forest behind her, terrified that Braeden and the Black Cloak would be there.

  When dawn came with the dull glow of gray light slowly filling the southern sky, she came into a shaded dell of ferns in a secluded spot she had used before, and there the weight of all that she’d been through finally caught up with her. She collapsed to her knees in exhaustion, grief coiling through her in trembling sobs, then she curled up in a little ball on the forest floor and wept. Her heart ached so bad that it felt like it was going to break apart.

  She couldn’t believe what had happened. How was it possible that Braeden had the Black Cloak, and why had he put it on? Had he been using it to capture people’s souls?

  Still crying, she tossed and turned in her bed of ferns, her heart filled with anguish. She wasn’t sure if Braeden had actually seen her and had been trying to attack her with the cloak’s searing black shapes. Was it possible that Braeden had truly turned on her?

  She ran the back of her hand across her runny nose, wiped her eyes, and sniffled. She was a spirit, but she couldn’t separate herself from the memories and sensations of the physical world, the longing and the pain of it. Her chest and legs hurt from running. Her face hurt from crying. But more than anything, the pain was in her heart. Was heartbreak any less painful because it wasn’t physically real?

  She pressed her eyes shut, curled into a tighter ball, and covered herself with her trembling hands.

  After she crawled from the grave, she had rushed back to Biltmore to warn everyone about the evils she’d seen in the forest, to help them fight the coming storms and darkness, but it was hopeless. It was already all over. The darkness had already come. Her enemy had already attacked her and defeated her and pulled Braeden into his evil realm. Or maybe Braeden was the evil realm.

  What was she going to do now?

  She was nothing but a spirit, bodiless, powerless, dead and buried. The storms and the floods were coming to Biltmore. The water was rising. That clawed creature she’d seen in the forest was on its way. The sorcerer had already cast his spells, and she had already lost. She had lost everything. Her world was ending, and there was nothing she could do.

  Her only relief was when she fell into an exhausted sleep. She dreamed she was a droplet of water tumbling in the flow of a turbulent river, then drifting into the still waters of a placid lake, then lifting on the heat of the midday sun and sailing on a tumult of moisture-laden clouds, until she was rain, falling back down through the sky again, landing on a leaf, and then dripping down to the earth, and then running along the ground until she slipped into the flow of the river where she began. The water, the sun, the earth and sky…It felt as if she could see all the inner workings of the universe.

  She knew her time in the living world was coming to an end. She didn’t know how many more nights she had left before she faded, or how many times she could shift before she couldn’t shift back, but her body and her spirit were being absorbed back into the elements. Soon, she’d become so intermingled with the world, she would cease to be any semblance of what she had been before.

  When she woke, the forest was fresh and cool with morning air, but she felt so disoriented that she had to remind herself where she was and how she got there. It took her several seconds to piece together everything that had happened the night before.

  And as she lay there on the forest floor trying to understand, she gradually realized that she was not alone. A large animal lay in the grass a few feet away from her. It was a mountain lion, long of body and dark of fur.

  Serafina smiled and pulled in a long, deep, pleasurable breath. Seeing the cat lying there filled her heart with joy. It was a catamount she knew well.

  Not sure if the mountain lion knew she was there, and worried that she might scare him away, she did not move. She watched him for a long time, the gentle rise and fall of the cat’s chest, the slow curling of his tail and the small flicking of his huge paws. It was her friend Waysa. And he was dreaming.

  As she lay in the ferns beside him, she closed her eyes and tried once again to change into her feline form. But it didn’t come. Tears rose in her eyes, and she pressed her eyes shut and gritted her teeth.

  She would have
loved to have lain in this beautiful shaded place with Waysa in her panther form, to find just a little bit of peace, just a little bit of gentleness at this moment. That was all she wanted right now, to have her thick black fur, and her whiskers, and her claws, and her muscles, and her long tail, and her four padded feet, and her twitching ears. She just wanted to be a cat. She just wanted to be herself.

  The breathing of the lion beside her changed. Waysa slowly opened his beautiful brown-and-amber catamount eyes and scanned the forest for friend or foe. As his gaze turned toward her, she lifted herself up and looked at him, hoping beyond hope that he’d somehow see her there, lying in the ferns beside him, but he looked right through her. Waysa could see her no better than the others could.

  With Waysa near, she wondered where her mother and the cubs were. A pang of worry rippled deep through her belly. Had the sorcerer killed them like he had killed so many others?

  She looked around her and realized that she recognized this tranquil dell of ferns beneath the shade of the trees where she had taken refuge. In all her running and her panic during the night, she hadn’t come here by chance. This was a place that she and Waysa had spent time before.

  “Waysa, can you hear me?” she asked, her voice quivering with both hope and hopelessness. She missed her friend more than she could bear.

  Waysa’s ear twitched, but he didn’t look at her. He looked in the opposite direction. Then he rose to his four feet.

  Serafina heard a faint rustle of leaves, something coming slowly and quietly through the forest toward them.

  Waysa crouched down low onto his haunches as the sound approached. She wasn’t sure if he was frightened, uncertain, or excited about what was coming.

  Then Serafina saw it.

  The black head came through the brush first, then the impossibly bright yellow eyes, and the muscled black shoulders, the long black body, and the sweeping black tail. Serafina caught her breath. It was the young black panther she’d seen before.

  There can only be one black panther, Serafina thought. And there she is. It’s not me anymore. It’s her.

  Serafina felt like she should know who this panther was, but she didn’t.

  The panther scanned the meadow of ferns and spotted Waysa.

  Waysa hunched down his body even further. Serafina wasn’t sure if he was getting ready to pounce on her or if he was trying to make himself less threatening—for a cat, sometimes it was both at the same time.

  But whatever kind of movement it was, it was enough to spook the young panther. The panther turned away and bounded into the forest the way she came.

  Waysa sprang after her. At first Serafina thought he must be defending his territory against her, but then she realized that he wasn’t attacking her, he was trying to catch up with her, trying to run with her.

  “Good-bye,” Serafina said wistfully, as Waysa and the black panther disappeared into the forest together.

  Serafina found herself once again alone. Every friend she had made, everything she had gained in her life, was gone now. A deep and overwhelming pain filled her chest. She had to find out what had caused all this. The storm-creech she’d seen in the forest was still out there, and the black shapes were coming, destroying everything in their path. It felt like Biltmore and the people she loved were in more danger now than they had ever been.

  But she was powerless. In the physical world, she had no body, no claws, no teeth, no hands, not even a voice. But what is power? she wondered. Was it the weapons and tools to act, or the ability to think? Was it talking to someone, or doing something? If you have only a small amount of power, and you’re able to do only the tiniest, most insignificant things, does that mean you’re powerless? Or with that tiny power, do you have all the power in the world?

  She dropped down to her hands and knees and pushed at the dirt with her fingers. Nothing happened. Just as before, the world affected her, but she couldn’t affect the world. She tried again and again, and then gave up.

  The night before, she had shifted into the water of the stream, but she didn’t want to become the dirt. The grave, the dirt, the dust, that was the last thing she wanted to become. She’d never be able to get back. She wanted to move the dirt. To affect it. To change it, not her.

  A bumblebee buzzed by her, its dangling legs laden with clusters of yellow pollen. Getting an idea, she followed the bee. She came to a bush blooming with pale red flowers—bees, wasps, and other flying insects hovering around the bush, battling each other for position as they dipped in and sipped the nectar. Tiny yellow grains of pollen floated in the light of the sun. When she raised her hand and moved it slowly through the light, the bees and the pollen seemed to move away from her hand.

  Hopeful, she pulled in a lungful of air and blew out at the floating pollen, but nothing happened. She remembered a famous musician, a flute player, who once visited Biltmore. One of the children at dinner asked if she could play his flute. But no matter how hard the girl blew into the instrument, she could not get it to make a flutelike sound. “It takes a lot of practice,” the musician said kindly. “You have to do it just right.”

  And now here Serafina was trying to play the flute of the world. She blew the pollen from different angles and in different ways, slowly but surely figuring out how it worked. If she blew too hard or too soft or at the wrong angle, nothing happened. But if she blew just right, she could get the pollen to float in the way she wanted.

  I can’t do much, but I can do something, she thought, and if I can do even the smallest thing, then I am a powerful being.

  As she practiced, trying to figure out what she could do and how she could do it better, she remembered something her pa told her when she was younger.

  “Sometimes I reckon the universe we live in is one of God’s great machines,” her pa had said. “Its gears are nigh on invisible, and its spinning wheels are often silent, but it’s a machine all the same-like, with patterns and rules and mechanisms. And if you look real close, you can understand it, and for just a spell, in just the smallest way, you may be able to get it to do what you want.”

  When her pa told her that, he was talking about the mechanical devices he dealt with every day. He definitely wasn’t imagining his daughter as a whispery little haint blowing primordial dust, but she reckoned the principle was the same.

  By practicing over and over again, she found that she could move dust and pollen floating in the air where she wanted it. She could rustle the edge of a leaf and change the flight path of a bee. And it all made her laugh. The mere act of having an effect on something, anything, caused her immeasurable joy. It meant that, at least for a little while longer, she was real.

  She went over to the bank of the stream and tried to see if she could use her hands to channel the water in a certain way, creating little turbulent eddies near the stream’s shore. She found that she couldn’t block the water with her fingers or lift it in the cup of her hands. But sometimes, if she focused on the flowing water in just the right way, she could shape its movement.

  She slowly realized that one of the most important things was that she had to let go of this idea that she was a human being or a catamount with a physical body in the living world. She had to accept the idea that she was a different kind of thing now, a spirit, just thought, and soul, a tiny wave of energy and elements—dust and wind and water. And when she began to accept this, to let herself slip away with the flow of the world, she began to see the fabric that held everything together, and she could give it a little tug.

  Through all this practice, she kept thinking about the terrible evil spreading across the land. Somehow, she had to fight it. But the loneliness of it all was nearly unbearable. She wanted to talk to Waysa and run at his side. She wanted to warn Mr. Vanderbilt about the coming dangers. More than anything, she wanted to ask her pa for advice about what she could do.

  But of course, there was no point now. Waysa and Mr. Vanderbilt and her pa and the others couldn’t hear her words. There was no o
ne, absolutely no one in the world, who even knew she was there.

  And then she looked in the direction of the dark river she’d seen a few nights before, and she paused.

  Or was there?

  The sorcerer by the river, Serafina thought.

  “I can’t see you, but I know you’re there,” the sorcerer had said. He’d actually spoken to her.

  But it had frightened her, and she ran away like a startled deer.

  If I had only known, Serafina thought.

  When she tried to remember the details of that first strange night, she could still feel the fear in her heart. The sorcerer had been walking slowly through the forest by himself in the dead of night, working close to the ground. He had possessed some sort of dark power.

  Serafina didn’t want to return to where she had seen him by the river. The thought of it put a twisting knot in the pit of her stomach. But the truth was, she had run out of other paths to take. Her pa had told her once that true courage wasn’t because you didn’t feel fear. True courage was when you were scared of something, but you did it anyway because it needed to be done. If she was going to get back to the land of the living, she had to stay bold.

  She started walking in the direction of the river. As the sun rose toward noon, she thought she still had one more ridge and valley to go. But she heard the sound of rushing water ahead of her and soon came to a deeply flooded area. She realized this was the new shore of the river.

  This river in the forest had swollen far past where it had been before, flooding the trees for as far as she could see, the roots and trunks drowning in moving water. The flooding was so deep and wide that she couldn’t even make out the main course of the river, let alone the other side of it. The dark brown current rushed by, tearing at the vegetation and carrying it along, swirling in large, twisting whirlpools, and crashing up into whitewater torrents where the water passed through the upper branches of the trees. Her mind was slow to comprehend the unimaginable: the river had filled the valley. The water was tearing away everything in its path, trees and rocks—and now mountains—everything getting swept away.