Serafina and the Splintered Heart Page 8

  As she walked along the flooded bank, she realized that the place where she had seen the sorcerer a few nights before was long gone. She could feel the muddy earth she was standing on slipping away beneath her feet, the inexorable pull into the all-consuming current. The thought of it would have frightened her even in the best of times, but in her current state, she was terrified by the thought of getting sucked into a mudslide. She turned tail and headed for high ground.

  In the afternoon, she curled up beneath the overhang of a rock to rest. A few hours later, she started awake with a sudden jerk. But when she woke up, she couldn’t move her arms or legs. She couldn’t raise her body from the ground. She tried to pull air into her lungs, but she felt the solidness of the earth against her, all around her, holding her in and pressing her down. Clenching her teeth, she clawed and snarled, twisted and bent, cracking the brittle stone around her. “Not yet!” she told the earth as she climbed out and brushed herself off.

  It’s getting worse, she thought, stumbling away from the crevice of stone that had nearly caught her. I’ve got to keep moving.

  As she continued her search for the sorcerer and the sun began to set, she came to a steep slope and followed it down into a wet area of bulrushes and cattails. She found her way into a mountain bog where the ground was nothing but thick layers of spongy sphagnum moss and peat, the ancient fiber of a hundred forests that had come before. The bog exuded the dense, vaporous aroma of year upon year of amassed plants and thick black soil. The moss felt damp and strangely buoyant beneath her bare feet as she walked.

  Cinnamon fern and swamp laurel with dark pink flowers grew out of the wet, mushy trunks of long-fallen trees. Tiny red cranberries grew all over the leafy ground. And delicate purple and violet dragon-mouthed orchids hung spiraling down.

  As she delved deeper into the bog, she stayed alert for any signs of the sorcerer.

  In the puddles on the ground, yellow-spotted salamanders scurried this way and that, and small bog turtles with orange necks crawled around. Southern irises, trout lilies, and arrowhead plants were growing everywhere, along with pitchers, sundews, and other carnivorous plants.

  Just ahead, she heard a faint, buzzy peeeent.

  Curious, she moved toward the sound and came to a small meadow in the bog. The sun had set behind the trees just a few minutes before and a soft, dusky orange light filled the western sky.

  Peeeent!

  She finally saw it: a small, pudgy, well-camouflaged brownish bird with an extremely long bill sat on the ground in the center of the meadow.

  It was a timberdoodle.

  Hunters who came to visit the estate called the birds woodcocks. Mountain folk called them bogsuckers or brush snipes. She thought it was interesting how different people had different names for the same thing. Mountain lion, puma, panther, painter, cougar, catamount…there were many names for her kin. Waysa had taught her that the Cherokee word was tsv-da-si.

  She wondered what kind of name people had for what she had become. A haint, a haunt, a shade, a phantom, a spirit, a specter, an ethereal being…

  Suddenly the shy little timberdoodle burst up into the air in a crazy, spiraling flight, its wings whistling and all a-twitter, flying great sweeping circles up into the twilit sky. When it reached the very top of its spiral, the woodcock hovered for a moment, as if held in the air, then sang out a liquid song. From there it began to fall, tumbling back down toward the earth, folding and fluttering like it had been shot with a gun, but all the while singing through its vainglorious display.

  Serafina smiled. She’d never seen the sky dance of the timberdoodle before, but her pa had told her the stories. In this place, in this moment, for just a few minutes during sunset, this normally shy, lonely little bird called out to the world, I’m here! I’m here!

  He’s just looking for a friend, she thought. I wonder if something like that would work for me…The thought of standing out in the middle of the meadow and leaping in great circles, tilting and twittering, and yelling, I’m here! I’m here! brought a cheer to her heart.

  Finally, the timberdoodle landed exactly where he’d started.

  It was then that Serafina lifted her eyes and saw the silhouette of a person standing and watching from the other side of the meadow.

  It was the dark-robed sorcerer she’d seen by the river. Serafina ducked down to conceal herself, not sure if the sorcerer could see her.

  When the hooded man finally turned and walked away, Serafina stayed low, gave him a few minutes to put some distance between them, then skirted the meadow and followed him. Serafina moved as quietly as she could through the wet forest bog, but she was determined not to let the sorcerer slip away.

  Then the sorcerer stopped and stood very still.

  Serafina hunkered down and hid behind the trunk of a large tree.

  The sorcerer turned his head and looked in the direction she was hiding.

  She thought that after a moment the sorcerer would turn back around and resume walking toward his destination, but he did not.

  He lifted his head, then raised his thin, delicate hands and gently pulled his hood down until the dark cloth gathered around his shoulders.

  That was when Serafina saw the sorcerer’s face for the first time. It was not a man, but a girl! About fourteen years old, she had a pale complexion, dark red lips, and long red hair. The girl’s green eyes scanned the forest, looking right where Serafina was hiding. Serafina crouched down even farther, but she couldn’t help peeking through the vegetation back at the girl.

  Her expression was filled with a grave and somber stillness, as if she had suffered a great loss. She had about her the feeling of someone who was hiding, diminished, but stoically unwilling to relinquish life, like a broken owl who no longer has the heart to fly.

  The girl was nearly unrecognizable in manner and form, but Serafina knew exactly who it was.

  Fear shot through Serafina. She hunched down low and peered through the bushes. It was Rowena! Too close now to flee, Serafina wanted to pounce fast and fight her old enemy. A growling, seething anger rose up inside her for all the terrible things Rowena had done. But the more she watched the wretched girl, the more curious Serafina became.

  Rowena had changed. The angles of her face, the movement of her body, and especially her spirit and mannerisms, were all different. Her hair was still red, but it wasn’t dressed up into fancy curls like before. It was long and thick around her neck and shoulders. Her face was still pale, but she wasn’t wearing any lady’s makeup to brighten her lips or shadow her eyes. And she wasn’t wearing a stylish dress like she always had. She wore simple, dark robes, like a hermit who had withdrawn from the world. She did not appear to have a horse or carriage anymore. She walked through the forest alone.

  Rowena peered in Serafina’s direction for several long seconds, studying the bushes where she was hiding as if she knew she was there. Serafina remained very still, unsure what Rowena could and couldn’t sense.

  Finally, Rowena pulled the hood back up around her head and continued walking through the misty lowlands of the bog.

  Serafina released a long, steady breath, relieved that she’d avoided Rowena’s detection. There was a part of Serafina that wanted to turn around and go home, go the other way, let wounded owls lie. But there was another part of her, the bolder, fiercer, more determined part, that was saying, Don’t let her get away.

  Serafina decided to follow her.

  Pretty sure that she was invisible to even Rowena, Serafina tracked through the bog behind her, but kept a safe distance, just in case. Sometimes she lost the girl in the gray mountain mist, but then she would catch up again.

  Soon they came to a faint path that wound even deeper into the wetlands, through a dark and shadowed grove of old, ragged cedar trees, with leafy ferns all around and moss-covered trunks.

  Finally, Serafina watched as Rowena came to a small habitation.

  At first it seemed like nothing more than a large clump of tree bra
nches. Thin, twisty twigs had grown downward from the larger limbs of the trees, and the spidery roots had grown upward, creating tight, interwoven walls of sticks with a stick-woven roof overhead. The embers of a small cook fire glowed in front of the shelter’s entryway. Various collections of plants lay here and there on logs, as if drying in what little sun might filter down through the trees during the day.

  Serafina watched as Rowena tended to a row of carnivorous plants growing near her lair, mumbling strange and unrecognizable words as she pinched small, struggling flies and hornets in her fingers and dropped them into the awaiting mouths of the plants.

  A few inches from where Serafina was crouched, and in various other areas of the forest around the shelter, hazes of white spiderwebs stretched between the trees. Feeling a crawling sensation on her spine, she looked more closely into the mass of web and saw thousands of black spiders with crooked legs and red hourglasses on their backs. Sucking in a gasp, she quickly moved away and found a new tree to hide behind. Her pa had taught her that the black widows were the most dangerous spiders around, but she’d never seen them bunched into large nests like this before.

  She watched as Rowena worked. Pitcher plants, butterworts, and other carnivorous plants grew all around the shelter, up the walls and the rooftop. Rowena took several small plants out of her satchel, positioned them nearby, and moved her hand over them, mumbling something Serafina didn’t understand. When Rowena lifted her hand, the plants had taken root in their new position.

  When Rowena was done planting what she had gathered, she went over to the small stream that ran nearby, its water tinted light brown with the tannin of the swamp, where she slowly washed her hands. Serafina couldn’t help but notice that it was the only small, gentle stream she’d seen in a long time. She wondered if the storm-creech did not know about this hidden place.

  Serafina crept deeper into Rowena’s lair, more and more curious about what she was seeing.

  Several chickens and gray spotted fowl roamed nearby, along with a tribe of goats with long, shaggy black hair, thick, curving horns, and strange, square pupils in their eyes.

  Serafina peered into the shelter of woven sticks. Other than the simple bed and a place for food, it seemed to be filled with glass flasks and orbs containing green, yellow, and milky-white liquids.

  As she watched Rowena slowly and calmly gather leaves from some of the plants outside the shelter, Serafina frowned. Rowena had been deceitful and dangerous, but she had been alert and full of life. Now she seemed so grave in spirit. It was as if a great loneliness had grown within her, and now had nearly taken her over, like a thick carpet of moss overtaking a tree that had fallen onto the forest floor.

  “I can feel you watching me,” Rowena said.

  Serafina froze right where she was, her heart pounding.

  “I told you to leave me alone,” Rowena said harshly. “I’m through with you!”

  Serafina moved back a little and crouched down in the bushes.

  Rowena pulled back her hood and shouted angrily out into the woods in the other direction, “Just get out of here! I don’t want you here!”

  It seemed that Rowena couldn’t see her after all. But who was she talking to?

  Curious to see what would happen, Serafina stepped a little closer.

  “No! I told you to go away,” Rowena said as if she knew exactly what she was doing. “I can hear you breathing down my neck. I’m not going to do your bidding anymore. I’m through with you, so stop bothering me!”

  As Rowena stood up in anger, the air around her compressed and expanded violently, buffeting Serafina back. Frightened, Serafina quickly retreated into the forest.

  Serafina knew she should turn and slink away from Rowena’s wet, boggy lair. It was obvious that her old enemy had become far more powerful. But in other ways, the girl seemed so diminished.

  Serafina thought about abandoning this idea of approaching Rowena and just skulking back to Biltmore and trying to make the best of her situation, but she hated the thought of it. She couldn’t talk to them, she couldn’t warn them, she couldn’t help them in any way. In the nights to come, when the storms finally hit Biltmore and the rivers burst, what was she going to do? And what about Braeden? Had he started sucking up the souls of lost children like the Man in the Black Cloak, greedy for more power and more life, his skin slowly rotting from his body? Was he the root of all this evil or a victim of it? And no matter what he was, could she abandon him? When she thought about Waysa, she remembered him looking straight through her like she didn’t even exist anymore. The world was wrecked. It broke her heart to think about enduring another night of this. She pulled in a breath, plucked up her courage, and spoke.

  “I haven’t been bothering you,” she whispered. “I just got here.”

  Rowena immediately froze, obviously surprised by the sound of her voice.

  For several seconds, Rowena did not move or say a word. Her dark red eyebrows furrowed.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  Serafina couldn’t believe it: Rowena had heard her! She was actually talking to her!

  “I’m warning you,” Rowena said sternly, looking up into the air. “I’ll summon you out by force if I have to.”

  As Rowena lifted her open hand, the trees above Serafina began to shake and rattle with a threatening violence. Serafina could feel the air around her pulsating.

  “I know you’re there,” Rowena said, “so don’t just lurk out there. Tell me who you are!”

  Serafina was too frightened to answer, fearing that Rowena would destroy her the moment she said her name. She wanted to run while she still had the chance. But Rowena was the only person she’d encountered since she’d crawled from the grave who could hear her.

  “Are you living or are you dead?” Rowena demanded.

  Serafina froze. She didn’t know what to do.

  “I asked you a question,” Rowena said. “Are you living or are you dead?”

  Finally, feeling like she had no other choice, Serafina decided to speak again. “I…I don’t rightly know,” she admitted.

  Rowena seemed to understand that answer in ways that Serafina did not.

  “But who are you?” Rowena asked again. “Where do you come from?” Her voice was gentler now, almost kind, as if she’d enticed reluctant spirits from the shadows before.

  “I…” Serafina began, but then stopped, too uncertain to continue.

  “Don’t be frightened,” Rowena said, her voice filled with a compassion that Serafina had never heard from her before. “Just tell me your name. No harm can come from that.”

  “I’m…” Serafina stopped again.

  “Yes?”

  Serafina ducked down behind a tree. “I’m…Serafina,” she said finally.

  “The cat!” Rowena hissed, her face blanching as she spun around and peered out into the forest. She crouched down and looked all around her like she thought a catamount was going to pounce on her at any moment. And Serafina knew that she probably would have attacked the sorceress if everything had been the way it was before, but in her current form how could she fight Rowena? How could she do anything?

  “Something’s happened to me,” Serafina told her.

  “But you’re still here in this world,” Rowena said, her voice filled with uneasiness as she looked warily around her for signs of attack.

  “Part of me, at least,” Serafina said.

  Rowena paused, taking in these words. “But why have you come here?” she asked suspiciously.

  “You’re the only person I’ve found who can hear me,” Serafina said.

  Rowena pressed her lips together and nodded. “I can speak to both sides now.”

  “You mean the living and the dead…Were you the one who woke me from the grave? Were you talking to me?”

  Rowena ignored her question.

  “Was it you?” Serafina pressed her. “What did you say to me?”

  Rowena shook her head. “It doesn’t matter now, just th
e ramblings of a troubled soul, nothing of consequence. I have to be careful when I go to a cemetery, but especially that one.” Then Rowena’s tone took on a harder edge, like she wanted to change the subject. “Did you come here to my home to kill me, is that it, to seek your revenge?”

  Serafina knew it was a fair question. But as she had been talking to Rowena, she felt more and more relieved that she was finally able to interact with someone. Whether she wanted it to or not, her hatred for Rowena was slowly fading behind her into a past that seemed so long ago.

  “No,” she said to Rowena. “I didn’t follow you here to kill you. To be honest, after the battle for the Twisted Staff, I thought you and your father were already dead.”

  “We’re not easy to kill,” Rowena said.

  “But I don’t understand what’s happening. Is Braeden on your side now?”

  “No,” Rowena said.

  “But I saw him with the Black Cloak…”

  “Where did you see him?” Rowena asked quickly, her voice filled with so much interest that it made Serafina reluctant to answer.

  “I don’t understand,” Serafina said. “Where did the Black Cloak come from? I destroyed it on the angel’s sword the night we defeated Mr. Thorne.”

  “We remade it,” Rowena said. “The silver clasp is the core of its power, not the fabric.”

  Serafina frowned in aggravation, regretting she hadn’t found the clasp and melted it down when she’d had the chance. Rowena seemed to have so much more knowledge than she did, so much more capability, and yet there was something about her…a hopelessness in her, a feeling of resignation, of giving up. And there had been fear in her, too. She’d been frightened of something, telling it to go away. Who or what was she hiding from deep in this forest bog?

  “The truth is,” Serafina said finally, “I have no wish to harm you, Rowena. With the way I am now…I’m just right glad to know that I’m not just a gust of wind.”