When you’re dreaming, what happens if you fall asleep in your dream? Do you dream? And is your dream real life?
If she was dead and buried, how could she be tired?
She didn’t know, but maybe sleep wasn’t about the body, but about rest for the mind and the spirit.
All she knew was that she was exhausted. Trembling and forlorn, she curled up in a ball.
As she fell asleep, she slipped into a dream where she was biting and clawing, fighting in a black, swirling world, and then it all fell away and all she could feel was the earth and the river and the wind, a vast world without form, and she felt herself being swept through it like she was nothing but a particle of dust, and then a tiny droplet of water, and then a wisp of air, until she finally dissolved into nothingness.
She started awake with a violent jerk.
When she looked around the workshop she didn’t know whether she was awake or asleep. Did she just dream of her death? Or was her death the reality and what she was experiencing now the dream?
She remembered the frightening sensation of her feet being torn into little pieces by the current of the river, and the feeling of the wind high in the trees almost sweeping her away. I only have so much more time left here, she thought, and then I’m going to fade away completely.
She looked at her surroundings, trying to understand. It was dark, the witching hour between 3:00 and 4:00 a.m.
Still shaking from the dream, she rose from her bed and stood in the workshop, not sure what to do. She just stood there and breathed and tried to figure out whether she was truly breathing or dreaming of breathing or remembering breathing.
Finally, she went over to her pa sleeping on his cot.
She tried to touch his side to make sure he was truly there. She felt a vague shape, but no warmth, no response to her touch. It was just as it had been with Braeden.
Even though she couldn’t feel her father’s warmth, and he couldn’t feel hers, she curled up beside her pa like a little kitten so small and light that it wasn’t even felt against its master’s chest. And she tried not to sleep.
In the morning, when her pa woke and began his day, she tried to touch him, tried to speak with him, tried to tell him what was happening to her, tried to warn him about what she’d seen in the forest, tried to tell him to check the stream flowing into the pond, but the more she tried, the more sadness it seemed to cause him. Her presence wasn’t a comfort to him, but a sorrow. She was haunting him.
Finally, when he gathered his tool bag and went off to work, she let him go, not because she wanted to let him go, but for mercy’s sake.
Serafina sat alone at the bottom of the basement steps, her head on her hands. She had to figure out a way to get back into the world and warn everyone that they were in danger. She’d been attacked, and clearly Braeden had been attacked, and she was sure that there were more attacks to come.
“But what can I do?” she asked herself. How could she talk to the people she loved? How could she warn them?
She had found Mr. and Mrs. Vanderbilt, Braeden, Gidean, and her pa, but there was one more person at Biltmore who might be able to help her. She went up the back stairway to the fourth floor and down the corridor into the maids’ quarters.
When she came to the particular maid’s room she was looking for, the door was ajar.
As Serafina paused, a bad feeling crept into her.
“Essie?” she asked quietly. “Essie, are you there?”
Finally, Serafina slipped slowly into the room.
Her friend Essie’s room was empty and lifeless. Essie’s books and newspapers weren’t on the nightstand by the bed. Essie’s drawings of flowers and plants weren’t on the wall. Essie’s clothes weren’t strewn across the floor and chair. The bed had no sheets or pillows.
Serafina’s heart sank.
No one was living in this room anymore.
Essie was gone.
Remembering her friend’s old mountain stories of haints and nightspirits and other strange occurrences, Serafina had hoped that maybe Essie could help her, that maybe she could even talk with her in some way, but it was all for naught.
It just seemed so unfair, so wrong. She was home, but she felt homesick. Why couldn’t everything just stay the way it had been? She’d made friends and found new family. She’d worn beautiful dresses and had English tea with lots and lots of cream! She’d met her mother and run at her side. She’d nuzzled her head and felt her purr. But what had happened to her mother and the cubs? Were they gone like Essie? Serafina couldn’t bear the thought that something bad had happened to any of them.
As she stood in the room, she noticed the mirror on the wall.
As soon as she saw it, she froze where she was and her heart began to pound.
“Oh, no, I’m not doin’ that…” she said firmly.
She didn’t want to move toward it. She was too frightened to put herself in front of it and look at it.
What would she see?
Her old self? A whispery haint? A grave-walking ghoul bloodied with the wounds she could see on her torn, bloodstained dress? She was a ghoul. Suddenly she was sure of it. The last thing she wanted to see was the bloody, corpsy sight of her walking death.
Get hold of yourself, you frightened little fool, she scolded herself. You’ve got to figure this out! You’ve got to look!
She pulled in a long, deep breath.
Then she took a step toward the mirror.
Then another.
Finally, she slowly moved a little bit in front of it and looked at herself.
All she could see in the mirror was a glint of light, a faint blur of motion when she moved, as if she was nothing but air itself.
She had no reflection. She was nobody and nothing.
She remembered back to the time she’d looked into this mirror and noticed her amber eyes starting to change, and her black hair starting to come in, and how proud she’d felt of the beautiful dress she’d been wearing. Now she had no eyes, no hair, nothing.
So much of what she had come to know and love had just slipped away. Was this the work of the sorcerer, or was it simply how time passed?
It felt like it was more than that. It felt as if her world had been shattered into a thousand pieces like a Ming vase on a tiled floor. She kept wondering if she could pick up the pieces and put them back together again.
“Stay bold,” she told herself sternly. Stop this nonsense, feelin’ all sorry for yourself. Dream or real, dead or alive, you don’t give up, you don’t give in to hopelessness. You keep fighting!
Then, even as she was thinking these thoughts, she saw something very faint in the movement of light and air in the reflection of the mirror. There was something behind her. When she turned to look at what it was, she noticed the tiny particles of dust floating in random motion in the rays of morning light coming through the window.
She stepped toward the floating dust.
She marveled at how she could see the shape of each particle, the way it turned and caught the light as it tumbled through the air. The dust reminded her of the words spoken at funeral rites when a loved one was buried.
“And we commit her body to the ground,” the pastor would say. “We all go to the same place. All come from dust and all return to dust. Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”
As she studied the slow swirling motion of the dust in the sunlight, she whispered, “That’s what I am now.” Specks of dust floating in the air.
She lifted her hand and passed it slowly through the rays of light. Her hand caused no shadow, but she could swear that the motes of dust whirled up in little clouds around the movement of her hand.
“I’m here,” she said. “Just a little bit…I’m still here.”
Even if I’m just a minuscule speck of dust or a gust of air, then I still exist. There’s still hope.
She looked around at Essie’s empty room. The past was behind her. The future unknown. But what now?
She looked
out the window toward the mountains. Great banks of dark clouds were rolling across the peaks, vast sheets of rain drinking up the rays of the sun. The water of the French Broad River had risen so high in the last few nights that the ancient river had burst its banks and flooded the lagoon. The lagoon had been drowned in the water of the rains and completely swept away.
The storms are coming, she thought.
And I’ve got to stop them.
On her way down to the first floor, Serafina descended the long, gentle curve of the Grand Staircase, walking in broad daylight past the guests on the stairs. She jumped up and down in front of them and tried to touch them. She swiped her hands across the long skirts of the ladies’ dresses, trying to make the material fly. But it made no difference. She’d spent her whole life hiding, but now she just wanted one person, any person, to know she was there.
“Hello, there!” she said loudly to one of the many new lady guests who had arrived for the upcoming summer ball. “Beautiful dress you’re wearing today!” she shouted to another. “Your hat is on crooked, sir,” she said to one of the gentlemen.
Reaching the main floor, she went into the Winter Garden, where a number of young ladies in beautiful powder-blue and yellow dresses were chatting over English tea. She tried to steal their sugar cubes and knock over their teacups, but she couldn’t affect a thing. Then she noticed the faint trace of steam coming off the tea in one of the cups and she had an idea. She bent down and blew gently into the hot vapor, and to her surprise, it actually swirled in a new direction and disappeared into the air. Serafina smiled. She was making progress.
Encouraged, she crossed over to the back corridor and slipped into the Smoking Room with its rich blue damask wallpaper, elegant velvet chairs, and gold-leafed books on the shelves. When she had come here with Braeden on Christmas Eve, they had been dressed in their finest clothes for the first Christmas party she had ever attended. I just hope it wasn’t my last, she thought glumly.
But she wasn’t going to stand around feeling sorry for herself just because she was dead.
She walked over to the room’s fireplace, with its finely carved white marble mantel, and was relieved to see that the barn owl was still mounted there.
Her old enemies, the powerful conjurer Uriah and his treacherous daughter-apprentice Rowena, had been shape-shifters, able to change into the white-faced owl at will.
Long ago, Uriah had stolen this land from its rightful owners and formed his dark dominion in the hidden forests of these mountains. He had killed many of the forest animals, as well as Serafina’s panther father. But the arrival of Mr. Vanderbilt and the construction of Biltmore Estate freed the mountain folk and the forest animals from the conjurer’s spells and brought new light into the area. Uriah had been obsessed with destroying Biltmore ever since.
Filled with a hateful vengeance, he had created the Black Cloak, which allowed its wearer to steal the souls of its victims. And he had used the Twisted Staff to enslave the animals of the forest and attack Biltmore.
As Uriah was flying in owl form, she had raked him from the sky with her panther claws, sending the bloodied bird tumbling toward the ground. She and her allies had struck down Rowena that same night.
Serafina had hoped that she had destroyed both of them, but the truth was, she didn’t truly know. Waysa had told her, It is the way of his kind that even when he seems to be dead, he is not. His spirit lives on. He hides in a darkness the rest of us cannot see.
The morning after the battle, Biltmore’s groundskeepers had found a dead owl in the forest, and they had it mounted over this fireplace. She remembered that it had looked so lifelike, but now it seemed dead and worn, its feathers graying and tattered, the living spirit gone. It reminded her of the dried, white, desiccated shell of a rattlesnake after it had shed its skin and become anew.
She couldn’t help but wonder now if the robed sorcerer she’d seen by the river might have been Uriah in some new form.
Had Uriah been the one who attacked her on the Loggia the night of the full moon? Was he the sorcerer causing the storms in the forest?
Had he returned to destroy Biltmore once and for all? Or was it some new enemy that she’d never seen before?
Whatever the answer was, she had to stay watchful.
For the rest of the afternoon, she practiced moving particles of dust, shaping tendrils of steam, and causing candles to flicker as she studied the comings and goings of Biltmore. She followed people through their daily lives, watching them from the shadows, a shadow herself, looking for signs of suspicious behavior and clues to where something was amiss.
It wasn’t until later that evening that something caught her eye.
The formal dinner in the Banquet Hall started promptly at eight, with many of the guests and staff talking about the heavy rains, the muddy condition of the roads, and the water collecting in the fields where vast acres of crops were being lost to the flooding. Braeden was sitting near his aunt and uncle. Her friend seemed to be in somewhat better spirits than the night before, well enough to at least come to dinner, but there was still a dark and unsmiling gloominess to him.
A mustachioed gentleman at the table tried to speak with him. “It’s good to see you, Master Braeden. I was terribly sorry to hear that you’ve given up your riding. I know you have always enjoyed your time with your horses.”
It seemed as if the gentleman was trying to be kind, but Braeden’s face hardened at his words.
Serafina wondered if she could get Braeden’s attention by swirling the water in his water glass or something. There had to be some way to signal him, to let him know she was there with him. But as soon as she approached him, Braeden became even more upset, muttered that he was tired, and quickly excused himself from the table.
“Good night, Braeden,” Mrs. Vanderbilt said, concerned that he was leaving so soon.
“Sleep well,” Mr. Vanderbilt said to his nephew, but then touched Braeden’s arm, drew him closer in, and spoke to him in a soft and quiet tone. “Remember, the servants will be double-locking all the doors tonight and guards will be posted.”
Braeden clenched his jaw and walked away from his uncle without saying a word.
Serafina was taken aback by the rudeness of Braeden’s behavior. And she thought that if Mr. Vanderbilt had some inkling of the dangers surrounding Biltmore, then locking the doors and posting guards made perfect sense. But it almost seemed as if Mr. Vanderbilt was telling Braeden that the doors would be double-locked not to keep something out, but to make sure Braeden didn’t try to leave the house. And Braeden was none too happy about it.
She followed her friend as he trudged up the stairs to his room, dragging his metal-braced leg behind him. In months past, she had seen him heal a fox, a falcon, and other animals—it was part of his connection to them, part of his love for them—but he couldn’t heal humans, not even himself. And it was clear that something had gone terribly wrong with him. His dog, his horses…It was so sad that his grief had kept him from his only friends.
When Braeden arrived at his bedroom door, Gidean was waiting quietly for him outside his room.
“I don’t want you following me,” Braeden said harshly to Gidean. “Just stay away from me!”
The look on the dog’s face was so miserable that Serafina wished she could kneel down beside him and pet him like she used to. “I’m sure he doesn’t mean it,” she said to Gidean, even though the dog couldn’t hear her, and the truth was, she wasn’t sure of anything anymore. Maybe Braeden did mean it.
As Serafina followed Braeden into his bedroom, she was surprised by the state of it. The last time she’d seen his room, it had been warm and tidy, but now it was messy and disheveled, with days-old food trays piled on the dresser and dirty clothes all over the floor. The four-poster bed was unmade. The drapes were covered with dust. It looked like he hadn’t cleaned his room in months, and hadn’t let the servants in, either.
He exhaled a long, tired breath as he collapsed into the lea
ther chair by the small, unlit fireplace. He rubbed his bad leg with his shaking hand. His other leg moved in constant restlessness. And he kept pulling his hand through his hair, then wiping the side of his face. He wasn’t just exhausted, but anxious and frustrated.
Serafina remembered visiting him here one night and curling up on the rug in front of the warm fire with Gidean as Braeden slept quietly in his bed. But now he just stared blankly into the dead ashes of the empty black hearth.
Suddenly, Braeden got up. His metal brace thumped the wooden floor as he paced, pressing his trembling fingers to his skull as if there were voices in his head.
More agitated than even before, he changed out of his black dinner jacket and trousers, and put on the rugged clothes he used for hiking. Then he got down onto his hands and knees and pulled a coil of rope out from under his bed.
“What in tarnation are you gonna do with that?” Serafina asked out loud.
As the rest of the house retired for the evening, Braeden opened one of his windows and hurled the rope out into the darkness. It had been raining hard all night, and now the wet spray of it blew into the room.
“Just what’s goin’ on in that head of yours, Braeden?” she asked him, feeling a terrible tightness in her chest.
She could see that his hands were trembling something awful as he struggled to tie the end of the rope to the bed. The shaking was so bad that he could barely manage it. Then he went over to the window.
“Braeden, whatever you’re thinking about doing, don’t do it!” she told him.
But he climbed onto the windowsill, his hands and knees slipping on the rain-slick surface, and started to crawl out. He couldn’t maneuver his braced leg well enough by its own power, so he lifted it with his hands, then dragged himself over, and began climbing down the rope on the outside of the building.
This was an insanely dangerous thing to do for even an able-bodied person in dry weather, but the sickly, crooked-legged boy was climbing out the window in the middle of a rainstorm. There was a forty-foot drop to the stone terrace below. The fall was going to kill him.
Serafina and the Splintered Heart Page 5