Serafina and the Splintered Heart

by Robert Beatty

  “But if Serafina’s spirit gets pulled back into the Black Cloak, then what’s going to happen?” Braeden asked, his voice trembling with the same fear that was enveloping Serafina.

  “I warned you about this,” Rowena said harshly. “I told you this was going to frighten you. You have to trust me.”

  “But what’s going to happen next?” Serafina asked Rowena. “That’s what we need to know. Are you going to keep the cloak for yourself? Are you going to steal my strengths and capabilities? Or are you going to give the cloak back to your father? Do you think that will satisfy him and he’ll leave you alone? Do you think that will win back his approval? With the cloak, you’ll have everything! You’ll have all the power and all the choices!”

  Rowena suddenly hissed like an owl and turned away, clicking her throat in disgust. “It’s impossible to explain it to you,” she said again.

  “Explain what?” Braeden asked in confusion, not realizing that Rowena was talking to Serafina.

  “You keep saying that, Rowena!” Serafina shouted at her. “But you have to explain it, or we’re not going to do it! Swear to me that you’re not going to hurt Braeden.”

  “Are you talking to Serafina?” Braeden asked in confusion. “What is she saying?”

  “Nothing of consequence,” Rowena muttered and began to walk away, the angry flick of her hand casting a blast of force tearing through the forest and snapping branches. Waysa moved rapidly between Rowena and Braeden, ready to lunge at the sorceress.

  Bitter-tasting bile rose up in Serafina’s throat. This whole thing was beginning to feel like a trick. But then she remembered the night in the graveyard long ago. She had lured the Man in the Black Cloak into a trap. After the battle, she had tried to tear the cloak’s fabric with her hands, but the fabric had been far too strong. Then she tried to pierce it with a dagger. But the cloak could not be harmed by a normal blade. That night in the graveyard, she had pierced the cloak on the sharp point of the angel’s steel sword. She had cut the cloak to pieces. That was how she had destroyed it. And when she did, it released its magic in a great cataclysm of heat and smoke and haze, and all the victims that had been captured in the cloak were suddenly set free. She remembered seeing Clara Brahms’s body lying in the leaves on the ground. When the girl twitched and began to rise, Serafina had feared that she was a zombie rising from the dead, but she wasn’t. She was a little girl, freed from the dark folds of the cloak. And Serafina remembered that she had freed her mother the same way that same night.

  “You’re going to repair the cloak…” Serafina said, “but then you’re going to destroy it on the angel’s sword…”

  Rowena stopped and turned, relieved that she finally understood. “I do not know if I can succeed, but I am going to try…”

  “You’re going to try what?” Braeden asked, confused and frightened.

  Serafina thought about how she had crawled from the grave and had been living in the spirit world, what she could and couldn’t do, who she could and couldn’t touch, what paths she could and couldn’t take. Dust and water and wind, she wasn’t long for this world. She thought about Braeden and Waysa fighting for her with all their hearts, and her pa with his deadened soul going through the motions of his life, and her mother who had lost all hope. She thought about Rowena’s father, the coming storms, the raging rivers, his lust for vengeance against the Vanderbilts. He would not rest until Biltmore was destroyed. Then she started thinking about everything she’d seen Rowena do, how they’d first met, all the tricks and betrayals, and all the battles they had fought against each other. Rowena had followed many paths, twisting and intertwining, and there were many ways she could turn.

  Through all this, Serafina realized that maybe the most difficult thing wasn’t to trust your friend, or even your enemy, but to trust yourself. She had to trust that no matter how dark her future became, she was strong enough, that whatever happened, whether she passed away forever or somehow found her way through to the other side, she had to trust herself, trust her own soul, her own wisdom, her own strength, to pass through the darkness and unknown. She had to trust that she could become who she was meant to be.

  Her hands were trembling. Her legs were shaking. Even her voice was unsteady when she spoke. “I have one last request,” Serafina said to Rowena. “If I agree to do this, I need you to give me your word that no matter what happens to me, you’ll protect Braeden and my pa and Waysa and everyone at Biltmore from your father. Give me your word.”

  Rowena paused. There was no grimace, no smile, but a face as stone and immobile as the angel’s face in the graveyard.

  Serafina studied her, trying to figure out what she was thinking. Was she reluctant to give her word? Or was she actually, in a strange way, satisfied with what Serafina was asking her to do? Had this been what she wanted all along, to join them, to have friends that would fight for her, and that she would fight for in return?

  But if Serafina died, Rowena would have to defend all of Biltmore from her father. It was not a fight she could win on her own. She could barely hide herself in the bog to escape him. There was no way she could protect everyone at Biltmore. The friendship Rowena sought came with an almost impossible price, but without that friendship, what chance did Rowena have to survive?

  “I need your word, Rowena,” Serafina said, but even as she pressed, she realized she didn’t know what Rowena’s word meant. This could all be a trick. But she could see no other choice. “If you don’t help me,” Serafina pressed her, “what will happen to you, Rowena?”

  “I will survive alone,” Rowena said.

  “You know that’s not true. Is that why you came to talk to me at my grave that night? Maybe you’ll survive for a little while against your father. Maybe you can keep hiding from him. But will you truly live? If we trust you to help us, then you have to trust us to help you.”

  Rowena did not reply at first, but after a long moment, she nodded in agreement. “If you don’t make it through, I will do everything in my power to protect them. You have my solemn word.”

  Serafina studied Rowena. She looked at her face, her eyes, the way she moved when she said the words. How do you know when someone’s lying to you, or if they will keep their promise?

  “What’s going on?” Braeden asked. “What have you given your word to do?”

  “We are running out of time, cat,” Rowena said, ignoring Braeden.

  A cold, black fear like nothing Serafina had ever felt before vibrated through her body. The last thing she wanted to do in the world was to get sucked into the Black Cloak, but she knew she had to do it.

  “I’m ready,” she said. “I trust you, Rowena. Tell Braeden and Waysa what we’re going to do.”

  Serafina, Braeden, and Waysa watched Rowena work. The sorceress sat down in her lair and took the Black Cloak into her lap. The cloak’s dark folds roiled and seethed of their own accord when she moved the fabric with her hands, as if she were holding not a garment but a massive, living snake.

  She drew out a long, thin needle of bone and began to sew, slowly stitching the tears of the Black Cloak’s torn fabric.

  “The outside of the cloak is goat’s wool woven with the skin of timber rattlesnakes,” Rowena said, “so I’ve used a fine goat’s wool thread for the stitchings. But the lining of the cloak, where its most important power lies, is black satin made from the silk of black widow spiders.”

  Braeden’s face wrinkled in revulsion. “Spiders? The Black Cloak is made from spider silk? How do you get usable silk from a spider?”

  “It is very difficult,” Rowena admitted as she worked, “but it is possible if you know the spell.”

  “A coercion spell…” Braeden grumbled.

  “Yes, obviously, coercion is required,” Rowena said, annoyed at the accusation. “Black widow spiders aren’t the most willing allies, believe me, and their venom is exceedingly unpleasant. But their silk is much stronger than the silk of many other spiders. Spiders can make six different type
s of silk: strong silk for dangling, sticky silk for catching prey, flat silk for flying in the wind, and the others, each for their purpose. It takes all of the black widow’s silks twined together to create the thread we need. I use a coercion spell to make the spiders do what I need them to do, and a twining spell to spin the thread.”

  “But isn’t a spider’s silk white or clear?” Braeden asked, appalled by it all, but beguiled by the gruesome details of the process. It seemed to fascinate him that spiders and other animals were part of the cloak’s construction.

  “It is the twining process that turns the thread black,” Rowena said.

  As hour after hour went by with Rowena clutching the twisting cloak, Braeden grew restless. Sometimes, he paced back and forth through the muck outside the lair, dragging his braced leg behind him. Waysa just watched and waited, his claws out, his tail flicking impatiently, as if he were more than ready should battle come.

  Serafina watched Rowena carefully, determined to not let the sorceress trick her. She had to stay vigilant, but the truth was, she didn’t know how or at what moment Rowena might betray her.

  Rowena had gone quiet in her work. Her body began to rock back and forth like she was in some sort of trance, the cloak turning and coiling in her hands. But even as she rocked, she kept mumbling and hissing, casting spell after spell as she stitched the torn fabric, rocking and stitching, a witch knitting a dark and wicked curse, the Black Cloak slithering with power beneath her.

  Serafina felt her lungs getting tighter, her breaths getting more difficult. As she watched the sorceress, a dark fear grew within her. She pulled her mesmerized eyes away from Rowena and looked out of the lair’s damaged door to Braeden and Waysa, but suddenly they were gone. They had disappeared.

  Serafina blinked and rubbed her eyes in confusion, then looked again. Braeden and Waysa were still gone.

  As she gazed out at the forest, she realized that the trees seemed to be fading before her eyes, as if darkness darker than darkest night were blotting them out in a terrible black fog. It wasn’t just her friends who were missing now, but the entire forest.

  Serafina looked down at the ground she was standing on. It was gone, nothing but darkness.

  She could not feel it.

  She could not see it.

  Everything was going!

  She pulled in a breath. She could no longer smell the plants of the bog. She could no longer hear the insects.

  She turned to Rowena in hot panic. All she could see now was the sorceress, her hooded head down, her face shrouded, the Black Cloak glowing and writhing in her lap as she stitched the last tear closed.

  Serafina’s world went black.

  Serafina could not move.

  She could not touch or feel.

  All she could see around her was a black, swirling darkness, like she was inside a storm of soot.

  All she could hear were the winds of moving fabric.

  And all she could smell was ash.

  It felt as if the whole world had disappeared and she was all that was left, utterly alone now and forever. Everything she had known, everything she had loved, was gone, incinerated by a prison of incessant darkness.

  She tried to be brave. She tried to be bold. But she couldn’t do it. She screamed in terror. “Rowena!”

  “Do not fight it…” came a raspy voice.

  Confusion flooded into Serafina’s mind. Was it the cloak speaking to her?

  Serafina screamed and she fought. She would not give up. She would not stop fighting. She would tear and tear and tear.

  She wanted her mother and Braeden and her pa and everyone she loved. She wanted to see moonlight and sunlight and starlight and every kind of light there was, the light from inside a friend’s soul when they smiled and the light from the dawn of a new idea. She wanted it all!

  “You have to let everything go…” the voice came.

  She wanted to hear the rustle of wind in the trees and the sound of music and the murmur of soft voices.

  “Just let everything go…”

  But she wasn’t going to give up. She wanted to feel the coolness of the misty night on her skin and the warmth of the morning sun.

  “Trust me, cat, just let everything go…”

  Cat, Serafina thought suddenly. The voice had said cat. It wasn’t the Black Cloak speaking to her, but Rowena! She was trying to guide her, to show her the way.

  The sorceress had been her enemy. They had attacked each other, tricked each other, and slashed each other with wounds. But was she still her enemy? Or had Rowena truly switched sides?

  And then a different kind of thought came into Serafina’s mind.

  She knew that despite the many vicious and deceitful deeds Uriah had forced his daughter to do, Rowena had always wanted Braeden as her friend.

  “You don’t even know what friendship is!” Rowena had screamed at her in frustration. “I’ve seen it!”

  She’s seen it, and she wants it, Serafina thought. And now I’ve forced Rowena to promise that if I don’t make it, then she’d join with Braeden at Biltmore…

  Serafina had thought she had exacted a difficult promise from Rowena, but now she realized that it might have suited Rowena just fine.

  All that time playing the role of “Lady Rowena” the sorceress had been pretending to like Braeden, but maybe the trick was that she wasn’t pretending.

  Was that Rowena’s plan now, to get rid of her, and have Braeden’s friendship to herself? By persuading Serafina to go into the cloak, had Rowena finally managed to trick her rival out of existence?

  Serafina didn’t know what was in Rowena’s heart, but she saw two paths before her. She could trust Rowena, stop fighting, and let her soul be pulled entirely into the Black Cloak. Or she could try to keep fighting in this storm of oblivion.

  She thought about how important it was that Braeden had learned from Rowena’s deceit months before that sometimes he shouldn’t trust people. And she thought how she herself had learned that sometimes she should trust people. Despite all of Rowena’s duplicitous shifts and caustic moods, she had helped her talk to Braeden, she had helped her spell the letters in ash in front of the fireplace, and she had revealed the secrets of the Black Cloak. Was it possible that Rowena might have feelings for Braeden, but convincing Serafina to get pulled back into the Black Cloak wasn’t necessarily a malicious trick designed to eliminate her? Was it possible that both of those things could be true at the same time?

  Serafina realized that she didn’t know the answers to the questions. It was a terrifying feeling, but there was no way to know. But she did know that here, in this dark, swirling place, and in the spirit world where she’d been wandering, there was no good path. There was nothing there. Even if she fought back to the place she’d been, there was nothing there. No voice. No touch. No love. Her only hope was forward. Her only hope was the unknown.

  Trust me, Rowena had said. Trust me.

  Serafina knew that she might not return to the land of the living. She might not ever see the world again. In her mind, she began to say good-bye to Braeden and to Waysa. She said good-bye to her pa and to her mother, and the cubs, and Mr. and Mrs. Vanderbilt, and everyone else she knew. One by one, she said good-bye to all of them. Her only hope was that she had somehow helped them.

  Finally, she shut her eyes and pulled in a long, deep breath, her chest rising, filling her lungs with the sooty black void. She held her breath for as long as she could, knowing that it would be her last, like a person trapped underwater knows the inhalation that will finally drown her lungs in a watery death.

  Then she exhaled, and her mind unfurled as the cloak sucked her soul deep into its void.

  And she disappeared into the black folds that she had seen take so many souls before her.

  She had no body. She had no wandering spirit. All she had was consciousness, churning through the black prison.

  She finally knew what Clara Brahms, Anastasia Rostonova, her mother, and all the other victims
of the Black Cloak had experienced.

  She had no perception of time or change. Each moment might be a fleeting second—a drop of water as it falls to the floor and splashes into nothingness. Or it might be a whole year of bountiful experience lost—every moment she’d ever spent with the people she loved.

  She did not know.

  There was no up or down, no action or effect. No hard or soft, no brightness or color, no movement or sensation, no voice or touch, no shape or beauty or love or compassion.

  Rowena had trapped her in a black, empty world.

  Serafina opened her eyes and saw nothing but black. It was as if she hadn’t opened her eyes at all.

  She had been deep in the darkened void of a swirling, half-dreaming world when she was awoken to the sound of a muffled voice, but now there was no voice, no sound, no movement of any kind.

  Just black.

  She closed her eyes and reopened them. But it made no difference. It was still pitch-dark.

  But she wasn’t floating in the black void of the cloak anymore. She was lying on her back on a long, flat, cold surface.

  Where am I? she thought. How did I get here?

  Then a sound finally came: a thudding in her ears that was more real, more pressing, than anything she had ever heard.

  Thump-thump.

  For a moment that was all there was.

  Thump-thump, thump-thump.

  The beat of her heart and the pulse of her blood.

  Thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump.

  As she slowly moved her tongue to moisten her cracked, dry lips, she detected the faint taste of metal in her mouth.