“Or the darkness of night,” Serafina said, nodding. “I swear to you, we will hide the cloak well. We’ll make sure that your father will never threaten you or anyone at Biltmore again.”
Braeden walked into the room through the butler’s door that came from the back stairs.
“I wish we could destroy the terrible thing,” Braeden said.
“Destroying the cloak will free its prisoner,” Serafina said. “We can never destroy it. We must put it somewhere it will never be found, and lock it up forever.”
“I know just the place,” Braeden said.
And Serafina knew exactly where he had in mind.
When she looked back at Rowena, and saw the sorceress still staring at the Black Cloak in stunned disbelief, Serafina thought she must be thinking about her father.
“It is done,” Rowena said, as if trying to convince herself.
“And what will you do now, Rowena?” Serafina asked her gently.
Rowena paused, as if she was thinking about that profound question for the very first time. And then she looked at Serafina and said, “I will live.”
Serafina smiled a little bit at the corner of her mouth. Rowena was just beginning to realize that she had survived. She would go on, free, into a very different world. She would truly live.
“But don’t just live,” Waysa said, looking at Rowena with kind eyes. “Live well. Make all this worth it.”
Rowena nodded, appreciating his words. “And you do the same.”
Serafina gazed around at her friends, all happy and smiling, looking back at her. They had saved Biltmore. And they had saved each other.
It was hard to take it all in, but they had finally defeated Uriah, the old man of the forest, the conjurer, the bearded man, the sorcerer, the wielder of the Twisted Staff, the creator of the Black Cloak, the enemy who could not be killed.
And through all of this, Serafina thought about her pa working on his machines, and Essie bustling from room to room, and Mr. and Mrs. Vanderbilt and the coming baby, and all the daytime folk at Biltmore. She thought about the wolves, and the crows, and the other animals of the forest, and she thought: We’re finally safe now.
Serafina carefully gathered the Black Cloak up from the floor of the Banquet Hall. The cloak writhed and twisted in her hands.
There are other paths to follow…the cloak hissed as it tried to coil up her arms, as if it knew what she was planning to do with it. It wasn’t the prisoner within speaking to her, but the cloak itself.
Serafina wanted to drop it, get away from it, but she knew she couldn’t. She held the cloak tighter and looked at Braeden. “Get the trowel and mortar.”
As Braeden grabbed the equipment, she noticed that the design on the Black Cloak’s silver clasp was no longer blank, but entwined with thorny, binding vines twisting around the shadows of a single face.
She and Braeden headed outside with the cloak on their own. They wanted as few people as possible to know where they were going to put it.
They made their way through the darkened gardens and down toward the pond.
With me on your shoulders, you’d have strength beyond imagining…you could fly…you could live in ways that you never dreamed of…the cloak hissed.
She could feel the pull of the cloak on her mind, an aching desire to give in to its hissing pleas. She wanted to put it on, to wear it, to use it. By sucking in human souls, the cloak provided the wearer the ultimate power, but she knew she must resist it.
“Here it is,” Braeden said as they came to the inlet of the pond.
She and Braeden crawled through the metal chute and into the flume.
Together, we could be all-knowing, Serafina…
“Don’t you dare use my name!” Serafina snarled. She gripped the cloak in her tightly balled fists, refusing to listen.
Braeden carried the lantern, shovel, and tools as they followed the narrow brick tunnel beneath the pond. There was no water running through the tunnel, but it was dripping wet with the sludge of the black algae that coated the walls.
Think about what you’ve enslaved, the cloak rasped. It’s all in your hands now…
Clenching the cloak tighter, Serafina led the way, delving deeper and deeper into the tunnel, until they reached its lowest and darkest point.
“This is the spot,” Braeden said.
“Hurry,” Serafina said.
Just put me on, and all of Uriah’s power will be yours, Serafina…the cloak whispered.
Serafina tried not to imagine the knowledge and power she’d attain, but she could feel her hands shaking as she held the writhing thing. She wanted so bad to put the cloak on her shoulders.
“Braeden, please hurry!” she cried.
Braeden quickly pried up the bricks with the shovel, then got down on his knees and pulled the bricks away with his hands. There was already a shallow hole where he had stored the Black Cloak before, but Serafina said, “Dig it deeper.”
Braeden grabbed the shovel and went to work, digging down into the gravel another two feet.
Together, we shall know a thousand spells…the cloak hissed.
“Deeper,” Serafina said.
Together, we shall never die…
“Deeper!” Serafina told Braeden.
Braeden’s hands began to bleed with blisters from the oak handle of the shovel, but he did not argue or complain. He could see Serafina’s shaking body, and the anguish tearing through her face, and he kept digging.
“How far?” he asked, but he did not stop.
“Six feet,” Serafina said. “Six feet under.”
When Braeden had finally finished digging, Serafina crawled down in and shoved the Black Cloak into the bottom of the hole. She pushed the folds of the material as deep as she could make them go, then pressed them down with the palms of her hands. The cloak hissed and rattled like a snake fighting against her.
“Bury it!” Serafina snapped harshly at Braeden, her voice sounding disturbingly like to the cloak itself.
“Bury it, Braeden, bury it…” she hissed, the voice of the cloak coming through her.
His eyes wide with fear, Braeden hurried to push the loose gravel into the hole, handfuls at first, then using the shovel. The dirt began to fill the grave. As Serafina held the cloak down, it felt like she was drowning it. She could feel the sensation of the dirt pressing more and more around her.
“You’ve got to get out of there, Serafina!” Braeden shouted.
Just put me on…the cloak hissed.
“Keep shoveling!” she screamed, holding the cloak down beneath the dirt as it writhed in her hands. “Bury it!”
Finally, when the dirt was all around her, and the cloak was buried, she clambered out. Braeden heaved her up to him.
She and Braeden filled in the rest of the dirt, packed it down, and stamped on it with their feet until it was hard.
Then, back down on their hands and knees, they used the trowel to spread a thick layer of mortar over the dirt.
“More,” Serafina urged. “As thick as we can make it.”
When the mortar was finally down, they pushed the bricks into place. The gray mortar oozed up into the thin spaces between the bricks as they laid them.
Brick by brick, they closed the Black Cloak in.
Brick by brick, they silenced the raspy voice.
And brick by brick they buried their enemy below.
When they were finally done and the mortar had hardened, Serafina stared suspiciously at the brick floor, half expecting to see the insidious black fabric squeezing up through the mortared cracks like little creeping fingers, its voice hissing for her to put it on.
But there was no sound or movement.
They had buried the Black Cloak and Uriah once and for all.
Here the Black Cloak and its prisoner would remain beneath the pond, buried in an unmarked grave and bricked in, seething in the darkness below the darkness.
The following day, as Serafina walked through the forested highlands t
hat overlooked Biltmore, she saw a figure moving slowly through the trees. It took her several seconds to realize that it was Rowena coming toward her.
The sorceress was wearing the dark robes and hood of her ancient kindred, and she was carrying a long laurel staff. She wore a twisting bronze-and-silver torc around her neck, and her red hair was tied into a thick braid that fell down into the folds of her hood.
Rowena stopped a few feet in front of Serafina. As the sorceress gazed at her, her green eyes glistened in the sunlight that came down through the forest leaves.
“Have you hidden it?” Rowena asked her.
“We have,” Serafina replied, nodding.
“Good,” Rowena said, relieved.
The sorceress looked down at the ground for a moment as if collecting her thoughts, then she lifted her eyes and looked at Serafina once more. “Then this is where our paths finally part.”
Serafina hesitated, not sure what to say to the girl who had been her enemy and her friend.
“You’ve decided on what you’re going to do…” Serafina said.
Rowena nodded. “I am going to follow Waysa’s advice. I’m going to live well.”
“And where are you going?”
“Once long ago these dark forests and jagged mountains were the hidden domain of a great conjurer, the old man of the forest. As I see it, somewhere out there, there’s a vacancy now. And a girl to fill it. In her own way.”
Serafina nodded, understanding Rowena’s words.
Rowena gazed toward Biltmore visible in the distance and then looked back at Serafina. “You are the protector of that place,” she said. “Protect it well, and everyone within.”
Serafina nodded, knowing exactly who she meant.
“Live well, sorceress,” Serafina said.
“Live well, cat,” Rowena said in return.
That night, Serafina slipped out of Biltmore just as the moon was rising in the eastern sky, her four feet trundling easily, silently, along the front terrace, then down the steps, and across the grass toward the trees.
When Waysa spotted her coming, he flicked his tail and ran.
So you want to race…Serafina thought, and lunged into a powerful run.
She chased Waysa through the forest, tearing through the ferns, leaping over creeks, dodging between rocks, her heart filling with the joy that only motion can bring.
Waysa doubled back around behind her, crouched at the top of a boulder, and leapt upon her as she ran past. The two catamounts somersaulted in mock battle across the forest floor, then Serafina burst out of it and sprinted away, forcing Waysa to chase after her.
She loved running through the forest with Waysa, her senses alive, and her muscles blazing with power. She loved the speed of it and the rushing wind, the feel of her furred feet flying across the ground, the grace of her tail steering her quick changes in course. When she ran as a black panther, she was everything she had ever dreamed of being.
After the chase, she and Waysa came to the cliff that looked out across the great river. They stopped there at the edge, panting and happy, and gazed out across the moonlit view. The flooding was already receding, the rivers and the forest slowly returning to their natural state.
Serafina’s heart skipped a beat when she spotted movement on the high ground in the distance.
She glanced at Waysa. He saw it, too.
The dark figures were far away, and she couldn’t quite tell what they were. They were but shadows and a slinking, skulking movement among the rocks of the ridge. Then it became more clear.
The silhouettes of three mountain lions came up over the distant ridge, backlit by the light of the rising moon.
Serafina’s heart swelled. One of the lions looked larger than the other two younger, leaner cats.
Filled with excitement, Serafina and Waysa ran toward the ridge to meet them.
The five lions came together, rubbing their heads and their shoulders against each other and purring. Her mother was strong and powerful, and the cubs had grown so much!
Serafina, her mother, and Waysa shifted into human form.
Serafina gazed at her mother’s beautiful face with its high, angular cheekbones, her long, lion-colored hair, and her tearful golden-amber eyes looking back at her, and then they moved toward each other and embraced.
“Serafina…” her mother purred as she held her.
“Momma…” Serafina whispered in return, pressing herself into the warmth of her mother’s chest as she wrapped her arms around her.
“When I heard you were alive, I wept with joy and came as fast as I could,” her mother said.
Serafina held her mother tight. She could feel the warmth of her mother’s love pouring through her body. After all their nights apart, they were finally back together again.
Suddenly, she remembered being a little girl prowling unseen through Biltmore’s upstairs rooms looking into the face of every woman she saw, wondering if it was the face of her mother. And she remembered that first night in the forest she saw her mother’s eyes and knew who she was. It seemed so long ago now, but the feeling, the love she felt in her heart, was the same.
Months before, when she was first united with her mother, she had learned so much from her, about the lore of the forest and the lives of the catamount. She had learned so much about what it meant to be Serafina. But she knew now, even with all that she’d been through since then, that there was still so much more for her to learn. She was just beginning in the world, and she needed her mother to guide her. The spirit and the body, the heart and the soul, the light and the darkness, she wanted to learn it all.
Knowing that it was all ahead of her, Serafina found a great sense of peace.
All through the night, the five cats ran, leaping and diving through the forest, down into valleys and up along the ridges. The night was their domain. Serafina had found her kindred, her family, the primordial creatures to whom she was born.
Deep in the night, they finally returned to the place they began, at the edge of the high ground that looked out across the river to the distant mountains. When Waysa shifted into human form, Serafina did as well.
There was a strange look in her friend’s eyes that worried her. She could see there was something on his mind.
Serafina looked at Waysa, but he did not want to look at her.
She stepped toward him and touched his arm.
Finally, he lifted his eyes.
“I need to talk to you, Serafina,” he said, a sad tone in his voice.
A sinking feeling poured through her. “Tell me what it is,” she said softly, her voice trembling.
“Now that you’re safe, and your mother is back, I…” Waysa’s voice faltered.
“What is it, Waysa?” she asked him again, but she didn’t truly want to know the answer. She wanted to pull back time, to go back, back to the way it was before.
“I think it’s time for me to go,” he said.
Her eyes watered as she looked at him. “No, Waysa…”
“When I finally avenged my family, I thought it would restore the balance. I thought it would heal my heart. But when I think of my sister and my brothers…my mother and my father…there’s still…an emptiness inside me. My family is dead, I have to accept that, but I want to know if any other Cherokee catamounts survived. Uriah scattered my people. I need to find them. I need to tell them what’s happened here, that there’s no more need to fear. I need to bring them back together…”
Serafina stared at Waysa. She did not want to agree with him. She did not want to let him go. She wanted to yell at him and demand that he stay. She wanted to grab hold of him and make him stay.
But she knew she shouldn’t. She knew that she should let him go, that it was right for him to go. If his people were still out there, he had to find them, he had to bring them together. That’s what he did. He saved people, just like he’d saved her.
“I understand,” she said softly.
Waysa slowly took her into his a
rms and held her, and she held him in return, and for a moment she and her friend were of one spirit. She suddenly remembered the wild-haired feral boy fighting for her against the wolfhounds, the pang of loneliness she had felt when she realized he had disappeared into the darkness and she might not ever see him again. She remembered hiding in the cave with the boy who had left her the riddle so that she could find him, how he’d pushed her through the waterfall so that he could teach her to swim, how they’d fought together, run together, how he’d told her that she could be anything she envisioned herself to be.
“You stay bold, Serafina,” he said now, his voice shaking with emotion.
“Stay bold, Waysa,” she said in return. “Go find your people. And remember, no matter what happens, you have your family here. You have my mother, and my brother and sister, and you have me.”
He nodded silently as he slowly turned away from her. He shifted into lion form and disappeared into the forest.
Standing with her mother and the cubs at her side, the last she saw of him he was running along the ridge, and then he faded into the silver light of the glowing moon.
On a sunny afternoon a few days later, well after Braeden and Serafina had cleaned up the mess and repaired what damage they could in the house, the carriages returned from Asheville with Mr. and Mrs. Vanderbilt and the servants who had been traveling with them.
The footmen carried the luggage up to their rooms. Mrs. Vanderbilt’s maid and Mr. Vanderbilt’s valet began the process of unpacking. And soon Biltmore was filled with the normal sounds of the house, the bustling of the servants, the tinkling of teacups, Mr. Vanderbilt’s St. Bernard, Cedric, following him from room to room. The whole family was home again. The house resumed its old patterns, with tea at four and dinner at eight.
Upon hearing the good news that Serafina had returned to Biltmore, Mr. Vanderbilt asked Braeden to have her join the family for dinner.
As was his tradition, Braeden presented Serafina with a dress to wear. She had no idea where he got this one, or how he’d gotten it so quickly. Maybe he’d persuaded one of his feathered friends to deliver it from a distant city by air. She just hoped he hadn’t asked the black widow spiders to make it.
Serafina and the Splintered Heart Page 24