Serafina and the Seven Stars

by Robert Beatty

  And now Braeden was gone as well.

  “Sit down,” Mr. Vanderbilt had said to her and Braeden as they came into his office that dreadful day. “Braeden, you know that in the time since your parents passed away, you have become like a son to me. I love you with all my heart.”

  Braeden sat quietly beside her, unmoving, as if he knew there was nothing he could do about what was about to happen.

  “Your father specified in his will,” Mr. Vanderbilt continued, “that his children should attend the school that he and the other members of the Vanderbilt family have attended for generations. It is incumbent upon both of us to put our personal feelings aside and do our duty to fulfill your father’s last wishes. I’m afraid the time has come for you to leave Biltmore and return to New York City.”

  Braeden’s brows furrowed, and he wiped his eye with trembling fingers. He looked more somber than she’d ever seen him. But he lowered his head, slowly nodded, and said very softly, “I understand, Uncle.”

  And now she found herself hiding, crumpled up behind a railing, without him.

  School? Of all the godforsaken, no-good places on earth, why did he have to go to school? What kind of aunt and uncle would do that to a child? What good would school do for him? He was already one of the smartest people she knew! And if he absolutely had to go to school, why did he have to go to school so far away?

  She hated it. She hated everything about it.

  When the day came that Braeden had to leave for New York, she went to the train station with him and Mr. Vanderbilt. She remembered standing on the platform in front of Braeden, not sure what to say to him. And she could see that he didn’t know what to say to her, either.

  For the last year, they’d been together almost constantly, but it had all come to this bitter end.

  How do you say good-bye?

  With all the various passengers shouldering past them and climbing hurriedly into the massive, steam-hissing black machine, she and Braeden looked at each other, their gazes locked. They had defeated their darkest foes, but they could not defeat this.

  “I’m going to miss you, Serafina,” Braeden said, very quietly.

  “I’m going to miss you, too,” she said in return, her voice shaking.

  There were so many things she wanted to tell him, so many memories she wanted to recall together, but all the thoughts gathering in her head got stuck in her throat and she couldn’t speak.

  As the train whistle blew, he seemed like he was going say something to her as well, like he wanted to say good-bye, but he just kept looking at her as if he was struggling to find the words. When the conductor hurried by, shouting, “Last call! All aboard!” Braeden muttered, “I’ve got to go,” then climbed the steps into the train car and disappeared.

  Standing at Mr. Vanderbilt’s side, she watched the train pull away, the low rumble of its boiling engine and thumping wheels churning in her body.

  She did not move.

  She did not scream.

  But she felt the pound of it in her chest even now as she remembered watching the train roll down the long, clicking steel tracks, and disappear.

  I’m not just useless, she thought. I’m lost.

  After the new guests had all gone inside, and the last two footmen closed the front doors behind them, Serafina picked herself up and made her way to the far side of the house.

  How do you say good-bye? she wondered. And how do you live after you have?

  She walked alone onto the South Terrace, near the windows of the Library, with the view of the mountains in front of her, and the thick vines of wisteria growing in the lattice above her head.

  As the sun set and night fell, she remembered the time Braeden had sat alone on this bench in the darkness, wrapped in his woolen blanket, recovering from his wounds, and looking out at the stars. She had walked up behind him as pale as moonlight and put her wisp-of-a-spirit hand on his shoulder.

  It seemed so long ago.

  “Now you’re the ghost,” she whispered.

  She gazed out across the forested valley at the view of the Blue Ridge Mountains as the sky darkened. There were not yet any stars, but the brilliant dot of Venus was setting over the silhouette of Mount Pisgah on the western horizon. The bright ball of Jupiter gleamed above, followed by the tiny pinprick of Saturn, and then the reddish orb of Mars rising from the mountains in the east. It was a rare, blue glowing moment when she could see all four planets wheeling across the sky at once, as if spinning on a great invisible disk.

  With Braeden gone, the planets had once again become her companions. And a few minutes later, thousands of stars began to fill the dark, moonless sky.

  Once Venus had disappeared behind the mountain, it was Jupiter that burned the brightest and the longest, and she imagined that it was her long-lost friend. She tried to imagine his life in New York City. He had told her that there were so many electric lights there that it was hard to see the stars, but she imagined that he must be able to see Jupiter. At least Jupiter, she thought, looking up at the planet.

  “Wherever you are, Braeden,” she whispered, “stay bold!”

  It was hard to imagine what her life at Biltmore was going to be like without him. He was not only her best friend, he was the only person in her life who knew who she truly was.

  She still had her pa, who had found her in the forest when she was a baby, and who had loved her ever since, but even her beloved pa had never seen her in her true feline form like Braeden had. She’d been far too scared to tell her father anything about that.

  Her pa was in charge of building and fixing the mechanical contraptions at Biltmore. He believed in tools and machines and iron things made by man, and in normal, everyday human beings, not strange and unnatural shape-shifting creatures of the night like her.

  She loved to run with her feline brother and sister through the forest, but they were pure mountain lions, not catamount shape-shifters, so she couldn’t strategize with them, sneak through the house with them, make secret plans, devise ingenious traps, kill demons, or do any of the things that normal friends did together.

  After she and Braeden defeated their enemies months before, time had frayed, and the world gone slow. The days had become long, like feathery gray clouds with naught but murky shape stretched across the sky. And now that he was gone, it made it all the worse.

  What worried her now was whether after all these months of peace at Biltmore she would still be able to distinguish a real threat from a startled jump. With her friend and ally gone, how would she gather and sort out the clues of a mystery? What would she be fighting for if there was no one at her side?

  And on many nights, she missed her catamount mother, who had taught her so much of the forest and the mountains. Her mother was a shape-shifter like her, but had been imprisoned in her feline form for so many years that even after Serafina had freed her, she was unable to fully rejoin the human world. She had gone off into the Black Mountains in search of new territory, more animal than human now.

  Glancing through the windows into the Library, and down the long Tapestry Gallery, she saw the glow of the lamps and candles, and heard the mingling voices of the evening’s revelry, with the women in their long, glittery dresses and the men in their black jackets and white ties, all smiles and grand hellos, sipping their champagne.

  All this happiness here, she thought. Is this my world now?

  But she knew there were other places out in the world that weren’t as safe and protected as Biltmore. Earlier that summer she had gone to see her old friend Waysa, who lived in the Great Smoky Mountains, and she saw the plight of his Cherokee kindred, and many others as well, struggling through a violent attack on the forests there. Hordes of men with great steel saws and steam-powered winches were slashing down the ancient trees. She and Waysa had barely managed to escape. Was it right for her to stay here at Biltmore in this quiet, peaceful, empty place when she knew there were others who needed help?

  Months before, there had been a
frightening, soul-splintering time when she had shifted into mist and dust and other forms. But she had turned thirteen years old now, she had her feet on the ground, and all that was behind her.

  But sometimes, late at night, when she was in her panther form, it felt as if she might go out running through the forest and just keep going, like her mother had.

  And sometimes, more and more when she was in her human form, it felt as if her senses and her brain, and even the core of her body, were changing in dark and primal ways, like she was becoming less human and more panther every day.

  She knew it was the way of her solitary, feline kind to wander, to explore, but how could she just leave her home? How could she leave her pa? And what about her brother and sister living in the surrounding forest, and Mr. and Mrs. Vanderbilt, and little Baby Nell? She could never do it. Even if there was a way in her mind to say good-bye to the Vanderbilts, she knew in her heart she could never leave her pa. She had to stay in this lonely, empty place whether she belonged here or not.

  As she was standing on the terrace, consumed in her thoughts, she heard the step of a foot in the gravel behind her. Startled, she spun around, her heart lurching as she raised her hands to defend herself.

  She could see right away that there was indeed someone standing behind her.

  But he wasn’t attacking her.

  He was just looking at her.

  The hair on the back of her neck stood on end.

  It wasn’t a stranger.

  She knew that what she thought she was seeing was impossible.

  He seemed to be standing in front of her, his skin pale in the starlight, his tousle of brown hair more disheveled than usual, his brown eyes brighter than she remembered, and his face filled with tenderness. But there were dirty scuff marks on the shoulder of his jacket, the knees of his trousers were badly torn, and traces of crusted blood streaked his face.

  Her heart shuddered in her chest as a terrible thought leapt into her mind.

  Had there been a train wreck?

  Was this his spirit coming back to say good-bye to her one last time before he left the living world for good?

  Or had all her startled jumps and scaredy-cat fears finally shattered her mind?

  She felt a slow aching dread filling her insides as she tried to open her mouth to speak. “Are…” she began to ask the apparition. “Are you real?”

  Gazing at her with soft eyes, he gently asked, “Are you all right, Serafina?”

  When she finally spoke, her words came out as a whisper. “Did something happen to the train?” she asked. “Are you actually here?”

  “I’m here,” Braeden said, nodding.

  “But how? I saw you get on the train and it pulled away.”

  “I only made it as far as Tennessee,” he said, shrugging a little, almost as if he was embarrassed.

  “I don’t under—What do you mean?”

  “I was sitting on the train, thinking about everything, but I only made it as far as Tennessee, and then I couldn’t take it anymore.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I jumped off.”

  “What? How did you get back here?”

  “My uncle gave me some money for my first semester at school, so I used it to buy a horse.”

  “You rode all the way home from Tennessee?”

  “Fifty miles.”

  Serafina looked at him in shock, amazed by his story. He was filled with a rebellion she’d never seen in him. Mr. and Mrs. Vanderbilt, and all his aunts and uncles up in New York, were going to be so worried about what happened to him, and angry when they found out what he did. He had disobeyed them! And leave it to Braeden to solve his problems with a horse! He and his new horse must have been riding hard to get back home so quickly.

  But as she stood in front of him, she became aware of the beat of her heart in her chest, and it began to drown out everything else. Her thoughts felt as if they were getting washed away in the warm new blood pumping through her body.

  Braeden stepped toward her, his eyes looking down at the ground, then slowly rising up to look at her.

  As he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close, it felt as if he was pulling her into a warm blanket. They held each other, and the fretting anxiety and confusion she’d been feeling earlier began to melt away.

  “Come on,” he said, finally separating from her. “I want to show you something down by the lake.”

  “Aren’t you going to get in trouble for coming back?” she asked as they went down the stone steps that led to the Pergola and into the gardens.

  “Oh, yes, most definitely,” he said with an odd cheerfulness.

  “What are you going to do when they find out?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe they won’t.”

  She couldn’t help but glance at him in surprise that he didn’t have some sort of plan worked out.

  “I just wanted to see you one last time,” he said.

  As they followed the path past Biltmore’s famous golden-rain tree, Braeden kept talking. “I know I was born in New York, and that’s where my family comes from, but…I don’t know…” He glanced at her and then cast his eyes sheepishly to the ground. “My life is here…” he said. “You’re here.”

  She felt a pang of happiness when he said these words. It was as if she were becoming physically lighter.

  “And you belong here, too,” she said, suddenly realizing by the tremble in her voice why he’d struggled to say the words he’d said to her. Why were certain things—even things that were obviously and deeply true—often the most difficult things to say to someone?

  “I’m glad you’re home, Braeden,” she managed to get out as they went down the steps into the Walled Garden, filled with its red and orange spray of autumn mums. “I’ve been moping around wonderin’ what to do, and skittish as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.”

  “I know what you mean,” he grumbled.

  “When I’m in the house,” she said, “I try to join in, I try to talk to people, I really do, but I feel like I’m just watching everyone else from a distance, like I’m disconnected from them.”

  “And from me, too?” he asked.

  “Not you,” she said, “but your aunt and uncle sometimes, and definitely the new guests. Especially the hunters.”

  “The way some of those hunters strut and brag and make bets on how many animals they’re going to kill is disgusting,” he said, scowling. “But that’s not me and you, and it’s not my aunt and uncle, either.”

  “Then why do they allow the hunters to come?” she asked, genuinely curious, but as soon as she said the words, she knew she shouldn’t have. “I’m sorry. My pa would say I’m gettin’ above my raising, and he’d be right. I know I don’t have any right to tell your aunt and uncle who they should allow into their home. They allowed me into their home, and I’m decidedly suspect.”

  Braeden smiled as they walked. “Come on now, don’t exaggerate. You’re not decidedly suspect,” he scolded her. “You’re just plain old, regular suspect, a typical shape-changing, rat-catching, basement-dwelling, demon-killing mountain girl. Nothing wrong with that. We seem to need those around here.”

  She laughed at his description as he continued. “My aunt and uncle have hosted the hunting season every fall for years. It’s a tradition in the old families, a way for family and friends to get together, but my aunt and uncle don’t actually do any hunting themselves. They enjoy the riding, but not the rest of it.”

  “Not the killing, you mean,” she said quietly.

  After crossing through the Rose Garden, they took the brick pathway around the glass-roofed Conservatory. The trail that led down to the lake, which their old friend Mr. Olmsted, Biltmore’s landscape architect, had called the Bass Pond, was covered in a carpet of pine needles, soft and quiet beneath their feet.

  “I guess I just don’t know what to do here anymore,” she said.

  “You don’t need to do anything.”
>
  “That’s just it. I feel useless, like I’m not any good to anybody.”

  “You’re not useless,” he said fiercely. And then he added with a smile, “At least not any more useless than I am these days, being a scofflaw fugitive from justice and all.”

  Serafina smiled with him, feeling better and better as they walked together down the path.

  “Come on, I want to show you something,” he said, quickening his pace as they approached the lake.

  “What is it?” she asked, hurrying to keep up with him.

  As they crossed through the last of the trees and approached the shore of the lake, she saw a clump of sticks on the ground, arranged into a small pile and surrounded by a circle of stones.

  Braeden knelt down, struck a wooden match, and leaned in to light the dried leaves inside the stack of sticks. As he blew on the glowing embers, the smoke rose up around him.

  “Oh yes, we were expecting you. We have your seat reserved for you right here, madam,” he said to her with an exaggerated, elevated air and a sweeping gesture of his hand, as if he were inviting her into the most elegant of drawing rooms.

  “What is all this?” she asked.

  “It’s a campfire.”

  “I know, but how did it get here?”

  “I built it.”

  “When?”

  “Just a little while ago.”

  “But how did you…”

  Seeming pleased with her mystified reaction, he grinned, put his hands behind his head, and lay back on the ground, looking up at the stars.

  It was hard for her to take it all in. He had apparently leapt off a moving train, then rode a horse like a mad boy through the mountain wilds to get here. He was in serious trouble. But he seemed so calm and relaxed, as if he finally had everything he wanted.

  “Why did you build this campfire, Braeden?” Serafina asked as she sat on the ground beside him.

  “I had a feeling you wouldn’t like tonight’s party too much.”

  “So you knew I’d be outside, on that particular terrace?”