Serafina and the Twisted Staff (The Serafina Series)

by Robert Beatty

  A whimper.

  Serafina turned.

  Back behind the shelter, there were more cages.

  She heard the whimper again – a long, pleading, mournful whine.

  As she glanced warily around her, her legs buzzed with tension. Her temples pounded. Every sensation in her body was telling her she should not linger here, but her heart was telling her she must go towards the sound.

  She crept slowly forward. The other cages had been empty, but to her horror she found several inhabited cages behind the shelter.

  She saw brownish fur inside one of the cages, but she still couldn’t tell what the creature was.

  She crept closer.

  The mound of fur in the cage was a few feet long, and it was shaking.

  Then she heard the whimpering sound again.

  Serafina tried to stay steady and strong, but she started trembling as badly as the poor animal in the cage. She couldn’t help it. She looked behind her, then scanned the forest to make sure no one was near. It felt like a terribly dangerous place. The pine trees grew so close together, and the area beneath the upper limbs was so dark that it was difficult to see any distance at all.

  Crawling on her hands and knees, she crept around to the front of the cage.

  She peered through the cage’s iron bars.

  There she saw it.

  Serafina looked into the face of one of the most beautiful animals she had ever seen: a young female bobcat. She had large, striking eyes, long whiskers and a white-marked face with wide ruffs of hair that extended outward from her cheeks and around her head, all the way to her tufted, black-tipped ears. She had greyish-brown black-spotted fur, with black streaks on her body and dark bars on her legs.

  But, as beautiful as the bobcat was, she was in terrible shape. It was clear that she’d been drooling and clawing, chewing at the metal cage, frantic to escape.

  As Serafina approached her, the bobcat became quiet and still, staring at her with big, round eyes. She seemed to understand that Serafina was not her enemy.

  Serafina saw that there were other animals in the cages too – a woodchuck, a porcupine, even a pair of river otters. One of the saddest of all was a red-tailed hawk with its talons lacerated and bloody, its feathers torn and broken from batting its wings against the wire mesh in its fight to escape.

  Serafina quickly glanced around her, frightened that the owner of this camp would arrive at any moment. These terrible cages didn’t belong to her, so she had no right to do what she wanted to do. But did she need someone’s permission to do what was right?

  She looked behind her and then scanned the trees for danger. Her heart began to pound in her chest so hard that she could barely breathe.

  She knew she should run, but how could she leave?

  She inched closer to the bobcat’s cage, unfastened the latch, and opened the door.

  ‘Come on out,’ she whispered.

  The bobcat crept out slowly, afraid of everything around her. Serafina touched the cat’s fur with her bare hand. The bobcat looked at her with her huge eyes, then slunk quickly off into the forest. Once the bobcat had escaped the pine trees and was in the safety of the distant undergrowth, she turned and looked at Serafina.

  Thank you, she seemed to be thinking. Then the cat finally disappeared into the brush.

  ‘Stay bold,’ Serafina said quietly, remembering the expression the feral boy had used when he had helped her. She didn’t know why, but for some reason those two simple words had meant a lot to her.

  She quickly released the woodchuck, porcupine and otters. They all looked strong enough to get home. She was sure the otters would know the way to the nearest river. But the hawk was in a bad way. She thought that he could probably fly, but a red-tailed hawk out at night was in grave danger from its natural enemy, the great horned owl.

  She reached into the cage, carefully grabbed the hawk with both hands and pulled him out. He lifted his wings and tried to pull away, none too happy to be handled. She expected he would hiss and snap at her, but he did not. He stared at her with his powerful raptor eyes and clamped on to her wrist with one of his talons, squeezing so hard that she thought he was going to break her bones. It was as if he somehow understood she wanted to help him, but at the same time he wasn’t going to give up control.

  She left the pine forest and the terrible cages behind her, carrying the wounded hawk clutched in her hands.

  When she and the hawk had finally escaped the pine trees and entered a better part of the forest, she slowed down. She wished she could carry the hawk all the way back to Biltmore and give it to Braeden to take care of, but she couldn’t travel fast enough with a hawk in her hands, and she was pretty sure the hawk wasn’t too happy about being carried around by somebody like her. She found a safe thicket of tree brush and stuffed the hawk inside where it could hide from the marauding owls until daylight came. ‘Rest here, then fly strong, my friend,’ she whispered.

  From there, she tried to move quickly away. She wanted to put as much distance between her and those cages as she could. She knew that the forest was a wild, untamed place, with all sorts of life-and-death struggles, but what kind of person would trap and capture animals like that? Why would he leave them there, starving and afraid, hidden beneath the darkened trees?

  A mist drifted through the branches of the forest and made it difficult for her to find her way, but she kept moving downhill as best she could. She felt a tightness in her stomach. She couldn’t escape the feeling that she had just avoided a dark and terrible danger.

  Through the mist she saw something out of the corner of her eye. When she looked over, she spotted a figure in the distance walking through the trees. At first she thought it might be the man she’d seen entering the forest with Mr Vanderbilt. She felt a sudden hope. Maybe she was far closer to Biltmore than she’d realised. But a heaviness rolled into her chest. She crouched in the underbrush and watched the figure at a distance. He was wearing a long, dark, weather-beaten coat and a wide-brimmed hat. It was the bearded man she’d seen in the forest a few nights before! She hit the ground in sudden panic.

  She tried to stay quiet, but her chest pulled in rapid breaths as she looked towards him. He had a heavy, dark grey beard, thick and wavy like an animal’s coat. His face was craggy with cracks and wrinkles, wind-worn like he’d been in the forest for fifty years. She scanned the area, looking for signs of the wolfhounds, but didn’t see them. Nor did he seem to be carrying the walking stick he had before. But she knew it was him.

  Staying low and quiet and very still, she watched him. He seemed to drift into and out of the mist, in and among the trees, disappearing and then reappearing in the swirls of the fog. He drifted further away, then closer, as if the trees themselves were playing tricks on her eyes. He seemed more like a ghostly haint than a mortal man. As she felt the goose bumps rising on her arms, she wanted to run, but she was afraid the sound of her flight would draw his attention.

  But she had to get out of here. Just as she started to back away and go in the opposite direction, the man stopped dead in his tracks. He pivoted his head towards her with a startling, inhuman quickness – like an owl spotting prey. His terrible silver eyes peered right at her.

  She ducked down to the ground and pressed her back to the base of a gnarled old fir tree, hiding. The image of his pivoting head threw a shiver down her spine.

  She heard him moving rapidly towards her.

  She had to run, but her chest tightened and her legs clamped. A sharp pain attacked her throat like someone’s fingers had grabbed hold of her windpipe. Her whole body started shaking violently with something beyond fear, something beyond her control. Panic set in. She couldn’t get any air into her lungs. She tried to scream, but she couldn’t get sound of any kind to pass through her constricted throat.

  The footsteps came rapidly closer as the man in the long dark coat came towards her. She could hear his boots sinking into the damp earth as he walked. She became aware of a sudden co
ldness on the ground beneath her and around her. When she looked down, she saw that the earth had become soaked with blood.

  Serafina tried to leap up from the ground and flee, but the man had cast some sort of spell on her. Her muscles were rigid. They would not move.

  As the man bore down on her, Serafina watched in horrified amazement as the roots of the tree erupted out of the blood-soaked earth, grew rapidly round her wrists and clamped her hands to the ground. Without her hands to fight, she was completely defenceless.

  Like a desperate mink caught in a trap, she bent down and chewed at the roots that held her hands. When another root started slithering like a snake round her ankles, she kicked it angrily away.

  Suddenly, the forest that had always been her ally and concealment had become her enemy.

  As the man came round the tree, his face was shrouded in darkness save for the silver blaze of his eyes. He grabbed at her with two bony, clutching hands, grasping like the talons of an owl. As his long, clawlike fingernails sank into her, she twisted wildly and broke free. She thrashed her legs, then darted away.

  She ran as fast as she could, until she thought she must have put some distance between herself and her pursuer. But just as she turned her head to look behind her she heard a tick-tick-ticking sound. A terrible hissing scream erupted a few feet above her left shoulder. The sound scared her so badly that she leapt back and hit a tree. A large, nasty-looking white barn owl flew right over her head, its horrible black eyes peering at her, its mouth open as it let out its bloodcurdling scream.

  She dived into a thicket of vine-strangled brambles where the barn owl could not fly. She thought she was very clever. But then the barn owl disappeared and the bearded man began tearing the branches away, pushing into the thicket towards her. She got down on her hands and knees and crawled through the vines into the deepest part of the thicket. She hoped it might provide her some form of protection from the bearded man’s spells. But, instead, the vines started moving, snaking, twisting themselves around her limbs and neck.

  She screamed and thrashed and yanked at the vines as she crawled out of the other side of the thicket. From there, she stood up and ran across the open ground.

  She wanted to turn, she wanted to fight, she wanted to attack this horrible man, but there was nothing she could do but run for her life. She ran fast through the cover of the forest. She thought she was doing it. She thought she was escaping.

  When she glanced back, she saw that the man had not chased her. He was still standing where he had been. He simply flattened his hand to his mouth and blew across his palm in her direction. It was like the cold, corpsy breath of Death himself had struck her. The blood rushed from her head. Her lungs went cold. Her muscles went limp, and her body involuntarily collapsed, somersaulting down a small incline, a dead weight and lifeless, until she came to rest in the dirt.

  Her whole body had gone pale and cold. Her lungs had stopped pulling in air. Her heart had stopped pumping blood. She had a few seconds of thought left as the blood drained from her head, but she was a dead girl, a cadaver, lying face down on the ground.

  The man made his way over to her, grabbed her limp body like a rag doll and pulled her up onto an old stump. But even as he dragged her against the cold earth she could feel the effects of his spell wearing off – like pins and needles in her limbs. She did not understand it, but she was apparently a far tougher creature than he had accounted for. Her chest tingled with the slip of new air into her lungs. Her heart suddenly thumped to life again, and warm blood flowed through her like waves.

  ‘Now, let’s get a good look at you,’ the man said as he brought her into the moonlight. ‘Just what kind of little girl are you, sneaking up on me like that?’

  When he flipped her limp body round so that he could see her face, she was terrified, but she kept her eyes closed and pretended to be dead.

  ‘Ah, I see,’ the man said. ‘It’s you again. I should have known. You’ve been a nuisance to us already, haven’t you? And I’ve seen enough of your kith and kin to know that it’s only going to get worse if I let you grow up.’

  As Serafina felt her strength coming back into her muscles and the saliva wetting her mouth, she knew she only had one chance. The old rat trick. Bursting alive, she twisted round and bit the man’s right hand as deeply and fiercely as she could.

  The man reflexively yanked back his hand. But she didn’t let go at first. His arm’s yanking motion pulled her entire body up. At that moment, she released her bite and went flying through the air. She landed on the ground, rolled to her feet and ran.

  Serafina ran for miles, and then walked, and then ran some more, travelling as far from that place as she could.

  She tried to think through everything she had seen. She knew it had been the same bearded man she had encountered in the forest a few nights before. He had seemed to be drifting in and out of the trees with an almost spectre-like quality, like an apparition in the mist. Was he the old man of the forest that the mountain folk spoke of? He seemed to know her. He had said that she was a nuisance, like she was getting in his way. But in the way of what? What was his goal? Was it truly to find the Black Cloak? Or was it more than that? She thought about the stallions pulling the driverless carriage, and the swifts swarming her and Gidean attacking her on the stairs . . . Was he somehow controlling these animals? Whoever he was, he could use his hands to throw deathly spells that Serafina never wanted to experience again.

  When she came down from the craggy gardens, she had intended to find her mother and make her tell her everything she knew, and then from there go on to Biltmore. But what if the bearded man had already found her mother and the cubs? What if he had killed them? It was too terrible to think about. She ran faster. Now, more than ever, she had to find them.

  As the sun rose and she travelled through the forest, she tried to think about where her mother might have gone. But other questions crept into her mind too. Did her mother know this intruder was invading her territory? Had her mother sent her away to keep her safe?

  Serafina thought again about the message her mother had left for her.

  It didn’t seem to make any sense.

  What you climbed is floor . . . ?

  She racked her brain. ‘What did I climb?’ she asked herself.

  Was it a tree of some kind? A floor of wood?

  She thought about her battle against the wolfhounds. She had leapt into a tree, then ran along a branch, then fought the dogs on the ground until they backed her against the rock face at the bottom of the cliff.

  And then she got it.

  She had climbed up the rock wall.

  So maybe she was looking for something that had a rock floor.

  What kind of room has a rock floor?

  Then she smiled. Not a room. ‘A cave,’ she said.

  But there were many caves in the mountains. She thought about the next line of the riddle.

  ‘What does rain is wall mean? That makes no sense.’

  As she walked through the forest, she kept repeating ‘where rain is wall’.

  ‘How could rain be a wall?’ she said to herself. ‘Rain is water . . . You drink water. You wash with water. You swim in water . . .’ The possibilities were endless.

  And pointless.

  There was water everywhere. She looked at the clouds. There was even water up there. Water started out in a cloud, and then fell as rain, and then flowed across the earth into the rivers. She thought about rivers.

  When is a river a wall?

  Walls are vertical.

  Then it came to her.

  ‘A waterfall,’ she said with satisfaction. A wall of water, a wall of rain.

  There were no lakes or ponds in these mountains, but there were plenty of waterfalls. The mountains were alive with moving water. The mountains had been carved by moving water, in all its forms and spirits: great rivers that roared headlong over cliffs and tiny streamlets that trickled through the deepest woods. There were triple-tiered
falls that slipped across cascading stone, and falls that poured over sliding rocks to icy-cold pools below. There were tall, narrow falls that plummeted from jagged heights and low, quiet falls that smoothed their boulders round.

  But what she needed was a waterfall with a cave. She knew of several. But one was far too wet. The other far too easy to find. Her mind settled on a waterfall she knew of that was hidden in a small, protected cove. Is that where her mother had gone?

  There was only one way to find out, so she headed for it.

  ‘What you climb is floor and rain is wall,’ she said as she walked. It made sense. It made perfect sense. And it felt good that something in the world finally did.

  When she arrived at the waterfall several hours later, late in the morning, she studied it from a distance, wary of the danger it might contain. The water flowed smooth and straight over the edge of rock. She could smell the crash of the clear blue water into the pool below, and feel the droplets floating on the breeze as the mist touched her cheeks.

  She didn’t want to go right inside the cave, because she wasn’t sure what was in there, but she crept slowly, carefully, towards the entrance, staying low to the ground and very quiet.

  ‘I was hoping you’d come,’ said a loud male voice immediately behind her.

  Startled beyond her wits, she arched her back and jumped straight up, hissing and spinning round to defend herself.

  Serafina landed on all fours on a tree limb and looked down at her attacker.

  She stared for a moment and then blinked, unsure of what she was seeing.

  The feral boy was sitting casually on the ground just a few feet behind where she had been.

  ‘Do you want to climb trees?’ he asked, smiling. ‘Or are you hungry?’

  Still feeling the jolt of fear tingling through her body, she studied the boy. He had an uncanny stealth to him. She had not heard him or sensed him in any way.