She didn’t know what it meant. It felt like she didn’t know what anything meant anymore. A black and terrible loneliness welled up inside her, an anguish stronger than anything she had ever felt before. But what did the cloak do? How did it work? Did it really give its master the blessing of profound knowledge? Could it answer the questions that stormed through her mind?
You will become all-knowing, all-powerful…the cloak whispered.
Her head spun in confusion. Cloudiness closed in on her mind. She was unable to control herself. Her fingers grasped, her arms moved, and she began pulling the cloak around her. Drawn in by its powerful spell, she draped the Black Cloak over her back and shoulders just for a brief moment to see what would happen. She only wanted to wear it for a few seconds, just long enough to see how it felt.
As she pulled on the cloak, it spoke to her once more.
Welcome, Serafina. I’m not going to hurt you, child…
As soon as Serafina put the cloak on, her world changed. The weight of the cloak on her shoulders felt strangely satisfying. The cloak gave off no stench or foul smell. There was no blood or fear while she was wearing the cloak. It made no rattling sound. Everything about it felt fine and good.
She used her fingers to clasp the cloak at her throat. Although it had been a full-length cloak on the much taller Mr. Thorne, it fit her body perfectly. She held out her arms and pivoted and looked at the cloak on her body. She thought she looked very sophisticated and aristocratic wearing it. Then she walked a few paces back and forth, testing how it draped and flowed. It felt like she was dancing with every movement she made.
“I look good in this,” she said. Her voice sounded strong and confident.
She didn’t feel nearly as confused, tired, and discouraged as she had just a moment before. No, she wasn’t tired at all anymore. She felt rested, capable. Optimistic. She felt powerful. Wearing the cloak, she felt as if she could do almost anything, solve any puzzle, accomplish any task, play any instrument, speak another language, and if she tried, maybe even fly. It was a wonderful, glorious feeling, and she spun around the angel’s glade kicking up the snow.
The power is within us…the cloak whispered.
She tried to imagine it. She’d be famous and popular, and everyone would love her. She’d have many friends and a huge family of people who adored her. She’d travel all over the world. She’d know more than everyone else. No one could defeat her.
We will work together…
She’d be the most powerful girl in the entire world.
We will be a great force…
With the fabric of the cloak wrapped around her, she began to understand things about it that she could not before. She could see its history, like a dark dream in her mind. The cloak had been conjured by a sorcerer who had lived in a nearby village. He’d intended to use it to gain talents and understanding, to learn languages and skills, and to become a great, unifying leader in society, but his creation went terribly awry. He hadn’t just created a concentrator of knowledge: he’d created an enslaver of souls. When he realized what he had done, he tried to hurl the cloak into the village’s deepest well. He fought with the cloak, tearing and pulling and throwing, but the cloak grasped at him and twisted around him and would not let go until, finally, the sorcerer threw himself and the cloak together down the well, thinking that he would destroy them both. As the years passed, the sorcerer’s body rotted in the well, putrefied, but the cloak remained, perfect and unharmed, until years later when it was found by the drunken and desperate Mr. Thorne. The cloak had the power to acquire knowledge and capability, to concentrate the talents of a hundred people into a single person. She had seen what Mr. Thorne did with that capability. She imagined what she could do with it. She’d be able to do anything she wanted. She could go anywhere. She’d know everything. She’d finally find all the answers.
She ran her fingers down the fabric of the cloak and felt its potency coursing through her. It contained such tremendous capability, she thought. She tried to imagine what great things she could do with it, what good and beneficial deeds she could accomplish in the world. It seemed like it would be such a shame to waste that power. Someone had to use the cloak; it might as well be her.
Lift the hood of the cloak…
She felt good and hopeful and buoyant.
Put on the hood…
She reached up and gathered the cloak’s hood in her fingers and pulled it onto her head.
Then she screamed in horror at the shock of what she saw.
The edges of her sight blurred into a dark and vibrating tunnel. She could still see the physical world directly in front of her, but the hood pressed in on her peripheral vision with a crush of dead children and adults pushing their faces up against hers. The faces of the dead children surrounded her.
A little blond girl cried as she pressed her cold dead face against Serafina’s, touching her pleadingly with her grasping fingers. “I can’t find my mother! Can you help me?”
“Pozhaluysta, skazhite gde moi otets?” a girl with long, curly black hair said, pressing her face against Serafina’s.
“Please help me!” wailed a woman, only to be pushed out of the way by two more faces. The visages of terrified children and adults were crowded inside the cloak.
“The horses are trapped!” a boy shouted, pressing his face in among the others. “Watch out!”
Serafina screamed and ripped the hood from her head. She gazed around the empty glade, shaking and gasping for breath.
The souls of the dead people were imprisoned in the black folds of the cloak. This was the cloak’s power: to enslave people’s talents and hold their souls prisoner in a ghastly cage.
Come, little creature…We shall be together…
She shook her head, trying desperately to resist the cloak’s powerful spell.
We shall control the world…
“No,” she said, gritting her teeth.
Everyone shall love us…
“No!” she shouted. “I won’t do it!”
She unclasped the cloak from her neck and tore it away. The act of ripping it from her body struck her such a blow that she fell onto her hands and knees, suddenly debilitated by extreme fatigue and despair. But, filled with determination, she got back up onto her feet. She tried to hurl the cloak to the ground, but the slithering creature tangled itself in her arms and wouldn’t let go. She couldn’t free herself from it.
Alone you are a weak little creature, but together we are strong…
“No!” she shouted.
She knew that she had to get rid of the cloak. She had to destroy it. As the cloak roiled and twisted like black snakes in her hands, she tried to tear the material in her fingers, but they weren’t strong enough to rend it. The cloak, seething and hissing, wrapped around her arms and her legs, clinging to her.
A bloody hand reached up from the ground and gripped her ankle.
Serafina screamed.
“Don’t hurt the cloak, you stupid child!” Thorne snarled. Wounded and crazed, he yanked her to the ground, knocked the wind out of her, and held her down. “If you destroy it, then we’ll lose everything!”
She struggled to escape him, but he clenched her by the arms and she couldn’t get free.
“We’ll work together,” he rasped. “You with your abilities and me with mine. Don’t you see? We’re the same. We’re on the same side.”
Something was happening to him. Thorne’s face was gray and deteriorating, his skin flaking off around his cheeks and eyes. His hair had turned gray and wiry. His mouth dripped with blood.
A wave of revulsion poured through her. She tried to kick him and bite his hands and pull herself free, but she couldn’t wrest herself from his grip.
He held her to the ground with all his weight, pushing the air painfully from her lungs. She could feel her ribs bending, starting to crack. Despite his wounds and his decomposing condition, Thorne seemed to be getting stronger and stronger, driven by his greed for the
cloak.
“I’ll never give in to you!” she snarled into his face. “Never!”
“Then you’re going to die, little mouser…”
Pressing her down, he crushed into her. She couldn’t breathe. Without air flowing through her lungs, she couldn’t move, couldn’t think. Even as she fought to get away, she felt her life draining from her, her arms and legs falling limp, her mind clouding with the white light of death.
She thought there was supposed to be a sense of peace when death finally came. But she didn’t feel it. There was still too much to do in her life, still too many questions to answer, too many mysteries to solve, and it was the mysteries, the unfinished business, the want, that kept her going. She didn’t want to die, especially not this way. But she could feel herself drifting now, the life ebbing out of her, her soul slipping away.
But she kept seeing a vision of her pa in her mind. She could hear his voice. Eat your grits, girl, he demanded.
I’m not gonna eat my grits! she shouted back at him.
Her pa gazed at her dying on the ground beneath her enemy’s weight and he shook his head. The rat don’t kill the cat, girl, he said. That just ain’t right.
The rat don’t kill the cat, she thought as she pulled her wayward soul back into her body with fierce determination. The rat don’t kill the cat, she thought again as she felt a burst of new strength. She began to fight anew, pulling her arm free from her captor.
At that moment, a large black shape lunged out of the mist with a ferocious snarl and a flash of white teeth. At first she thought it must be some kind of black wolf. But it wasn’t a wolf. It was a dog. A Doberman.
It was Gidean!
Gidean bit into Thorne’s side and pulled him to the ground, then plunged in for another attack, biting and snapping. Thorne grabbed his fallen dagger from the ground and slashed Gidean in the side. Gidean yelped in pain and pulled back. Then the mountain lion charged out of her den and dove into the battle. She attacked Thorne with rapid swats of her clawed paws, her teeth snarling and her ears pressed back against her head, as if she was mightily perturbed that he hadn’t stayed dead. Plunging back into the fight, the wounded Gidean chomped Thorne’s arm, forcing him to drop the dagger, then tore into his shoulder and dragged him viciously across the ground, shaking him.
Serafina spotted the Black Cloak lying on the ground. She darted into the battle and snatched up the dagger that had fallen from Thorne’s hand. Then she attacked the cloak with the blade. She was sure this was the answer. She cut and stabbed, trying to slice through the material, but the cloak fought against her, twisting and turning and rattling. Becoming a black seething coil in her hands, the cloak clutched at her and wrapped itself around her arms and then her body, and began to crush her. No matter how hard she tried, she could not cut the snaking cloth.
As the folds of the Black Cloak slithered around her neck and began to tighten, she tried to scream for help, but the cloak choked her breath short. Nothing but horrible gagging noises escaped from her clasped throat. Gasping for breath and clutching at her neck, she struggled to get up onto her feet. She stumbled toward the statue of the angel in the middle of the glade. It had sliced my finger with the slightest touch. In one swift motion, she hurled herself onto the point of the angel’s gleaming sword. The sword slashed the side of her neck with searing pain as its tip pierced into the folds of the Black Cloak. The cloak screamed and hissed as the razor-sharp edges cut into it. Serafina grabbed at her neck and tore the cloak away, then clenched the material in her fists and slammed the cloak onto the sword point. She pierced it again and again. The cloak slithered and screeched, coiling like a tortured serpent. It writhed in her hands as she tore the cloth, but she did not relent. When she was finally done, there was nothing left of the Black Cloak but shreds lying at the angel’s feet.
Serafina fell away, panting and exhausted, pressing her hand to the wound at her neck to staunch the bleeding. She looked over and saw Thorne pinned to the ground beneath her allies. Thorne was strong, but without the Black Cloak he was no match for the speed, power, and jaws of both Gidean and the lioness.
Serafina felt a wave of triumph pass through her. They’d done it. It was all over. It had to be.
But as Gidean and the lioness struck the final, killing bites into Thorne, his body emitted a frightening sizzling sound, like meat burning on a fire. His carcass vibrated as his skin burned and peeled down into blood and bones. A thick cloud of smoke emanated from his body as it rapidly disintegrated, as if enkindled by the air itself.
Gidean stepped back and tilted his head in confusion. The lioness retreated into the den to protect her cubs.
The stinking black effluence poured forth until the roiling smoke filled the entire glade. The whole area became a great, choking cloud. Serafina coughed, waved her arms, and tried to escape from the smoke.
“Come on, Gidean,” she called, and pulled him back as she gagged on the horrible taste of the smoke in her throat.
Overwhelmed by the fumes and unable to see, she tripped over something and fell face-first to the ground. Whatever she tripped over was hard, like a branch. But when she looked, she realized it wasn’t a branch. It was a human leg. She whimpered in horror and scrambled away from it. The body of a little girl lay on the ground, her arms and legs tangled and bent at crooked angles.
Serafina crawled several yards across the angel’s glade, then got up onto her feet, her whole body shaking with fear. She looked again at the body of the girl lying on the ground. It had blond hair and wore a yellow dress. A yellow dress! How was that possible?
The body was facedown. Serafina couldn’t see the face, just the hair, the sickly pale legs, and the crumpled fingers of the hands.
Just as she took a small, tentative step toward the body to get a closer look, one of the fingers twitched.
Serafina leapt back, grabbing Gidean for protection. Gidean barked and snarled at the body, his teeth white and gleaming.
The hand bent. Then the body’s arm moved, then a leg. It was like a carcass crawling its way out of a grave.
Serafina’s instinct was to run, but she forced herself to stay.
The body slowly got up onto its hands and knees, the hair falling around the face and covering it.
Serafina was horrified to think what the face was going to look like, imagining it to be the face of a carcass, bloody and rotted.
The thing stood erect on two feet.
Serafina watched in a paralyzed state of horror. Gidean lunged and snapped repeatedly, warding off the zombie’s attack.
But then the head slowly turned and the hair parted and Serafina looked into the face. It wasn’t a rotting monster, but the perfect features and lucid, pale blue eyes of Clara Brahms. Clara opened her mouth and spoke in a desperately sweet voice, “Please, can you help me?”
Serafina froze, astounded. Clara was alive! She stood before her in her yellow dress as bright and bold as a Sunday morning. Her body and her soul had been freed.
“I remember you,” Clara said to Serafina. She reached out and clutched Serafina’s hand. Serafina flinched back reflexively, but the hand that grasped her was warm and full of life. “I saw you,” Clara said. “I called out to you. I knew you’d help me. I just knew it!”
Too shocked to speak or respond to Clara in any way, Serafina turned and looked across the glade. As the smoke cleared, it revealed the bodies of many children and adults lying on the ground.
The victims of the cloak woke up slowly, as if from a long, nightmarish sleep. Some of them sat on the ground in confusion for a long time. Others stood and looked around them.
A tall girl with long, curly black hair came up to Serafina and started speaking to her in Russian. She seemed very sweet, but scared and anxious to reunite with her father and her dog.
And there was a young man, as well, who didn’t understand what was happening. “Have you seen my violin?” he asked repeatedly. “I seem to have lost it.…”
A small boy with
a mop of curly brown hair, wearing an oversize coachman’s jacket, touched Serafina’s arm. “Pardon me, Miss Serafina, but have you seen the young master? I’ve got to get home. My father is going to be worried about me, and the horses need to be fed their grain. Do you know the way to Biltmore?”
“Nolan! It’s you! You’re alive!” Serafina grabbed the little boy and hugged him. “I’m so glad to see you. Don’t worry. I’ll take you home.”
“You’re bleeding, miss,” he said, gesturing toward her neck.
She touched the wound. It hurt a bit, but the bleeding had stopped. “I’m all right,” she said. The truth was, she’d suffered multiple cuts and bruises, but she didn’t care about that. She was just so happy to be alive.
She looked at all the children, took a long, deep breath, and smiled. She felt a tremendous sense of relief, a sense of exultation. They were alive. They were safe. She had saved them.
Then Serafina saw among the cloak’s victims a woman with long golden-brown hair, lying on the ground. She looked weak and confused, but she was alive.
Serafina went over to her. She got down on her knees and comforted the woman. As Serafina took her arm and helped her stand, she noticed how lean and muscular the woman was, but she seemed even more disoriented than the others.
“Where are my babies?” the woman muttered in slurred, hard-to-understand words.
When Nolan came over and covered the shivering woman with his jacket, she pawed it slowly and awkwardly around herself with her open hands, as if her fingers were stiff and didn’t bend.
“You’re safe now,” Serafina assured her. “You’re going to be all right.”
The woman just stared at the ground, her hair hanging loose around her head. When Serafina slowly brushed back the woman’s hair from her face, what she saw startled her. The woman had the loveliest face Serafina had ever seen. She had a perfect, pale complexion; high, protruding cheekbones; and long, angled cheeks. But her most striking feature was her amber-yellow eyes.
Serafina and the Black Cloak Page 19
