Serafina and the Twisted Staff (The Serafina Series)

by Robert Beatty

  ‘Get the veterinarian!’ Mr Vanderbilt shouted, and the butler ran to fetch him.

  Serafina wiped the tears from her eyes as she looked up at the people of Biltmore. Then she saw the dark figure of Detective Grathan standing on the third floor high above. His long brown hair hung around his head like a dark hood. Holding his spiralling antler cane in his hand, he looked down at her and the crying boy and the bloody dog on the floor between them. She wanted to snarl up at him, to bite him, but he just stared at her, as if it were a scene he’d seen many times before. There wasn’t fear in his expression like the others. There was a knowingness in his eyes.

  Braeden looked at Serafina, his eyes filled with agony. She knew he could see the fresh blood on her face and the scratches on her body. It was obvious that she and Gidean had fought. ‘What happened, Serafina?’ he cried, tears streaming down his face.

  ‘I don’t know, Braeden,’ Serafina said.

  ‘She’s lying,’ Lady Rowena said as she came down the stairs and stood behind Braeden. ‘She was fighting the dog and then tricked it so that it jumped over the railing.’

  ‘Braeden, please believe me. That’s not what happened,’ Serafina pleaded. ‘Gidean attacked me. We both fell.’

  ‘She didn’t fall,’ Lady Rowena said. ‘She couldn’t have fallen. She’s standing right in front of us.’

  ‘Gidean would never attack you,’ Braeden said hopelessly to Serafina as he dropped his head and looked at his wounded dog.

  ‘I – I didn’t do this!’ Serafina stammered, tears pouring out of her eyes again as she furiously wiped them away. She couldn’t understand how this could happen. How could she be in this situation? Braeden had to believe her. She reached out to hold his arm.

  ‘Leave him alone! You have done enough!’ Rowena shouted, blocking her. Serafina snarled at the girl, then turned back to her friend.

  ‘I swear to you, Braeden, I did not do this.’

  Braeden looked desperately at her. ‘He’s hurt bad, Serafina.’

  ‘You should leave,’ Rowena said to Serafina, her voice filled with fear and anger. ‘You don’t belong with civilised people. Look at you! You’re like some kind of wild creature! You don’t belong here!’ Then she looked around at all the frightened onlookers. ‘How can you live with her in this house? Something’s going to happen! It won’t just be a dog next time. She’s going to hurt someone!’

  ‘Braeden, no . . .’ Serafina begged him, clutching his arm.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Serafina saw two footmen moving in to protect the young master.

  ‘Braeden, please . . .’

  As Mr Vanderbilt came towards her and Braeden, he gestured for his footmen to take control. She had no idea what Mr Vanderbilt and the footmen were going to do, but when a footman grabbed her from behind, it startled her badly. In all her anger and confusion, she twisted round, hissing, and bit him on the hand before she could stop herself. It was pure and utter reflex, an instinct over which she had no control. Her teeth sank into the man’s hand, drawing blood. He leapt back, yelling in pain. She could see the horrified faces of everyone around her as they backed away from her. Mr and Mrs Vanderbilt stared at her in disbelief, barely able to comprehend what she’d just done. She’d become the very wild beast that Rowena had been screaming about.

  Filled with shame and anguish, tears streaming down her face, she leapt to her feet. The Vanderbilts and the guests and servants shrank away from her in fear. Gazing around at their horrified faces, she couldn’t stand it any longer. She ran. The crowd recoiled in panic as she fled through them across the Entrance Hall. One of the women screamed. Serafina escaped through the front doors and plunged into the darkness outside. It felt like it took forever to run across the open lawn and reach the trees. She kept running, just running, her heart pouring out of her, and still running, into the forest, into the mountains, crying and distraught, more confused than she had ever been in her life. She had bitten a footman and snarled at everyone. Blood all over her hands, she had snapped and hissed like a trapped animal.

  You don’t belong here! Rowena’s words stormed through her mind as she ran, echoes of her mother’s words the night before. She had been cast unwanted from place to place, and had nowhere to go.

  But, worst of all, because of her, Gidean had been hurt terribly, and she’d broken Braeden’s heart. It felt like she’d betrayed the only two friends she had ever known.

  Serafina ran into the forest and just kept running, hot tears pouring from her eyes. Her lungs gasped frantically for breath; her chest filled with shaking emotion. She wasn’t running with direction; she was running away – away from the injured Gidean, away from the sight of her best friend in anguish, away from the shame of what she’d done.

  When she finally slowed to a walk, she sniffled and wiped her nose with the back of her hand and kept walking fast and hard. As she crossed through the great oaks of the forest and Biltmore disappeared further and further behind her, her stomach churned. The magnitude of what she was doing began to sink in. She was leaving her pa and Braeden, and Mr and Mrs Vanderbilt, and Essie, and everyone else she knew at Biltmore. She was leaving them all behind.

  When she thought about how she hadn’t even said goodbye to her pa, she started crying all over again. It broke her heart that he’d hear about this shameful, horrible incident from the servants and from Mr Vanderbilt, that her pa would hear that she’d hurt the young master’s dog and that they’d thrown her out of the house. She could still feel in her teeth the sensation of biting into that footman’s hand. She could still see the horrified looks on all their faces when she ran through the crowd of people. Maybe Lady Rowena was right. Maybe she truly was a terrible and wild creature. She didn’t belong in a civilised home.

  But her mother had told her that she didn’t belong in the forest, either. The words still echoed in her mind. She was too human, too slow and weak to fight off attackers. You don’t belong here, Serafina, her mother had said.

  She didn’t belong in the forest or at Biltmore. She didn’t belong anywhere.

  She walked for miles, driven by nothing but burning emotion. When she saw a glow of light in a valley below her, she finally slowed down, curious. Tall, rectangular shapes rose up among the trees, some of them dotted with dim points of light, others entirely dark. The sound of a whistle startled her, and then she saw a long, dark chain of boxes curving along the mountainside. The metal snake weaved in and out of the trees, but as it crossed a trestle bridge over a river, a plume of white steam roiled up into the moonlit clouds. It’s a train, she thought. A real train.

  She’d learned about locomotives, with their fireboxes and their piston rods, from her pa, and she’d heard tell of Mr Vanderbilt’s grandpa who’d spread his ships and trains across America. Even from this great distance, she could feel the iron beast’s rumble in the earth beneath her feet and the pressure of its hurtling movement in her chest. She couldn’t even imagine being up close to such a thing. But she wondered fleetingly what it would be like to leap upon such a monster and fly to distant places on long, shining tracks. It was a foreign world down there in the city of Asheville, filled with people and machines and ways of life she did not understand, and from there an entire country spread out in all directions. What would she become if that was the path she took?

  As the sun rose, she kept moving, trekking far up into the Craggy Mountains, mile after mile. She drank from a stream when she was thirsty. She hunted when she hungered. When she was tired, she slept tucked into a crevice of rock. A wild creature she became, full and earnest, if not in body, then in spirit whole.

  Later the next evening, as she crossed through a forested cove between two spurs of a mountain ridge, the scent of a campfire drifted on the crisp autumn air. Drawn to it, she came upon a small collection of log cabins where several families gathered around a little fire roasting corn on the cob and grilling trout caught from the nearby stream. She marvelled that a boy about her age was playing a gentle melod
y on a banjo while his younger sister accompanied him on a fiddle. Others were singing soft and dancing slow, like the quiet river by which they lived.

  Serafina did not approach the mountain folk, but she sat in the trees on the hillside just above them and, for a little while, listened to their music and let her heart go free.

  She watched and listened as the mountain folk played song after song, all of them singing along and dancing in each other’s arms. Some of their songs were fast jigs and reels, everyone hooting and hollering, but mostly, as the night wore on, they played the softer songs, songs of the gentle heart and the deepened soul. They drank their white lightning and their autumn cider and rocked in their chairs, telling their stories around the campfire, stories of long-lost loves and heroic deeds, of strange occurrences and dark mysteries. When everyone started drifting off to their beds beneath their cabin roofs or sleeping on the ground beneath the stars, she knew it was time for her to go as well, for this was not her home tonight, this was not her bed. She reluctantly pulled herself up onto her feet and slipped away from the smouldering campfire’s glowing light.

  She kept travelling, but slower now, less and less anxious to get away from what was behind her. High up into the Black Mountains she climbed, following a ridge of craggy gardens where only rhododendrons and alpine grasses grew. She walked along a stony reach where the moonlit mist fell down the mountains like the waves of a silver sea. She trekked over a highland bald with no trees, just the moonlight, and the geese flying across the dark blue sky. She followed a jagged-edged river and gazed upon a waterfall that fell, and fell, and fell, down one rock after another, splashing and turning, until it disappeared into the misty forest below.

  As she was about to carry on, she looked over and saw movement on a ridge that ran parallel to her own. It was a red wolf, long and lean and beautiful, trotting along a path. When the wolf stopped and looked at her, it startled her. But then she realised that she recognised the wolf and the wolf recognised her.

  She had seen him a few weeks before along the river, the night she was lost in the forest. So much had happened in her life since then.

  She stared at the young wolf for a long time, and the wolf stared at her. He had thick, reddish-brown fur, pointed ears and incredibly keen eyes. She wondered how he had fared since last they met. The wound he had suffered that night had healed and he looked stronger now.

  Then she saw something behind him. Another wolf trotted along the path. Then another. She soon saw that there were many wolves, male and female, pups and elders, all travelling with him. But some of them glistened with fresh wounds. Others were limping. She could see that they had fought a great battle against a terrible enemy. Her wolf friend had become one of the leaders of his pack. The pack of wolves wasn’t hunting but travelling a long distance. She could see it in the way they moved, the way they held their heads and tails down as they trotted. They were leaving these mountains, like the luna moths and songbirds, and they were leaving them for good.

  When she looked at the red wolf again, he seemed to see the sadness in her face, for now she saw it reflected in his.

  Something deep down in her began to burn. Her wolf friend had found his kin. He had found his place. The wolves of the pack stuck together. They fought together. That’s what a family was. That’s what it meant to be kin. You didn’t give up on that.

  She felt the heat rising in her cheeks against the midnight chill. She thought about Biltmore and her family there. She didn’t want to leave them, to be separated from them. She wanted to stick together. She wanted to be a pack of wolves, a pride of lions. She wanted to be a family.

  She thought about her mother, and the cubs, and the dark lion, and the feral boy who had saved her life. She wanted to be with them, to hunt with them, to run with them, to be part of their lives in the forest.

  They were all her folk. And she was theirs.

  Standing there on top of the mountain, she knew what she had to do.

  The running would get her to a distant city or to the top of a mountain, but in the end, the running would get her nowhere. There was nowhere to go when you didn’t have a family to go home to, to share it with.

  As the wolf and his pack disappeared into the trees, she sat down in the gravel right where she had been standing and looked out across the mountains beneath the stars.

  Something was wrong. She could feel it.

  Why would her mother send her away? That wasn’t right.

  Why would chimney swifts swarm her?

  Why would Gidean attack her?

  Why was she running away from Biltmore?

  Why were the wolves leaving?

  The more questions she asked herself, the fiercer she felt. All these things seemed wildly separate, but maybe all the questions were connected. Maybe they all had the same answer.

  She didn’t know if Gidean had lived or died after the fall from the railing. She didn’t know if Braeden would ever be able to forgive her. But she wasn’t going to give up on her family. Families were supposed to stick together no matter what. No argument or terrible event should break them apart. Her pa had shown her time and time again that if something was broken, you fixed it. And the one thing Serafina had learned in the twelve years of her life was that if the rat wasn’t dead, then whack it again until it was. You didn’t give up. She was going to fight, and she was going to keep fighting until her family understood her.

  She was convinced now that something was wrong in the forest. Something was wrong at Biltmore. And she was going to find out what it was and fix it.

  She stood, brushed herself off and headed back down the mountain.

  She knew what she must do.

  Serafina made her way back along the mountain ridge through the thick, scrubby vegetation that grew among the rocks, then down the slopes of Greybeard Mountain into the forest trees of the lower elevations. She rested when she needed to, but tried to keep moving. She was determined to find her mother and learn everything she could about the dark force that had invaded the mountains. She had seen the terrifying man in the forest with his dogs, and she had come up against Grathan at Biltmore. She didn’t know who or what these men were, or exactly what dark powers they possessed, but she knew she had to fight them.

  Her mother and the cubs had abandoned the den at the angel’s glade, so the only clue she had to follow was the cryptic words her mother had scratched into the dirt.

  ‘If you need me, winter, spring or fall,’ Serafina said, ‘come where what you climbed is floor and rain is wall.’

  She imagined it must be a riddle, something she could solve, but their enemies could not. But it confused her. Her mother had wanted her to go back to Biltmore, not follow her, so why did she leave any message at all?

  As she descended the mountain, she came to a dark stand of decrepit old pine trees with thick, straight trunks coated in black mould, all the lower limbs withered and rotten, the roots growing along the ground like long, treacherous fingers. The smell of damp earth and decaying wood filled her nostrils. Everything around her was sticky with black pine sap. There were no other plants growing here – no saplings or bushes could survive in the perennial shadow of the blackened pines. Nothing but dark blood-red pine needles covered the ground.

  Disturbed by this deadened place, she crouched down and tried to see ahead of her through the murkiness of the night. She wondered if there was a path through it or if she had to find a way round it. She could hear the pine sap dripping from the branches of the trees. A foreboding crept into her. On the ground, beneath the twisted limbs of the pine trees, she saw a dark, unnatural shape.

  Her instinct urged her to turn round and go in the other direction, put distance between her and whatever this place was. But her curiosity would not let her leave. She crept slowly towards the shape, pulling deep draughts of air into her lungs.

  It appeared to be a worn, flat, rectangular stone, and beside it was a low, elongated, heavy iron cage buried in the ground. She took a hard s
wallow. She studied the cage, trying to understand what it was for. It was no more than a foot or two high. A small door had been fabricated into the end of it, with a latch on the outside. To lock something in, she thought. It appeared to be a cage for an animal of some kind. Then she found another cage, and then another. As she crept along, low and quiet, she felt a sickening in her stomach. There were hundreds of cages for as far as she could see.

  She found a small hut made of twisted branches and gnarly vines. She had seen woodsmen make lean-tos and shelters from branches before, but this shelter did not appear like its branches had been cut and gathered, but as if they had grown or slithered into that spot to form walls and roof. The vines and branches interlaced into an unnatural weave, like the hide of a perverse beast. Pine sap dripped from the tree limbs onto the roof of the hut, coating it in a black and stinking ooze. The grey remnants of a campfire smouldered in front of the hut. A black iron pot sat in the smoking ashes. Dozens of dead crows and vultures lay on the ground, their clawed feet cramped into balls.

  Serafina’s limbs trembled. Her heart pounded. She was frightened by what she was going to find within this dark place. But she had to find out. She had to keep going.

  She crept closer to the shelter. She watched and listened. There appeared to be no movement, no sound, other than the constant dripping of the sap.

  She crept inside.

  There were bundles of wire in the foul hut, but no inhabitant. She found wire cutters, gloves and other tools, but no indication what all this was for except for a pile of furred animal skins lying on the hut’s dirt floor. Black furs and brown, grey and white. She couldn’t help but clench her teeth at the sight of it and snarl her nose away from the rancid smell of the dead skin. It felt like spiders were crawling all over her shoulders and neck.

  Serafina hurriedly backed out of the hut and scanned the area for danger. This was a deeply disturbing place. She quickly turned to leave. Then she heard a sound that stopped her in her tracks.