Serafina and the Twisted Staff (The Serafina Series) (16 page)

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.

S
erafina 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 swallow. 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.

A whimper.

S
erafina 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.