Serafina and the Twisted Staff (The Serafina Series) (19 page)

‘You look exhausted,’ Waysa said, ‘and like you’ve been dragged through a mud pit. You need to rest. But before you do we should get you cleaned up.’

‘What do you mean?’ she asked, turning towards him.

But in one quick moment, he rushed her and tackled her headlong through the waterfall. The shock of the icy-cold water hit her first, then she felt herself tumbling downward.

S
erafina felt a swoop in her stomach as she fell through the rush of the waterfall, her body plummeting towards the rocks and water below. Her mind
exploded with fear of what was going to happen when she hit the bottom.

She had tried to cross that one river at its most shallow point to escape the wolfhounds, and it had nearly killed her. She’d never swum in deep water. She wasn’t even sure she
could. And she certainly didn’t want to find out like this.

But at that instant her whole body plunged with a great, enveloping crash into an ice-cold pool of deep blue. The biting cold was the most immediate shock she felt. But the force of her fall
sank her down, down, down into the churning water, surrounded by clouds of swirling bubbles. She tried to flail her arms and legs, but she just kept sinking. Her lungs were going to burst,
desperate to take a breath.

A hand grabbed her wrist and pulled her up.

As soon as her face broke the surface, she heaved in a great, gasping breath of air and started flailing and splashing.

Waysa held her to keep her afloat. ‘Don’t panic! I’ve got you!’

‘I can’t swim!’ she sputtered.

‘Paddle your legs,’ Waysa told her, and she started pushing her legs rapidly against the water. ‘All right, good. Now paddle your arms in front of you, close to your chest,
like this. Good. You see, you paddle your arms and your legs together, like you’re crawling as fast as you possibly can.’

Serafina had no choice but to listen to everything he was telling her to do. ‘Keep paddling!’ he ordered. ‘Good. Now I’m going to let you go.’

‘Don’t let me go!’ she screamed.

‘I’m letting go . . .’

When Waysa released her, she paddled furiously and kicked her legs and held her head above the water in front of her, terrified at every breath that it would be her last. But she soon found
herself holding her own. She wasn’t immediately sinking! She could swim. She could actually swim!

‘That’s it! You’ve got it!’ Waysa shouted.

It turned out that swimming was like falling and landing on her feet without getting hurt. For her and her kind, it was a reflex. It wasn’t something she would have ever chosen to do, but
now that she had to do it she could do it almost instinctively. She paddled around in the pool, filled with joy. She could actually swim!

‘It’s so cold!’ she complained, half angry and half laughing.

‘Just keep paddling. You’ll get used to it,’ Waysa said, swimming beside her.

Serafina swam one way and then another. She tried turning her body this way and that, feeling the water rush over her skin. It felt like she was flying through soft, thickened, ice-cold air.

When they were done, Waysa climbed out of the pool onto the rocks and boulders at the edge of the river. Then he turned and put out his hand.

She grabbed hold and he hoisted her up onto a boulder. From there, they climbed together, hand over hand, back up to the cave. They threw more sticks onto the fire, gathered the warm, fuzzy cubs
into their arms, and huddled around the flames.

‘You could have given me a warning!’ she said.

‘Would you have done it if I had?’ he said, laughing.

‘No!’

‘You see,’ he said, gloating. ‘You’re going to find swimming useful for crossing rivers on long journeys.’

It felt good to be warm and clean again, her hair lying around her shoulders and her body strong. The icy water seemed to have a powerful and rejuvenating effect.

For a little while, as they sat by the fire, she and Waysa talked about their lives. She knew she should ask him about the bearded man he had called the conjurer, and where her mother had gone,
and all the other questions on her mind. But she’d been running and fighting for so long that, for a little while, she just wanted to feel like things were going to be all right. In the cave,
it was like it was just the two of them in the world, and the world was good. She asked him questions about his sister and the other members of his family, and he seemed grateful to have a chance
to talk about them. He asked her about her life at Biltmore, about her pa and her younger days. She told him about Braeden, and what had happened to Gidean, and how she’d fled in shame.
Talking to Waysa was easy. It felt like a salve on the wounds of her heart.

When she and Waysa curled up in their blankets on opposite sides of the campfire, she was relieved to finally sleep for a few moments. She dreamed of forests – of tall, beautiful trees and
flowing water, rocky slopes and deep ravines. And she dreamed of swimming.

A short time later, she awoke curled up in a little ball with the two sleeping cubs. They were warm and soft, breathing quietly with little purring sounds, their heads tucked into her chest and
legs.

Waysa was awake as well, gazing at her from across the fire.

For a long time, she did not speak, and neither did he.

When she finally did say something, her words were soft. ‘You fled your home from far away. You’ve been running. When you came here, you could have kept running. What kept you here,
Waysa?’

Waysa turned away from her and gazed at the waterfall.

‘Why did you stay?’ she asked, her voice low and gentle.

‘I’ve been waiting for you,’ he said softly.

She felt her brows furrow as she looked at him. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘I would have passed through and kept going days ago, but after I saw you in the forest that night . . .’

‘What?’ she urged him. ‘After you saw me in the forest, what happened?’

‘I wanted to wait for you,’ he said.

‘What do you mean, wait for me?’ she asked gently, narrowing her eyes at him.

‘I thought we could leave here together.’

Serafina could hear the seriousness in his voice.

‘You don’t truly know me,’ she said.

‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘I don’t. I don’t know anyone any more, not a single living soul other than you, and your mother, and the cubs.’

Serafina stared at Waysa but didn’t know what to say. It was the way of a young mountain lion to leave his mother and find a territory of his own, but it was the way of a human to want a
friend and a family.

As Serafina stared at Waysa, she realised that there was far more to this boy than she’d thought. He was asking her to leave this place with him, to go live in the forest and run through
the ferns and hunt drummers and swim in pools together. He’d been hoping to find her again. He’d been waiting for her.

She watched him for a long moment, just holding his gaze, and then she said, ‘You realise I can’t change.’

‘Of course you can,’ he said.

‘I’ve tried. I can’t do it.’

‘You’re just not seeing what you want to be.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Once you envision what you want to be, then you’ll find a way to get there.’

‘I don’t think so,’ she said.

‘I’ll teach you,’ he said, and his voice had such confidence, such kindness, that it was almost impossible not to believe him.

As she turned away from him and cuddled with the cubs, she thought about what Waysa had said. There was a new path opening up in front of her now. It awed her to think about it. One path would
take her home to Biltmore like she’d planned, to people she knew and loved, but to conflict and pain and uncertainty as well. But this other path, with Waysa, would take her away, maybe
forever. She knew she would miss her pa and Braeden, but she wondered what it would be like. Would she come to know Waysa in the way she knew them? Would she go on to see new mountains and new
waterfalls? Were there different kinds of trees and animals in those distant places? Would she finally find a place to belong? What would become of her? With Waysa’s help, could she truly
learn to change?

As she tried to envision her future, she realised there were many paths, many different ways to go, and part of growing up, part of
living
, was choosing which ones to follow. Two main
paths lay before her, leading to two very different lives.

She slowly got up to her feet and tried to think it through. She knew that she had to be smart and she had to be bold. But, more than anything, she knew she had to follow the path of her
heart.

S
tanding in the cave with Waysa, Serafina tried to imagine all that had happened when the conjurer attacked her mother and the cubs – the
bearded man casting his spells and twisting vines. The cubs must have been terrified.

‘Is that why he attacked?’ she asked Waysa. ‘Did he want the cubs?’

‘He’s been capturing animals of all kinds,’ he said. ‘That’s why they’re fleeing. They sense the coming danger. And that’s why you and I must take the
cubs and leave this place, Serafina. As soon as you are rested enough to travel at speed, we must follow your mother’s path and join her.’

Waysa’s words were a shock to her. She longed to see her mother again, but her heart ached painfully at the thought of leaving.

‘We can’t fight this darkness, Serafina,’ Waysa warned, seeming to sense what she was thinking. ‘We must flee these mountains.’

‘But I don’t understand,’ Serafina said. ‘Tell me what’s going on. Why is all this happening? Why did my mother send me back to Biltmore?’

‘Your mother loves you and her cubs more than anything in the world. She thought you’d be safe at Biltmore. But she was wrong.’

‘Is Biltmore in danger?’ Serafina asked in alarm.

‘Everything’s in danger. Especially Biltmore.’

‘What?’ Serafina said. ‘Then we need to help them, Waysa.’

‘We can’t,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘He’s far stronger than we realised. He’s even stronger than when he killed my family three weeks ago. He’s
gathering more and more power as he comes this way. His power is tied to the land, to the forest and the people and animals he controls within it. But Vanderbilt and his vast estate stand in his
way of controlling this region for himself.’

‘But who is he? Who is this man?’ she asked, panic building up inside her.

‘He’s a shifter, like the catamounts. He can shift into a white-faced owl at will. But he uses his power for evil, to try to control the forest, to steal from it, to take its animals
and its trees and the magic within it and bend them to his will. My people call him the Darkness, for he is a future through which they cannot see. Shifters inherit their gift, pass it down from
one generation to the next, but he has taken his power further. He has spent years learning to twist the world we know, to throw curses and cast spells. He wants to control this forest, to make
slaves of us all, from the smallest mouse to the largest bear, and everything in between. He hates the catamounts most of all because he cannot control us. We stand against him. He will destroy
anything in these mountains that gets in his way.’

‘Are you saying that he’s going to attack Biltmore?’

‘I don’t know by what path or trickery he will come,’ Waysa said. ‘He’s a conjurer of the dark arts. He does not fight with tooth and claw like you and me. He does
not fight straight on. He uses subterfuge and deceit to weave his way. He flies silent. He watches like an owl and keeps himself hidden at a safe distance. He concentrates his power into weapons
and then sends in his demons to do his bidding.’

Serafina tried to understand. ‘Do you mean . . . a weapon like the Black Cloak?’

Waysa nodded. ‘The Black Cloak was a collector of souls, one of the first concentrators of dark power that he ever created. I do not know all the different spells he will cast this time,
but the tearing of the Black Cloak wrought a terrible new fury in him. That’s what started all this. That’s what brought him here.’

‘Are you saying the creator of the Black Cloak has come alive? Not Mr Thorne, but the cloak’s actual
creator
?’

‘He’s never been dead,’ Waysa said.