Serafina and the Twisted Staff (The Serafina Series) (5 page)

When they reached a prominence of high ground, the two lions paused and looked down towards the river. They watched as the five wolfhounds followed Serafina’s scent to the edge of the
river, then crossed it. But they went straight across, not realising she had been swept far downstream by the powerful current. At the time, it had felt like a catastrophe that the river had pulled
her off her feet and carried her away, but now she realised that it had saved her. The wolfhounds sniffed the ground, circling in confusion. They’d lost her scent. And when they ran up and
down the edge of the river looking to find her trail, their confusion mounted.

They can’t find me
, Serafina thought with a smile as she clung to her mother’s back.
All they can smell is mountain lion.

Suddenly, the lions were moving again, running through the forest at high speed, leaping small ravines and creeks, dashing through ferns. The branches and trunks of the trees flashed by. The
whistle of the wind filled her ears.

They ran for so long through the night that Serafina’s eyes closed, and all she could feel was the movement of the running, the coolness of the air above her, and the warmth of her mother
beneath her.

S
erafina awoke a short time later on a bed of soft bright green grass that glowed in the moonlight. She felt the warmth of nuzzling fur and the
deep and gentle vibration of purring. Her mother’s two cubs snuggled up against Serafina, kneading her back with their tiny paws, so happy to see her that they were giving her a back rub. She
couldn’t help but smile. She could feel their little noses pressing against her shoulders and their whiskers tickling her neck. Over the last few weeks that she’d been visiting the cubs
at her mother’s den, she had come to love her half brother and half sister, and she knew they had come to love her too.

She reached up to feel the cut on her head. It had been dressed with a leafy compress that had stopped the bleeding and numbed the pain. The wounds on her arms and legs had been treated with
poultices of forest herbs. She didn’t want to, but she was pretty sure she could move if she needed to. She had noticed in the past that pain didn’t slow her down like it did many other
people. She had surprised her pa in this regard more than once. Cold weather didn’t affect her either. Like her kin, she seemed to have been born with a natural toughness, the ability to keep
going even when she had been battered and bloodied. But, even so, the medicine on her cuts and punctures was a welcome relief.

Feeling a gentle hand on her shoulder, she looked up. Her mother was in her human form – with her golden feline eyes, strikingly angled cheekbones, and long light brown hair. But the most
striking feature was that whenever Serafina looked into her mother’s face she knew that her mother loved her with all her heart.

‘You’re safe, Serafina,’ her mother said as she checked the dressing on her head.

‘Momma,’ she said, her voice weak and ragged.

Looking around her, Serafina saw that her mother had brought her deep into the forest, to the angel’s glade at the edge of the old, overgrown cemetery. Beneath the cemetery’s dark
cloak of twisted and gnarled trees, thick vines strangled the cracked, lichen-covered gravestones. Straggly moss hung down from the dead branches of the trees, and the darkened earth oozed with a
ghostly mist. But the mist did not seep into the angel’s glade itself, and a small circle of lush grass always remained perfect and green, even in winter. In the centre of the glade stood a
stone monument, a sculpture of a beautiful winged angel with a glinting steel sword. It was as if the angel protected the glade in a cusp of time, making it a place of eternal spring.

Her mother had been raising her two new cubs in a den beneath the roots of a large willow tree at the edge of the glade. And on a very different night from tonight, it had been the battleground
on which Serafina and her allies had defeated Mr Thorne, the Man in the Black Cloak.

Find the Black One!
the bearded man with the wolfhounds had said earlier that night. She could not help but gaze around the glade for signs of the Black Cloak that she had torn to pieces
on the razor-sharp edge of the angel’s sword. She’d been sure that she had destroyed it, but she should have smashed its silver clasp and burned the leftover scraps of cloth. She looked
towards the graveyard, with its tilting headstones and its broken coffins, and wondered what might have happened to the last remnants of the cloak.

For as long as she could remember, she had prowled through Biltmore’s darkened corridors on her own. All her life, she’d hunted. It had been her instinct. She had never known why she
had a long, curving spine, detached collarbones, and four toes on each foot. She had never known why she could see in the dark and others could not. But when she’d finally met her mother
she’d understood. Her mother was a
catamount
, a shape-shifting cat of the mountains. Serafina had come to understand that she wasn’t just a child. She was a
cub
.

Desperate to learn more, she had hunted with her mother in the forest every night for the last several weeks, not just learning the lore of the forest, but what it meant to be a catamount. She
had listened diligently to her mother’s teachings and studied her mother when she was in her lion form. She had concentrated with all her mind and all her heart just like her mother had
taught her. She had tried countless times to envision what she would look like, what it would feel like, but nothing ever happened. She was never able to change. She stayed just who she was. She
wanted so badly to ask her mother to help her try again right now, but she had a sick feeling in her stomach that her mother wouldn’t do it.

As the cubs trundled around in front of Serafina and nuzzled her face, she petted them and snuggled them, pressing their little ears back with her hands. The cubs were pure mountain lions, not
shape-shifters, but they had accepted her from the beginning, never seeming to notice or care that her teeth were short and her tail was missing.

She wondered where the dark lion had gone. He was too young to be the father of her mother’s cubs, so why had he been with her?

‘Who was that other lion, Momma?’ she asked. ‘The young one –’

‘Never mind about him,’ her mother snarled. ‘I’ve told him to keep his distance from all of us, especially you. This isn’t his territory and he knows it. He’s
only passing through with the others.’

Serafina looked up at her in quick surprise. ‘What others?’

Her mother touched her cheek. ‘You need to rest, little one,’ she said, and then began to pull away.

‘Please, tell me what’s happening,’ Serafina pleaded, grabbing her mother’s arm. ‘What others are you talking about? Why are the animals leaving? Who was that man
in the forest? Why has he come?’

Her mother turned and looked into her eyes. ‘Never let yourself be seen or heard in the forest, Serafina. Always stay low and quiet. You must keep yourself safe.’

‘But I don’t want to be
safe.
I want to know what’s happening,’ she said before she could stop herself, realising how childish she sounded.

‘I understand your curiosity. Believe me, I do,’ her mother said gently as she reached out and touched her arm. ‘But how many lives do you think you have, little one? The
forest is too dangerous for you. One of these nights I might not be there in time to save you.’

‘I want to be able to change like you, Momma.’

‘I know you do, kitten. I’m sorry,’ her mother said, wiping Serafina’s cheek.

‘Tell me what I need to do,’ Serafina begged. ‘I’ll keep practising.’

Her mother shook her head. ‘Catamount kittens change with their mothers when they are very young, before they walk or run or speak. It becomes so much a part of how they envision
themselves that they cannot even remember it being any other way. They see themselves as a catamount, and a catamount they become. I’m so sorry that I wasn’t there to teach you when you
were young.’

‘Teach me now, Momma.’

‘We’ve been trying every night – you know we have,’ her mother said, ‘but I’m afraid it’s too late for you. You won’t ever be able to
change.’

Serafina shook her head fiercely, so frustrated and hurt by her words that she was almost growling at her mother. ‘I
know
I can do it. Don’t give up on me.’

‘The forest is too dangerous for you to be here,’ her mother said, her eyes filled sadness.

‘You can come back with me to Biltmore in your human form,’ Serafina said excitedly. ‘We can be together.’

‘Serafina,’ her mother said, her tone both soft and firm at the same time, like she knew the loneliness and confusion that Serafina must be feeling. ‘I was trapped in my lion
form for twelve years. I can’t even imagine going back into the world of humans again, not yet. You have to understand. My soul was cleaved. I need time to heal, to understand what I am.
I’m so sorry, but right now I belong in the forest, and I need to take care of the cubs.’

‘But –’ Serafina tried to say.

‘Wait,’ her mother said softly. ‘Let me finish what I was saying. I need to tell you this.’ She paused, filled with emotion. ‘During those same twelve years that I
was a lion, you were as trapped as I was. You were trapped in your human form.’ Her mother wiped a tear from her own eye. ‘That is what you are now. That is what you’ve grown up
to be. You’re a human . . . and I’m a catamount.’ She looked down at the ground and pulled in a long, ragged breath. And then she lifted her eyes and looked at Serafina again.
‘I am so thankful that we had this time together, that I got to know you and see what a wonderful girl you’ve grown up to be. I love you with all my heart, Serafina, but I can’t
be your mother the way I know I should be.’

‘Momma, please don’t say that . . .’ Serafina said.

‘No, Serafina,’ her mother said, holding her with trembling hands. ‘Listen to me. You almost died tonight. I should have never let you wander the forest alone. I almost lost
you.’ Her mother’s voice cracked. ‘You have no idea how much you mean to me . . . and you have no idea how dark a force has been stirred. I want you to go back to Biltmore and
stay there. That is your home. You’re safe inside those walls. Things are changing here. I must take the cubs and go. The forest is far too dangerous for you, especially now.’

Serafina looked up at her. ‘You’re going? What do you mean, “especially now”? Tell me what’s happening, Momma. Why are all the animals leaving?’

‘This is not your battle to fight, Serafina. With your two legs, you can’t run fast enough to escape this danger. And you can’t claw hard enough to fight against it. Once
you’ve rested, I want you to go home. Be very careful. Stay clear of everything you see. Go straight back to Biltmore.’

Serafina tried to keep from crying. ‘Momma, I want to be here with you in the forest. Please.’

‘Serafina, you don’t be –’

‘Don’t say that!’

‘You have to listen to what I’m saying,’ her mother said more forcefully. ‘You don’t belong here, Serafina.’

Serafina rubbed the tears out of her eyes in fury. She wanted to belong. She wanted to belong more than anything. Her mother’s words were splitting her heart in two. She wanted to keep
arguing, but her mother would say no more.

Her mother laid Serafina’s head down in the grass. ‘I’ve given you something to help you sleep. You’ll feel better when you wake.’

Serafina lay quietly, just as her mother had told her, but it was all so confusing. Whether house or forest, she just wanted to find a place to be. She seemed to have friends who weren’t
her friends, kin who weren’t her kin. It felt like a dark force was gathering in the forest and seeping into her heart, like the Black Cloak slowly wrapping itself round her soul.

Lying at the base of the angel, she felt herself drifting into a deep and blackened sleep, like she was falling into a bottomless pit, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

When she woke a few hours later, she was no longer lying in the grass. She found herself in total darkness. She felt dirt all around her – below her, above her and on all sides.