Serafina and the Black Cloak (16 page)

It hurts, but I’m gonna live,
she thought.
Assuming I can find my way home.
She had thought that the forest couldn’t be nearly as bad as her pa described, but it turned
out to be a far darker, more dangerous place than she’d ever imagined. With everything she’d seen so far, she didn’t think she could survive another night here. But she was still
miles from the house, stuck on a ridge, and she didn’t even know which direction to go.

She looked up at the dark, cloudy sky, trying to find the position of the sun, then she scanned the surrounding landscape for clues and landmarks. With no compass, no map, and no idea where she
was in relation to Biltmore Estate, how could she make sure she was going in the right direction?

She was already cold when it started raining.

“Oh, great,” she said, shouting up at the clouds. “Thank you! That’s really nice, you stupid sky!”

She hated getting wet. This was a miserable place. She just wanted to get home. She missed her pa something awful. She longed for a glass of milk, a piece of fried catfish, a warm little cook
fire in the workshop, and her dry, cozy bed behind the boiler. Yesterday she’d been slinking gracefully across the plush carpets of Biltmore’s elegant rooms, and today she was stuck out
in the cold, wet, stupid, raining world.

As the rain poured down, she tried to hide under the boughs of a pine tree, but it didn’t help. The big drips onto her sopping head and neck just made her more miserable. Rivulets of water
flowed across the rocky ground beneath her. Wet and bedraggled, she clung to the trunk of the tree, terrified that she’d slip down the steep slope of the mountainside. She wanted her pa to
get his ladder and rescue her like he had when she was little, but she knew he wouldn’t even know where to look for her.

Then, as she watched the water trickle across the ground, a thought occurred to her.

Water runs downhill. Downhill, and into rivers.

She had been following the contour of the ridge because it had been easiest, but now she had a different idea. What if she climbed straight down the steepest slope of the mountain and used the
trunks of the trees and the branches of the rhododendrons as a sort of ladder? She’d get down a lot quicker.

She stepped closer to the edge and peered tentatively over the cliff. It was a long way down, but she grabbed the first branch to see if it would hold her. Suddenly, her foot slipped in the wet
leaves, her fingers broke free from the branch, and she plummeted down the mountainside.

The swooping sensation of free fall instantly filled her entire body. She slid down feetfirst, screaming. She tried to stay upright and reached out for the bushes to break her fall, but then she
hit a tree trunk, and it knocked the wind out of her. She pitched in one direction, then the next, hurtling down the mountain. She hit a branch. She spun. She hit a rock. She plunged. Suddenly, she
was somersaulting end over end. All the while she fell, tumbling down the mountainside in a great wave of autumn leaves. The rush of speed and the wind against her face made her feel like she was
flying, but then she hit another tree, the force slamming a painful grunt from her chest, and she flipped and rolled until she finally crashed, breathless and hurting, at the bottom of the
ravine.

She lay there for several seconds, unable to move. Her whole body hurt. She’d been punched and battered and stabbed.

“Well, that was one way to get down,” she groaned.

When she was finally able to get on her feet, she brushed herself off and limped on her way.

She followed a small stream that trickled into a creek. Thirsty, she lay flat at the stream’s edge and lapped up the clear mountain water like an animal.

The stream led her to a waterfall that crashed into a tumultuous pool thirty feet below.

Does this waterfall have a name?
she wondered. If she knew that, then maybe it would help her understand where she was and give her a better chance of finding her way home.
What river
is this?

But then she realized that it didn’t matter exactly where she was. A river wasn’t a place. A river was movement. She remembered something her pa had taught her. All the rivers in
these mountains wound through complicated, twisting routes, but eventually they all flowed in one direction, into the mighty French Broad River.

The Blue Ridge Mountains were some of the oldest mountains in the world. The river had been flowing here for millions of years and had helped shape the mountains into what they were today. And,
most importantly, she knew that the French Broad River flowed through the grounds of Biltmore Estate, right past the mansion. The river was the way home.

She climbed down the wet, slippery rocks at the edge of the waterfall, then made her way along the craggy shoreline. Confident in her direction now, she traveled as fast as she could. She had to
reach her pa, who she knew must be worried sick about her, and she wanted to see Braeden. She wasn’t sure if she had abandoned him by sneaking into the woods, or if he’d abandoned her
by going home in his uncle’s carriage; but they’d separated, and it made her stomach hurt. The more time that went by, the less certain she became of how she should feel. Was Braeden
actually her friend, or was her mind just imagining it, like when she imagined herself as being friends with the butler’s assistant who stopped and ate the cookies? All her life, she had
pretended that she had friends, but was it true this time?

She and Braeden had only known each other for a short while, but she let the memories of their time together wash over her. To someone like her, it felt like a lifetime of friendship. She was
like a starved animal wolfing down a scrap and thinking it had eaten a full meal. But she had no idea if he missed her the way she missed him.

She walked for hours, following the river until it flowed into a much wider, flatter river that she hoped was the French Broad, but she wasn’t sure. She was tired, hungry, and sore from
her wounds. She just wanted to get home.

As the sun slowly withdrew behind the trees in the western sky, she tried to push herself faster. She didn’t want to get caught in the forest another night, for that’s when the
mountain lion, the Man in the Black Cloak, and whatever other demons might crawl out of the cemetery would be on the prowl. But it was no use. The sun abandoned her, the birds and the other daytime
sounds went dead, and the darkness settled into the trees like a black oil.

Exhausted, she stopped to catch her breath and rest a spell. She knew it was dangerous to linger in the open. Wet and shivering, she crawled into a hole beneath the hollowed roots of a tree at
the river’s edge, curled into a little ball, and peered out into the darkness.

She was a failure. That’s what she thought. She had come to the forest to see the world, but all she’d found was wretchedness.

From her little cave beneath the roots, she looked downstream along the gravelly shore of the river. The air around her was cold and still, but the river rippled with a steady rushing sound, and
she could taste its moisture on her lips. The waxing moon rising above the mountains cast a silvery light across the deep-flowing black water. Mist oozed out of the forest and drifted across the
river like a legion of ghosts.

A wolf called in the distance, a long, plaintive, lonely howl that put a shiver up her spine. The wolf was miles away, up on the mountains. But then she nearly jumped out of her skin when a much
closer wolf answered the call with a returning howl.

Red wolves were elusive, almost mythological beasts, seldom seen by anyone, but they were well known for being fierce warriors that fought in packs, tearing their enemies with their gleaming
white fangs.

The wolf close to her howled again, and a dozen wolves on the other side of the river lit up the air with a bloodcurdling chorus of howls. Goose bumps rose on her arms.

She did not hear it approach for it moved like a ghost through the mist, but she saw the wolf come slowly out of the forest and look out across the river. She stayed very still among the roots
and watched it. She could smell the musky scent of its coat and see its moonlit breath in the air.

It was a young wolf, long and lean, with a deep coat of reddish-brown fur, a slender nose, and tall ears. The fur on its right shoulder was bloody from a wound.

She held her breath and stayed quiet.
The wolf doesn’t know I’m here,
she thought.
I’m one with the forest. I’m camouflaged and silent.

But then the wolf turned its head and looked straight at her, its eyes as keen and penetrating as any creature she had ever seen.

Her muscles bunched as she prepared herself for the attack.

But then the wolf’s ear twitched. Serafina heard it, too. There was something large moving through the forest, traveling along the river shore toward them.

The wolf looked in the direction of the sound, and then he looked back at her. He stared at her for several seconds, even as the sound moved toward them. Then, to her astonishment, the wolf
walked into the river. He kept walking until he was up to his shoulders in the water, then the river swept him away and all she could see was his head as he tried to fight against the current. He
was swimming toward the howls of his brothers and sisters on the other side of the river. And he was swimming away from the thing coming toward her.

Suddenly, she felt abandoned, vulnerable.

The river made too much noise for her to hear exactly what was coming toward her, but it was getting closer. Sticks breaking. Footsteps. Two feet. It wasn’t the mountain lion or another
wolf that had scared the red wolf across the river, but a man. Was it the Man in the Black Cloak?

As she huddled down into the dirt, a hideous giant centipede crawled across her hand. She flinched and stifled a scream.

Her lungs demanded more air. Her legs tensed, wanting her to run. But it was too late. The attacker was too close. A smart rabbit doesn’t break cover when the predator is upon her. She
hides
. She pushed herself farther back into the dark little hole beneath the roots.

A flickering light came through the trees. She heard the pushing of bushes and the scraping of bark and the muffled clanking of metal and wood.

It’s a lantern,
she thought.
The same kind of lantern the Man in the Black Cloak used the night he took Clara Brahms.

Trembling, she crouched low and readied herself for battle.

S
erafina watched the man raise his lantern and look around him as he broke through the underbrush. It was clear that he was searching for
something, but more than that, he was
frightened
. Even with his lantern and the nearly full moon, he could not see as well in the forest’s darkness as she could. When the man took
another step, she recognized the familiar creak of his leather work boot. That’s when she realized that it wasn’t the Man in the Black Cloak. It was her pa, in a long, dark brown
weather cloak. Despite his warnings, and despite his fear, he had delved deep into the forest to rescue her.

She gasped, crawled out of her hole, and ran toward him.

“I-I’m here, Pa! I’m here!” she stammered, crying as she threw her arms around him.

He squeezed her tight for a long time. It was like being hugged by a gentle bear. She clung to his huge, warm body.

As he exhaled in relief, she could feel the shattering worry pouring out of him. “Sera, aw, Sera, I…I thought you’d disappeared like the other children.”

“I ain’t disappeared, Pa,” she said, her voice quivering like she was a little girl again.

Seeing her torn clothing and the scratches on her arms even in the poor light of his lantern, he asked, “What happened to you, Sera? You have another run-in with a raccoon?”

She didn’t even know where to begin in telling him everything that had happened to her, and she knew he wouldn’t believe her anyway. He would think it was just another one of her
cockamamy stories.

“Got terribly lost,” she said, shaking her head in shame, and it was the truth. Tears streamed down her face.

“But you’re all right?” he said, looking her over. “Where’s it hurt?”

“Just wanna get home,” she said, burying her head in the folds of his cloak. She remembered how angry she’d been at him for not telling her about her birth, and how she’d
convinced herself that he wasn’t on her side, but she realized now how foolish she’d been. Nobody in the world had ever done more for her than her pa, and nobody in the world had ever
loved her like he did.

When the wolves across the river exploded into howls, it made her pa flinch.

He looked around. “I hate wolves,” he said with a shudder as he put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her along. “Come on. We’ve gotta get out of here.”

She happily went with him, but as the wolves continued their howling, it sounded different to her than it had before. The howls weren’t the lonely searching calls spread across the vast
distances of mountain ridges, but excited yip-howls, all from the same location. She couldn’t help but feel that they weren’t howls of menace, but of joy and reunion.
You made it,
brother.
She thought of the wounded red wolf crossing the river.
You made it home.