Serafina and the Twisted Staff. Robert Beatty

breaks.’ Just as he said the words, the metal snapped in his fingers. ‘You see that?’

      Serafina looked up at her pa and smiled. Some days, he had a special kind of magic about him.

      Then she looked over at the other workbench. Somewhere between mending the elevator, fixing the cold box and tending to his other duties, her pa had cobbled together a dress for her made out of a burlap tow sack and discarded scraps of leather.

      ‘Pa . . .’ she said, horrified by the sight of it.

      ‘Try it on,’ he said. He seemed rather proud of the stitching he’d done with fibrous twine and the leather-working needle he sometimes used to patch holes in the leather apron he wore. Her pa liked the idea that he could make or mend just about anything.

      Serafina walked glumly behind the supply racks, took off her tattered green dress, and put on the thing her pa had made.

      ‘Looks as fine as a Sunday mornin’,’ her pa said cheerfully as she stepped out from behind the racks, but she could tell he was lying through his teeth. Even he knew it was the most god-awful, ugly thing that ever done walked the earth. But it worked. And to her pa that’s what counted. It was functional. It clothed her body. The dress had longish sleeves that covered most of the punctures and scratches on her arms, and a close-fitting collar that hid at least part of the gruesome cut on her throat. So at least the fancy ladies at the shindig or the supper, or whatever it was, wouldn’t swoon at the corpsy sight of her.

      ‘Now, sit down here,’ her pa said. ‘I’ll show you how to behave proper at the table.’

      She sat reluctantly on the stool he placed in front of an old work board that was meant to represent the forty-foot-long formal dining table in Mr and Mrs Vanderbilt’s grand Banquet Hall.

      ‘Sit up straight, girl, not all curvy-spined like that,’ her pa said.

      Serafina straightened her back.

      ‘Get your head up, not hunched all over your food like you gotta fight for it.’

      Serafina leaned back in the way he instructed.

      ‘Get them elbows offen the table,’ he said.

      ‘I ain’t no banjo, Pa, so quit pickin’ on me.’

      ‘I ain’t pickin’ on you. I’m tryin’ to teach ya somethin’, but you’re too stubborn-born to learn it.’

      ‘Ain’t as stubborn as you,’ she grumbled.

      ‘Don’t get briggity with the sass, girl. Now, listen. When you eat your supper, you need to use your forks. You see here? These screwdrivers are your forks. The mortar trowel there is your spoon. And my whittlin’ blade is your dinner knife. From what I’ve heard, you gotta use the right fork for the job.’

      ‘What job?’ she asked in confusion.

      ‘For what you’re eatin’. Understand?’

      ‘No, I don’t understand,’ she admitted.

      ‘Now, look straight ahead,’ he said, ‘not all shifty-eyed like you’re gonna pounce on somethin’ and kill it at any second. The salad fork here is on the outside. The dinner fork is on the inside. Sera, you hearin’ me?’

      She didn’t normally enjoy her pa’s etiquette lessons, but it felt kind of good to be home, safe and sound, suffering through yet another one.

      ‘You got it?’ he asked when he’d finished explaining about the various utensils.

      ‘Got it. Dinner fork on the inside. Salad fork on the outside. I just have one question.’

      ‘Yes?’

      ‘What’s a salad?’

      ‘Botheration, Serafina!’

      ‘I’m askin’ a question!’

      ‘It’s a bowl of, ya know . . . greenery. Lettuce, cabbage, carrots, that sort of thing.’

      ‘So it’s rabbit food.’

      ‘No, ma’am, it is not,’ her pa said firmly.

      ‘It’s poke sallet.’

      ‘No, it ain’t.’

      ‘It’s food that prey eats.’

      ‘I don’t want to hear no talk like that, and you know it.’

      As her pa schooled her in the fineries of supper etiquette, she got the notion that he’d never actually sat at the table with the Vanderbilts. She could see that he was going more on what he imagined than live experience, and she was particularly suspicious of his understanding of salads.

      ‘Why would rich and proper folk like the Vanderbilts eat leaves when they could afford to eat something good? Why don’t they eat chicken all day? If I was them, I’d eat so much chicken I’d get fat and slow.’

      ‘Sera, you need to take this seriously.’

      ‘I am!’ she said.

      ‘Look, you’ve got a friend in the young master now, and that’s a good’n. But if you’re gonna be his friend for long you need to learn the rudiments.’

      ‘The rudiments?’

      ‘How to behave like a daytime girl.’

      ‘I ain’t no Vanderbilt, Pa. He knows that.’

      ‘I know. It’s just that when you’re up there I don’t want you to –’

      ‘To what? Horrify them?’

      ‘Well, now, Sera, you know you ain’t the daintiest flower in the garden, is all. I love ya heaps, but there ain’t no denying it – you’re a sight feral, talkin’ about prey and hunting rats. With me, that’s all fine and good, but –’

      ‘I understand, Pa,’ she said glumly, wanting him to stop. ‘I’ll be on my best behaviour when I’m up there.’

      When she heard someone coming down the corridor, she flinched and almost darted. After years of hiding, it still made her scurry when she heard the sound of footsteps approaching.

      ‘Someone’s comin’, Pa,’ she whispered.

      ‘Naw, hain’t nobody a-comin’. Just pay attention to what I’m tellin’ ya. We’ve got to –’

      ‘Pardon me, sir,’ a young maid said as she stepped into the workshop.

      ‘Lordy, girl,’ Serafina’s pa said as he turned round and looked at the maid. ‘Don’t sneak up on a man like that.’

      ‘Sorry, sir,’ the maid said, curtsying.

      The maid was a young girl, a few years older than Serafina, with a pleasant face and strands of dark hair curling out from beneath her white cap. Like the other maids, she wore a black cotton dress with a starched white collar, white cuffs and a long white lace apron. But from the look of her and the sound of her words it seemed like she was one of the local mountain folk.

      ‘Well, spit it out, girl,’ Serafina’s pa told her.

      ‘Yes, sir,’ she said, and glanced at Serafina self-consciously. ‘I have a note from the young master for the little miss.’

      As the maid said these words, she eyed Serafina. Serafina could see the girl trying to make sense of the weird angles of her face and the amber colour of her eyes. Or maybe she was noticing the bloody wounds peeking out from beneath the edges of the burlap gunnysack she was wearing. Whatever it was, there was apparently plenty to stare at, and the girl couldn’t quite resist availing herself of the opportunity.

      ‘Ah, ya see, Sera,’ her pa said. ‘I told ya. Good thing we’ve been a-practisin’. The young master is sending you a proper invitation to the supper this evening.’

      ‘Here you go, miss,’ the maid said as she stretched out her hand