Serafina and the Twisted Staff. Robert Beatty

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.

      

      It took Serafina several seconds to realise that she was lying in her mother’s earthen den. Her mother must have picked her up and carried her into the den when she was sleeping.

      She felt warmer and stronger than she had before. She got herself up onto her hands and knees and crawled out of the den, then stood in the moonlight of the angel’s glade. Looking up at the stars, it felt like a few hours had passed.

      Her bleeding had stopped and her wounds did not hurt as badly as they had before. But, as she looked around her, her heart sank, for her mother and the cubs and the dark lion were gone. They had left her here alone.

      She found words traced into the dirt.

       If you need me, winter, spring, or fall, come where what you climbed is floor and rain is wall.

      Serafina frowned. She didn’t know what the words meant or even if they had been left for her.

      She gazed around the angel’s glade and then out into the trees. The forest was utter stillness, nothing but a mist drifting through the wet and glistening branches, and she could not hear a single living thing. It was as if the entire world outside the glade had disappeared.

      She thought about her mother, and the cubs, and the dark lion, and what her mother had said: You don’t belong here, Serafina! Of all the wounds she’d suffered, that one hurt the most.

      Then she thought about Braeden, and her pa, and Mr and Mrs Vanderbilt, and everyone at Biltmore living their daytime lives so separate from her own.

       You don’t belong there, either.

      Standing in the centre of the angel’s glade, she came to a slow and aching realisation.

      She was once again alone.

      Just alone.

      When she thought about what her mother had told her she would never be able to do, an aching, broken, throbbing part of her just wanted to kneel down and cry. She didn’t understand. She had been so hopeful with all the changes that were happening in her life, but now she felt like she was caught in between, like she didn’t belong anywhere. She was neither forest nor house, neither night nor day.

      After a long time, she turned and looked at the beautiful, silent stone angel, with her graceful and powerful wings and her long steel sword. Serafina read the inscription on the pedestal.

      OUR CHARACTER ISN’T DEFINED

      BY THE BATTLES WE WIN OR LOSE,

      BUT BY THE BATTLES WE DARE TO FIGHT.

      Then she looked back out into the forest once more. She decided that no matter what she could or couldn’t do, no matter who did or didn’t want her, she was still the C.R.C. – that much she knew for sure. And she’d seen things in the forest tonight that she couldn’t account for. She didn’t know who the bearded man was, except that he was something so dark that the animals fled before him, something so dangerous that even her mother believed that he could not be fought. Her mother was sure the darkest dangers lurked in the forest, and no doubt they did, but Serafina knew from experience that sometimes they crept into the house. She remembered the driverless carriage and the four stallions going onward up the road towards Biltmore. She could swear there had been someone else in that carriage. In what guise would this new stranger arrive and slither his way into Mr and Mrs Vanderbilt’s home? Into her home. And what had he come for? Was he a thief ? Was he a spy?

      Standing there in the angel’s glade, Serafina came to a decision. If there were a rat in the house, she was going to find it.

      

      Serafina stopped at the edge of Biltmore’s lagoon, crouched down in the undergrowth and scanned the horizon for danger.

      She waited and she watched.

      From her current vantage point, she didn’t see any signs of trouble. Everything looked peaceful and serene.

      The mirrorlike surface of the lagoon reflected the last of the shimmering stars that would soon give way to dawn. A family of swans flew low over the smooth water, then circled round and came in for a landing, shattering the reflection of the starlit sky.

      In the distance, Biltmore House sat majestically atop a great hill, seeming to rise up out of the trees of the parkland that surrounded it. The windows glinted as the first light of the rising sun touched its walls. With its slate-blue roof, elegant arches and spired towers, it looked like a fairytale castle of old, the kind she had read about in the mansion’s library when everyone else was asleep.

      Seeing the house, a gentle warmth filled her heart. She was glad to be coming home. She decided that she would try to rekindle her friendship with Braeden, and she’d make sure she thanked Mrs Vanderbilt again for the dress she’d given her. And she would do her best to mind her pa. But the first thing she had to do was to make sure she watched out for any strangers who had arrived at Biltmore during the night. The pain of her wounds had lessened, but the frightening images of the bearded man in the forest and the other figure in the carriage blazed in her mind. And she kept wondering what had happened to the feral boy