Serafina and the Splintered Heart. Robert Beatty

      As soon as she saw it, she froze where she was and her heart began to pound.

      ‘Oh, no, I’m not doin’ that . . .’ she said firmly.

      She didn’t want to move towards it. She was too frightened to put herself in front of it and look at it.

      What would she see?

      Her old self ? A whispery haint? A grave-walking ghoul bloodied with the wounds she could see on her torn, bloodstained dress? She was a ghoul. Suddenly she was sure of it. The last thing she wanted to see was the bloody, corpsy sight of her walking death.

      Get hold of yourself, you frightened little fool, she scolded herself. You’ve got to figure this out! You’ve got to look!

      She pulled in a long, deep breath.

      Then she took a step towards the mirror.

      Then another.

      Finally, she slowly moved a little bit in front of it and looked at herself.

      All she could see in the mirror was a glint of light, a faint blur of motion when she moved, as if she was nothing but air itself.

      She had no reflection. She was nobody and nothing.

      She remembered back to the time she’d looked into this mirror and noticed her amber eyes starting to change, and her black hair starting to come in, and how proud she’d felt of the beautiful dress she’d been wearing. Now she had no eyes, no hair, nothing.

      So much of what she had come to know and love had just slipped away. Was this the work of the sorcerer, or was it simply how time passed?

      It felt like it was more than that. It felt as if her world had been shattered into a thousand pieces like a Ming vase on a tiled floor. She kept wondering if she could pick up the pieces and put them back together again.

      ‘Stay bold,’ she told herself sternly. Stop this nonsense, feelin’ all sorry for yourself. Dream or real, dead or alive, you don’t give up, you don’t give in to hopelessness. You keep fighting!

      Then, even as she was thinking these thoughts, she saw something very faint in the movement of light and air in the reflection of the mirror. There was something behind her. When she turned to look at what it was, she noticed the tiny particles of dust floating in random motion in the rays of morning light coming through the window.

      She stepped towards the floating dust.

      She marvelled at how she could see the shape of each particle, the way it turned and caught the light as it tumbled through the air. The dust reminded her of the words spoken at funeral rites when a loved one was buried.

      ‘And we commit her body to the ground,’ the pastor would say. ‘We all go to the same place. All come from dust and all return to dust. Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.’

      As she studied the slow swirling motion of the dust in the sunlight, she whispered, ‘That’s what I am now.’ Specks of dust floating in the air.

      She lifted her hand and passed it slowly through the rays of light. Her hand caused no shadow, but she could swear that the motes of dust whirled up in little clouds around the movement of her hand.

      ‘I’m here,’ she said. ‘Just a little bit . . . I’m still here.’

       Even if I’m just a minuscule speck of dust or a gust of air, then I still exist. There’s still hope.

      She looked around at Essie’s empty room. The past was behind her. The future unknown. But what now?

      She looked out the window towards the mountains. Great banks of dark clouds were rolling across the peaks, vast sheets of rain drinking up the rays of the sun. The water of the French Broad River had risen so high in the last few nights that the ancient river had burst its banks and flooded the lagoon. The lagoon had been drowned in the water of the rains and completely swept away.

      The storms are coming, she thought.

       And I’ve got to stop them.

      On her way down to the first floor, Serafina descended the long, gentle curve of the Grand Staircase, walking in broad daylight past the guests on the stairs. She jumped up and down in front of them and tried to touch them. She swiped her hands across the long skirts of the ladies’ dresses, trying to cause the material to fly. But it made no difference. She’d spent her whole life hiding, but now she just wanted one person, any person, to know she was there.

      ‘Hello, there!’ she said loudly to one of the many new lady guests who had arrived for the upcoming summer ball. ‘Beautiful dress you’re wearing today!’ she shouted to another. ‘Your hat is on crooked, sir,’ she said to one of the gentlemen.

      Reaching the main floor, she went into the Winter Garden, where a number of young ladies in beautiful powder-blue and yellow dresses were chatting over English tea. She tried to steal their sugar cubes and knock over their teacups, but she couldn’t affect a thing. Then she noticed the faint trace of steam coming off the tea in one of the cups and she had an idea. She bent down and blew gently into the hot vapour, and to her surprise, it actually swirled in a new direction and disappeared into the air. Serafina smiled. She was making progress.

      Encouraged, she crossed over to the back corridor and slipped into the Smoking Room with its rich blue damask wallpaper, elegant velvet chairs, and gold-leafed books on the shelves. When she had come here with Braeden on Christmas Eve, they had been dressed in their finest clothes for the first Christmas party she had ever attended. I just hope it wasn’t my last, she thought glumly.

      But she wasn’t going to stand around feeling sorry for herself just because she was dead.

      She walked over to the room’s fireplace, with its finely carved white marble mantel, and was relieved to see that the barn owl was still mounted there.

      Her old enemies, the powerful conjurer Uriah and his treacherous daughter-apprentice Rowena, had been shape-shifters, able to change into the white-faced owl at will.

      Long ago, Uriah had stolen this land from its rightful owners and formed his dark dominion in the hidden forests of these mountains. He had killed many of the forest animals, as well as Serafina’s panther father. But the arrival of Mr Vanderbilt and the construction of Biltmore Estate freed the mountain folk and the forest animals from the conjurer’s spells and brought new light into the area. Uriah had been obsessed with destroying Biltmore ever since.

      Filled with a hateful vengeance, he had created the Black Cloak, which allowed its wearer to steal the souls of its victims. And he had used the Twisted Staff to enslave the animals of the forest and attack Biltmore.

      As Uriah was flying in owl form, she had raked him from the sky with her panther claws, sending the bloodied bird tumbling towards the ground. She and her allies had struck down Rowena that same night.

      Serafina had hoped that she had destroyed both of them, but the truth was, she didn’t truly know. Waysa had told her, It is the way of his kind that even when he seems to be dead, he is not. His spirit lives on. He hides in a darkness the rest of us cannot see.

      The morning after the battle, Biltmore’s groundskeepers had found a dead owl in the forest, and they had it mounted over this fireplace. She remembered that it had looked so lifelike, but now it seemed dead and worn, its feathers greying and tattered, the living spirit gone. It reminded her of the dried, white, desiccated shell of a rattlesnake after it had shed its skin and become anew.

      She couldn’t help but wonder now if the robed sorcerer she’d seen by the river might have been Uriah in some new form.

      Had Uriah been the one who attacked her on the loggia the night of the full