Serafina and the Twisted Staff (The Serafina Series) (17 page)

She quickly released the woodchuck, porcupine and otters. They all looked strong enough to get home. She was sure the otters would know the way to the nearest river. But the hawk was in a bad
way. She thought that he could probably fly, but a red-tailed hawk out at night was in grave danger from its natural enemy, the great horned owl.

She reached into the cage, carefully grabbed the hawk with both hands and pulled him out. He lifted his wings and tried to pull away, none too happy to be handled. She expected he would hiss and
snap at her, but he did not. He stared at her with his powerful raptor eyes and clamped on to her wrist with one of his talons, squeezing so hard that she thought he was going to break her bones.
It was as if he somehow understood she wanted to help him, but at the same time he wasn’t going to give up control.

She left the pine forest and the terrible cages behind her, carrying the wounded hawk clutched in her hands.

When she and the hawk had finally escaped the pine trees and entered a better part of the forest, she slowed down. She wished she could carry the hawk all the way back to Biltmore and give it to
Braeden to take care of, but she couldn’t travel fast enough with a hawk in her hands, and she was pretty sure the hawk wasn’t too happy about being carried around by somebody like her.
She found a safe thicket of tree brush and stuffed the hawk inside where it could hide from the marauding owls until daylight came. ‘Rest here, then fly strong, my friend,’ she
whispered.

From there, she tried to move quickly away. She wanted to put as much distance between her and those cages as she could. She knew that the forest was a wild, untamed place, with all sorts of
life-and-death struggles, but what kind of person would trap and capture animals like that? Why would he leave them there, starving and afraid, hidden beneath the darkened trees?

A mist drifted through the branches of the forest and made it difficult for her to find her way, but she kept moving downhill as best she could. She felt a tightness in her stomach. She
couldn’t escape the feeling that she had just avoided a dark and terrible danger.

Through the mist she saw something out of the corner of her eye. When she looked over, she spotted a figure in the distance walking through the trees. At first she thought it might be the man
she’d seen entering the forest with Mr Vanderbilt. She felt a sudden hope. Maybe she was far closer to Biltmore than she’d realised. But a heaviness rolled into her chest. She crouched
in the underbrush and watched the figure at a distance. He was wearing a long, dark, weather-beaten coat and a wide-brimmed hat. It was the bearded man she’d seen in the forest a few nights
before! She hit the ground in sudden panic.

She tried to stay quiet, but her chest pulled in rapid breaths as she looked towards him. He had a heavy, dark grey beard, thick and wavy like an animal’s coat. His face was craggy with
cracks and wrinkles, wind-worn like he’d been in the forest for fifty years. She scanned the area, looking for signs of the wolfhounds, but didn’t see them. Nor did he seem to be
carrying the walking stick he had before. But she knew it was him.

Staying low and quiet and very still, she watched him. He seemed to drift into and out of the mist, in and among the trees, disappearing and then reappearing in the swirls of the fog. He drifted
further away, then closer, as if the trees themselves were playing tricks on her eyes. He seemed more like a ghostly haint than a mortal man. As she felt the goose bumps rising on her arms, she
wanted to run, but she was afraid the sound of her flight would draw his attention.

But she had to get out of here. Just as she started to back away and go in the opposite direction, the man stopped dead in his tracks. He pivoted his head towards her with a startling, inhuman
quickness – like an owl spotting prey. His terrible silver eyes peered right at her.

She ducked down to the ground and pressed her back to the base of a gnarled old fir tree, hiding. The image of his pivoting head threw a shiver down her spine.

She heard him moving rapidly towards her.

She had to run, but her chest tightened and her legs clamped. A sharp pain attacked her throat like someone’s fingers had grabbed hold of her windpipe. Her whole body started shaking
violently with something beyond fear, something beyond her control. Panic set in. She couldn’t get any air into her lungs. She tried to scream, but she couldn’t get sound of any kind to
pass through her constricted throat.

The footsteps came rapidly closer as the man in the long dark coat came towards her. She could hear his boots sinking into the damp earth as he walked. She became aware of a sudden coldness on
the ground beneath her and around her. When she looked down, she saw that the earth had become soaked with blood.

S
erafina tried to leap up from the ground and flee, but the man had cast some sort of spell on her. Her muscles were rigid. They would not
move.

As the man bore down on her, Serafina watched in horrified amazement as the roots of the tree erupted out of the blood-soaked earth, grew rapidly round her wrists and clamped her hands to the
ground. Without her hands to fight, she was completely defenceless.

Like a desperate mink caught in a trap, she bent down and chewed at the roots that held her hands. When another root started slithering like a snake round her ankles, she kicked it angrily
away.

Suddenly, the forest that had always been her ally and concealment had become her enemy.

As the man came round the tree, his face was shrouded in darkness save for the silver blaze of his eyes. He grabbed at her with two bony, clutching hands, grasping like the talons of an owl. As
his long, clawlike fingernails sank into her, she twisted wildly and broke free. She thrashed her legs, then darted away.

She ran as fast as she could, until she thought she must have put some distance between herself and her pursuer. But just as she turned her head to look behind her she heard a
tick-tick-tick
ing sound. A terrible hissing scream erupted a few feet above her left shoulder. The sound scared her so badly that she leapt back and hit a tree. A large, nasty-looking white
barn owl flew right over her head, its horrible black eyes peering at her, its mouth open as it let out its bloodcurdling scream.

She dived into a thicket of vine-strangled brambles where the barn owl could not fly. She thought she was very clever. But then the barn owl disappeared and the bearded man began tearing the
branches away, pushing into the thicket towards her. She got down on her hands and knees and crawled through the vines into the deepest part of the thicket. She hoped it might provide her some form
of protection from the bearded man’s spells. But, instead, the vines started moving, snaking, twisting themselves around her limbs and neck.

She screamed and thrashed and yanked at the vines as she crawled out of the other side of the thicket. From there, she stood up and ran across the open ground.

She wanted to turn, she wanted to fight, she wanted to attack this horrible man, but there was nothing she could do but run for her life. She ran fast through the cover of the forest. She
thought she was doing it. She thought she was escaping.

When she glanced back, she saw that the man had not chased her. He was still standing where he had been. He simply flattened his hand to his mouth and blew across his palm in her direction. It
was like the cold, corpsy breath of Death himself had struck her. The blood rushed from her head. Her lungs went cold. Her muscles went limp, and her body involuntarily collapsed, somersaulting
down a small incline, a dead weight and lifeless, until she came to rest in the dirt.

Her whole body had gone pale and cold. Her lungs had stopped pulling in air. Her heart had stopped pumping blood. She had a few seconds of thought left as the blood drained from her head, but
she was a dead girl, a cadaver, lying face down on the ground.

The man made his way over to her, grabbed her limp body like a rag doll and pulled her up onto an old stump. But even as he dragged her against the cold earth she could feel the effects of his
spell wearing off – like pins and needles in her limbs. She did not understand it, but she was apparently a far tougher creature than he had accounted for. Her chest tingled with the slip of
new air into her lungs. Her heart suddenly thumped to life again, and warm blood flowed through her like waves.

‘Now, let’s get a good look at you,’ the man said as he brought her into the moonlight. ‘Just what kind of little girl are you, sneaking up on me like that?’

When he flipped her limp body round so that he could see her face, she was terrified, but she kept her eyes closed and pretended to be dead.

‘Ah, I see,’ the man said. ‘It’s you again. I should have known. You’ve been a nuisance to us already, haven’t you? And I’ve seen enough of your kith
and kin to know that it’s only going to get worse if I let you grow up.’

As Serafina felt her strength coming back into her muscles and the saliva wetting her mouth, she knew she only had one chance. The old rat trick. Bursting alive, she twisted round and bit the
man’s right hand as deeply and fiercely as she could.

The man reflexively yanked back his hand. But she didn’t let go at first. His arm’s yanking motion pulled her entire body up. At that moment, she released her bite and went flying
through the air. She landed on the ground, rolled to her feet and ran.

S
erafina ran for miles, and then walked, and then ran some more, travelling as far from that place as she could.

She tried to think through everything she had seen. She knew it had been the same bearded man she had encountered in the forest a few nights before. He had seemed to be drifting in and out of
the trees with an almost spectre-like quality, like an apparition in the mist. Was he the old man of the forest that the mountain folk spoke of? He seemed to know her. He had said that she was a
nuisance, like she was getting in his way. But in the way of what? What was his goal? Was it truly to find the Black Cloak? Or was it more than that? She thought about the stallions pulling the
driverless carriage, and the swifts swarming her and Gidean attacking her on the stairs . . . Was he somehow controlling these animals? Whoever he was, he could use his hands to throw deathly
spells that Serafina never wanted to experience again.

When she came down from the craggy gardens, she had intended to find her mother and make her tell her everything she knew, and then from there go on to Biltmore. But what if the bearded man had
already found her mother and the cubs? What if he had killed them? It was too terrible to think about. She ran faster. Now, more than ever, she had to find them.

As the sun rose and she travelled through the forest, she tried to think about where her mother might have gone. But other questions crept into her mind too. Did her mother know this intruder
was invading her territory? Had her mother sent her away to keep her safe?

Serafina thought again about the message her mother had left for her.

It didn’t seem to make any sense.

What you climbed is floor
. . . ?

She racked her brain. ‘What did I climb?’ she asked herself.

Was it a tree of some kind? A floor of wood?

She thought about her battle against the wolfhounds. She had leapt into a tree, then ran along a branch, then fought the dogs on the ground until they backed her against the rock face at the
bottom of the cliff.

And then she got it.

She had climbed up the rock wall.

So maybe she was looking for something that had a rock floor.

What kind of room has a rock floor?

Then she smiled. Not a room. ‘A cave,’ she said.

But there were many caves in the mountains. She thought about the next line of the riddle.

‘What does
rain is wall
mean? That makes no sense.’

As she walked through the forest, she kept repeating ‘
where rain is wall
’.

‘How could rain be a wall?’ she said to herself. ‘Rain is water . . . You drink water. You wash with water. You swim in water . . .’ The possibilities were endless.