Serafina and the Black Cloak - Robert Beatty Page 0,4
just what would happen if they did. What if the boy glimpsed her? What would she do? What if his dog chased her? Could she get up a tree in time? Sometimes she liked to imagine what she would say if she met Mrs. Vanderbilt face-to-face. Hello, Mrs. V. I catch your rats for you. Would you like them killed or just chucked out? Sometimes she dreamed of wearing fancy dresses and ribbons in her hair and shiny shoes on her feet. And sometimes, just sometimes, she longed not just to listen secretly to the people around her, but to talk to them. Not just to see them, but to be seen.
As she walked through the moonlight across the open grass and back to the main house, she wondered what would happen if one of the guests, or perhaps the young master in his bedroom on the second floor, happened to wake and look out the window and see a mysterious girl walking alone in the night.
Her pa never spoke of it, but she knew she wasn’t exactly normal looking. She had a skinny little body, nothing but muscle, bone, and sinew.
She didn’t own a dress, so she wore one of her pa’s old work shirts, which she cinched around her narrow waist with a length of fibrous twine she’d scavenged from the workshop. He didn’t buy her any clothes because he didn’t want people in town to ask questions and start meddling; meddling was something he could never brook.
Her long hair wasn’t a single color like normal people had, but varying shades of gold and light brown. Her face had a peculiar angularity in the cheeks. And she had large, steady amber eyes. She could see at night as well as she could during the day. Even her soundless hunting skills weren’t exactly normal. Every person she’d ever encountered, especially her pa, made so much noise when they walked that it was like they were one of the big Belgian draft horses that pulled the farm equipment in Mr. Vanderbilt’s fields.
And it all made her wonder, looking up at the windows of the great house. What did the people sleeping in those rooms dream of, with their one-colored hair, and their long, pointy noses, and their big bodies lying in their soft beds all through the glorious darkness of the night? What did they long for? What made them laugh or jump? What did they feel inside? When they had dinner at night, did the children eat the grits or just the chicken?
As she glided down the stairs and back into the basement, she heard something in a distant corridor. She stopped and listened, but she couldn’t quite make it out. It wasn’t a rat. That much was certain. Something much larger. But what was it?
Curious, she moved toward the sound.
She went past her pa’s workshop, the kitchens, and the other rooms she knew well, and into the deeper areas where she hunted less often. She heard doors closing, then the fall of footsteps and muffled noises. Her heart began to thump lightly in her chest. Someone was walking through the corridors of the basement. Her basement.
She moved closer.
It wasn’t the servant who collected the garbage each night, or one of the footmen fetching a late-night snack for a guest—she knew the sound of their footsteps well. Sometimes the butler’s assistant, who was eleven, would stop in the corridor and gobble down a few of the cookies from the silver tray that the butler had sent him to retrieve. She’d stand just around the corner from him in the darkness and pretend that they were friends just talking and enjoying each other’s company for a while. Then the boy would wipe the powdered sugar off his lips, and off he’d go, hurrying up the stairs to catch up on the time he’d lost. But this wasn’t him.
Whoever it was, he wore what sounded like hard-soled shoes—expensive shoes. But a gentleman proper had no business coming down into this area of the house. Why was he wandering through the dark passages in the middle of the night?
Increasingly curious, she followed the stranger, careful to avoid being seen. Whenever she snuck up close enough to almost see him, all she could make out was the shadow of a tall black shape carrying a dimly lit lantern. And there was another shadow there, too, someone or something with him, but she didn’t dare creep close enough to see who or what it