Serafina and the Black Cloak - Robert Beatty Page 0,47

for several seconds, unable to move. Her whole body hurt. She’d been punched and battered and stabbed.

“Well, that was one way to get down,” she groaned.

When she was finally able to get on her feet, she brushed herself off and limped on her way.

She followed a small stream that trickled into a creek. Thirsty, she lay flat at the stream’s edge and lapped up the clear mountain water like an animal.

The stream led her to a waterfall that crashed into a tumultuous pool thirty feet below.

Does this waterfall have a name? she wondered. If she knew that, then maybe it would help her understand where she was and give her a better chance of finding her way home. What river is this?

But then she realized that it didn’t matter exactly where she was. A river wasn’t a place. A river was movement. She remembered something her pa had taught her. All the rivers in these mountains wound through complicated, twisting routes, but eventually they all flowed in one direction, into the mighty French Broad River.

The Blue Ridge Mountains were some of the oldest mountains in the world. The river had been flowing here for millions of years and had helped shape the mountains into what they were today. And, most importantly, she knew that the French Broad River flowed through the grounds of Biltmore Estate, right past the mansion. The river was the way home.

She climbed down the wet, slippery rocks at the edge of the waterfall, then made her way along the craggy shoreline. Confident in her direction now, she traveled as fast as she could. She had to reach her pa, who she knew must be worried sick about her, and she wanted to see Braeden. She wasn’t sure if she had abandoned him by sneaking into the woods, or if he’d abandoned her by going home in his uncle’s carriage; but they’d separated, and it made her stomach hurt. The more time that went by, the less certain she became of how she should feel. Was Braeden actually her friend, or was her mind just imagining it, like when she imagined herself as being friends with the butler’s assistant who stopped and ate the cookies? All her life, she had pretended that she had friends, but was it true this time?

She and Braeden had only known each other for a short while, but she let the memories of their time together wash over her. To someone like her, it felt like a lifetime of friendship. She was like a starved animal wolfing down a scrap and thinking it had eaten a full meal. But she had no idea if he missed her the way she missed him.

She walked for hours, following the river until it flowed into a much wider, flatter river that she hoped was the French Broad, but she wasn’t sure. She was tired, hungry, and sore from her wounds. She just wanted to get home.

As the sun slowly withdrew behind the trees in the western sky, she tried to push herself faster. She didn’t want to get caught in the forest another night, for that’s when the mountain lion, the Man in the Black Cloak, and whatever other demons might crawl out of the cemetery would be on the prowl. But it was no use. The sun abandoned her, the birds and the other daytime sounds went dead, and the darkness settled into the trees like a black oil.

Exhausted, she stopped to catch her breath and rest a spell. She knew it was dangerous to linger in the open. Wet and shivering, she crawled into a hole beneath the hollowed roots of a tree at the river’s edge, curled into a little ball, and peered out into the darkness.

She was a failure. That’s what she thought. She had come to the forest to see the world, but all she’d found was wretchedness.

From her little cave beneath the roots, she looked downstream along the gravelly shore of the river. The air around her was cold and still, but the river rippled with a steady rushing sound, and she could taste its moisture on her lips. The waxing moon rising above the mountains cast a silvery light across the deep-flowing black water. Mist oozed out of the forest and drifted across the river like a legion of ghosts.

A wolf called in the distance, a long, plaintive, lonely howl that put a shiver up her spine. The wolf was miles away, up on the mountains. But then