Serafina and the Black Cloak - Robert Beatty Page 0,78
touching her pleadingly with her grasping fingers. “I can’t find my mother! Can you help me?”
“Pozhaluysta, skazhite gde moi otets?” a girl with long, curly black hair said, pressing her face against Serafina’s.
“Please help me!” wailed a woman, only to be pushed out of the way by two more faces. The visages of terrified children and adults were crowded inside the cloak.
“The horses are trapped!” a boy shouted, pressing his face in among the others. “Watch out!”
Serafina screamed and ripped the hood from her head. She gazed around the empty glade, shaking and gasping for breath.
The souls of the dead people were imprisoned in the black folds of the cloak. This was the cloak’s power: to enslave people’s talents and hold their souls prisoner in a ghastly cage.
Come, little creature…We shall be together…
She shook her head, trying desperately to resist the cloak’s powerful spell.
We shall control the world…
“No,” she said, gritting her teeth.
Everyone shall love us…
“No!” she shouted. “I won’t do it!”
She unclasped the cloak from her neck and tore it away. The act of ripping it from her body struck her such a blow that she fell onto her hands and knees, suddenly debilitated by extreme fatigue and despair. But, filled with determination, she got back up onto her feet. She tried to hurl the cloak to the ground, but the slithering creature tangled itself in her arms and wouldn’t let go. She couldn’t free herself from it.
Alone you are a weak little creature, but together we are strong…
“No!” she shouted.
She knew that she had to get rid of the cloak. She had to destroy it. As the cloak roiled and twisted like black snakes in her hands, she tried to tear the material in her fingers, but they weren’t strong enough to rend it. The cloak, seething and hissing, wrapped around her arms and her legs, clinging to her.
A bloody hand reached up from the ground and gripped her ankle.
Serafina screamed.
“Don’t hurt the cloak, you stupid child!” Thorne snarled. Wounded and crazed, he yanked her to the ground, knocked the wind out of her, and held her down. “If you destroy it, then we’ll lose everything!”
She struggled to escape him, but he clenched her by the arms and she couldn’t get free.
“We’ll work together,” he rasped. “You with your abilities and me with mine. Don’t you see? We’re the same. We’re on the same side.”
Something was happening to him. Thorne’s face was gray and deteriorating, his skin flaking off around his cheeks and eyes. His hair had turned gray and wiry. His mouth dripped with blood.
A wave of revulsion poured through her. She tried to kick him and bite his hands and pull herself free, but she couldn’t wrest herself from his grip.
He held her to the ground with all his weight, pushing the air painfully from her lungs. She could feel her ribs bending, starting to crack. Despite his wounds and his decomposing condition, Thorne seemed to be getting stronger and stronger, driven by his greed for the cloak.
“I’ll never give in to you!” she snarled into his face. “Never!”
“Then you’re going to die, little mouser…”
Pressing her down, he crushed into her. She couldn’t breathe. Without air flowing through her lungs, she couldn’t move, couldn’t think. Even as she fought to get away, she felt her life draining from her, her arms and legs falling limp, her mind clouding with the white light of death.
She thought there was supposed to be a sense of peace when death finally came. But she didn’t feel it. There was still too much to do in her life, still too many questions to answer, too many mysteries to solve, and it was the mysteries, the unfinished business, the want, that kept her going. She didn’t want to die, especially not this way. But she could feel herself drifting now, the life ebbing out of her, her soul slipping away.
But she kept seeing a vision of her pa in her mind. She could hear his voice. Eat your grits, girl, he demanded.
I’m not gonna eat my grits! she shouted back at him.
Her pa gazed at her dying on the ground beneath her enemy’s weight and he shook his head. The rat don’t kill the cat, girl, he said. That just ain’t right.
The rat don’t kill the cat, she thought as she pulled her wayward soul back into her body with fierce determination. The rat don’t kill the cat, she thought again as she felt a burst of new strength. She began to