Serafina and the Black Cloak - Robert Beatty Page 0,81
her head. When Serafina slowly brushed back the woman’s hair from her face, what she saw startled her. The woman had the loveliest face Serafina had ever seen. She had a perfect, pale complexion; high, protruding cheekbones; and long, angled cheeks. But her most striking feature was her amber-yellow eyes.
Serafina frowned. She looked at the woman in confusion and disbelief. The woman looked so familiar to her, and yet Serafina was sure she had never seen her before.
It was at that moment that she realized that it felt like she was looking into a mirror.
Serafina opened her mouth to speak, but her voice was trembling so badly she could barely get the words out.
“Who are you?”
The woman did not answer the question. She rubbed her eyes and face with the backs of her hands, then she looked around, glassy-eyed, taking in the forest and the angel’s glade as if she did not understand what she was seeing or how she came to be there. The woman stumbled toward the opening of the lion’s den beneath the roots of the willow tree.
“Where are my babies?” she asked frantically.
Seemingly ignorant of the severe danger of entering a lion’s den, the woman went to the mouth of the den and looked in. She appeared to think her babies were in there. Serafina felt so sorry for her. The poor creature must have lost her mind in the imprisonment of the cloak. Worried that the lioness would attack the woman, Serafina reached to pull her out of harm’s way. But then the woman made a series of sharp, guttural hissing noises, and the lion cubs came trundling out of the den in response to her call. Laughing, the woman dropped down onto her knees and encircled the cubs in her arms as they rubbed their shoulders against her, purring.
Serafina cringed, expecting the mountain lion to come charging out of the den at any second. But when she checked the den, there was no sign of the mother lion. Serafina scanned the trees nervously.
The woman, still on her knees with the cubs, lifted her hands and looked at her palms, as if they were things of amazement, opening and closing her fingers repeatedly, and she smiled. She rubbed her arms and her head and brushed back her hair like a person who had woken up from a terrible nightmare and had to reassure herself that she was still in one piece. She stood and looked up at the night sky and took a long, deep breath. Then she turned rapidly around, holding Nolan’s jacket to her body. She laughed. She tilted her head back and shouted up at the stars. “I’m free!”
Still smiling, the woman looked around at her surroundings with a new brightness in her eyes. She looked at the graveyard, the stone angel, and the other victims. Then she looked at Serafina. The woman froze. She stopped smiling. She stopped moving. She just stared at Serafina.
Serafina’s heart began pounding in her chest, a slow, steady rhythm. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
Suddenly, the woman lunged at her with a startling burst of speed. Serafina leapt back to defend herself, but the woman caught her with ease and held her by the shoulders, looking into her face.
“You’re her!” the woman said in astonishment. “You’re really her! I can’t believe it! Look at you!”
“I—I…I don’t understand…” Serafina stammered, trying to pull away.
“What’s your name, child?” the woman asked. “Tell me your name!”
“Serafina,” she mumbled, staring wide-eyed at the woman.
“Let me look at you!” the woman said, turning her first one way and then another, as if to take her measure in every way. “Just look at you! You’re so big! How wonderful you are. You’re amazing!”
Serafina reeled with dizziness as a new wave of confusion swept through her. What in heaven’s name was this woman doing?
“Who are you?” Serafina asked again.
The woman paused and looked at her with compassion. “I’m sorry,” she said gently. “I forgot that you don’t know me. My name is Leandra.”
The name meant nothing to Serafina, but the woman’s eyes, her voice, her face—everything about her mesmerized her. Serafina felt like sparks of a crackling fire were popping in her mind.
“But who are you?” Serafina asked again, clenching her fists in frustration.
“You know who I am,” Leandra said, studying her.
“No, I don’t!” Serafina shouted, stomping her foot.
“I’m your mother, Serafina,” the woman said softly, reaching out and touching Serafina’s face for the first time.