Serafina and the Black Cloak - Robert Beatty Page 0,82
frowned in confusion. How could this be possible? She studied the woman’s face, trying to make sense of its configuration, trying to understand if she should believe what she was seeing in front of her. Her mouth felt terribly dry. She licked her lips and then clenched them together, breathing through her nose. She tried to steady her breathing as she looked at the woman’s hair, her hands, her sinewy body. But it was her eyes more than anything, her yellow eyes, that told her that it was true. This was her mother.
Serafina felt her face flash with heat. Suddenly, the image of her mother blurred as the tears welled in her eyes and brimmed over. She released a sigh that turned into a sob, then heaving sobs that she couldn’t control, and her mother reached for her and pulled her into her arms.
“Oh, kitten, it’s all right,” her mother said, as her own sobs rolled against Serafina.
When Serafina finally spoke, her voice was so weak with emotion that she could only manage one frail and breathless word.
“How?” she asked.
The children and adults who had been freed from the cloak began to wander through the graveyard. Some of them spoke to each other, trying to understand where they were and what had happened to them, but their minds were beset by confusion. Many were too bewildered to speak at all. Nolan and Clara, along with the other children, stayed nearby; for they recognized Serafina, and they huddled together; but many of the adults wandered off, trying to remember their lives and their families. One man stood staring at a gravestone.
“That’s me,” he said, in shock. “That’s my name. My wife and children must have thought I died.…”
Serafina understood now why some of the graves in the graveyard had no bodies, but she still didn’t understand how the woman standing before her could be her mother.
“What happened to you?” she asked.
The stars glistened in her mother’s mesmerizing eyes. “I am a catamount, Serafina,” she said, her breath filling the icy air as she spoke. “My soul has two halves.”
Serafina breathed slowly in and out, trying to comprehend what her mother was saying, but it made no sense.
“Come,” Leandra said gently, touching her arm. “Sit here with me for a moment.” They sat on the ground beside the pedestal of the stone angel, facing each other. “I once lived in a village near here. I was a normal human woman, but I could also change shape into a mountain lion whenever I wished to.”
As Serafina listened to her mother’s story, everything else fell away. The cold air, the gravestones, the other victims of the cloak…Everything disappeared except the quiet, soothing tone of her mother’s voice.
“I was married to a man who I loved dearly, and we were going to start a family. I was pregnant. He, too, was a catamount, and we spent much of our time together out here in the forest, running and hunting.”
As her mother spoke, she gently wiped away the snow that was falling onto Serafina’s hair. “But those were difficult times for all of us. The forest in this area was dying, twisted and withered by an evil force.…”
Serafina looked over at the remnants of the Black Cloak and the scorch marks on the ground.
“One day,” Leandra continued, “I was walking down a path in human form, and I was attacked by an unimaginable darkness.…”
“The Man in the Black Cloak,” Serafina whispered.
“During the battle, he wrapped his cloak around me. I fought for my life, but he was far too strong. My husband heard me screaming and came running. He, too, began to fight, but we were losing. I saw the Man in the Black Cloak strike your father down. In a matter of seconds, I was going to be overcome in the cloak’s black folds. I was terrified. I feared for the lives of the babies inside me. I tried to change into a mountain lion to fight him with tooth and claw, but in that instant, the cloak sucked in the human part of my soul. I kept fighting, as fierce as any mother lion has ever fought, and I finally escaped and fled, but the cloak had torn me asunder.”
“I don’t understand,” Serafina cried. “What do you mean? What is asunder?”
“The Black Cloak tore me apart, Serafina. It absorbed the human part of my soul, for that was its purpose, but it had never encountered a catamount before.”