Serafina and the Black Cloak (15 page)

All right, I don’t like this place at all. These are graves
.…

She wiped her clammy hands on her shirt, then she took a few more steps, finding more graves beneath the undergrowth of the forest. The graveyard seemed like it went on and on. There were graves
as far as she could see, most of them overgrown with vines and trees.

Many of the headstones were so close together that they couldn’t possibly have bodies beneath them, just like the stories she’d heard. It was as if people had gone missing, their
bodies never found, and these were but markers of the lost.

But as she delved deeper into the oldest parts of the abandoned cemetery, she saw mounds where bodies had definitely been buried, and other graves that were empty holes, as if the coffins had
been plundered or the dead had crawled out of the ground on their own.

She swallowed hard and tried to keep moving despite the trembling in her limbs.

In some places, the layers of earth appeared as if they had shifted, exposing broken, rotting coffins to the air. Some of the coffins jutted up out of the earth or were tangled beneath gnarled
tree roots. She kept walking and reading the stones. A hundred years of old people, young people, brothers and sisters, friends and enemies, husbands and wives.

She had heard stories about this old cemetery, filled with hundreds of gravestones and monuments, even though no one alive could remember burying the people. Many of the local mountain folk
wondered where all the dead people in this cemetery had come from. Whole families seemed to have perished in short spans of time.

There were tall tales that the mountain folk no longer used this cemetery because burying your loved ones here didn’t necessarily guarantee that they would stay. The coffins shifted in the
unstable earth. The bodies went missing. Your dead loved ones were seen wandering their old homes and streets, as if searching for a place to rest.

There were tales, too, of human beings shifting into the shape of wild animals, of sorcerers and witches with surpassing power, and horrible, disfigured creatures crawling through the
forest.

She came upon two small mounds so close together, side by side, that they were nearly a single grave. One tombstone identified the two young sisters within:

OUR BED IS LOVELY
,
DARK
,
AND SWEET
.
COME JOIN US NOW AND WE SHALL MEET
.
MARY HEMLOCK AND MARGARET HEMLOCK
1782–1791 REST IN PEACE AND DON
’
T RETURN

When she read the words
don’t return
, the hairs on the back of her neck tingled. What kind of strange place was this?

She had come in search of an old village, but all she’d found was its cemetery. She had a feeling that this was all that was left.

As Serafina walked, the dry autumn leaves crunched beneath her feet. Tree branches lay like emaciated dead fingers on the ground among the gravestones and monuments. Many of the monuments had
toppled to the earth and lay broken and strewn while others had sunk deep into the ground. A few of the gravestones remained standing, sticking up several feet with spires or crosses, but they were
so thickly covered in black and green moss and overgrown with vines that they were nearly indistinguishable from the wretched forest around them.

She read another:

DEATH IS A DEBT TO NATURE DUE
,
WHICH I HAVE PAID
,
AND SO WILL YOU
.

In another area, she found row upon row of crosses. An old, weathered plaque explained that these sixty-six crosses were the graves of an entire company of Confederate soldiers who were found
dead one night, even though they never fought in any battle.

Farther on, Serafina came to a glade, a little clearing in the trees strangely without bushes, vines, or undergrowth of any kind. This one particular part of the cemetery had not become
overgrown, but remained an area of perfect green grass. In the center of the glade stood a stone monument carved into the likeness of a winged angel. Stranger still was the fact that although there
was fog all around the glade, there was no fog in the glade itself. Sunlight filtered through the mist and illuminated the angel’s face and hair and wings with a gentle light.

“Now, she’s pretty,” Serafina said as she stepped closer and read the inscription on the pedestal of the statue:

OUR CHARACTER ISN
’
T DEFINED
BY THE BATTLES WE WIN OR LOSE
,
BUT BY THE BATTLES WE DARE TO FIGHT
.

Serafina looked up at the angel and studied her. Dappled layers of green and gray moss and lichen covered the angel, and the black streaks of a hundred years of aging stained her long dress and
her beautiful face. Dark tears seemed to be falling down her cheeks, as if she had known great sadness. But her wings stretched upward into a fury, her head raised into an apocalyptic cry, as if
calling those around her into a great battle.
What kind of battle?
Serafina wondered. In her right hand, the angel held a sword. The statue itself was made of stone, but the sword appeared
to be made of steel, and the metal gleamed as if it was untouched by time. Curious, Serafina slowly reached out her hand and touched the edge of the blade. She gasped and pulled back, blood oozing
from her finger. The edge of the sword was razor-sharp.

Then something caught her eye. She felt a pulse of fear. Her muscles tightened, readying themselves to flee. At the edge of the glade, a gravestone had tumbled over where a gnarled old willow
tree had fallen and its upturned roots had created a small cave. She wasn’t sure, but she thought she saw one of the shadows slowly move.

Then she was sure of it.

There was something stirring by the old grave.

S
erafina had to remind herself to keep breathing, to stay calm. She felt her chest tightening, her breaths getting shorter and shorter. She wanted
to turn and run, but she stayed and watched, her curiosity too strong to overcome.

She crept quietly through the graveyard to get a closer look.

She feared it might be a corpse crawling out of the ground. She imagined its rotting white hands digging through the dirt as it broke the surface. But as she got closer, she realized it
wasn’t a corpse at all, but a very living creature.

It was some sort of small wildcat with yellowish-brown fur, black spots and markings, and a long tail. It took her several seconds to figure out that it was a baby mountain lion.

Suddenly, a second lion cub appeared. They charged each other, grabbing each other with their paws and tumbling in play, meowing and howling and swatting each other. They had the most adorable
little yellow faces marked with black streaks and spots, and long white kitty whiskers.

Smiling, Serafina watched the cubs play in the bright green grass of the stone angel’s sunlit glade. The fear she had felt just moments before began to melt away. She had always loved
kittens.

She crouched down and moved a little closer. One of the cubs spotted her. Its ears perked up, and it stared at her, studying her. She thought that it would run away in fear. But it didn’t.
It gave her a raspy meow and ambled toward her as if it didn’t have a care in the world.

She extended her arm, holding her hand still. The brave little cub slowed down, but it kept coming toward her, watching her, inching closer and closer. When it reached her, it sniffed her
fingers and rubbed the side of its mouth along the length of her hand. Serafina smiled, almost giggled, pleased that the cub didn’t fear her.

She sat down in the grass, and the cub climbed right into her lap, pawing playfully at her fingers. She wrapped her arms around the cub and hugged its warm, fuzzy little body to her chest. It
was good to have some company that didn’t scare the living daylights out of her. The other cub came over, and soon she was lovin’ on both of them as they tumbled and rolled around her,
and they rubbed themselves against her and purred.

“What are you sweet little babies doing here?” she asked. After all she’d been through, it felt more than agreeable to be accepted by these wonderful little creatures. It felt
like a homecoming.

Soon, they were all up and about. She chased the cubs around the glade, pretending to swat at them with her paw, then they chased her. She got down on her hands and knees. One of the cubs ran
behind the pedestal of the stone angel, came around the other side, and peeked at her, his dark little eyes blinking as he pretended to stalk her. He darted out playfully, running sideways with his
back arched into a mock attack as he leapt upon her. Then the other cub joined in, grabbing her arms and legs, trying to tackle her, and soon they were all brawling and growling. The adorable,
kittenish attack made Serafina laugh out loud.

And her laughter carried through the misty forest.

She kept playing and wrestling with the cubs, feeling a pure and oblivious childlike pleasure that she hadn’t felt in a long time.

Then she sensed severe and immediate danger. She turned and saw something hurtling toward her out of the mist. At first, it seemed to be floating like a ghost, but then she realized it
wasn’t a ghost at all.

It was running. Fast. Straight toward her.

A wave of dread washed through her as she realized that by playing with these cubs she’d made a terrible, terrible error in judgment. The angry, full-grown mother mountain lion charged
toward her. The lioness would kill her to defend her cubs.

Fear jolted Serafina into motion. The lioness leapt through the air, her claws and teeth bared. Serafina knew she was going to die, but she tried to duck. The impact of the lioness’s
attack slammed into her so hard that it knocked her off her feet. She and the vicious beast tumbled across the grass in a brawling, snarling mass of hissing, teeth, and claws.

Serafina battled with all her strength. She had never in her life fought anything so physically powerful. She knew there was no way to defeat her; she was but a kitten compared to this wild
beast. Her only hope was to get away as fast as she could. She kicked her feet and flailed her fists. She beat the lioness with a stick, screaming all the while.

When the lioness tried to bite her neck and deliver her deadly blow, Serafina slammed her hands into the lioness’s face and tore at her eyes, then whirled herself into a wild, twisting
frenzy. Her attacks distracted the big cat just long enough to break herself free. Then she sprang up and darted away like a scalded dog.

The lioness chased her, but Serafina sprinted with an incredible burst of fear-induced speed. She scrambled into the thick bushes like a squirrel and just kept running. She ran and she ran. She
ran until her whole chest hurt with thumping pain.

She crossed a rocky stream, then went through a thick stand of pines, and then delved into a thicket of thistles and blackberry thorns. She climbed up hills and over rocks and just kept running
as far as she could.

Finally, exhausted, she ducked beneath a bush like a rabbit and listened for the sounds of her pursuer. She did not hear her.

She imagined that the lioness, satisfied that she had chased off the intruder, had returned to her cubs. She could picture the mother lion scolding them for playing with a stranger and pushing
them angrily back into their den beneath the roots of the tree.

Panting and wounded, Serafina pressed on through the forest, determined to put as much distance as possible between her, the cemetery, and the mountain lion’s den. She vowed to never
return to that terrifying place.

When she finally stopped for a moment to catch her breath, she looked around her. Nothing looked familiar. It was then that she realized that she was completely and utterly lost.

S
erafina kept moving and soon found herself traveling along the top edge of a rocky, tree-covered ridge. In her panic to escape the lioness, it
seemed that she’d run halfway up a mountain.

Exhausted, she finally stopped to rest and check her wounds. Her clothing had been torn. The length of twine that once held her pa’s shirt around her body had broken and was gone. Claw
marks sliced her arms and legs. Her head hurt. Several tooth marks punctured her chest. She was pretty torn up, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as she had expected.