sea of trees, knowing there was no way to elude the dogs now. Spasms of pain radiated from the puncture wounds in her arms and legs. She had to wipe the blood out of her eyes to see where she was going. The needled branches of the trees were so thick and high that she could no longer see the moon and stars. Her racing feet cracked sticks on the ground, making noise that she wouldn’t normally make, but it didn’t matter now. She had to run like she’d never run before. But even as she ducked and darted between the trees, she kept hearing the feral boy’s voice: You can’t outrun these things for long! She wanted to turn and fight them, but if they caught her here in the thicket of trees it’d be impossible to see their attacks. They’d kill her for sure. She had to keep running.
Suddenly, the trees opened up and she nearly fell headlong over a cliff edge into a rocky crash of whitewater rapids below. She pulled herself back from the edge with a gasp and grabbed onto the branches of a tree.
Looking over the edge of the cliff, she could see there was no way to cross the river here. The cliff was too high, the rapids too dangerous.
There ain’t nothin’ but bad choices, she thought. She knew she had to get to cover, but right now the cover she needed was to conceal her scent.
Pushing herself on, she ran along the cliff as it led down towards the river.
When she came to the stretch below the rapids, she tried to wade quickly across what looked like the safest and shallowest point. She’d never been in deep water before and didn’t know how to swim. She pushed hard through the drag of the rushing, knee-deep water, desperate to reach the other side and escape the wolfhounds. The mountain river was so cold that her legs ached. The current ran swift and strong. As she placed each step against the tearing force of the water, she felt the round, algae-covered rocks turning and slipping beneath her searching feet.
She reached the centre of the river. The water ripped round her thighs, making it more and more difficult to push against it. She was making headway. But just when she thought she was going to make it across, she felt the current lifting her body away from the rocks beneath her feet. She lost her balance and crashed down into the icy-cold water. She flailed wildly, desperately kicking her legs in search of footing, but the bottom of the river disappeared as the current swept her into deep water. Coughing and spitting, she thrashed and leapt and gasped frantically for air as the river carried her downstream towards the next set of rapids.
The current sucked her into a rifling chute between two giant boulders, then shot her out the other side, tumbling end over end underwater through a dark green pool. As her head broke the surface, she managed to steal another gasp of air before the river grabbed hold of her again, heaving her and yanking her through a spiral of rushing water. She found herself spinning, submerged in a whirlpool so deep that she said goodbye to her pa. But then her body hit a jagged rock. She tried to cling to it, but the rushing flow immediately pulled her away again. She’d always thought she was strong, but compared to the force of the river she was nothing more than a kitten tossed into the water. When the rapids finally spat her out into the calm water downstream, she crawled from the river, wet and bedraggled, and collapsed onto the rocky shore, exhausted.
She had made it across.
Serafina knew that if the dogs followed her downstream and saw her across the river, then they would pursue her. She had to get up, had to keep running, but she couldn’t force her arms and legs to move. She couldn’t even lift her head. The freezing-cold water and pounding force of the river had sapped all the remaining strength from her muscles. Her limbs were shaking. As she lay on the watery stones at the edge of the river, the protection of Biltmore seemed impossibly far away, beyond her reach. Her body was so tired she could barely get a few feet, let alone the miles she needed to go. The small puddles of water among the stones where she lay began to turn dark one by one. She felt so cold.
She wondered if the feral boy was lying mortally wounded in the forest back where she’d left him or still fighting the wolfhounds. Or maybe he had escaped them. She could hear his voice in her mind. Run! he had shouted to her. Run! But she could not run. She could not move.
A wave of black calm passed through her, inviting her to simply shut her eyes and let everything go. A cloud of sickening colours veiled her eyes. She could feel herself passing out. How easy it would be to simply drift away. But a fierceness boiled in her heart. Get up! she told herself. Run! Get home! She struggled to rouse herself, to get onto her feet, to at least raise her head.
She opened her eyes and squinted through the blood. The terrain on this side of the river was low and gentle, dotted with ferns and birch trees, so different from the rocky cliffs that she had left behind on the other side. She saw a light coming towards her in the darkness. At first she thought it must be a twinkling star, for the sky was clear, but it wasn’t one light. It was many lights.
She felt her chest trying helplessly to suck in air in anticipation of an attack, but even in the haze of her fear she hoped that it might be a torch or lantern, her pa coming in search of her like he had once before.
But then she saw that the lights weren’t the flickering flames of a lantern, but the scintillating dance of living creatures floating in the air and coming towards her down the river.
Are they fireflies? she wondered as they came closer.
But these were much larger and bright green in colour, their wings slowly flashing white and green, white and green, as they flew, like the wings of luminescent butterflies.
But they’re not butterflies, either, she thought with a smile. They’re luna moths.
It was an entire eclipse of moths, each one pale green in colour and glowing in the moonlight, hundreds of them flying together down the length of the river, their long tails streaming behind their silent, gently fluttering wings.
She had found her first luna moth in Biltmore’s gardens one midsummer’s night when she was a little girl. She remembered the moth’s almost magical glow in the starlit darkness as she held it in her open hand, its wings moving gently up and down. But it was strange to see so many of them travelling together. Was she imagining this? Was this how death came? A distant memory from the midnights of her past?
But, as she watched the luna moths flying over the water, it struck her again that they weren’t just hovering. They were travelling down the length of the stream, as if they would follow this river to the one that it flowed into, and then onward to the next river, and the next, through the mountains, and all the way to the sea. They were leaving this place. Just like the birds.
She heard the wolfhounds barking and howling to each other on the cliff on the other side of the river. They were coming.
As the last of the luna moths disappeared, she tried to push herself up onto her weakened arms, but she didn’t have the strength. She tried to get her legs underneath her, but she couldn’t.
But she’d seen the luna moths for a reason. She was sure of it.
She looked around for a place to take cover and noticed a grove of birch trees just a few feet away. As she tried to figure out how she was going to reach the trees, she saw a pair of eyes glinting in the darkness.
The eyes were keeping their distance, studying her.
Serafina held the eyes in her gaze and breathed as steadily as she could.
At first, she thought she had misjudged the position of the wolfhounds, that they had already crossed the river and were now surrounding her. But these weren’t the searing black eyes of the wolfhounds. The eyes were golden brown.
A
