not come out. It was like a tear in the fabric of the world.
The sight of it tightened her chest. Her skin buzzed. She backed away and ducked into a thicket of bushes to hide.
When the black shape drifted in her direction, she caught her breath in surprise. She couldn’t tell if it was drifting on the winds of the storm or was actually drawn to her in some way.
The roiling black shape floated slowly closer. She thought that the thick foliage would protect her, but the leaves and branches snapped and hissed as the black shape touched them, bursting them one by one, as it moved towards her.
She frantically squirmed away, but the edge of the black shape touched her shoulder. The searing pain felt like she was being slashed with a burning, white-hot blade. She screamed in agony and wrenched herself away.
Driven by blind fear, she clambered out of the thicket and ran. She spotted a rocky area and sprinted for it. When she saw the drop-off of a steep mountain slope, she jumped.
She hit the ground hard and rolled down the earthen slope, her shoulders and legs thudding against the rocks and trees as she fell, then sprang to her feet and fled.
She tore through the forest, gasping for breath, but pushed herself on, looking over her shoulder for signs of the storm-creech and the black shapes.
As the rain and wind slowly died down, and the storm faded behind her, she kept going at a hurried pace.
Finally, she was relieved to see the glow of the moon peeking through the clouds. Day folk knew that the sun rose in the east and set in the west, but many didn’t realize that the moon did as well. Its black shadows among the trees were like arrows pointing the way home. As soon as she got her wits about her, she figured out what direction she needed to go, and went as fast as she could. She had to warn the people of Biltmore about what she had seen.
But just as she began to make progress, she came to the edge of a river blocking her path. She scanned the surrounding area in confusion.
‘Don’t tell me you’ve gone and gotten yourself lost,’ she scolded herself.
She had thought she was close to home. She remembered a creek near here, small and shallow, just a quick leap across. But what blocked her path now was a powerful river, turbulent and strong, ripping through the trees. Its shores weren’t the rocky edge of a normal river, but the flooded forest.
It was strange how so much had changed. If the little creek she remembered was now this churning river, then there must have been many other storms like the one she’d just fought her way through. A knot of worry bunched in her stomach. There were few things in the mountains more powerful and damaging than the rushing waters that had formed them.
Knowing she had to get home, she stepped into the dark water of the river to cross it. The current felt like tiny shards tearing at her bare skin. She’d waded across plenty of rivers, but this was a strange and alarming sensation that she’d never felt before. When she took another step, it became very clear that the river was far too deep and turbulent for her to cross. It seemed like it wanted to suck her in and pull her under.
Looking out across the river, she was amazed to see an entire tree – branches, trunk, and roots and all – floating downstream, tumbling through the current, like a great, leafy leviathan. Many of the largest and oldest trees at the edge of the river had toppled into the current, the earth beneath their roots ripped away by the powerful pull of the rushing water.
She stepped back out of the flooded river and away from the edge, convinced that the dark, malevolent water wanted to consume her. She couldn’t cross here. But if she was anywhere near where she thought she was, there were no roads or bridges for quite a while.
‘We’re in a real pickle now, girl,’ she said, talking to herself the way her pa did. ‘What we gonna do about it? That’s the question.’
Then she had an idea.
She made her way upstream along the shore until she found one of the tallest trees hanging over the river, its great, spreading boughs almost reaching across and touching the trees on the other side. She knew the relentless current tearing at its roots would soon bring the tree crashing down into the river, but for now it was her path.
She climbed up the trunk and then outward on the limbs, high up over the river’s tumbling flow, moving from branch to branch, her goal to cross over the river the way she’d seen squirrels do it, using the canopy of the trees as her bridge.
But as she crawled further out, the tree’s branches became slender green saplings bending and whipping in the wind. It felt like the wind was going to sweep her away. Every muscle in her body clenched as she bobbed and swayed in the upper branches. She could see the closest tree on the other side, a great pine with sturdy branches thick with needles, but she couldn’t leap across such a great distance. It was just too far.
Looking down, all she could see a hundred feet below her was the swirling black water of the river. If she lost her grip here, or tried to jump to the tree on the other side, then she’d go plummeting down. She’d either die when she hit the water or get swept away in the current and drown. One way or another the river would have her, just like it wanted.
As she was trying to figure out what to do, she heard a stick break on the forest floor down below her, back in the direction from which she had come. She swivelled, scanning the forest for danger. Had the storm-creech followed her scent and tracked her here? But then she spotted a robed figure moving slowly through the trees.
What kind of devil-spawn is comin’ now? she thought in exasperation. I just want to get on home!
She squinted her eyes and peered down through the branches of the trees, trying to make out who or what was down there.
It was a man wearing long robes, and a hood of some sort covered his head, like one of the old Celtic druids from ancient Britain that she’d seen depicted in Mr Vanderbilt’s books.
As he made his way through the forest, the robed man opened a pale and delicate hand in front of him. Suddenly, a glowing, hissing torch of blue light, like a tiny ball of lightning, rose up from his palm and hovered over his shoulder, lighting his way through the darkness.
Some kind of sorcerer, Serafina thought as she crouched lower. Her heart began to pound in her chest. The storm-creech, the floating black shapes, the storms . . . They were all his doing. Everything she had seen must have been the sorcerer’s conjurations. Had it been the sorcerer who attacked her on the loggia? Had he already taken over Biltmore? She had to get home.
But how? She was stuck up in a tree a hundred feet above a raging river.
When the dark-robed sorcerer stopped walking, the hair on the back of Serafina’s neck stood on end. Her whole body began to shake. Every sense inside her was telling her to fight or flee. Flee, her mind kept telling her. Flee before it’s too late!
The sorcerer slowly lifted his head and looked up into the trees in her direction.
Serafina scurried for cover, pushing herself further out onto the thinner branches of the tree even as they bent and twisted in the wind, lifting her and dropping
