She reached up to feel the cut on her head. It had been dressed with a leafy compress that had stopped the bleeding and numbed the pain. The wounds on her arms and legs had been treated with poultices of forest herbs. She didn’t want to, but she was pretty sure she could move if she needed to. She had noticed in the past that pain didn’t slow her down like it did many other people. She had surprised her pa in this regard more than once. Cold weather didn’t affect her either. Like her kin, she seemed to have been born with a natural toughness, the ability to keep going even when she had been battered and bloodied. But, even so, the medicine on her cuts and punctures was a welcome relief.
Feeling a gentle hand on her shoulder, she looked up. Her mother was in her human form – with her golden feline eyes, strikingly angled cheekbones, and long light brown hair. But the most striking feature was that whenever Serafina looked into her mother’s face she knew that her mother loved her with all her heart.
‘You’re safe, Serafina,’ her mother said as she checked the dressing on her head.
‘Momma,’ she said, her voice weak and ragged.
Looking around her, Serafina saw that her mother had brought her deep into the forest, to the angel’s glade at the edge of the old, overgrown cemetery. Beneath the cemetery’s dark cloak of twisted and gnarled trees, thick vines strangled the cracked, lichen-covered gravestones. Straggly moss hung down from the dead branches of the trees, and the darkened earth oozed with a ghostly mist. But the mist did not seep into the angel’s glade itself, and a small circle of lush grass always remained perfect and green, even in winter. In the centre of the glade stood a stone monument, a sculpture of a beautiful winged angel with a glinting steel sword. It was as if the angel protected the glade in a cusp of time, making it a place of eternal spring.
Her mother had been raising her two new cubs in a den beneath the roots of a large willow tree at the edge of the glade. And on a very different night from tonight, it had been the battleground on which Serafina and her allies had defeated Mr Thorne, the Man in the Black Cloak.
Find the Black One! the bearded man with the wolfhounds had said earlier that night. She could not help but gaze around the glade for signs of the Black Cloak that she had torn to pieces on the razor-sharp edge of the angel’s sword. She’d been sure that she had destroyed it, but she should have smashed its silver clasp and burned the leftover scraps of cloth. She looked towards the graveyard, with its tilting headstones and its broken coffins, and wondered what might have happened to the last remnants of the cloak.
For as long as she could remember, she had prowled through Biltmore’s darkened corridors on her own. All her life, she’d hunted. It had been her instinct. She had never known why she had a long, curving spine, detached collarbones, and four toes on each foot. She had never known why she could see in the dark and others could not. But when she’d finally met her mother she’d understood. Her mother was a catamount, a shape-shifting cat of the mountains. Serafina had come to understand that she wasn’t just a child. She was a cub.
Desperate to learn more, she had hunted with her mother in the forest every night for the last several weeks, not just learning the lore of the forest, but what it meant to be a catamount. She had listened diligently to her mother’s teachings and studied her mother when she was in her lion form. She had concentrated with all her mind and all her heart just like her mother had taught her. She had tried countless times to envision what she would look like, what it would feel like, but nothing ever happened. She was never able to change. She stayed just who she was. She wanted so badly to ask her mother to help her try again right now, but she had a sick feeling in her stomach that her mother wouldn’t do it.
As the cubs trundled around in front of Serafina and nuzzled her face, she petted them and snuggled them, pressing their little ears back with her hands. The cubs were pure mountain lions, not shape-shifters, but they had accepted her from the beginning, never seeming to notice or care that her teeth were short and her tail was missing.
She wondered where the dark lion had gone. He was too young to be the father of her mother’s cubs, so why had he been with her?
‘Who was that other lion, Momma?’ she asked. ‘The young one –’
‘Never mind about him,’ her mother snarled. ‘I’ve told him to keep his distance from all of us, especially you. This isn’t his territory and he knows it. He’s only passing through with the others.’
Serafina looked up at her in quick surprise. ‘What others?’
Her mother touched her cheek. ‘You need to rest, little one,’ she said, and then began to pull away.
‘Please, tell me what’s happening,’ Serafina pleaded, grabbing her mother’s arm. ‘What others are you talking about? Why are the animals leaving? Who was that man in the forest? Why has he come?’
Her mother turned and looked into her eyes. ‘Never let yourself be seen or heard in the forest, Serafina. Always stay low and quiet. You must keep yourself safe.’
‘But I don’t want to be safe. I want to know what’s happening,’ she said before she could stop herself, realising how childish she sounded.
‘I understand your curiosity. Believe me, I do,’ her mother said gently as she reached out and touched her arm. ‘But how many lives do you think you have, little one? The forest is too dangerous for you. One of these nights I might not be there in time to save you.’
‘I want to be able to change like you, Momma.’
‘I know you do, kitten. I’m sorry,’ her mother said, wiping Serafina’s cheek.
‘Tell me what I need to do,’ Serafina begged. ‘I’ll keep practising.’
Her mother shook her head. ‘Catamount kittens change with their mothers when they are very young, before they walk or run or speak. It becomes so much a part of how they envision themselves that they cannot even remember it being any other way. They see themselves as a catamount, and a catamount they become. I’m so sorry that I wasn’t there to teach you when you were young.’
‘Teach me now, Momma.’
‘We’ve been trying every night – you know we have,’ her mother said, ‘but I’m afraid it’s too late for you. You won’t ever be able to change.’
Serafina shook her head fiercely, so frustrated and hurt by her words that she was almost growling at her mother. ‘I know I can do it. Don’t give up on me.’
‘The forest is too dangerous for you to be here,’ her mother said, her eyes filled sadness.
‘You can come back with me to Biltmore in your human form,’ Serafina said excitedly. ‘We can be together.’
‘Serafina,’ her mother said, her tone both soft and firm at the same time, like she knew the loneliness and confusion that Serafina must be feeling. ‘I was trapped in my lion form for twelve years. I can’t even imagine going back into the world of humans again, not yet. You have to understand. My soul was cleaved. I need time to heal, to understand what I am. I’m so sorry, but right now I belong in the forest, and I need to take care of the cubs.’
‘But –’ Serafina tried to say.
‘Wait,’ her mother said softly. ‘Let me finish what I was saying. I need to tell you this.’ She paused, filled with emotion. ‘During those same twelve years that I was a lion, you were as trapped as I was. You were trapped in your human form.’ Her mother wiped a tear from her own eye. ‘That is what you are now. That is what you’ve grown up to be. You’re a human . . . and I’m a catamount.’ She looked down at the ground and pulled in a long, ragged breath. And then she lifted her eyes and looked at Serafina again. ‘I am so thankful that we had this time together, that I got to know you and see what a wonderful girl you’ve grown up to be. I love you with all my heart, Serafina, but I can’t be your mother the way I know I should