It began to sink in that her pa hadn’t come for her, either, and neither had Braeden.
No one had come.
She was alone.
Fear began to well up in her mind. As she thought about what might have happened to the people she loved, her heart felt heavy in her chest. She didn’t know what had attacked her or how long she’d been gone. She wondered what the people of Biltmore would think when she walked into the mansion covered in graveyard dirt, but her true fear, deep down, was that they wouldn’t be there at all, that she’d find the house empty, full of nothing but shadows.
Anxious to get moving, she headed into the forest, following the path that would take her to Biltmore. She had to get home.
Serafina followed the path through the darkened forest at a quick pace, down into a ravine dense with ancient maple and hemlock trees. Her legs felt strong and steady beneath her as she weaved between the great trunks of the forest’s oldest inhabitants.
A chorus of tree frogs, peepers and insects filled her ears, and the scents of primrose and moonflower wafted past her nose. The evening flowers stayed closed during the day, but opened with their sweet smells at night.
Everything seemed unusually vibrant to her tonight, like her body and her senses were alive with new sensations.
The forest grew thick with rosebay rhododendron bushes glimmering in the silver moonlight. Hummingbird moths hovered over the white and pinkish blooms, dipping into the recesses of the flowers and sipping out the nectar within. It almost felt as if she could hear the beat of the moths’ wings against the night air.
Fireflies floated in the darkness above the shiny green leaves of the laurel. Soft flashes of lightning danced on the silver-clouded sky behind them, and a gentle thunder rolled through the darkness, moving on the rising heat of what felt like a summer breeze.
‘This is all so strange . . .’ she said to herself, looking around her in confusion as she travelled. The last night she remembered, it had been winter, but the air felt strangely warm now. And these plants and insects didn’t come out in winter. Had the magic of the angel’s glade somehow extended out into the rest of the forest?
When she glanced up at the moon, what she saw stopped her dead in her tracks. The moon was not all the way full, but large and bright, with the light on the right and the shadow on the left.
‘That’s not right,’ she said, frowning. That night she was on the loggia the moon had been full, which meant what she was seeing now was impossible.
She knew that the moon was only full one night a month, then it would wane for fourteen nights, with the light on the left side, getting smaller and smaller until it was dark for a single evening. Then it would wax for fourteen nights, with the light on the right, until it was full once more. Then it would start all over again.
The moon was the great calendar in the sky by which she had marked the nights of her life, wandering through the grounds of Biltmore Estate by herself. The steady phases of her pale companion, the slow sweep of the glistening stars, and the curving transit of the five brightest planets had been her silent but loyal confidants for as long as she could remember. They were her midnight brothers and her dark-morning sisters. She had spoken to them, learned from them, watched them as a girl sees the members of her family moving around her.
But tonight she looked at her sister the moon in confusion, a thumping urgency in her temples as she tried to figure out the meaning of what she was seeing. The moon was lit on the right side. That meant it was waxing, getting larger each night. But if the moon had been full the last time she saw it, how could it be waxing now?
It was as if she’d fallen backwards a night in time. Either that or something equally unimaginable: she’d been underground for more than an entire cycle of the moon.
‘That means twenty-eight nights have passed, maybe more . . .’ she said to herself in astonishment.
The breeze whispered through the tops of the trees as if the hidden spirits of the forest were nervously discussing that she had discovered the universe’s ruse. Time flew forward. Time flew back. Nothing was as it seemed. People were buried underground and people came back. She was in a world of many in-betweens.
Another set of flashes lit up the sky and danced silently among the clouds, then the thunder rolled on, echoing across the mountainsides.
She had always been able to see things other people could not, especially in the dark of night, but tonight there seemed to be a special magic in the forest. It felt as if she could actually see the evening flowers slowly opening their petals to the moon and the glint of starlight on the iridescent wings of the insects. She felt the caress of the air as it slipped through the branches of the trees, around her body, and against her skin. She sensed the stony firmness of the earth and rock on which she stood. The tiny droplets of dew on the clover leaves around her suddenly glistened, and a moment later, the white light of the distant lightning shone in her eyes. Water and earth and light and sky . . . It was as if she had become intermingled with the faintest elements of the world, as if she were in tune with the slip and sway of the nocturnal realm in a way that she had never been before.
She continued walking, but as she gazed through the trees she spotted what appeared to be a crease of blackness in the distance. She tilted her head in confusion. Was it a shadow? She couldn’t make it out. But as she narrowed her eyes to look at it, she realized that whatever it was, it was moving, not towards her or away, but hovering in the air, like a rippling black wave.
The skin on her arms rose up with goosebumps. She couldn’t help but wonder if what she was seeing was related to the black shape that had attacked her at Biltmore.
She knew she should leave it alone, but she was too curious to turn away. She slowly moved closer until she was maybe a dozen steps from it, then she stopped and studied the black shape. It appeared to be about five feet long, floating of its own accord a few feet off the ground, like a long banner held in the breeze. And it was utterly black, blacker than anything she had ever seen.
Suddenly, a wind swept through the trees. A gust kicked up from the forest floor, swirling small tornados of leaves around her. The branches hanging above her began to creak and bend, like the swaying limbs of old, twisted men, their long, twiggy hands dangling down onto her head and shoulders. When the cold mist of a coming rain touched her face, she realised that a storm was near. And then she spotted a dark figure making its way towards her through the trees.
Serafina sucked in a breath in surprise and dropped to the ground to hide. She scrambled beneath the base of a half-toppled tree where the spidering roots had pulled up from the earth and created a small cave. Pressing herself in as deep as she could go, she peered out through the small holes between the roots.
The man, or creature, or whatever it was, moved towards her through the forest with a slow and deliberate pace, like a predator hunting for prey. It stalked on two long, gangly legs, its back hunched over and its head hanging down, its shoulders swaying one way and then the other as it gazed from side to side. Even as hunched as it was, the creature was very tall, with long, crooked arms dangling in front of it like a praying mantis, and the elongated fingers of its spindling hands like white, scaly talons, tipped with sharp, curving, clawlike fingernails. It moved with steady purpose, scraping its feet through the leaves of the forest floor, the movement of its bones sounding like cracking branches.
What