Hunters who came to visit the estate called the birds woodcocks. Mountain folk called them bogsuckers or brush snipes. She thought it was interesting how different people had different names for the same thing. Mountain lion, puma, panther, painter, cougar, catamount…there were many names for her kin. Waysa had taught her that the Cherokee word was tsv-da-si.
She wondered what kind of name people had for what she had become. A haint, a haunt, a shade, a phantom, a spirit, a specter, an ethereal being…
Suddenly the shy little timberdoodle burst up into the air in a crazy, spiraling flight, its wings whistling and all a-twitter, flying great sweeping circles up into the twilit sky. When it reached the very top of its spiral, the woodcock hovered for a moment, as if held in the air, then sang out a liquid song. From there it began to fall, tumbling back down toward the earth, folding and fluttering like it had been shot with a gun, but all the while singing through its vainglorious display.
Serafina smiled. She’d never seen the sky dance of the timberdoodle before, but her pa had told her the stories. In this place, in this moment, for just a few minutes during sunset, this normally shy, lonely little bird called out to the world, I’m here! I’m here!
He’s just looking for a friend, she thought. I wonder if something like that would work for me…The thought of standing out in the middle of the meadow and leaping in great circles, tilting and twittering, and yelling, I’m here! I’m here! brought a cheer to her heart.
Finally, the timberdoodle landed exactly where he’d started.
It was then that Serafina lifted her eyes and saw the silhouette of a person standing and watching from the other side of the meadow.
It was the dark-robed sorcerer she’d seen by the river. Serafina ducked down to conceal herself, not sure if the sorcerer could see her.
When the hooded man finally turned and walked away, Serafina stayed low, gave him a few minutes to put some distance between them, then skirted the meadow and followed him. Serafina moved as quietly as she could through the wet forest bog, but she was determined not to let the sorcerer slip away.
Then the sorcerer stopped and stood very still.
Serafina hunkered down and hid behind the trunk of a large tree.
The sorcerer turned his head and looked in the direction she was hiding.
She thought that after a moment the sorcerer would turn back around and resume walking toward his destination, but he did not.
He lifted his head, then raised his thin, delicate hands and gently pulled his hood down until the dark cloth gathered around his shoulders.
That was when Serafina saw the sorcerer’s face for the first time. It was not a man, but a girl! About fourteen years old, she had a pale complexion, dark red lips, and long red hair. The girl’s green eyes scanned the forest, looking right where Serafina was hiding. Serafina crouched down even farther, but she couldn’t help peeking through the vegetation back at the girl.
Her expression was filled with a grave and somber stillness, as if she had suffered a great loss. She had about her the feeling of someone who was hiding, diminished, but stoically unwilling to relinquish life, like a broken owl who no longer has the heart to fly.
The girl was nearly unrecognizable in manner and form, but Serafina knew exactly who it was.
Fear shot through Serafina. She hunched down low and peered through the bushes. It was Rowena! Too close now to flee, Serafina wanted to pounce fast and fight her old enemy. A growling, seething anger rose up inside her for all the terrible things Rowena had done. But the more she watched the wretched girl, the more curious Serafina became.
Rowena had changed. The angles of her face, the movement of her body, and especially her spirit and mannerisms, were all different. Her hair was still red, but it wasn’t dressed up into fancy curls like before. It was long and thick around her neck and shoulders. Her face was still pale, but she wasn’t wearing any lady’s makeup to brighten her lips or shadow her eyes. And she wasn’t wearing a stylish dress like she always had. She wore simple, dark robes, like a hermit who had withdrawn from the world. She did not appear to have a horse or carriage anymore. She walked through the forest alone.
Rowena peered in Serafina’s direction for several long seconds, studying the bushes where she was hiding as if she knew she was there. Serafina remained very still, unsure what Rowena could and couldn’t sense.
Finally, Rowena pulled the hood back up around her head and continued walking through the misty lowlands of the bog.
Serafina released a long, steady breath, relieved that she’d avoided Rowena’s detection. There was a part of Serafina that wanted to turn around and go home, go the other way, let wounded owls lie. But there was another part of her, the bolder, fiercer, more determined part, that was saying, Don’t let her get away.
Serafina decided to follow her.
Pretty sure that she was invisible to even Rowena, Serafina tracked through the bog behind her, but kept a safe distance, just in case. Sometimes she lost the girl in the gray mountain mist, but then she would catch up again.
Soon they came to a faint path that wound even deeper into the wetlands, through a dark and shadowed grove of old, ragged cedar trees, with leafy ferns all around and moss-covered trunks.
Finally, Serafina watched as Rowena came to a small habitation.
At first it seemed like nothing more than a large clump of tree branches. Thin, twisty twigs had grown downward from the larger limbs of the trees, and the spidery roots had grown upward, creating tight, interwoven walls of sticks with a stick-woven roof overhead. The embers of a small cook fire glowed in front of the shelter’s entryway. Various collections of plants lay here and there on logs, as if drying in what little sun might filter down through the trees during the day.
Serafina watched as Rowena tended to a row of carnivorous plants growing near her lair, mumbling strange and unrecognizable words as she pinched small, struggling flies and hornets in her fingers and dropped them into the awaiting mouths of the plants.
A few inches from where Serafina was crouched, and in various other areas of the forest around the shelter, hazes of white spiderwebs stretched between the trees. Feeling a crawling sensation on her spine, she looked more closely into the mass of web and saw thousands of black spiders with crooked legs and red hourglasses on their backs. Sucking in a gasp, she quickly moved away and found a new tree to hide behind. Her pa had taught her that the black widows were the most dangerous spiders around, but she’d never seen them bunched into large nests like this before.