She watched as Rowena worked. Pitcher plants, butterworts, and other carnivorous plants grew all around the shelter, up the walls and the rooftop. Rowena took several small plants out of her satchel, positioned them nearby, and moved her hand over them, mumbling something Serafina didn’t understand. When Rowena lifted her hand, the plants had taken root in their new position.
When Rowena was done planting what she had gathered, she went over to the small stream that ran nearby, its water tinted light brown with the tannin of the swamp, where she slowly washed her hands. Serafina couldn’t help but notice that it was the only small, gentle stream she’d seen in a long time. She wondered if the storm-creech did not know about this hidden place.
Serafina crept deeper into Rowena’s lair, more and more curious about what she was seeing.
Several chickens and gray spotted fowl roamed nearby, along with a tribe of goats with long, shaggy black hair, thick, curving horns, and strange, square pupils in their eyes.
Serafina peered into the shelter of woven sticks. Other than the simple bed and a place for food, it seemed to be filled with glass flasks and orbs containing green, yellow, and milky-white liquids.
As she watched Rowena slowly and calmly gather leaves from some of the plants outside the shelter, Serafina frowned. Rowena had been deceitful and dangerous, but she had been alert and full of life. Now she seemed so grave in spirit. It was as if a great loneliness had grown within her, and now had nearly taken her over, like a thick carpet of moss overtaking a tree that had fallen onto the forest floor.
“I can feel you watching me,” Rowena said.
Serafina froze right where she was, her heart pounding.
“I told you to leave me alone,” Rowena said harshly. “I’m through with you!”
Serafina moved back a little and crouched down in the bushes.
Rowena pulled back her hood and shouted angrily out into the woods in the other direction, “Just get out of here! I don’t want you here!”
It seemed that Rowena couldn’t see her after all. But who was she talking to?
Curious to see what would happen, Serafina stepped a little closer.
“No! I told you to go away,” Rowena said as if she knew exactly what she was doing. “I can hear you breathing down my neck. I’m not going to do your bidding anymore. I’m through with you, so stop bothering me!”
As Rowena stood up in anger, the air around her compressed and expanded violently, buffeting Serafina back. Frightened, Serafina quickly retreated into the forest.
Serafina knew she should turn and slink away from Rowena’s wet, boggy lair. It was obvious that her old enemy had become far more powerful. But in other ways, the girl seemed so diminished.
Serafina thought about abandoning this idea of approaching Rowena and just skulking back to Biltmore and trying to make the best of her situation, but she hated the thought of it. She couldn’t talk to them, she couldn’t warn them, she couldn’t help them in any way. In the nights to come, when the storms finally hit Biltmore and the rivers burst, what was she going to do? And what about Braeden? Had he started sucking up the souls of lost children like the Man in the Black Cloak, greedy for more power and more life, his skin slowly rotting from his body? Was he the root of all this evil or a victim of it? And no matter what he was, could she abandon him? When she thought about Waysa, she remembered him looking straight through her like she didn’t even exist anymore. The world was wrecked. It broke her heart to think about enduring another night of this. She pulled in a breath, plucked up her courage, and spoke.
“I haven’t been bothering you,” she whispered. “I just got here.”
Rowena immediately froze, obviously surprised by the sound of her voice.
For several seconds, Rowena did not move or say a word. Her dark red eyebrows furrowed.
“Who are you?” she asked.
Serafina couldn’t believe it: Rowena had heard her! She was actually talking to her!
“I’m warning you,” Rowena said sternly, looking up into the air. “I’ll summon you out by force if I have to.”
As Rowena lifted her open hand, the trees above Serafina began to shake and rattle with a threatening violence. Serafina could feel the air around her pulsating.
“I know you’re there,” Rowena said, “so don’t just lurk out there. Tell me who you are!”
Serafina was too frightened to answer, fearing that Rowena would destroy her the moment she said her name. She wanted to run while she still had the chance. But Rowena was the only person she’d encountered since she’d crawled from the grave who could hear her.
“Are you living or are you dead?” Rowena demanded.
Serafina froze. She didn’t know what to do.
“I asked you a question,” Rowena said. “Are you living or are you dead?”
Finally, feeling like she had no other choice, Serafina decided to speak again. “I…I don’t rightly know,” she admitted.
Rowena seemed to understand that answer in ways that Serafina did not.
“But who are you?” Rowena asked again. “Where do you come from?” Her voice was gentler now, almost kind, as if she’d enticed reluctant spirits from the shadows before.
“I…” Serafina began, but then stopped, too uncertain to continue.
“Don’t be frightened,” Rowena said, her voice filled with a compassion that Serafina had never heard from her before. “Just tell me your name. No harm can come from that.”
“I’m…” Serafina stopped again.
“Yes?”
Serafina ducked down behind a tree. “I’m…Serafina,” she said finally.
“The cat!” Rowena hissed, her face blanching as she spun around and peered out into the forest. She crouched down and looked all around her like she thought a catamount was going to pounce on her at any moment. And Serafina knew that she probably would have attacked the sorceress if everything had been the way it was before, but in her current form how could she fight Rowena? How could she do anything?
“Something’s happened to me,” Serafina told her.
“But you’re still here in this world,” Rowena said, her voice filled with uneasiness as she looked warily around her for signs of attack.
“Part of me, at least,” Serafina said.
Rowena paused, taking in these words. “But why have you come here?” she asked suspiciously.
“You’re the only person I’ve found who can hear me,” Serafina said.
Rowena pressed her lips together and nodded. “I can speak to both sides now.”
“You mean the living and the dead…Were you the one who woke me from the grave? Were you talking to me?”
Rowena ignored her question.
“Was it you?” Serafina pressed her. “What did you say to me?”
Rowena shook her head. “It doesn’t matter now, just the ramblings of a troubled soul, nothing of consequence. I have to be careful when I go to a cemetery, but especially that one.” Then Rowena’s tone took on a harder edge, like she wanted to change the subject. “Did you come here to my home to kill me, is that it, to seek your revenge?”