“You’ve decided on what you’re going to do…” Serafina said.
Rowena nodded. “I am going to follow Waysa’s advice. I’m going to live well.”
“And where are you going?”
“Once long ago these dark forests and jagged mountains were the hidden domain of a great conjurer, the old man of the forest. As I see it, somewhere out there, there’s a vacancy now. And a girl to fill it. In her own way.”
Serafina nodded, understanding Rowena’s words.
Rowena gazed toward Biltmore visible in the distance and then looked back at Serafina. “You are the protector of that place,” she said. “Protect it well, and everyone within.”
Serafina nodded, knowing exactly who she meant.
“Live well, sorceress,” Serafina said.
“Live well, cat,” Rowena said in return.
That night, Serafina slipped out of Biltmore just as the moon was rising in the eastern sky, her four feet trundling easily, silently, along the front terrace, then down the steps, and across the grass toward the trees.
When Waysa spotted her coming, he flicked his tail and ran.
So you want to race…Serafina thought, and lunged into a powerful run.
She chased Waysa through the forest, tearing through the ferns, leaping over creeks, dodging between rocks, her heart filling with the joy that only motion can bring.
Waysa doubled back around behind her, crouched at the top of a boulder, and leapt upon her as she ran past. The two catamounts somersaulted in mock battle across the forest floor, then Serafina burst out of it and sprinted away, forcing Waysa to chase after her.
She loved running through the forest with Waysa, her senses alive, and her muscles blazing with power. She loved the speed of it and the rushing wind, the feel of her furred feet flying across the ground, the grace of her tail steering her quick changes in course. When she ran as a black panther, she was everything she had ever dreamed of being.
After the chase, she and Waysa came to the cliff that looked out across the great river. They stopped there at the edge, panting and happy, and gazed out across the moonlit view. The flooding was already receding, the rivers and the forest slowly returning to their natural state.
Serafina’s heart skipped a beat when she spotted movement on the high ground in the distance.
She glanced at Waysa. He saw it, too.
The dark figures were far away, and she couldn’t quite tell what they were. They were but shadows and a slinking, skulking movement among the rocks of the ridge. Then it became more clear.
The silhouettes of three mountain lions came up over the distant ridge, backlit by the light of the rising moon.
Serafina’s heart swelled. One of the lions looked larger than the other two younger, leaner cats.
Filled with excitement, Serafina and Waysa ran toward the ridge to meet them.
The five lions came together, rubbing their heads and their shoulders against each other and purring. Her mother was strong and powerful, and the cubs had grown so much!
Serafina, her mother, and Waysa shifted into human form.
Serafina gazed at her mother’s beautiful face with its high, angular cheekbones, her long, lion-colored hair, and her tearful golden-amber eyes looking back at her, and then they moved toward each other and embraced.
“Serafina…” her mother purred as she held her.
“Momma…” Serafina whispered in return, pressing herself into the warmth of her mother’s chest as she wrapped her arms around her.
“When I heard you were alive, I wept with joy and came as fast as I could,” her mother said.
Serafina held her mother tight. She could feel the warmth of her mother’s love pouring through her body. After all their nights apart, they were finally back together again.
Suddenly, she remembered being a little girl prowling unseen through Biltmore’s upstairs rooms looking into the face of every woman she saw, wondering if it was the face of her mother. And she remembered that first night in the forest she saw her mother’s eyes and knew who she was. It seemed so long ago now, but the feeling, the love she felt in her heart, was the same.
Months before, when she was first united with her mother, she had learned so much from her, about the lore of the forest and the lives of the catamount. She had learned so much about what it meant to be Serafina. But she knew now, even with all that she’d been through since then, that there was still so much more for her to learn. She was just beginning in the world, and she needed her mother to guide her. The spirit and the body, the heart and the soul, the light and the darkness, she wanted to learn it all.
Knowing that it was all ahead of her, Serafina found a great sense of peace.
All through the night, the five cats ran, leaping and diving through the forest, down into valleys and up along the ridges. The night was their domain. Serafina had found her kindred, her family, the primordial creatures to whom she was born.
Deep in the night, they finally returned to the place they began, at the edge of the high ground that looked out across the river to the distant mountains. When Waysa shifted into human form, Serafina did as well.
There was a strange look in her friend’s eyes that worried her. She could see there was something on his mind.
Serafina looked at Waysa, but he did not want to look at her.
She stepped toward him and touched his arm.
Finally, he lifted his eyes.
“I need to talk to you, Serafina,” he said, a sad tone in his voice.
A sinking feeling poured through her. “Tell me what it is,” she said softly, her voice trembling.
“Now that you’re safe, and your mother is back, I…” Waysa’s voice faltered.
“What is it, Waysa?” she asked him again, but she didn’t truly want to know the answer. She wanted to pull back time, to go back, back to the way it was before.
“I think it’s time for me to go,” he said.
Her eyes watered as she looked at him. “No, Waysa…”
“When I finally avenged my family, I thought it would restore the balance. I thought it would heal my heart. But when I think of my sister and my brothers…my mother and my father…there’s still…an emptiness inside me. My family is dead, I have to accept that, but I want to know if any other Cherokee catamounts survived. Uriah scattered my people. I need to find them. I need to tell them what’s happened here, that there’s no more need to fear. I need to bring them back together…”
Serafina stared at Waysa. She did not want to agree with him. She did not want to let him go. She wanted to yell at him and demand that he stay. She wanted to grab hold of him and make him stay.
But she knew she shouldn’t. She knew that she should let him go, that it was right for him to go. If his people were still out there, he had to find them, he had to bring them together. That’s what he did. He saved people, just like he’d saved her.