Serafina and the Black Cloak Read Free

and the last thing she ever wanted to do was to cause him
trouble.
    So she had become an expert at moving undetected, not just to catch the rats, but to avoid the people, too. When she was feeling particularly brave or lonely, she darted upstairs into the
comings and goings of the sparkling folk. She snuck and crept and hid. She was small for her age and light of foot. The shadows were her friends. She spied on the fancy-dressed guests as they
arrived in their splendid horse-drawn carriages. No one upstairs ever saw her hiding beneath the bed or behind the door. No one noticed her in the back of the closet when they put their coats
inside. When the ladies and gentlemen went on their walks around the grounds, she slinked up right next to them without them knowing and listened to everything they were saying. She loved seeing
the young girls in their blue and yellow dresses with ribbons fluttering in their hair, and she ran along with them when they frolicked through the garden. When the children played hide-and-seek,
they never realized there was another player. Sometimes she’d even see Mr. and Mrs. Vanderbilt walking arm in arm, or she’d see their twelve-year-old nephew riding his horse across the
grounds, with his sleek black dog running alongside.
    She had watched them all, but none of them ever saw her—not even the dog. Lately she’d been wondering just what would happen if they did. What if the boy glimpsed her? What would she
do? What if his dog chased her? Could she get up a tree in time? Sometimes she liked to imagine what she would say if she met Mrs. Vanderbilt face-to-face.
Hello, Mrs. V. I catch your rats for
you. Would you like them killed or just chucked out?
Sometimes she dreamed of wearing fancy dresses and ribbons in her hair and shiny shoes on her feet. And sometimes, just sometimes, she
longed not just to listen secretly to the people around her, but to talk to them. Not just to see them, but to be
seen
.
    As she walked through the moonlight across the open grass and back to the main house, she wondered what would happen if one of the guests, or perhaps the young master in his bedroom on the
second floor, happened to wake and look out the window and see a mysterious girl walking alone in the night.
    Her pa never spoke of it, but she knew she wasn’t exactly normal looking. She had a skinny little body, nothing but muscle, bone, and sinew.
    She didn’t own a dress, so she wore one of her pa’s old work shirts, which she cinched around her narrow waist with a length of fibrous twine she’d scavenged from the workshop.
He didn’t buy her any clothes because he didn’t want people in town to ask questions and start meddling; meddling was something he could never brook.
    Her long hair wasn’t a single color like normal people had, but varying shades of gold and light brown. Her face had a peculiar angularity in the cheeks. And she had large, steady amber
eyes. She could see at night as well as she could during the day. Even her soundless hunting skills weren’t exactly normal. Every person she’d ever encountered, especially her pa, made
so much noise when they walked that it was like they were one of the big Belgian draft horses that pulled the farm equipment in Mr. Vanderbilt’s fields.
    And it all made her wonder, looking up at the windows of the great house. What did the people sleeping in those rooms dream of, with their one-colored hair, and their long, pointy noses, and
their big bodies lying in their soft beds all through the glorious darkness of the night? What did they long for? What made them laugh or jump? What did they feel inside? When they had dinner at
night, did the children eat the grits or just the chicken?
    As she glided down the stairs and back into the basement, she heard something in a distant corridor. She stopped and listened, but she couldn’t quite make it out. It wasn’t a rat.
That much was certain. Something much larger. But what was it?
    Curious,