Nevermore: A Novel of Love, Loss, & Edgar Allan Poe (19 page)

Vines rose from the ground and whipped across that space.
 
Trees bent double, their uppermost branches digging in like roots, and all the while the growing mass of light and vegetation contracted.
 
A moment later, Edgar noticed that Nettie stood off to the side.
 
She leaned easily on her staff, and she watched.
 
The girl was back at her side.
 
He glanced to where the two men had fallen.
 
At first he saw nothing, and then he saw that there were raised mounds, strands of vines, tree roots, and weaving undergrowth.
 
The mounds moved in a ponderous, relentless motion toward the trees.

Edgar shifted his concentration back to Nettie.
 
The glowing mass had dimmed some, but he didn't think it was because the power had lessened, or even that the light had lost intensity.
 
It was the swamp.
 
It closed in over the top, formed a pulsing orb of green and darkness.
 
There was a final scream.
 
It was primal, filled with rage.
 
As the light was fully encased, the sound was choked, until at last all Edgar saw was Nettie, an old woman leaning on a staff, the trees, and a snarled mass of undergrowth.

Nettie turned then, and stared straight at the point where he stood.
 
His heart hammered, and sweat broke out on his brow, but she did not speak, or move toward him.
 
Instead, unbelievably, she winked.
 
Then she turned back and slapped the staff smartly against the vines and trees before her.
 

At first nothing happened.
 
Then, like the splitting of an eggshell, a crack ran down the sides of the mound.
 
It shivered, shook, and then huge clumps of it crumbled and fell away. Nettie stepped back.
 
The outer shell dropped from the mound like sand pouring through an hourglass.
 
When it was finished, Edgar caught his breath.

There was an old, gnarled cypress tree standing where Nettie had been scant moments before. There was no sign of the sorceress, Estrella, but the tree had a distinctly human shape.
 
As he studied it, he saw the outline of her hair in the trailing vines, her outstretched arms, as if still diving forward to attack.

Edgar stepped from the trees then.
 
He couldn’t help himself.
 
He started walking forward, and Nettie turned to meet his gaze.
 
As he walked his sight blurred, and the world tilted.
 
Dizziness stole his balance, and he toppled forward.
 
He tried to raise his arms to stop his fall, but he felt heavy and sluggish.
 
He closed his eyes and turned his head, readying himself for the pain of impact. It never came.

H
e raised his head and sat up straight.

The night had deepened.
 
Someone had lit a candle, and the flame flickered, sending shadows dancing over the old wood porch.
 
The light flickered over the glass of the moonshine bottle.
 
The level of clear liquid had dropped considerably.

He turned then, expecting to find the chair across from him empty, but Nettie sat watching him with her eyes bright and inquisitive.

Edgar poured another small drink, trusting that it was not the liquor that had caused his vision.
 
He tossed it back and closed his eyes for a moment before speaking.

“You captured her – in a tree.”

It wasn’t a question.
 
He had heard the story of the woman and the tree, Lake Drummond, the trapped spirits that were so familiar to Lenore.
 
This was only an extension of the knowledge he'd gained over the past few days.

“How long?”

“You do not want to know that answer,” Nettie said.
 
“If I told you, there would be too many more questions.
 
What is important is that I knew why she had come.
 
She would have lured the girl – and she would have stolen her youth, and her royal blood.
 
If all had gone as she’d planned, she would have returned to rule in a land far from this place, killing, damning, and destroying all who got in her way.
 
I read her – I judged her.
 
This is my place.
 
She should not have come.”

“And now?” Edgar asked.
 
“Surely her chance to rule has passed?
 
The girl is safe?”

“As long as that dark one is trapped,” Nettie said, “the girl is safe.
 
Time has a way of bending and folding.
 
I do not know what might happen if she were allowed to complete her spell.
 
It does not matter – she is trapped.”

Edgar tried to clear his thoughts.
 
Something was bothering him.
 
To buy time, he asked.
 
“What about the deer?
 
Did you trap the deer as well?”

He saw a flicker of emotion pass over Nettie’s eyes then.
 
Pain?
 
Regret?

“No,” she said simply.
 
“He is an old…companion of mine.
 
You will understand – you with your fine old bird.
 
He drew too near to her – to my spell.
 
She somehow found the power to twist what I had wrought, and she captured him.
 
I cannot release him without setting her free.
 
He would not want it.”

Her voice had choked up at this last.
 
Edgar slowly poured a little more of the moonshine into each of their glasses.
 
He lifted his, and was about to ask another question, when it hit him like a stone to the head.

“My God,” he said. “Lenore.”

He didn’t say another word, but as if his thoughts were nothing more than a book lying open on the table before her, Nettie gasped, and her eyes went wide.

“She will set her free,” Edgar said.
 
“She will not know what she is doing, but she will be compelled.
 
She was drawn here by visions and by dreams.”

“You have to stop her,” Nettie said.
 
“I will protect the girl.
 
I can still handle the dark one, now that I know she’s coming, but she will be more powerful.
 
If she is reaching through my spell to draw others to the swamp, hiding their intent and their power from me, she has learned, and gathered her strength.
 
You must be careful, and you must be swift.
 
If you don’t stop her I can still protect the girl – perhaps, I can protect you.
 
The other – Lenore you called her?
 
She will be lost.”

The door behind Edgar swung open slightly, and Edgar turned.
 
In that instant – the second his gaze did not fall directly upon her – Nettie disappeared.
 
The bottle and what remained of its contents had also vanished.

“Gods,” Edgar cursed.
 
He rose, nearly toppling the table in his haste.

“We must leave,” he said to Tom, who’d stepped confusedly onto the porch.
 
“We must go now, and swiftly.
 
I have to reach the banks of Lake Drummond."

L
enore had never felt such intensity while working on a drawing.
 
She should have been done hours before.
 
Normally, she would have settled for a fraction of the detail she'd already included, and still, even as she expanded the lines and shading, her pencil darted back to something that was not quite perfect, inserted a line here, or a shadow there that could be rendered with more clarity.

Anita had been back to check on her three times, but she had never even glanced up from her work.
 
She felt the intrusion, and the shadow that crossed over the paper, but she could not draw herself from the trance the drawing had created.
 
The lighting shifted as the sun rose to its zenith and dropped toward the horizon, but she did not falter.
 
Though the shadows shifted, her memory supplied the details, and she drew, though her fingers were on the verge of cramping, and she feared if she gripped the pencil any tighter, it would shatter.

She knew that something was wrong, or, at least that something was different.
 
When she had released spirits in the past, it had been a detached, very personal act.
 
This was an entirely new experience.
 
It had been her will that pressed her to the task, her stamina and talent against fatigue and time.
 
She felt the shell of the tree crumbling as she drew, felt tendrils of thought working their way out to meld with her own.
 
Whoever, or whatever, was trapped was taking an active part in the escape, and she didn't know if she approved, or if she should be fighting with every ounce of her strength, pushing the pencil to fail in its task, dragging herself up and away to run and run and never look back.
 
In the end, it did not matter what she thought; she did what she had come there to do.
 
She drew, and her mind was filled with the image.
 
It was all she could do to maintain surface control of her senses, and her actions.

She was beginning to pick up leaked thoughts and memories from the woman trapped in the tree.
 
It was a wild rush of emotion.
 
Hatred, pain, regret, frustration, and behind every bit of it an overwhelming aura of power and strength of will.
 
Lenore tried to create a mental shield against it.
 
She distracted herself by trying to insert other images, faces, remembering the words to Edgar's story as he'd told it.

That proved a mistake.
 
As the words of the Brothers Grimm's
The Raven
wove into her thoughts, the trapped woman gripped them and twisted them savagely.
 
The castle shifted from the storybook vision Lenore had constructed in her imagination to a stern, Gothic structure that almost seemed carved into the cliff side of a mountain.
 
A road wound down from the keep toward a village below, obscured in wispy clouds of fog and shadows.
 
There was a light in one tower window, and almost as if she'd been flung at it, the image enlarged and focused so rapidly it caused a sharp spike of pain.

She stared in through an open slit in a heavily curtained window.
 
The hall beyond that window was large.
 
There were squat, thick thrones set at either end of a long table that ran the length of the room.
 
A man, presumably a king, or a lord, sat at the head of the table.
 
Across the long expanse, a cold, haughty woman with thin, severe features sat – his queen?
 
Behind, and to the left of the king, another figure stood.
 
She was tall, slender, and very dark.
 
Her hair, her eyes, even the robes she wore blended tightly to the shadows.

Lenore heard no voices, but the vision grew clearer with each passing second.
 
The man finished his meal and rose.
 
He waved to the shadows.
 
The dark woman stepped forward, and then, from the opposite side, two men in uniform appeared, bearing weapons and armor.
 
The lord held his arms out, and they dressed him for war, quickly and efficiently.

At the other end of the table, the woman sat staring in obvious disapproval.
 
The dark woman leaned forward and whispered something to the lord, who nodded.
 
Fully girded in chain mail, a great sword tucked into the scabbard at his side, he turned toward the woman at the far end of the table, who rose stiffly and approached.
 
He reached out a hand, now gauntleted, and she placed hers upon it.

Sound slowly faded into the growing clarity of the vision.
 
As if from very far away, or down an echoing corridor, Lenore heard him speak.

"I will return before the winter is upon us.
 
The borders must be defended.
 
In my absence, your word shall be law."

The woman nodded.

"You will – or course – take council where it is proper.
 
Estrella has been my eyes and ears in the village, and is a wise advisor.
 
Trust her."

Again, the woman nodded, but as she did, she sent a glance toward Estrella that, had it been a solid blow, would have shattered her like glass.