Nevermore: A Novel of Love, Loss, & Edgar Allan Poe (21 page)

It only took a few steps of the jostling lurching run to send Grimm airborne.
 
The old bird shot straight up until he cleared the tops of the trees, and then leveled off, pointing like the arrow on a compass to show where the path led.
 
It wasn't necessary.
 
Even parts of the path so choked with recent growth they would've needed a machete to clear them crumbled and fell away before them.

Though he had been more exhausted than he could ever remember being a short hour before, Edgar found that his pale, sedentary body performed beyond its limits.
 
He'd have sworn, and would do so repeatedly at later dates, that he was feeding off of some energy source leaking up from the swamp through his feet.
 
He felt years younger, and despite the weight of his pack, picked up speed the closer they drew to the lake.

He felt the nearness of the place as well.
 
His senses were heightened by whatever aid Nettie was providing.
 
It brought him close to the state where did his best writing, where the stories became part of him, the dreams molded themselves to reality, and he poured it all back onto paper to cleanse his mind.
 
This night, it was not just a story – but the swamp itself.

There was no cleansing this.
 
He sensed the lake ahead.
 
He also sensed the presence of several others.
 
One, he was certain, was Lenore.
 
She drew him with warmth and life, but also with anger and fear, and again, he sped his steps.

There was a lighter glow that must have been Anita, pulsing, close, but with no particular power.
 
Between the two he felt an immense darkness.
 
It seethed and roiled, but was contained in a small area.
 
It held them apart.

"Estrella," he breathed.

There was another.
 
Some distance from the three, bright, as Estrella was dark, a fourth essence called to him.
 
It felt different from anything he'd experienced.
 
Then, as he grew nearer, he realized this wasn't absolutely true.
 
It was unique, but not unfamiliar, because it reminded him of the bond he felt with Grimm – of the images and visions he shared with the bird, particularly in darkness, when he was working.
 
Something was out there, and powerful as it was, it meant him no harm.
 
In fact, he thought, if he could find a way to reach it, there was the chance it could aid him.
 
Just a chance.

"How much farther," Edgar said, fighting to run and speak and breathe at the same time.

"Not far," Tom said.
 
"I see a glow ahead – if there's a fire…"

Edgar didn't answer.
 
He poured all that remained of his strength, concentration, and energy into increasing his speed.
 
Whatever was going to happen, he would only be a part of it if he reached Lenore in time.

Grimm split the night with a great cry and began to circle, dropping at each pass, until as Edgar and Tom burst through the final ring of trees and onto the shore of Lake Drummond, he dropped to float just above the ground, looping back each time he pulled too far ahead.

Across the water, Lenore's fire was clearly visible.
 
Edgar could make out a figure standing near that fire, and not far away, he saw the crooked form of an old tree.
 
There were shadows huddled at the tree’s base.

"Lenore!" he cried out as loudly as he could, and then, not wanting to waste any more breath, he tore off down the shoreline with Tom hard on his heels.

L
enore worked steadily.
 
She was aware on one level that Anita stood nearby.
 
She thought, very faintly, that she heard a voice from farther away, calling her name.
 
Edgar?
 
It didn't matter.
 
She was focused, and trapped in the drawing, and her fingers flew over the paper now, erasing, brushing away the crumbs and erasing some more.
 
Again, the experience of changing the drawing and freeing the trapped spirit had proven different.

Her normal method was to draw the trapped spirit and the object that imprisoned them, then to remove the trapped spirit, and finally to return to the inanimate prison – the drawing of that prison – to perfection minus what she set free.
 
This time, it was different.
 
She had no sense of the tree behind the woman.
 
The two were inseparable, as if they'd never existed apart from one another.
 
When all traces of the woman had been removed, there was very little left of the tree.
 
Though her mind balked at this, her hands worked on – her fingers pressed the pencil to the drawing and she realized after a moment's horror what was happening.

She was recreating the tree as what it was – a prison.
 
For it to truly exist, it required a prisoner, and she fought with every ounce of her being to prevent what was unfolding on the paper.
 
It was a perfect likeness.
 
She knew the image well, knew every crease and fold age had applied, how certain strands of hair would never stay in place, no matter how they had been restricted or styled.
 
She knew the face as well as she knew anything on the Earth because it was her own.
 
She was replacing the woman in the tree with herself and though she fought until the tendons in her arms felt as if they might snap, she could not prevent it from happening.

As the inevitability washed over her, she began striving to find something else, some way to divert the power that coursed through her and claimed her.
 
If she could not free herself from this perversion of her talent, perhaps there was something else, some way to fight back that did not involve direct conflict.

She had already tried closing her eyes.
 
Though she was able to complete the act, her fingers worked on, as sure and sound in their art as if she'd given her strictest attention.
 
Now she tried something different.
 
She relaxed her combat with the entity possessing her, and slowly turned her head toward Anita.

The girl was watching her intently, and when she saw Lenore's gaze swing to hers, her face lit with hope.

"Lady?" she said.

"Hurry…" Lenore croaked.
 
"The deer.
 
You must free it.
 
No … time for detail.
 
Draw it in the sand – the tree – erase the deer – set it free.
 
Draw the…tree."

As whatever possessed her seemed suddenly to grow aware of the words, Lenore felt her gaze drawn back to the work at hand, to the drawing and its final details.
 
She struggled to remain in control for a final word.

"Quickly!"

She tried to turn her head back, to plead with the girl with her eyes, to make her understand, but she could not.
 
She sensed – or thought she sensed – Anita stumbling back.
 
Then all she could do was work the details of the
portrait unfolding on the paper
, adding highlights, stretching out the act of creation by adding in more and more subtle lines and shades.
 
If she could not prevent the drawing of this picture, she could make it perfect. She could make it take as long as possible to complete.
 
She knew that the one part of her gift that could not be stolen was that moment of completion.
 
If she could think of anything – any bit or piece of how the thing should look when finished – that had not been completed, she could delay that completion, and if she knew no other subject in the world well enough to play this sort of stalling game – she knew her own face.

A
nita turned, and she ran.
 
She had understood Lenore's message, and its urgency, but her heart hammered with doubt over what she might do.
 
She had no gift, and she had no time.
 
She had considered trying to drag Lenore from the fire, and the drawing, but the moment she recognized the lady's features in the tree, she knew she couldn't chance it.
 
If things had progressed too far, who would be destroyed?

The deer was not far away, and it was close enough to the water that the sand was moist.
 
She searched and quickly came up with a long, pointed branch that she gripped tightly.
 
A voice – so faint she thought it must be wind in the limbs of the trees, or rippling waves on the lake – drifted to her.

"Clear your mind.
 
See the deer.
 
See the tree.
 
There will be little time, but I can lend you strength.
 
When I complete this drawing, I don't know what will happen to me, but I will have energy – strength – and I will lend it to you.
 
What is in that tree – the animal, the spirit – it is important.
 
It can help.
 
You must hurry."

Anita did as she was told. She closed her eyes and listened to the night – the silence hanging over the lake and the crackling, blazing voice of the fire.
 
She thought back to other times on that same shoreline, fishing with her brothers, studying the deer tree.
 
It was almost a shock to realize she had done this, but now it seemed a part of the moment – something she'd seen in her own future beckoning, or some voice she had always heard there by the lake, just part of the experience that had slipped around her and become a part of her without any acknowledgment.

She knew this image.
 
She knew this energy – this power.
 
She opened her eyes, and, by the light of the moon, and the flickering flame of the fire, she drew.
 
She had never tried before – never done more than doodle on the side of a paper while her mother taught her letters, or a scratching on the wall of the barn with a bit of charcoal.
 
She had no idea what would happen –whether she'd end up with a childish stick picture of a deer, or…

The first line caught the swooping muscled shoulders.
 
Her hand took on a life of its own, and she worked the tip through the soft sandy dirt quickly.
 
Where it piled between lines she brushed it with her fingers, feathering it into shadows and dark highlights, moving faster and faster as she felt the energy behind her build.
 
She fed off of it.
 
Somehow Lenore channeled it to her, and the deer – the spirit – trapped in the tree joined itself to the creation.

Everything was funneling to a point.
 
The drawing in the sand.
 
The fire – the night – the power that flowed in and around and over her – the image that had trapped Lenore – all of it whirling like water into a deep hole, faster and faster until it was a blur.
 
The deer came to life and at some point, a voice whispered – "Now…it has to be now" – and she stopped, beginning the act of dissolution – thinking strokes backward. She remembered her father taking her deep into the swamp when she was a little girl.
 
She'd been afraid of being lost – afraid she'd never see home, or her mother again – and he'd told her to let the fear drop away.
 
Think about what you did, and reverse it.
 
Like flipping the egg timer, the sand flows one way, and then it flows back, always the same.

"You've taken all the steps, girl, just take them back."

And she did. One stroke at a time, she removed the deer.
 
She didn't worry about the tree, she'd never seen the tree – but she had seen trees.
 
She trusted her heart, and wiped the antlers, the flanks, the strong muscled chest from the earth.
 
The time – the sand – had almost run out.
 
She felt it approaching as if she'd dived from a cliff and saw the ground approaching ready to slam into her.
 
That was the key – to ignore it – to time the completion so it coincided, and then – let it go.
 
She had to let it go.
 
She didn't know why, but she knew that she had to break all the connections binding her to the moment at that point, or be caught in it forever.

The deer disappeared, and with broad, strong strokes, she drew a tree.
 
It was just a tree – a cypress – with gnarled knees and twisted branches.
 
She filled space, severing all ties between the drawing she'd created and the tree she'd grown up knowing. Nothing existed but the need to reach completion.

E
dgar's feet seemed to float above the surface of the shoreline.
 
Never had he moved so swiftly, or with such purpose.
 
After a hundred yards, he left Tom behind and continued to pick up speed.
 
Each time his feet touched ground, his strength was renewed.
 
His senses were heightened as well, and he quickly made out the two trees, the two women, and the fire.
 
It was impossible to tell from so far off exactly what was taking place.
 
He sensed some imminent event so crucial it could potentially break him into tiny bits and send him flying out over the lake, but still he ran.