Nevermore: A Novel of Love, Loss, & Edgar Allan Poe (15 page)

They reached the dock, and Tom clambered down onto the raft without hesitation.
 
Edgar regarded it dubiously, and then followed.

"If we take it to the other side," he said, "how will it be returned?
 
They won't need it until we come back?"

Tom laughed.

"It's like a bridge," he said.
 
"There's a rope tied to it.
 
When we're on the other side, we'll pull it up on the bank.
 
In a little while, Mr. Barnes will send someone down to pull it back before the rope can get caught up on a passing boat."

The simplicity of it struck Edgar, and he laughed.

"It really is a good thing you're here," Edgar said. "I probably would have waded across."

"You'd have to swim." Tom said.
 
"The waterway is very deep. It has to be so that the bigger sailboats can pass through to the locks up in Virginia.
 
With that pack, you'd have drowned.'

They stared at one another for a moment, and then Edgar burst out laughing.

"Just get us to the other side.
 
We have to get on with this journey so I can find some point at which I can reassert that I am the adult.
 
So far, I'd have died more than once without you – either from the cold, the lack of shoes, or drowning – and I haven’t even set foot in the swamp.
 
I'm beginning to feel as if I'm in a bit over my head."

"Maybe," Tom said, not laughing, "that's why your bird saved me?
 
He sure seems to look out for you."

"That he does," Edgar said.
 
"That he does.
 
And now you have joined him.
 
I'm a fortunate man."

Tom turned, untied them from the dock and pushed off, launching them across the nearly still water toward the far bank.
 
Edgar couldn't help scanning the trees and remembering the arrows, and the large figures who'd flanked the old woman during her brief appearance.
 

The crossing took only a moment.
 
On the far side, Tom leaped from the boat to the bank and hauled on the rope.
 
Once the corner of the raft had lodged on the bank, Edgar followed, and when they stood side by side on dry ground, he helped to draw the small craft far enough up the bank that it wouldn't slide away in the current.

"They'll come for it shortly," Tom said.

Edgar nodded.
 
He stared across the water back at the dock on the far side and the tavern beyond, as if locking the image in his memory.
 
Then he turned and stared into the trees.
 
He felt as if he'd stepped straight out of one world and into another.
 
Standing on the ground and looking up the length of them, the pine trees felt taller than they'd seemed from the dock.
 
When he finally lowered his gaze, he saw that there were several trails leading off into the swamp.
 
He studied them carefully.

"Which way?" he asked.
 
"And where do they all go?
 
Who has reason to journey into the swamp?"

"There are folks who live back there," Tom said.
 
"Some trap, some hunt and fish, but others – they just don't want to be found.
 
The trail on the left leads back to where there are some cabins, and even an old church.
 
The right trail leads back to the lake.
 
It's a good long hike, fairly clean.
 
We need to take the center trail.
 
It goes straight back in, just to the left of the lake.
 
Mostly hunters use it – some fishermen, but only those who are really serious.
 
It's the trail you'd take if you were going in and not planning on coming out – if you take my meaning.
 
It's the shack we're heading for where most folks say Nettie can be found, if she wants to be."

"If that is supposed to make me feel better," Edgar said, "it has fallen short.
 
I certainly hope that we'll be coming back."

Tom grinned.

"Don't you worry Mr. Poe," he said.
 
"I'll get you there and back again, wherever there turns out to be.
 
If we're looking for Nettie, we only have to go in so far.
 
The shack I mentioned is about two miles in.
 
It's a kind of jumping-off place.
 
From there, a lot of different trails go on in deeper, some toward the lake.
 
There's usually firewood, and if you use it you're expected to replace it before you go.
 
If you sit outside with that bottle, my Pa says Nettie will find you."

“If that doesn’t work,” Edgar said, “at least we’ll have a roof over our heads the first night.”

Tom grinned.

He turned, hefted his pack onto his back, and headed off down the middle path. Edgar followed.
 
After only a short while, the trees rising up on either side, and the heavy, moist air wrapped around them, enhancing the impression Edgar had of walking into the pathways of some other, older world.
 
Edgar studied the plants as they passed, memorized the trees, their leaves, the flowers that lined the trail.
 
He wanted to remember.
 
He didn’t know why, for certain, but he needed to know that it would stick with him – that he’d be able to recall it – possibly to write it down.
 
He wanted to be able to paint the images with his words as clearly as they came to him.

They worked their way in deeper, and the light from the sun dimmed.
 
It trickled down through the leaves and foliage.
 
It dappled the ground with white disks of light that danced with the breeze.
 
There were bird calls, and all around them the sounds of animals told him they were not alone.
 
It was wild, like the country must have been when only the Indians roamed the land.
 
Edgar felt it.
 
The swamp was a very old place, and powerful.

One thing was becoming clearer with every step he took.
 
A mile in the swamp was not the same as a mile on the road.
 
The trail was very rough, not raveled often, and at times barely recognizable.
 
Tom moved forward with confidence, pointing out areas where the footing was uncertain, ditches filled with undergrowth and leaves that might catch an unwary ankle, and at least once a coiled snake sunning itself in what light was available, not a foot from the trail.
 
Once or twice they stopped and waited as the boy listened to rustling in the undergrowth, or strange guttural sounds emanating from the shadows.

The boy kept up a steady rain of chatter that tapped at the edges of Edgar's thoughts without penetrating too deeply.
 
He spoke of family, spread around the state and as far west as the Mississippi.
 
He talked about farming, hunting, fishing, the trees they passed and the animals whose sign he found.
 
Edgar nodded at the proper moments, and shook himself free of his thoughts now and then to ask a question, or point something out, but for the most part his thoughts were far away.

He should have been leaving for home.
 
Virginia waited, and as ill as she was, he did not like losing any time with her – dark as it might be.
 
He half-wished he'd not come on this fool's errand at all, but knew at the same time there was no choice involved.
 
The minute he'd become aware of Grimm's strange cargo – it had fallen on him to find the end of the tale.
 
If he could just have written it, he would have, but Lenore had changed that.

She brought a new dimension to the images.
 
Before he'd had dreams, and shared pain with the denizens of shadowy half-realities.
 
Once converted to words and pressed onto paper, they diminished, releasing him.
 
This was different.
 
This time he'd seen the girl's face.
 
He knew that in some way it all related back to the Brothers Grimm, or at least so closely alike to what they'd written that there could be no doubt of a connection.
 
It made him wish for a few moments to discuss the story with those esteemed siblings.

The connection meant that the story that had been started, and the true ending, had never been joined, and he found himself locked in the center of it all, moving toward that truth without care, toward what might happen when he arrived.
 
It was usually not his lot to live the basis for his stories, but only to experience the melancholy and pain.
 
That was another thing that seemed different.
 
For once, he was unconvinced of a bleak outcome.
 
In
The Raven
, there was a happy ending.
 
In this reality, that ending was skewed, and yet, if he stretched the reality of it enough, the original story might be more of a map – or a key – even a prediction.
 
The young man who fell in love with the princess did not meet her while she was yet a raven, but while she was trapped in an inaccessible prison.

And even while trapped, the princess was able to get out long enough to give her lover all the information he needed to free her.
 
First, she sent him into temptation and bid him resist.
 
In typical human fashion, he did not, and so, she sent him on a quest.

In the end, there were three keys, and Edgar could not help but believe that they were still in some way relevant.
 
A staff – possibly a wand? – that allowed one to open doors.
 
A cloak or some method of becoming invisible to the naked eye, and a magic steed that could cross any land or terrain to reach its objective.
 
Very powerful objects indeed, and for the most part unlikely to exist, but as so many other things in life, these might be but symbols with much simpler, or complex explanations.

He wished he had time to sit and think it through.
 
There might be any number of meanings behind the stick, and in the story to win the horse that enabled the hero to reach his love, he had to use his wits to best three brigands who were quarreling among themselves.
 
It had all the signs of a truly grand puzzle, and the makings of a story unto itself.

The sun had risen directly overhead, and there was more light than there had been.
 
Herons and Cranes abounded, fish jumped in nearby pools and streams, and more than once Edgar was stopped cold by the sound of branches breaking, or some other sound he could not immediately account for.
 
None of it fazed Tom, who continued on down the barely discernible trail as if he were out for a Sunday stroll.
 
The deeper in they went, the more completely cut off they became from anything familiar or normal.

"This," Edgar said, stepping around the log of a rotted tree that had fallen across the trail, "must be what it was like for the first Europeans to visit here.
 
If I didn't know we'd left scant hours ago from a well-lit tavern, I might convince myself this wilderness stretched forever."

"If you keep going the way we're headed," Tom said, "it might seem that way.
 
The swamp is a big place, and Pa says – for the most part – the interior is unexplored.
 
Things change in here, water shifts, patches of land that you remember from earlier trips are either in a different spot, or plumb gone.
 
There's been men from down Old Mill way walked off into the swamp and was never heard from again.
 
I even heard a fellow say he'd seen a thing in here, like a man, but hairy.
 
I saw an ape in a circus once – sort of like that, he said, but tall like a man.
 
I wouldn’t' want to meet it, whatever it was.

"There's a lake near here, Lake Drummond, where I don’t go unless I have to.
 
Lots of folks fish there, and now and then someone hires a guide just to go in and see the trees.
 
There's a cypress there looks so much like a deer folks say that’s exactly what it is.
 
They claim hunters were chasing it, and it couldn't escape, so it changed itself into a tree and could never find its way back."

Edgar wondered briefly if Lenore would see that tree, and if so, if she would try to set the animal free as she'd done for so many others.
 
He thought the answer was yes, and he had a sudden yearning to see that drawing…and her face.

To clear his thoughts, he said.

"I don't know a lot about your swamp, but I've heard of Lake Drummond.
 
There's another legend associated with it that even a man living as far from here as I do would be familiar with it.
 
They say there's the ghost of an Indian maiden, a girl who died just before she was to be wed, who haunts that place.
 
I have a friend back home, a poet – and a minstrel, of sorts.
 
His name is Thomas, like your own, Thomas Moore.
 
He wrote about that girl, and her lover.
 
I've heard him sing it.

Edgar then began to sing softly.
 
His voice was not a great one, but he could carry a tune, and the memory of the song carried him back to other places, and other times.