The ravens tale, p.15
The Raven's Tale, page 15
I close my eyes and groan through the pain. “And yet I’m nothing more than the son of theater people.”
“That makes you even more fascinating, to be most honest.” Miles exhales a quiet laugh. “Richmond forces us to believe that theaters are the realm of the devil, rebuked by God, but I know that’s a lie. I beg your forgiveness.”
I nod. “I forgive you. But don’t ever insult my parents again.”
“I won’t.”
“And don’t tell the other fellows what I come from. Pedigree means everything here, and I’m a charity case.”
“Thank God you were taken in by generous and wise people, though.”
I open my eyes. “Every day of my life my ‘wise’ foster father reminds me that he could throw me back out to the streets at a moment’s notice. He wishes I would kneel before him, kiss his rings, and grovel in gratitude for his benevolence.”
“Oh.” Miles shifts his position on the ground, subjecting me to a view of the welt my fist left on his chin. “I didn’t realize it was like that. I’m sorry.”
I shut my eyes again.
“Hey.” Miles clasps my left shoulder. “When are you going to bring back your Gothic muse?”
His question stuns me even more than his insult about my heritage. Using both my elbows and hands, I push myself up to a seated position, breathing through a wave of dizziness. The handkerchief clings to the clots in my nostrils, so I don’t even need to touch it to keep it attached to my nose.
Miles snickers at this feat. “That’s disgusting.”
“My Gothic muse, you mean?”
“No, your muse is a wonder. You should share more of your fantastic and grotesque stories with us.”
I bend over at the waist and peel the cloth from my nose, breathing away the light-headedness. “I didn’t think any of you would want to hear my tales of the grotesque. I thought you’d all prefer the humorous pieces.”
“There are so many people trying to sound humorous and witty around here, Poe. But only you can silence a room by casting us under your strange, whispery spell. Bring her back.”
“I sent her away.”
“Find her.”
“It might be too late.”
“You’re a man skilled with words.” Miles rises to his feet with a slight wobble and offers me his hand. “If anyone can invoke a missing muse, it would certainly be you, my friend.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Lenore
The skies they are opal and restless;
The trees they are verdant and gleam—
The trees they are wakening and gleam:
It is noon, in a May young and breathless
Near a pool in the Valley of Dreams:
There are charms in this tarn of the pinelands,
In the misted and mountainous hills:—
It is here ’mid the poplars and pinelands,
Where a poet seeks fate in the hills . . .
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Edgar
The afternoon following my pugilistic encounter with Miles, after I’m recovered from my pain and my wounded pride, I roam through a ravine forged through the hills beyond the university—a lush and lulling land of sod and trees reawakening from the depths of winter. Leaves of caterpillar green burgeon on each bough above my head, and songbirds serenade my journey.
The locals call this sloping Eden the “Ragged Mountain.”
My wanderings take me through a veil of mist, and when I emerge through the other side, a burbling creek leads me to a pond surrounded by pines.
I remove my shoes and socks, jump upon a log, and, with my hands cupped around my mouth, I call across the water: “Lenore! They want to see you! Where are you? They want to see you!”
My shouts disrupt a group of mallards that quack and laugh at my clumsy invocation. With a haughty lift of their tail feathers, they turn their backs on me and swim into a thicket of grasses, where the males’ emerald heads shine like baubles in the reeds.
I proceed to launch into Homer’s invocations of his muse from both The Iliad and The Odyssey, all spoken in Greek, and I follow up with John Milton’s invocation in Paradise Lost:
“Sing heav’nly Muse, that on the secret top
Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire
That shepherd, who first taught the chosen seed,
In the beginning how the Heav’ns and Earth
Rose out of chaos . . .”
When nothing stirs in reply, other than a breeze and a squirrel shaking needles in the treetops, I plunk myself down on the bark of the log and gaze across the water, my legs stretched out in front of me. My bare toes wiggle into a grainy bed of soil that lodges beneath my nails. The wind toys with my curls and dries my lips.
Out of the corner of my eye, a shadow moves beneath the water.
I sit upright, remembering, with a shiver, the story of the Lake of the Dismal Swamp, a Virginian tale of a young man who goes mad after the death of his sweetheart. He insists to everyone that his darling isn’t truly dead, but that she, instead, journeyed to the Dismal Swamp. He follows her to the lake—and no one ever hears from him again.
I stand up and unbutton my vest, my eyes focused on the part of the pond where I saw the shadow. I fancy that a girl was swimming down there in the murk of the tarn, but . . . ’tis only a fancy.
“Lenore!” I shout, pulling the vest off my arms. “I offer my sincerest apology, my sweet, supernatural sister of the soul. Please return. I long for lyrics of tragic lovers and a watery grave. Come, swim in the darkness with me.”
I strip off the rest of my clothing and dive into the water with a plunging, rushing roar, swimming deep beneath the shore.
The purls and murmurs of the underwater world sing around me, and my eyes drink in the pond’s green luminescence, alive with drifting clouds of silt and the silver dances of minnows. Not since the previous summer have I swum in a river or a creek, and despite the chill that numbs me, I float in the water’s firm embrace, lulled by a rhythm that ripples into lyrics:
In youth’s spring, it was my lot
To haunt of the wide earth a spot
The which I could not love the less;
So lovely was the loneliness
Of a wild lake, with black rock bound,
And the tall pines that tower’d around.
A figure manifests in the water in front of me—a girl with radiant skin of lavender and river-blue eyes like Elmira’s. Coiled curls of ink undulate from her head; her lips are a flushed and feverish red. She stares at me with the gaze of the dead . . .
This violet vision of beauty and death drifts toward me, the skirts of her pale purple gown billowing like kelp around her legs. She cups her hands around my cheeks and kisses my mouth—a cold and clinging kiss that sucks the last of the oxygen from my lungs.
I untangle myself from her grip and swim upward, my chest tightening, legs kicking, a bubble of panic screaming from my throat. My right fist punches through the surface, and I raise my head for a gasp of air, wheezing like a walrus. Terrified that fingers will grab my ankles and pull me back under, I launch myself toward the shallows and stumble ashore, panting, tripping, dripping with pond water. I then lunge for my clothing, which I throw over myself in haste while catching my breath.
Before my brain settles from the blood pulsing through it, a blaze of poetry ignites in my mind as bright bursts of light flashing with lurid visions.
But when the night had thrown her pall
Upon that spot—as upon all,
And the wind would pass me by
In its stilly melody,
My infant spirit would awake
To the terror of the lone lake . . .
I plop down on the ground and pull on my socks and shoes with my gaze fixed upon that plutonian pool.
“It’s May,” says a voice that hums across the pond.
With a shriek, I jump up and spin around.
Upon the log where I previously lounged now sits Lenore with the tall, curved hat of black perched upon her head. She peers at me with her obsidian eyes, her posture erect, her legs crossed, her hands clasped around her right knee. She conveys both the regal mien of a queen and the calculating air of a schoolmistress about to torture her most delinquent pupil.
“It’s May,” she says again, this time with added emphasis on the month.
I stand up. “I know.”
“You last called for me in March, and we last spoke in February. That’s an appallingly long time for you to ignore me.”
“I must beg your pardon for the delay, Miss Lenore, but”—I brush away the wrinkles in my coat, the water from my hair speckling the fabric—“you did say you wouldn’t come if I called.”
She exhales a sigh of frustration.
I comb my fingers through the tangles in my curls and offer words that I know will appease her: “My friend Miles George wants to see you. He asked to hear more tales of the grotesque.”
A glimmer of interest flares in her irises.
“Will you do me the honor of making an appearance in my room tomorrow night?” I ask.
She narrows her eyes and pulls at the threads of her torn right sleeve. “What about Mr. O’Peale? Will he be there?”
“I’ll tell Garland to stay away.”
“He’ll pounce on me as soon as I leave your room.”
“No, I’ll make an arrangement with him. He can return next Saturday.”
She rises to her feet, removes her hat, and exposes a covering of short black feathers in place of her hair.
My mouth falls open at the shock of her avian scalp—so far open, in fact, that a gnat lands on my tongue. I spit out the damn thing with a hop of disgust that I worry Lenore will misinterpret as repulsion toward her.
“A gnat just flew into my mouth,” I say, so as not to offend.
“I know.” Lenore rolls back her shoulders. “I sent it in there.”
Again, my jaw plummets.
“I’m evolving, Eddy,” she says. “And yet I’m also not. I haven’t progressed since I last left you.”
I inch forward. “Miles called you a ‘wonder.’”
My God! Lenore actually smiles at that comment—a smile that produces dimples just like Elmira’s.
“Is Miles George perhaps in need of a muse?” she asks.
I chuckle, even though I do not intend to lose my muse to Miles George.
Lenore replaces her hat on her head and strolls toward me. “Tell me, Eddy Poe, what did you see eddying down in the waters when you were swimming in the darkness?” She offers me her right hand, her metallic nails glinting in the sunlight.
I step backward and neither answer nor touch her, yet I cast a brief glance toward the tarn.
“What did you see?” she asks again, her arm outstretched, her elbow poking through the tear.
I look once more at the pond and shiver from the remembered kiss.
“‘Death was in that poison’d wave,’” I say with a swallow. “‘And in its gulf a fitting grave.’”
Another smile spreads across Lenore’s face, this one beaming up to her eyes. Her chest expands with a sigh of rapture, and her sleeves no longer appear ripped. In fact, they seem to be patched with a coating of feathers.
“Was that girl in the water your influence?” I ask.
She lowers her arm to her side. “I told you, I’m evolving. And I’m relishing my talents.”
“Well, I must say, I’m impressed.” I offer her my hand. “Please, I implore you, be so kind as to collaborate with me in front of my companions tomorrow night.”
“Will you embrace me before I do?”
I shrink back. “Do—do you mean ‘embrace’ literally or figuratively?”
“Both,” she says, stepping closer, tipping her hat back from her forehead. “As I’ve said before, the others won’t see me as this peculiar girl anymore if you simply declare, ‘Discouragement be damned!’ Dive into worlds both natural and unnatural with me, Eddy.” She takes my hand, her touch somehow cold and iron hot. “Let us weave memories of the dead into works of art and render our Helen—our beautiful, loving Jane Stith Stanard—immortal.”
My heart beats faster at that offer.
Lenore leans toward me, her breath sweet pansies. “I want to fly across this earth on ebon wings and see everything with you—everything this world has to offer. Let us drink up beauty, sing out for all to hear, love like the gods, and immortalize our Helen forevermore.” She cocks her head. “Please, Edgar, will you embrace your Gothic art?”
“Yes.” I nod, thinking of Mrs. Stanard’s memory emblazed across the world. “Oh, God, yes!” I clasp Lenore to my chest, knocking her hat from her head, and my left cheek brushes against her crown of soft, silken feathers.
She squeezes her arms around me, her heart thumping against mine, and she whispers, “Finally! Thank you. Good gracious—thank you!” She shakes against me, half-sobbing into my left ear, undoubtedly waiting for the earth-trembling shift that will transform her into whatever she’s meant to become.
I shudder, as well, unsure how such a metamorphosis will unfold—anxious that it might involve pain, or the unleashing of diabolical horrors, or hideous, squawking cries.
In case it might help her, I offer more words of my poem: “‘Death was in that poison’d wave/And in its gulf a fitting grave/For him who thence could solace bring/To his dark imagining . . .’”
What are you doing? I imagine Pa asking if he caught me embracing my muse in the wilds of the woods. You’re seventeen years old now. You can’t keep wasting your time like this . . . you’re not going to seem so clever and charming when you’re a grown man falling behind on your bills . . . Fight off the urge to write these terrible Byron imitations of yours before you turn into a sickly, filthy burden on society, just like your dead mother!
Lenore lets me go and wipes her eyes with a sleeve that smudges soot across her face. “Go home and write down these lines that emerged from the lake—quickly! Before you lose them.”
I back away, surveying her appearance, from her feathered head down to the ashen hem of her dress. She hasn’t changed whatsoever.
“I don’t know why you didn’t just evolve . . .” I shake my head. “I don’t understand . . .”
“I think you do. Now go.” She waves me away. “Hurry! Don’t forget those lines until you forge them in ink.”
“I ask once again, will you do me the honor of visiting my room tomorrow night?”
She wraps her arms around herself and gives a small nod. A tear rolls down her right cheek.
“Is something the matter?” I ask.
“Go, Edgar!” she says with a force that rocks the ground beneath my feet and blusters through the pines. “Go write down that poem, you foolish, stubborn boy!”
I turn around and break into a run, propelled by the urgency and ferocity of her command. I bolt through trees and mist and push back branches that scratch at my face, and the harder my feet pound against the forest floor, the more I hear my own voice chanting in the rhythm of my footsteps—
Death was in that poison’d wave
And in its gulf a fitting grave . . .
CHAPTER THIRTY
Lenore
Is something the matter? he asks.
Why didn’t you evolve? he wonders.
I shall answer this simple riddle with a simple name: JOHN ALLAN!
That man’s voice rings throughout the entire state of Virginia, frightening my poet to death!
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Edgar
I throw open my dormitory door, primed to spring at my table and write down my poem from the lake—but I’m not alone.
Pa occupies my chamber, his back toward me, his attention focused on my drawings on the walls.
“Pa?” I ask.
He turns around with—my God, can it be?—tenderness in his eyes, along with a small semblance of a smile. For a moment I forget the battles waged between us and the putrid subject of my debts. For a moment, I’m six years old, and he’s escorting me to my first day at Mr. Ewing’s school in Richmond with that same “there’s my bright lad” expression illuminating his face.
“It’s good to see you,” I say, and I close the door behind me. “What are you doing here?”
“Business bought me to Charlottesville, as I said it might. Why is your hair damp?”
I touch a hand to my head. “I went swimming.”
“Is the weather warm enough yet?”
“I found the water invigorating.” I remove my coat with an eye on my quill, which shall not be touched this afternoon. “How are Ma and Aunt Nancy?”
Pa slides the chair away from my table and sits down with a sigh, his knees creaking. “Ma is sick again.”
“How sick?”
“The usual coughing. The fretting. The complaining.”
“Has a physician seen her?”
“Yes, of course. As always.” Pa leans an elbow on my table and rubs his giant forehead, which, I swear, has stretched two inches taller since February. “Are you studying hard?”
“I am.” I seat myself on my bed, aware of the fragrance of the river on my skin. “Professor Blaettermann singled me out for praise last week, in fact. He challenged us all to a translation of a poem by Tasso, and I was the only one who attempted it. He paid me a high compliment for my performance.”
“You’re not getting distracted by other pursuits, then?”
“What other pursuits do you mean?”
He nods toward my dragons, and the wraiths, and the tortured grimaces of the fantastic creatures scattered across my walls, and his voice deepens when he asks, “Do you spend as much time on your studies as you do on these troubling . . . drawings?” He speaks this last word as though he shouldn’t even classify my artwork as something as normal as a drawing.
“Yes, Pa. I’m doing quite well here. I believe I’ll end the session at the top of my classes.”
He casts me a sidelong glance. “That’s not just boastful talk, is it, Edgar?”
“No, sir. I’m flourishing here.” I fold my hands in my lap. “But . . .” I swallow. “I do owe more money for fees.”
