Nevermore: A Novel of Love, Loss, & Edgar Allan Poe by David Niall Wilson Page B

actually suggested that Anita show her the way.   The girl was familiar with the area, and he'd noticed that the two of them had hit it off.
    "A lot of strange things have been happening around her," Barnes said.   Most of them started when you came in drawing those pictures.   The rest seem to follow your friend, Mr. Poe.   I know Jebediah is grateful for the saving of his life – and that counts for something – but I'm thinking the sooner you finish your work and make your way out of here, the sooner things will get back to the normal run of things.   Duels, thieves slipping across the border, old Virginia men trying to marry their young cousins.   You know – normal problems."
    Lenore didn't know if he was joking, serious, or uncertain, but she took him up on the offer of Anita's company.
    "I made a promise," she said. "I promised that, when I was done, I'd wait, if Mr. Poe doesn't return before I do.   I'll make another…the minute that promise is kept, I'll move on, and leave you to your … normal life."
    Barnes went back to polishing his bar.
    "I'll hold you to that."
    Lenore took her leave then, and returned to her room.   She thought that – maybe – she might try to draw again – just for herself – before she slept.   Instead of a bird, though, the image that troubled her was very human.   Dark hair, darker eyes, and pale skin.   And the words.   Without any other gift at all they would be enough to make him magic.

Chapter Eight
     
    D espite his warnings to Tom to not come around too early, Edgar woke with the dawn.   He had slept long and well, and felt refreshed, despite the adventures of the day before.   He'd expected to toss and turn, ending up writing late into the night, but he hadn't even glanced at his quills, or his ink.   He'd poured himself two fingers from his flask, readied himself for bed, and brought out his worn copy of Grimm's Fairy Tales .   He didn't know what had possessed him to do it, but he'd finished his drink and worked his way through several of the old stories.
    They were dark.   Every one of them.   He knew they'd been written for children, but he couldn't imagine sending a young soul to bed with the images they provided.   Others who felt the same had already begun revising the tales, retelling them in watered down versions that hamstrung the storytellers' bite, but allowed the children who heard them to sleep at night without bright lights or screams.   He wondered briefly if that was how it always was with magic.   It started out vital and potent, and then, over time, as men and women fought to possess it, hide it, steal it, and decipher it, it grew more and more obscure.
    The fairy tales were like his own stories, he realized, but his made no pretense of being fairy tales for the naïve, they were a way of exorcising the heavy loneliness of his existence, the frustration of being unable to help his wife, and the dimly glowing, low-burning lamp that was his career.   The problems that his protagonists faced, the agony he put them through, served to boost his own spirits, at least to the level of mild melancholy.   He knew he should be grateful.   He made his living doing what he enjoyed, more or less.   He had gifts that others did not share, or even suspect.   He had Grimm, and Virginia loved him.   Those two things alone should have tipped the balance in his favor and lifted his spirits.
    Nothing seemed able to do it.   Nothing fully broke through the shadows – only the words gave him even partial respite.   When he wrote – and sometimes, if the story was good enough – when he read the words of others, the perpetual weight on his heart lessened.   The fairy tales he'd read had lightened his spirits in the same way the dismal, hopeless fates of his protagonists did.   In a certain perspective, it improved his state.   Things – as they said – could always be worse.
    As he waited for Tom, he organized his papers, and found himself