Nevermore

lift and lower. The steady motion rocked her arm and, like a balm, smoothed the pain back down.

Carefully, Isobel unfolded herself from Danny’s bed, doing her best not to wake him again. She put her bare feet onto the carpet and wove her way through his room to the door. She slipped down the darkened hallway and into her own room, taking care to ease the door shut behind her, turning the knob to silence the click of the latch. Then she did what until that very moment she had forbidden herself to even think of: She retrieved Varen’s jacket from her closet and, sitting with it on the edge of her bed, clutched it to her chest.

She pressed the collar to her lips, breathed him in. The coarse fiber still held his essence, reminding her of the moment they had been so close. She traced the length of one sleeve with her fingertips, remembering the feel of his body pressed against hers and the taste of his lips.

Isobel pulled on the jacket, threading her arms through one sleeve at a time. The weight of it settled onto her shoulders. She hugged herself, imagining that it was him who now held her and not this vacant shell, this last remaining relic.

She felt, and heard, the right pocket crinkle.

Isobel froze.

Without looking, she slipped a hand inside . . . and touched the edge of smooth paper.

She pulled free the folded slip. A note.

Its ash coating powdered to nothing at one pass of her thumb. Lips parted, she gaped at it, half expecting it to dissolve from her touch.

It didn’t.

She slowly opened the paper, handling it as though it were a wounded sparrow. She could tell from the uneven, crushed folds that it had been crammed into the pocket, hastily stowed away by its author, as though to put it out of sight before it could be seized.

Purple writing, his writing, dominated the page in quick yet beautiful curves and loops. Her eyes traced the lines, soaking up each sentence, one word at a time.

In the shadows of the dreamland, he waits. He watches the gaping window to the world he had so longed to open. Now flown wide, bleak and empty, ravaged—like him—it grants his wish. He belongs.

It cannot compare to the memory of her eyes. Blue azure, warm as a summer sky.

If he could but fall into their world.

Would that he had.

Now he writes the end to the story that past its Midnight Dreary—that too late an hour—has its own without him. It was always, he knows now, meant to end this way.

Like that circle that “ever returneth into the selfsame spot.”

My beautiful, my Isobel. My Love. You ask me to wait. And so I wait.

For all of this, I know, is but a dream.

And when, in sleep, at last we wake,

I will see you again.

Isobel stared at the paper in her quivering hand, able to do little more than trace and retrace, through her searing vision, the deep violet ink that comprised that final line.

Despite its literal meaning, she knew that he had meant it to say “good-bye.”

Never, she thought, trailing a fingertip over the swirl of those carefully crafted letters. A thousand times never. They were entwined now, irrevocably. Ever since that day he had set his pen to her skin. And if this rift that stretched between them now extended beyond the confines of time and space, of dreams and reality, she still had to believe that there was a way to cross it, still a way to keep her promise. There had to be.

Slowly, Isobel lowered the note, lifting her free hand to brush away the tears that fell.

A chill of ice air rushed up behind her, causing her to start. The breeze stung her dampened cheeks and combed cold fingers through her hair. She twisted to peer over her shoulder.

Her window. It was open. She frowned, unable to recall having raised it.

The lace curtains fluttered and whispered in the brisk wind, the white gauze of their fabric slipping and uncoiling against the panels of her wall with every swell, creating a sound like the rush of distant waves.

The winds picked up again, growing fiercer, with a hint of the sharp, bitter tang of the oncoming winter. The breeze tugged and jerked at the note in her hand, as if to snatch it from her grasp.

Refolding the paper, Isobel stood with a shudder. She pulled the jacket tightly around herself, wrapping her arms in close. She rounded her bed and went to her window, but paused at the sight of its reflection in her dresser mirror. There, around the square of black and empty night, she watched the white lace curtains flutter and snap. They waved at her like twin ghosts in the wind until, she thought, one took the shape of a familiar figure—a shrouded, translucent form—with skin the perfect whiteness of snow.

Epilogue

He stood on the farthest edge of the cliffs, boots caked in ash.

Like clawed fingers, the black rocks jutted out over the torpid waters far below, pointing toward the distant horizon. A vast motionless sea, canvas white and still as death, spread itself wide and long before him. It met, in the distance, with the thin black line that separated it from a torn violet sky.

At his back stood the skeleton ruins of the once-grand palace, now a crumbling structure forged of forgotten words and thoughts long since given to slumber.

Varen closed his eyes, allowing the dead nothingness around him to numb his mind and still the rhythms of his body until all he knew was the buzz of static, that dull vibration, as familiar to him now as breathing. His concentration drew to the cool, soft sensation of the pink satin ribbon wrapped around one hand, held tight in his fist.

“Is that why you return to this place each night?”

At the sound of her voice, musical and deep, Varen opened his eyes, though he did not turn. If he looked, then he would only be trapped again, lured by that ivory seraphim face framed by those endless waves of black.

His gaze narrowed on the horizon. He held his silence as the winds stirred, brushing his hair from his eyes. It flicked cold fingers at the bare skin of his arms.

“But do not forget that it was she who left you here.”

Far below, the frost white seas began to churn. The waters turned choppy until restless waves lapped at the rocky cliffs, as though to test their resolve to stand.

There was a billow of white gossamer to his left as she floated to stand beside him. The gales picked up with yet more speed, whipping her hair wildly about her face.

Below them, the sea’s voice rose from a whisper to a roar. Waves crashed, throwing themselves as though in suicide upon the pointed rocks.

The wind howled past them, lifting her veils into a violent dance. The satin ribbon rippled and snapped. Varen clutched it tighter.

“Standing here, so alone for so long . . . Do you not grow cold?” he heard her ask.

He stared forward, unblinking, as a knife of blue lightning sliced the sky.

“No,” he said.

Acknowledgments

There are so many people to whom I owe a wealth of gratitude. A huge thanks and many hugs