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friends have flown before—
On the morrow he will leave me, as my
Hopes have flown before.’
Then the bird said, ‘Nevermore.’”
She wrapped her arms around herself, tucking them in close in an effort to fight off the cold. Willing Reynolds to appear, she kept her eyes on Poe’s grave, and as she listened to the poem, it occurred to her that some of the watchers might have come to the graveyard in previous years. It was possible they knew something she didn’t since they congregated at the side gates of the cemetery rather than the front where she and Gwen had first entered. Maybe they were hoping to catch a glimpse of Reynolds as he wove his way through the cemetery grounds.
It made her wonder if she should try to get closer now. Or was it better to wait here, at a distance?
In the end, she knew making a move sooner rather than later wasn’t worth the risk of being spotted. Besides that, there was no telling from which direction Reynolds would enter the cemetery, if he hadn’t already. How could she know when she had witnessed Reynolds creating an entry between his realm and hers only once before.
He had done so from the midst of the woodlands on that first occasion Isobel had found herself within the dreamworld. He’d fixed one gloved hand around an imaginary knob, and the door had appeared at his silent behest. And then he’d opened it to reveal the interior of Isobel’s very own bedroom.
Though she knew that he could pass from one reality into the other, how he did it still baffled her. If what he had said about the worlds becoming separate when she’d broken the link was true—if the dimensions once again became parted, untraversable from either side, then what allowed him the ability to pass back and forth at will? Furthermore, what prevented her? Or Varen?
Isobel frowned at that question.
Apparently, there was not much that could prevent Varen. Hadn’t he and Pinfeathers already proven on more than one occasion that there were other ways of reemerging into this world?
A harsh wind blew through the graveyard, whistling over the tops of the tombs. It moaned above her as it coursed through the passageway of her hiding place, bringing with it a surge of snow flurries.
Isobel shuddered against the rush of frozen wind. She took in a deep breath, drawing the cold into her lungs. Exhaling again, she reminded herself that her questions would have to wait. Right now, she needed to keep her mind clear.
Whenever and however Reynolds chose to appear, she would have to be ready.
There was no sign of him yet, however, just the audience of the dead, and that of the living, too. The Greene Street crowd continued to chirp and chortle from their barrier point, a few of them inserting comments as the reader within their ranks bore onward with Poe’s poem, his resonant voice rising above the rest.
“‘Prophet!’ said I, ‘thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!—
Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate, yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted—
On this home by Horror haunted—tell me truly, I implore—
Is there— is there balm in Gilead?—tell me—tell me, I implore!’
Quoth the raven, ‘Nevermore.’”
Leaning out again, Isobel saw a set of metal steps a few feet away to her right. They extended down from the back door of Westminster Hall and led out into the yard. At the top of the stairs, a tall and slender set of double doors made entirely of glass revealed another small gathering of people she hadn’t noticed before. Unlike those huddling in the cold outside the gates, this group stood within the warmth of the hall, sharing an unobstructed view of Poe’s original burial site.
These, Isobel thought, must be the Poe scholars Mr. Swanson had told her about—the ones who gathered every year to oversee the ritual and to protect the Poe Toaster.
Seeing them there made her doubly glad she’d decided to stay put.
At the front of this cluster stood a man with a beard and glasses; stern-faced, but not unkind-looking. While the others behind him continued to chat among themselves, this man seemed restless. He kept taking his hands in and out of his pockets, checking his wristwatch, and occasionally glancing toward the Greene Street gates.
What was he so worried about? Did he think the Poe Toaster wasn’t coming? If nothing else, his anxiety assured her that, as of yet, Reynolds had not shown. Then she remembered what Mr. Swanson had said about people climbing the gates in years past, attempting to intercept the rite.
How fast could security get there if they were called into action? Probably within seconds.
A low scraping sound called Isobel’s attention away from her thoughts and back to Poe’s marker. Silence spread over the cemetery as the crowd of onlookers watching from the gates settled into hushed tones, shushing the man who had been reading aloud.
When the scraping noise came again, Isobel’s gaze narrowed on the crypt that stood catty-corner to Poe’s old grave.
She stared in disbelief as the slab door, which faced Poe’s marker, began to wobble in its frame. Then, gradually, an inch at a time, it started to shift inward, with the heavy, thunderlike rumble of stone sliding against stone.
