My Lenore
It was a dreary night in December when I heard a knock on the door.
I was reading a long forgotten lore on a chair next to the chimney when I heard the knock on the parlour's door. It was in the dead of night – and even though I worked with the passed, I had not expected any clients to come at this bewitching hour. I put away the lore and damped down the fire before going up to the parlour.
There he stood – a person too impatient to wait until I had opened the door.
The last time I had seen him was when I had buried her, my love.
Slowly melting snowflakes were entangled in his hair which was like hers in the colour of a raven's feathers, but his face, though sharing slight similarities with my love's – the distinctive cheekbones, the cupid's bow lips –, did not remind me much of her.
And his eyes – while hers had been big and blue and seemed to glow even in the darkest of nights, his were dark brown and more almond-shaped. This was the part of him which was the less from her – and the most from...
Some people said that parents kept on living in their children – and when I saw him, I saw her standing in the exact confident position with the same grin in front of me instead of him for a split second, and I forgot how to breathe for a moment.
"Can you remember who I am?" he asked, and I smiled.
"How could I ever forget you, Young Earl?" I said and sat down on my desk.
"Even though we only talked for a few minutes?" he teased and walked around. He – the boy, her boy who was so much like her, but not entirely. "I must have left quite the impression on you then."
"It was the first time I saw you with completely different eyes," were the words I wanted to say but never would. "I would never forget these minutes, no matter how brief they had been."
The boy turned around, and the eyes which were not my love's but someone else's shone in the faint candlelight. "You told me that I was free to come to your parlour if I were to be in need of intelligence regarding the dead." He examined a bust of Athena with genuine interest reflected in his dark eyes. His expression reminded me so much of my love, it hurt. "And now I am in need of such intelligence."
Straightforward – just like her. I could not resist a chuckle – the first genuine one in which felt like ages.
Before any of us two could continue this conversation, the door opened, and a tall man with a very grumpy face and black hair covered in snow stepped inside the parlour.
The boy turned and chuckled. "Too scared to stand outside on your own, Dee?" Upon hearing the name, the nickname, I briefly flinched, hoping that nobody had seen it.
The grumpy man scowled at him. "First of all, I was not scared. Second, people kept staring at me and my clothing. A kid even tried to steal my wallet. Third, it's freezing cold outside; and lastly, don't call me 'Dee.'"
He only received a wide grin. "It's not that cold outside, and you were scared that the people on the streets would come and murder you, Dee," the boy replied, and, again, for a second I saw my love instead of him.
"I was not-"
"This is Diedrich," the boy told me, interrupting the grumpy man. "You could call him my graduation present."
The man named Diedrich bristled with anger. "I am more of a blackmailed and forced partner."
"And, Dee, this is" – the boy kept ignoring him – "Undertaker. He is, obviously, a mortician, and the person who buried my parents."
The boy's companion scowled, and the boy laughed.
Even the boy's behaviour reminded me so much of her – it was as if she was talking and not he. He was so much like her, but at the same time he was not.
His presence brought along comfort, but also depression as it reminded me every time I laid my eyes upon him – this boy, her boy – that nevermore my love would come back to me. That he was only a fragment of her and everything else was lost.
"Nevermore," his presence seemed to scream at me, laughing down to me. "Nevermore, you will get her back. Nevermore you will be reunited with her." And still, I searched comfort in the boy's presence. This and every other time which would come I would welcome him and his companion. I would give him the intelligence they demanded in exchange of a simple laugh, although it hurt more and more to see him acting like her, but not being her in all entirety.
The years passed, and I still clung to the boy and the pain he brought to me. We had grown close, and he had stopped to come to me only for information. Now, he also came to chat. And the day, he first invited me to his manor, the manor which used to be my love's, I met his sister for the first time after the funeral.
The manor, dark and bleak, rose from the ground in the middle of a forest like it had used to do – back then, in different times, when the sky had still been blue and she alive.
The boy led me into a room with purple curtains, rustling because of the open windows and the chilling wind, to meet his sister, and I felt excitement like I had never felt it before. With my heart beating fast and loudly, I faced this girl – his sister, her daughter –, and a pain different from his overcame me.
With her hair fair and her eyes like emeralds, she did not look much like her. And there, in her eyes neither big nor round, laid something in them which had never laid in hers. But her cheeks, her chin, her lips were all the same – the shared features overshadowed by the golden frame and the so very different eyes.
"Franny," the boy spoke to his sister, "this is Undertaker."
"I know that," she replied with a glare, and rose from her chair. "You told me that he would come, and I remember him from our parents' funeral."
The girl turned to me and curtsied – and I stared at her through my fringe. She would have never done that. Never to me, very rarely to others. Another wave of pain struck me; and in my head, the two screamed at me the cursed word – "Nevermore."
There was only darkness awaiting me here and nothing more; and still did I come back to peer into that darkness to find only silence. Day by day. Month by month. Year by year. Until the times changed again, but the darkness, the silence did not.
"I will get married soon," the boy entrusted me one day in the dead of night. The sky was dark and every star unseen when I heard him tapping at my parlour's door.
I sat there on my desk and listened to him, wondering what she would think and say. The girl, his sister, had already given away her name to a man who had blessed her with two children – one years ago, one recently. A boy and a girl not much like my love, but fair like their mother and father.
My love would be happy to hear this news, but would not directly show it. Would only show it through little gestures, and well-hidden in her words.
That would not be what I would do.
"I congratulate you," I said to the boy, and his eyes shone faintly in the dim light of my candles.
"You don't even know her," the boy eventually spoke. Faint amusement dancing on his lips, his eyes examining the bust like he always did. Here, in this place of death, the boy was the only living person.
"I do not need to," I answered and stood up. "You have spoken of her with so much fondness that I don't need to know her."
"I just hope that you are a better judge of characters than she had ever been," I wanted to add but did not, and he thanked me with a chuckle.
Like all these years ago, it was a dreary December night when he knocked at my door, and they boy had already come inside when I arrived upstairs.
"I became a father a few days ago," the boy announced with rosy cheeks and raven hair graced with white. And only now, I realised that he was no boy anymore – not to the law, not to anyone. Not to anyone besides me, and I was hurt again.
Everything around me changed while I was cursed to stay the same forever. One day, time would take the boy, his sister, and their children away from me. Just like it had taken everything I had before. All my feelings, all my hope, even my love it had taken away from me. Leaving me all alone with the knowledge that, nevermore, they would come back to me. That, nevermore, I would be reunited with them.
Night by night, I saw my love in my dreams which I could not classify as good or bad. In my dreams, she was breathing and talking, scowling and smiling, but at the end, I lost her again. Again and again. And every time I whispered her name into the silence she had vanished into – but only an echo came back to me.
And "Nevermore" screamed her children's presences by day. "Nevermore would you ever be reunited."
But by night, my love was with me again, and I cherished every second with her until dawn took her away from me again. I loved the nights and allowed the mornings and the children to numb me. I wondered, if, someday, she would notice in my dreams how numb I had become, even though I would always smile at her.
Flowers bloomed, plants prospered before they waved farewell and painted the world in gold – and it was snowing again when I sat in the boy's office, bent over a book she would have loved, while he was away. Soon, I heard someone tapping softly at the office's door before stepping inside.
I had never met him before because he was ill like his mother and bedridden most of the time. He entered the office, and it was the first time I had ever seen him – and, strangely, against my numbness, the feeling of surprise faintly warmed my cold, dead body.
He was the boy's son, but his hair was slightly fairer, and he did not have brown, almond-shaped eyes.
The son's eyes were big and blue – just like hers.
My heart stopped beating, and only started again when he shyly said: "Father told me that I could play chess with you. Because he is busy himself right now." Only now, I noticed the chessboard which he hugged against his tiny body.
She had never been shy, had always been the confidence in person – but his eyes were almost the same as hers. And when I looked into the son's eyes, it was like opening a window and gazing into a world where she had never got lost. But when I looked away, and the window was closed, all left was cold darkness.
"Of course, I will play with you," I promptly said, and the light in the son's eyes tore at my heart.
The years went past, and with every game, I played with the son, my heart was mended. Our games lasted longer than every game I had played with my love. She had been brilliant, but unlike the son she had never been brilliant at chess.
He always played white, and I always played black as he should stay in the light forever. The son who was as intelligent as my love.
And when our game ended in a draw again, the son would smile at me – and it would be like my love was smiling at me again beyond my dreams.
It was cold outside when I saw the similarity between my love and the girl for the first time.
The girl looked like her mother – golden hair and emerald eyes –, and she would always watch the son and me play, never taking her eyes off the movements of our pieces. When we played, and she watched, she would never say much, only follow the game with interest shining in her large eyes.
But when arrived on this day to play with the son, I came across her training with her mother. Golden hair whirled around, but all I could see was black. All I could see was my love.
In all the girl's movements, in all the girl's expressions, I saw her. Smiling and wielding a sword like it was part of herself.
It was like my love had been split into two: Her colours and wit had been given to the son and her face and strength to the girl.
"See? I have never truly left you," I could hear my love's beautiful voice. "I could have never left you."
My soul, injured by sadness, was finally starting to heal again. Finally accepting that my love had never fully left me alone – that, in all those years, she had been with me. Through her children and children's children. And no matter if she was no there in all her entirety anymore, all parts of her still were – dwelling in different bodies. Her eyes, her hair, her face, her talents, her personality, and her angelic laugh.
And, for the first time in numerous miserable years, I felt genuinely happy again and not numb anymore.
And every night in my dreams my heart was torn apart again. Slowly, painfully. The son and the girl were warm, radiating, but the coldness had already sunken into my bones a long time ago.
But just like I had closed my eyes in front of this truth, I tried to close my eyes from the fact that the boy looked more and more distressed with every passing day. That the son was ill and incredibly frail. That the girl was holding back her legacy, and damped her part of my light.
That with every passing day, my love grew more and more silent in my dreams, and all I could hear was a choir singing "Nevermore."
It was December when the air grew denser, and I felt the presence of those from nowhere, reminding me of the day they had come, killing and taking my beautiful love from me.
My heart was racing when I hurried to the boy, his wife, and son – fearful and all in hate. I had been on my way, today should have been a happy day, but these things of evil had been faster than me.
The time had come. Again, my hope, my light had been taken away from me. Burning and dying in the terrible darkness blazing in front of me.
I had been dead for long. But only now, I felt like I had truly died.
And the warmth was leaving me, and the numbness was embracing me. Taking my feeling, taking my sanity, taking the few I had left.
Dark times had come and gone, but never had a time been as bleak as this.
It was January, the world too white and bright when I heard a knock on my door. The first one in many, many endless weeks.
And there he was, my light, the son, standing in front of me again.
"Can you remember who I am?" the son spoke the same words which had left the boy's mouth all these years ago on one of the many fateful December nights.
"How could I ever forget you, Young Earl?" I replied. Like the last December had never happened. Like I had gone in time to start anew.
"You told me that I was free to come to your parlour whenever I liked," the son said, examining a dusty Pallas, and I could have cried.
Finally, my brightest light had come back to me. He, the son, and he was more like her than he had ever been before.
And for the shortest of times, the ice in my battered heart was shattered.
The son lived – and my love continued to live inside of him. Inside of the sister and her girl and boy.
I had turned my face towards happiness again, but happiness had turned its back to me.
The moment he had stepped next to my light, the son.
This creature with the eyes in the colour of the terrible darkness.
And at the end of the day, he returned to his castle by the sea. No living soul knew about this special place of his, and no one would ever know.
Every night he left his beloved parlour and headed to this place in the secrecy of the night – and in this hidden and unknown place, he went to the basement. Every other room had once shone in elegance – in absolute grace and beauty – but now, the colour of the walls had faded away, and the lights had lost their brilliance. Only the basement shone with an eerie mixture of light and dead.
Faint moonlight lit up the dark cellar through tiny windows on the top of the walls when he stepped inside. The room was empty except for a single glass coffin in the middle. It glittered in the silver light of the moon.
"When evening came, and the dwarfs had gone home, they found Snowdrop lying on the ground: no breath came from her lips, and they were afraid that she was quite dead. They lifted her up, and combed her hair, and washed her face with wine and water; but all was in vain, for the little girl seemed quite dead. So they laid her down upon a bier, and all seven watched and bewailed her three whole days; and then they thought they would bury her: but her cheeks were still rosy; and her face looked just as it did while she was alive; so they said, 'We will never bury her in the cold ground.' And they made a coffin of glass, so that they might still look at her, and wrote upon it in golden letters what her name was, and that she was a king's daughter."
"Your grandson visited me today," Undertaker said while walking towards the coffin.
Her living on in others was great and wonderful – but wasn't the real one much better?
He sat down on his specially made coffin and looked upon the Queen of his little kingdom by the sea.
"And thus Snowdrop lay for a long, long time, and still only looked as though she was asleep; for she was even now as white as snow, and as red as blood, and as black as ebony."
Like she was sleeping, his love laid inside the glass coffin, dressed all in white like a bride and her dark hair framing her pale face. Undertaker placed his hand on the coffin's top and retraced her face on the glass.
"Are you not happy? He survived – and do not worry: I will take care of the beast."
I laid down by her side, by the side of my beautiful love, in her sepulchre by the sounding sea.
I would bring her back – no matter the cost. For I could not go on without her as anything would ever dissever me from her.
Or live with the thought of letting her become my Lenore.
Based/Inspired by "The Raven" and "Annabel Lee" by Edgar Allan Poe, and "Snow White"/"Snowdrop" by the Brothers Grimm.
The passages from "Snowdrop" were taken from "The Project Gutenberg EBook of Grimms' Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm." The cover is a painting called "Lost Lenore" by E. H. Wehnert which depicts a scene from Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven."
Hope you liked the story! (Even if it was, maybe, a bit odd...)
I was never very good with summaries, but when I was finally done with this story - a story which I started quite a while ago and really wanted to complete -, I could not think of a fitting summary. Thus, I simply took a part of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven" as a "somewhat summary."