My poet is a swimmer, so yes, I swim again, back down the Rivanna and the James, prepared to face either my death or my resurrection in Richmond.
I waited in the shadows during Eddy’s examinations.
I outlasted Garland O’Peale.
I survived ten long months in this fragile, mortal form.
John Allan will not ruin everything by caging my poet in a counting room.
At the end of my journey, on a biting December night, I hoist myself out of the freezing river and onto Ludlam’s Wharf, where these travels commenced back in February. I lost my hat early on in my swim, so water drips from the exposed feathers of my head to the boards where I kneel in the darkness to catch my breath.
To my left—to my horror—lies a body, motionless, in the middle of the wharf, the soles of its shoes directed my way. The sight of the thing chills me down to the marrow of my bones, not because I believe it to be a dead man, but due to the clicking palpitations emanating from its bosom.
There’s only one heartbeat, aside from my own, normally audible to my ears.
“Good gracious, what now?” I ask, and I force myself to my feet, my lungs heaving, my legs heavy.
I teeter closer to the body. The figure doesn’t stir at the sound of my approach.
A lantern hangs near enough for me to see my poet’s face, as I feared. He’s dressed in a blue coat and a black velvet vest with a raven-hued cravat shimmering at his throat.
His eyes are closed.
He’s scarcely breathing.
“I’m sober, so I know you’re not drunk,” I say.
He shakes his head.
“Are you sick?” I ask.
“I have no wish to live another hour,” he says with an earnestness and a depth to his voice that takes me aback. His eyes remain closed, and his lashes look wet and matted, as though he’s been crying.
“What happened?” I ask.
“I have nothing,” he says through his teeth. “It’s all gone.”
I turn toward Richmond, where a repugnant orange haze hangs over the west side—over Moldavia and its neighbors. The music of a quadrille rises from that direction, and a disquieting carnival quality pervades the song.
“What happened?” I ask again.
Edgar covers his eyes with his right arm. “Elmira engaged herself to Alexander Shelton.”
My stomach drops, and my body thrums with rage. My ears interpret his words to mean I’ve encountered yet another obstacle that will preoccupy my mind too much for poetry.
“She did what?” I ask.
“She never received my letters. I think her father intercepted them.”
“Did you explain that you wrote her?”
“And yet she still remains engaged to Mr. Shelton?”
He moves his arm and gazes up at the constellations above, his irises reflecting the oily sheen of the night. “They always leave me.”
“We don’t have time for any more tragedies and obstacles.”
Edgar’s voice turns heavier and colder: “I have no desire to live and will not.”
I turn around and jump straight back into the river.
Down in the dark and icy depths of the James, I squirm and kick with my hands squeezed around my head, and I question my entire existence.
I’m bound to a soul who doesn’t even want to live.
I’ll never soar across the earth or love like the gods.
I pull the demons from my poet’s head, but who will release the demons from me?
I scream with a deafening underwater howl that expels a flood of shadows from my lungs. Faces manifest in the torrents of gloom shrieking from me—faces with sinister eyes and contorted, shockingly wide-open mouths. The figures expand into shades that reach out to the heart of the river with hands clawed and withered. They cry out in unison with my wails, screaming and streaming into the distance on my waves of agony. Their expulsion from my soul leaves me weak and dizzy.
A firm arm clasps me beneath my armpits and hauls me up to the water’s surface, where I stretch my mouth open for a long breath of air.
My poet, it seems, has decided to live after all, and to save me as well.
With his arm tucked around me, he swims me back to the wharf amid the roar and the swell of the James. The river batters our heads and engulfs our noses, and yet my poet musters the strength to pull me onto the boards of the wharf.
I push myself up to a seated position, clasp my arms around my knees, and gasp for air, while my howls of horror keen in the waters. The docked ships bob and sway in the lingering tumult.
“I don’t want to lose you, too,” says my poet from beside me.
“You’re going to need to choose between John Allan and me. He’s why I can’t finish evolving.”
“I know.”
“You’ve already lost Mr. O’Peale, Eddy. Garland traveled home to Maryland with Upton Beall.”
Edgar swallows near my ear. “I hadn’t realized he was gone.”
I sigh. “Precisely.”
The screams of my shades fade into the night, and I’m left as a shivering, feathered wretch who suddenly doesn’t feel strong enough to swim a river ever again. Ice shines in the moonlight on the crest of the shore, and I tell myself I’m merely weak because of the freezing temperature.
Eddy drapes his blue coat around my shoulders, the fabric so dry, I assume he must have doffed the garment before diving into the river. His shoes, also dry, lie on their sides nearby.
I push the coat off me. “You’re the one who spent three weeks in bed for swimming the James the other winter. You wear the coat. Don’t catch your death of pneumonia.”
He hangs one half of the coat over my left shoulder and keeps the other half for himself.
I accept this compromise and scoot closer to him to battle the chills shivering through me.
“What time does Pa retire for the night?” I ask.
“Half past ten or so—or at least that was his habit before I left for college.”
I nod. “Go back home and warm yourself in front of the fire in your room. Rest from the shock of this evening. And at midnight, open your door to the upper portico.”
“Why?”
“Because, dear Edgar, if I don’t at least grow a set of grand and glorious wings tonight, I’m going to slip into John Allan’s chamber early tomorrow morning and smother him with his pillow.”
My poet stiffens beside me.
I sit up straighter. “We are going to do the wisest thing possible while you’re trapped in this mire of Elmira-induced pain.”
Edgar clears his throat. “And what might the wisest thing be?”
I turn toward him and look him straight in the eye, our faces so close, I feel his breath fluttering against my cheek. “What do you think?”
He shudders. “We’re going to turn her into poetry?”
I smile and nod. “And, oh, what poetry it shall be.”