Nevermor

by Lani Lenore

  Though she had been caged like an animal, she was thankful to have been ignored. She’d kept quiet and let herself blend in, and while some of the other inmates might occasionally keep too close or try to eat her hair, Wren knew there were worse things in the world. She had seen some of them with her own eyes.

  Here, the creatures in the dark are of a different sort.

  Wren had dealt with what she was given, relieved to still have her life after what had happened at the orphanage, telling herself every day that this trial would not be for long. Rifter would not abandon her. He would come.

  She had held onto that belief, but it had begun to slip over time.

  As in Nevermor, time seemed to have no relevance at the asylum. All of the days blurred together into masses of vaporous nothing. There was no hope of gaining and no fear of losing. Her existence spun like wheels in mud. Though she could not quite say when it had happened – after weeks, perhaps months of being locked away – eventually the quality of her life within the asylum began to change.

  Overcrowding had become a problem, and it was decided that the ranks of inmates should be thinned. Some were to be sent off to distant country asylums, and Wren had feared being taken to another place. She’d wanted to keep herself constant until Rifter had found her.

  As fate would have it, she got her salvation in the form of a doctor named Witherspoon, a logical man with an intelligent forehead and deep-set eyes. While the directors had been sorting through the patients, he’d become interested in her story, insisting she stay close. Though she was not quite ignored any longer because of him, things got a bit better for her after that.

  Wren was put into her own individual space. Though it was merely a small cell, she was glad for the solitude. She was allowed to take walks outside with the others in an attractive courtyard surrounded by high walls. An aviary was added within the ward, where the songs of cheerful birds could uplift her. The condition of the hospital was much improved.

  Still, she avoided association with the other women there. Some of them were wrongfully accused, just as she was, but the last group she had told innocent stories to had wound up dead because of her. She could not let it happen again.

  I will not let anyone else be ruined because of me.

  As Wren rested there on her bed in the cramped cell, the night gradually turned into a dismal, gray morning. Wren listened to the noises in the deep, echoing halls around her as the asylum came to life.

  The birds in the aviary were chirping with the morning light, at peace with their lives of captivity. Doors were opening and nurses were talking, wheeling in squeaky carts of breakfast and medicine. Other inmates awoke in their cells, some louder than others, meeting the day with scattered emotions. Still, Wren saw no need to stir. She was tired and weak, but still a long way from rest.

  She lay there until her usual nurse, Mary, brought in her breakfast on a dingy plate.

  “Alright now; sit up and eat up,” the woman said, wheeling the cart toward the bed.

  Mary was a plump woman of around thirty, who looked much older around the eyes. She was always the same – her hair tightly wound, dressed in her uniform of a long black dress and white apron, topped with the typical white hat common to those sharing her profession. Wren did not think poorly of her, but felt that the woman had an oddly shaped shadow.

  Wren had seen Mary every day for months, yet there was never much warmth between the two of them. They never engaged in small talk or even shared much eye contact. For Mary, it was strictly business, and Wren didn’t have much reason to converse. She was unfit to talk to.

  She was a murderess, after all.

  Wren often toyed with asking Mary what she thought of her, but feared the answer. The nurses were all certain they knew the truth about her story, and Wren understood there was nothing left but for her to do as they said – to be a good patient and pray for deliverance.

  Forgiveness waits beyond the confession of sins. That is what they would have me believe.

  Once she'd swallowed the food down like Mary expected, the nurse helped her dress in a clean gown she’d brought in, which was plain and very similar to what the rest of the inmates wore. Mary maneuvered her as if she was a doll instead of a girl, but Wren could not protest. She had as much of a life as a doll had.

  When Mary was done and had wheeled the tray out to leave her alone again, Wren sat on the end of the bed for a long time, staring absently at her shadow that was cast against the far wall. She'd often wondered about it – whether it was a shadow as she had once thought, or if her mimic had returned with her here, but she never saw it move out of sync, and so she had no proof either way.

  Where are you, Rifter? Why did you leave me here? Haven’t I suffered long enough?

  She remembered the last time she had seen him, when he’d looked into her eyes – when he’d made her so many promises. I could never forget you, he'd said. Of all the things he'd sworn to remember, Wren had not suspected that she would be the thing that would disappear. Hadn't the other boys – Sly, Finn, Toss – remembered her? Why hadn't they reminded Rifter that he needed to go after her?

  Maybe I will die before I have answers. I will waste away here.

  It was at that moment that the cell door squealed as it opened once again, and Mary leaned her head inside.

  “Come on now, Wren,” she said with firm insistence. “It’s time.”

  2

  In the drab office, a pair of large windows let in the gray light of the outside world. The buildings of London stretched out in the distance, each doing its part to block out the sun. The city served as an endless barrier to keep Wren from the world of her dreams, gradually closing in, reminding her that she had no world at all to belong to now.

  Wren sat before Doctor Everett Witherspoon, his half-moon glasses turned downward toward the journal on his desk. Wren didn’t think he was a bad man, but she couldn’t say that she enjoyed spending time with him. He was always judging her like the rest. She didn’t want to be judged. She wanted to be left alone.

  “You haven’t written much lately,” he commented, no doubt noticing the sentence she had begun last night, only to leave off without the desire to finish the thought.

  Wren did not respond. She watched Witherspoon open her casebook with steady fingers. The leather was worn around the edges from being opened and shut so many times. He must have known every word of it by now, having put most of the entries there himself, but she kept silent as he looked over the pages.

  Her eyes drifted over his shoulder, watching his shadow against the wall behind him, reflected by the light of day. It was faint and still – clearly not a secret imp. When Witherspoon finally lifted his brown eyes to hers, she knew what he would say before he opened his mouth.

  “I want to start at the beginning,” he said. Wren wasn’t surprised. He often liked to start at the beginning. “Can we do that?”

  She nodded. Wren had been through this so many times that the sessions no longer fazed her. Some of those memories had been difficult at first – some still were – but she knew that being agreeable with the doctor was better than trying to oppose him. She would comply.

  “When you were thirteen, something happened at home,” he reminded her as if she might have forgotten. “What was that?"

  Wren knew the answers to these questions as well as she knew her name. She always gave him the same replies, and though he might have been waiting for the day that she would slip, she would not. She knew her own story. It was all that had been looping through her head for years.

  “My father had an affair,” she stated in the factual tone of the shameless.

  “How did that affect your family?”

  “It ruined us,” she told him flatly as if the words were rehearsed. “I never knew her name – the other woman, I mean. Father met her at the bank. She was married as well, and everyone was spreading the rumors. My father lost his job and couldn't find decent employment because of the scandal. We ran out of mo
ney.”

  “And what about your mother? How did she react to the betrayal?”

  Wren remembered it all clearly, as though it had not been six years since she had seen her birth parents. When the ordeal had come to light, she remembered how her mother had not said a word. She had not tried to fight with Wren’s father about the rumors.

  She just…went away.

  “My mother shut herself up. She grew distant from us.”

  “From you and your brothers, even young Max,” Witherspoon confirmed. “He was a mere babe at the time, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  “All of those responsibilities fell to you then, didn't they? You had to grow up too soon.”

  Wren looked into his eyes as he watched her expectantly, awaiting her answer – her admittance or her revelation; she couldn’t say which.

  “I suppose,” she replied finally, lowering her eyes, but she knew that he was right in a sense. She remembered how her life had been – hadn’t been given the chance to forget. Max had been an infant at the time. She remembered the sound of him crying upstairs – after they had lost their nanny – and their mother simply hadn’t known what to do. Wren hadn’t either, but she had learned quickly, for she was the only one who would respond to the boy’s wailing cries.

  Max, my little boy, where are you now? I hope you’re safe. I know you must be. Wren often wondered about him, but she knew where he had gone, and could only find comfort in the thought that both of her brothers were in better places than she was now.

  “Let's skip forward a bit, shall we?” Witherspoon said, interrupting her thoughts. “You said that your family ran out of money. What happened then?”

  “My parents had to give us up. They took us to Miss Nora's Home.”

  “The orphanage, correct? What was life there like?”

  She had always been a bit torn about the Home before, but given the chance now, she might have gone back to it with the promise to never stray again.

  But I can’t go back there, she thought. Not ever.

  “Most of us were sent to work in factories during the day, but at least we had a place to return at night.”

  “That’s what you told the others, isn’t it? They looked up to you, didn’t they?”

  Though Wren had tried to keep her distance from the other orphans in her days after returning from Nevermor, it was true that those children had always looked up to her. She had cooked meals for them and joined them in games. She had gathered them in the closet when there was a storm; told them stories. She still remembered the way many of their faces had looked as they’d smiled at her gratefully.

  They had names. Polly, Liam, Lewis… They had thought a lot of her.

  “Yes, they did,” she said, lowering her head.

  “But you wanted out, didn't you?” the doctor said, leading her on. “You were finally able to escape. Where did you go?”

  Wren lifted her blue eyes. This was, perhaps, the turning point. It was the fork in the path, often presented but never taken. One direction might have brought her out of the woods while the other led her deeper into the depths until she was utterly lost in the dark tangles of her impossible reality. Perhaps it was true that if she’d only changed her story here, she might have been able to alter her situation. At the same time, it might have been the only difference between the asylum and the noose.

  Should I speak the truth or a lie? Should I deny or confess? Wren looked toward her shadow as if it would give her some cue, but it did not move, sitting as still as she was to gaze back at her.

  “Wren?” Witherspoon drew her back with his voice, watching her carefully. She blinked, looked at his face, and then took a breath.

  “I didn’t go anywhere,” she said, and she saw his eyes widen a bit – but she wasn’t finished. “I was taken away – to Nevermor.”

  His shoulders slumped. He had anticipated too strongly, but Wren could not change her story now. She’d told nothing but the truth.

  “Nevermor,” the doctor repeated, discouraged, but he humored her. “As you describe it, Nevermor is an island beyond the sea of dreams, full of fantasies.”

  “Yes,” she said quietly, as if the answer was going to turn around and bite her.

  “There, you made a new life,” Witherspoon said, getting back on track. “You made a life with a boy, I understand.”

  “We called him the Rifter,” Wren said lowly. Sometimes it pained her to say his name.

  “This Rifter, who you have spoken so fondly of in the past – the two of you had a relationship. Would it be going too far to ask if it was intimate?” Wren’s eyes widened as she looked at him, and he paused a moment before probing further. “Was it of a sexual nature?”

  Wren tensed at that and felt her face grow hot. As much as she believed she loved Rifter – even still – their love had not been perfect, but she remembered the way she had kissed him with her eyes shut so tightly. She remembered the night in the dark of a tent when she’d said she loved him. He had wanted to have her, but she had pushed him away.

  I wasn't ready.

  “No,” she answered finally, averting her eyes.

  “Yet it was very much like a marriage in your eyes, wasn't it? Didn’t you say so yourself once? And like your parents’ marriage, it was ruined by the denial of physical intimacy, isn't that right? Wasn’t your mother depressed after Maxwell was born? Her relationship with your father was scarred. He sought love elsewhere.”

  Wren didn’t answer, clenching her fists against her legs. This was an attack. Witherspoon had never done this to her before. Had she told him these things? She had recounted the story so many times in the past that she sometimes wasn’t sure of the exact details she’d given.

  “You told me once that there was an instance in which Rifter was unfaithful to you – with some sort of savage, Tribal maiden, I believe. Don't you think that event mirrors exactly what you believe your father did to your mother?”

  Wren had never heard this angle before, and she wasn’t quite sure what he was trying to prove.

  “It doesn't matter,” she uttered, feeling defensive.

  Witherspoon was able to see her unease and sat back a bit, letting the pressure off.

  “I shouldn't have said that. I apologize,” he told her, withdrawing. “Let's talk about something else. Tell me about your time in Nevermor.”

  Wren was able to exhale. She felt her muscles relax, making her as putty in her chair, though she hardly moved at all.

  “It was better in the beginning,” she said absently, becoming so lost in those old memories that he had to call her back.

  “Yet even in those first days, there were dangers, correct? In fact, everything in the world was a danger to you, I believe.”

  Yes, those first days had only been better if she could get past the threat of the pirates that had wanted to rape her, the mermaids that wanted to drown her, the hateful savages that might have killed her without blinking, not to mention a nightmare monster around every corner – and that wretched fairy with murder in her heart, the same which had eventually caused the deaths of the rest of them.

  But why would Whisper do that? Why? Those children did nothing. Was it because of me?

  Wren had thought that she and Rifter’s vindictive fairy companion had come to a truce near the end, but there was no proof of it now – not after what had happened two years ago.

  “I’ll accept that life was good to you for a while,” Witherspoon said, leading her on. “You were with your brothers. You made friends with those other boys – Rifter’s ‘Wolf Pack’. You were in love. But circumstances changed. Tell me.”

  Yes, things changed…

  “It started with the storm,” she said, recalling it. “Nevermor is a world of dreams and Rifter is the guardian of it, but when he dreams, sometimes things happen to the world. The landscape might change without warning, and another thing that often happens when he dreams is that the Scourge comes back.”

  “And the Scourge is
–”

  “A terrifying man,” Wren interrupted, meeting the doctor’s eyes. “Rifter’s worst nightmare. He changed everything – changed Rifter. Things got worse. There was conflict and war. There was fire and darkness. But in the end, Rifter conquered. He faced his fear and killed the Scourge. He promised me that things were going to get better.”

  “That was when he brought you back here. With Maxwell.”

  “Yes. So I could make sure he was safe from that life,” Wren admitted. Her choice with her baby brother Max had been a difficult one – letting him go off to another mother who would raise him. She had cried every night for a while, wondering where he was and praying that he hadn’t forgotten her, but eventually, she had managed to let him go. She hadn’t wanted Nevermor to corrupt him at such a young age. He’d deserved better.

  Wren had become firm in her agreement, but Witherspoon’s next question caught her off guard.

  “What happened to Henry?”

  She felt an abrupt choking sensation in the back of her throat when he said that name. Her other brother, Henry… Rifter had renamed him Fang.

  He was given the highest honor.

  “I don’t want to talk about Henry,” she said solidly. Even though time had passed, it still felt like a sword in her chest.

  “Fair enough,” Witherspoon said, making a note in the sideline of her casebook. Then he started off on another line of thought. “Rifter left you here with a promise that he would return for you in a few days, but he never came back, did he? Why do you think that is?”

  “He has a tendency to forget things,” Wren said swiftly, feeling a bit frustrated by now. She thought that he must have noticed. “It’s the fairy’s fault. She takes his memories away; sometimes even the small, insignificant ones.”

  “You’ve told me before that he has to be willing to let go of the memory first.”

  “Usually,” she confirmed.

  “Then how does that explain why he might have forgotten you?”