Page 11 of A Theory of Dreaming
The dream was just a dream.
He and Effy said their goodbyes just outside her dormitory, beneath a portico that was fanged with icicles. Preston watched her as she walked down the street, the cobblestones shimmering with glacial danger. He didn’t turn away until she had vanished into a crowd of other black-clad students, all pressing toward the library.
Preston exhaled, his breath a wisp of white in the cold. He had foolishly volunteered as a teaching assistant for one of Gosse’s classes, and he had to arrive before the students did, so he had a chance to pass out their papers and monographs.
He shook back the sleeve of his coat and looked down at his watch to see the time. But all three hands had stopped turning, frozen at 6:22. Preston frowned and held up his wrist for closer examination. The face of the watch was filled with water.
Five
All those years I cowered in the eternal night and yearned for the reprieve of the day, but I had forgotten that the light has a certain cruelty of its own. One can shrivel on an arid shore as easily as one can drown in deep waters. I had become a creature of the dark, an ephemeral shade, ill-fit for the waking, sunlit world.
—from the diaries of Angharad Myrddin, 202 AD
A bitterly cold wind lifted off Lake Bala and nipped at Effy’s nose and cheeks, but she walked with slow, deliberate steps nonetheless. At least until she was out of Preston’s sight. Then she hastened to a brisk pace, pulling her scarf up over her chin and shoving her hands into her pockets. It was no more than five minutes to the library, but by the time she reached the gleaming wooden doors, the chill seemed to have stolen into her very bones.
She didn’t know what had come over Preston. What had evoked such an urgent, unexpected fear. He always fretted and brooded, but this felt different. Sharper and more sudden. It seemed to have stuck him through like a silver blade.
He did have cause to worry, Effy supposed, just not about theperils of the ice. As she’d passed the newsstand, she had glimpsed today’s headline:MASS DESERTION AT THE FRONT LINE PROMPTS NEW RECRUITMENT CAMPAIGN FROM THE MINISTRY OF DEFENSE, REPUDIATION OF RUMORS ABOUT MYRDDIN’S WORK.
Belly churning, Effy had turned away. She thought of that first day at Hiraeth, when she had accused Preston of trying to undermine Llyr’s war efforts, of being a saboteur. She flushed with embarrassment at the memory. How cruel—howdeserved—it was to now be accused of the same thing herself.
She shook her head as if to clear it, and climbed up the library’s curving stairs, to the circulation desk. It was currently manned by a very surly-looking librarian, so Effy decided to brave the labyrinth herself. She passed through the door, rode the tiny, clanking elevator, and then, with a deep breath, stepped into the half-lit maze of stacks.
Unlike the vast reading rooms with their shining brown wood and cathedral ceilings, this part of the library was decidedly unglamorous. Shelves stretched out in all directions, the narrow aisles between them illuminated only by weak fluorescent lights. The smell of dust and old leather was overpowering in the windowless space. Effy coughed, and the sound was echoed eerily back to her.
She paced slowly through the stacks, fluorescents buzzing and flickering. This empty, shadowy, silent place was precisely where the Fairy King might have appeared to her, a whisper in the musty air or a flash of black hair between the shelves. And she would havebeen afraid, but the fear was hers—locked inside the safe box of her mind or within the water-stained pages ofAngharad.
Now, without the Fairy King, without the stories, the world was vast and beyond her understanding, beyond her control. It was frightening, and so very wearying. It piled on her like stones.
Despite wishing she were back in bed, asleep, anchored in Preston’s arms, Effy persevered through the aisles until she found what she was looking for. Ardor’s corpus took up an entire shelf of its own, dozens of books both new and old. She plucked up the first one, a rebound edition of his collected poems, excepting his magnum opus “The Garden in Stone.” The note in the front matter told her that “Garden” was too long to be included, and had its own separate edition, supposed to be part of a matched set. Someone—probably another first-year—had checked out that copy of “Garden.”
Effy tightened the ribbon in her hair to keep the loose strands from falling into her face, then slid down to the floor and opened the book in her lap.
The Collected Poems of Laurence Ardor, Lord of Landevale (Part I)
There was a short introduction, written by a scholar named Francis Rockflower.
The famed Laurence Ardor, future Lord of Landevale, was born Rhodri Morwent II, to a family of modest means in Marshsea. His father was a parish priest who was deeply committed to education, both religious and secular. The senior Rhodri Morwentused his church connections to secure his son a place at Locksley, a private secondary school which, at the time, only served children of Northern aristocratic extraction.
One might imagine that the young boy felt an interloper within this affluent and opulent world, but he was quick to adapt to the social mores of the upper class and became popular with his schoolmates. By his third year, he adopted the Northern name Laurence, and had also begun a relationship with Claribel Ardor, the beloved only daughter of the 1st Baron Landevale.
One might also imagine that an affair between individuals of such disparate backgrounds would be challenged and contested, but Laurence was well-loved by the baron, and he and Claribel were married with much joy and fanfare the week following his graduation. Several years later, the baron took ill. From his deathbed, he named his son-in-law the new Lord of Landevale.
Thus, one of Llyr’s most celebrated and illustrious literary figures was born.
Effy closed the book, her heart racing. According to Tinmew’s stodgy formalist approach, none of this background mattered—yet how could it not? Already rich images were filling her mind, visions of a young boy, knock-kneed and trembling, approaching Locksley’s imposing iron gate. She saw him take a quill and scratch out the nameRhodriand etchLaurencein its place. She saw him, from under a mop of untidy black curls, lock eyes with a young girl. She saw them lace their hands together in a field, a secret meeting place, a crown of flowers woven through her golden hair.She conjured up half a dozen more of these visions, each more vivid than the last.
Enthused, Effy dug through her satchel for her copy of “Garden.” The words of the poem had grown dull to her, grayed out by the dreariness of numbers and rote recitation. Now they felt alive again.
But when she opened the book, she was shocked to see that every page had been inked, every syllable now marked with a number. It took her only a moment to recognize the scrawling but precise penmanship as Preston’s.
He had done the scansion for her, last night while she slept. When the numbness of shock wore off, Effy was surprised to find that she felt angry. She had confided in him, admitted her embarrassment, but she hadn’t asked for his help. Certainly she hadn’t wanted him to just do it all for her, as if she were incapable herself.
A part of her knew she was being unfair. Preston only wanted to make things easier for her, to protect her. But it seemed like a strange sort of betrayal, and bitterness wound around her heart like copper wire.
Jaw clenching, Effy clamped her copy of “Garden” shut and stuffed it back into her satchel. Then she dug out a pen and wrote the name of the author of the introduction,Rockflower,on her palm. She waited until the black ink dried before she closed her fingers into a fist.
At last, after slamming the other book back onto the shelf, she marched through the aisles, into the ancient elevator, and out of the library, her face so hot that she barely felt the biting cold. Shepushed past crowds of tourists, shuffling like yoked oxen toward the Sleeper Museum, and past students hustling to their classes or to coffee and a scone at the Drowsy Poet. She did not stop until she reached the end of the pier.
