Page 15 of A Theory of Dreaming
Busy teachingyourclasses, Preston thought sourly, though he didn’t say it. Instead, he said, with a pointed look at Master Gosse, “I got here as quickly as I could.”
“Well, then,” the curator said. “I’ve closed down the exhibit, as per your instruction... take all the time you need.”
“Thank you very much, my good friend,” Master Gosse said, and then he clapped the curator heartily on the back. “You are assisting in the greatest intellectual pursuit of our age!”
Then, leaving the curator to quell the outraged crowd, Master Gosse marched back into the museum. Preston had no choice but to follow him.
He had not been inside the Sleeper Museum since his first year at the college—ever since Myrddin’s consecration, the lines had been staggeringly long, the tickets sold out months in advance. And then, following the revelations of their thesis, he had felt a vague sense of revulsion whenever he thought of entering, of—in any manner—paying respects to the man who had lied and obfuscated and imprisoned and abused, a memorial to achievements he had falsely earned. Now, as Preston trailed Gosse down the long, cavernous hall that led to the Sleepers’ chamber, his chest swelled with a novel sense of dread.
“How did you get the curator to close down the museum?” Preston asked in a whisper. It felt like the safest question.
“I merely told him that I was the nation’s preeminent Myrddin scholar, and that viewing the man in his coffin—in private—wasessential to my research.” In the empty hall, Gosse’s voice echoed resoundingly. “I may or may not have led him to believe that I was writing an article repudiating all of the nasty rumors you’ve spread. I daresay it’s a relief that he didn’t recognize you.”
“A relief,” Preston repeated. “Of course.”
The corridor was lined with placards and paintings locked behind protective plastic frames. The frames were smudged with fingerprints, as though the visitors could not help but try to reach what was within them—the portraits of the Sleepers, each one older than the last.
Preston averted his eyes as they passed Myrddin’s. Just before the archway was the painting of Llyr’s very first Sleeper: Aneurin the Bard, who looked preeminent and remote, lyre braced across his middle the way a warrior might gird himself with a weapon.
And then at last they came to the Sleepers’ chamber. The ceiling canted steeply upward, into a vaulted dome. The gray marble lacked any adornments, any intricate engravings, for this was meant to be a tomb, a temporary resting place before the Sleepers rose again, coming to Llyr’s aid when the nation needed them most. It was dim within the chamber, the lights recessed into the walls, and save for the sound of his and Gosse’s footsteps, utterly silent. A prominently placed placard instructed guests not to speak—and then, in a droll note below, addedYou would not want to disturb the Sleepers before their time, lest they wake in a foul mood!
Gosse maneuvered confidently through the chamber, and Preston followed more slowly behind. The coffins were all set in a circle, with the oldest Sleeper beside the newest, Aneurin theBard at Myrddin’s right. Again, Preston turned his gaze away from Myrddin’s reposing form. He looked instead at Aneurin, draped in gold-trimmed robes that seemed rather too fine for a court musician, his face obscured by a death mask, a plaster mimic of the bard’s features. Oddly enough, unlike the other Sleepers, his hands were not clasped over his chest. His arms were instead fixed at his sides, and completely hidden by the sleeves of his gown. Not even the tips of his fingers showed.
“Come here, Héloury,” Gosse said, impatience slipping into his tone.
His adviser had knelt down in front of Myrddin’s coffin, but his manner was brisk and businesslike, not reverential. From his satchel he removed a bundle of papers, and spread them out across the floor. Preston recognized them as the pages of Angharad’s diary.
Against all reason, and all good judgment, he knelt down beside Gosse.
“I have discovered it,” Gosse said fiercely. “Uncovered what others could not... the truth beneath what scholars believe is thetruth. The greatest and most ancient knowledge of the world, which has been left to lie in neglect like sunken treasure. I will paw through the sands of time itself, plunge into the place where dreams roll as high as the foam-lipped tide. A deathless death, an immortal slumber—only I will not be contained, like those who merely sleep. My body will be as still as those in their glass mausoleums, but my mind will be so alive as to rend apart the world.” Gosse paused and stared at Preston, feverish eagerness in his eyes. “You’ve seen it, haven’t you?Magic.”
No, Preston wanted to reply, he had not seen it. But—perhaps he had heard it. The bells. Impossible, yet real, just like the water that had stopped the hands of his watch.
“Right,” Preston said uneasily. “And where did you acquire this, ah, great and ancient knowledge?”
“Why, right here, of course!” Gosse practically bellowed. Preston flinched at the sound. He picked up one of the pages, cleared his throat, and then read: “‘Strange enough, this is something a child understands, and this understanding is drained from us as we grow, as we are taught that the world is ordered and reasonable, as we are taught to leave our dreams in our sleeping minds, and cast them aside in the sharp light of day.’”
Preston remembered this particular entry. “Angharad was writing about the Fairy King,” he said. “About the reprieve of imagination—about how her trauma reverted her to the state of a child—”
“No, no, no.” Gosse shook his head. “Why must you persist in this stubborn allegiance to reason? To order? You spent weeks in that house, on the bleak edge of the world, and watched as it crumbled into the sea. Surely, in all that time, you experienced things that logic could not explain?”
The bells.They gonged now, in the secret vault of his mind. Preston swallowed hard.
“So what is it that you plan to do here?” he asked. “If you can forgive me for being practical—what is the worth of this knowledge?”
“I plan to perform a ritual,” Gosse replied. Carefully, he bentover and smoothed out the pages on the floor. “It isn’t a complex one, but I do need your help. I’m of the opinion that the more people who partake, the more successful this ritual will be; the more people who believe, the more real something becomes. But for now it will just be us two. I can’t entrust this to anyone else.”
Preston’s pulse twinged in his throat. Master Gosse was mad, surely. Anyone else who heard his ramblings would have laughed. Would haveleft.
But Preston stayed. He wasn’t sure why. The easy excuse was that he could not afford to lose the favor of his adviser. That his position at the university was already precarious enough. Though perhaps the truth was even more perturbing than Gosse’s delusions. The truth was that Preston believed him. And he wanted answers, too. Anything to silence the diabolical bells.
So, very slowly, Preston asked, “What would you have me do?”
“It’s quite simple, really,” said Gosse. “We are here, in the very heart of Llyr’s faith, where those who come all indulge in the belief that the world is a more mystic, a more fantastical place. That in itself is power beyond measure. So it is only a matter of sipping from the well of that power. Close your eyes, Héloury.”
He hesitated. But only for a moment. Then he let his eyelids slide shut, lashes fluttering against the frames of his glasses.
“Remember, if you can, the last time you believed in magic.”
