Page 39 of A Theory of Dreaming
“Well, you were a child,” Effy said. “That hardly seems fair.”
Preston shook his head. “Even when I was eighteen. I could never do better than that against him. At least he wasn’t the type for boasting or showboating. He always told me I played a good game, even when he checkmated me within three turns.”
Effy felt a lump forming in her throat. “I wish I could have met him.”
“So do I.” Finally, Preston looked away from the lake and the distant, mist-wreathed mountains, and into her eyes. “He would like you—would have liked you, I mean.”
The slip from present to past made Effy’s heart throb. “He would have found me an easy victim, that’s for sure.” She tried a smile. “I’m terrible at chess.”
Preston let out a breathy laugh. “It’s silly. I haven’t touched a board since he died. I’m probably terrible now, too.”
“I doubt that.”
There was a low groaning sound as the sheet of ice on the lake began to crack, showing veins of blue-black water. Preston gave himself a brisk shake, as if to banish the thoughts from his mind, and said, “Isn’t it time for Tinmew’s class?”
He peered over her head, squinting at the clock that hung above the Segrave-Sayre Savings Bank, rather than looking down at his own watch. Effy had noticed he hadn’t been wearing it lately.
“Yes,” she replied dismally. “I should go.”
It was with great reluctance that Effy climbed the steps to the literature college, her gaze on the ground as she passed beneath thelintel with the names of the Sleepers.Aneurin the Bard. Perceval ab-Owain. Tristram Marlais. Gelert Bedwyn-Lawes. Robin Crother. Laurence Ardor, Lord of Landevale. Emrys Myrddin.She had been taught a song in primary school to memorize them, and even now the rhythm hummed in the back of her mind. Her newfound knowledge of scansion began to descend over it, numbers applying themselves to each syllable and beat.
What a bunch of rubbish, she thought bitterly. Scansion. The Sleepers. All of it. She had tried so terribly hard to get into the literature college and had thought it would soothe that deep ache in her soul. Now she felt only a scraping emptiness.
She made her way through the crowded, tobacco-scented lobby, ducking below elbows and darting around wool-clad bodies, and into the classroom. With only the melody of the song in her mind, and nothing more, Effy climbed to her usual seat and sat down. She pulled out her notebook and her copy of “The Garden in Stone,” flipping to the marked page.
It was only then that she noticed the swelling, seething silence around her.
Skin crawling, Effy looked up. Students were in their seats, or walking in through the door, but none of them spoke. None of them even shrugged out of their coats or unwound their scarves or ruffled their papers. They were utterly still, and they were all staring at her.
As Effy looked around the room, the emptiness within her filled, like water flooding its accustomed tributaries. It filled with terror and it filled with pain and it filled with grief. So much that itseemed to fill her physically, too, her gorge rising and tears leaping to the corners of her eyes.
Had they seen the posters? Had some other, awful rumor spread since then? Had Finisterre reneged on his promise and done something worse? She didn’t know. But, she realized with sickening dread, it was far from over. She had been a fool to think it would be so easy. Her throat shrank in on itself so that she could barely breathe.
The two seats beside her that were normally occupied were empty. The other students were giving her a wide berth, as if she were sick with something they could catch. Their gazes were varied—some suspicious, some probing, some vividly disgusted—but each one seemed to drive splinters into her skin.Not again, she thought, remembering her name on the class roster in the architecture college,Sayrecrossed out and replaced withWhore—
She wanted to get up and bolt, but she couldn’t. Leaving would be even worse. It would make her look frantic, unstable, guilty. Afraid. She had to stay, and sit with her head held high, as if no pairs of eyes were trained on her, as if none of their silent accusations would stick.
And so, Effy stared straight ahead at the chalkboard, unflinching and waiting. Months ago she would have fled without looking back. Now—just barely—she managed to hold on. For better or worse, she now had an ironclad grip on what was real.
Professor Tinmew entered several moments later, walking unenthusiastically to the lectern and clearing his phlegmy throat. Effy could feel each staggered, painful beat of her heart.
“Now, if you’ll open to page forty-two, we can begin the scansion...”
Even as the voices of her classmates rose, dutifully counting off their numbers, there was something thick and perturbed in their tone. Without looking around, Effy knew that their eyes had not left her. But at the very least, Professor Tinmew did not notice any disturbance and did not pay her any mind. He cleared his throat again and then began his lecture, which, as much as Effy tried, she could not manage to hear. Her heart was pounding too loudly in her ears.
She wantedAngharad, and Angharad. Her well-loved copy was back in her bedroom, tucked beneath her pillow, as it always was. She wanted to feel the familiarity of the pages and think of the woman who had written them, her steady green stare, like a lighthouse in the dark. But it had been hard to look at the book as of late. Because even though Angharad’s autograph was on the title page, the front cover still saidEmrys Myrddin, and when her eyes passed over the words—“I will love you to ruination,” the Fairy King said—she felt the most awful, perverse longing for him, which sickened her like a fever.
But the Fairy King was gone and he had taken the magic with him. But—perhaps books could still offer her a way to survive. They could anchor her in the real world instead of giving her an escape into a false one. After all, that was the point of Tinmew’s approach, wasn’t it? To do away with dreams?
And so, with trembling hands, she reached into her satchel and removed Rockflower’s biography of Ardor. She placed it noiselessly on her desk and turned to the marked page.
One can imagine, then, why he would have been inspired to compose “The Garden in Stone,” a work about a frozen, unchanging garden, trapped in the sinister rigidity of time. Within the garden, the maiden sleeps and dreams, her mind at work even when her body is magicked to immortal stillness. And, of course, there is the gallant knight who comes to her rescue, ultimately freeing the maiden and her garden from this ill fate.
Something began to settle in Effy as she read. A calmness as she was removed a layer from reality. Her grip began to slacken.
Composing this poem while blind was of course no mean feat, and Ardor employed an amanuensis to accomplish it. An amanuensis is an individual who is hired to transcribe what has been dictated by another. Historically, this was often a slave or a servant; however, in Ardor’s case, there is no record that any of his servants were literate. It is therefore generally agreed that his amanuensis was his own daughter, Antonia.
At that, what had been calm within Effy began to pulse, like a passel of birds taking flight. She flipped more hurriedly through the book, searching on every page for the word, the name,Antonia. Whenever she saw it, she tore out a scrap of paper from her journal and used it mark the place. This provided such a welcome distraction that, when Professor Tinmew finally dismissed the class, she was the last one up out of her seat, scrambling toexit the lecture hall and far less concerned about the students’ prying eyes.
