Page 4 of A Theory of Dreaming
At that moment, Gosse turned. “Do you believe in ghosts, Héloury?”
Preston was glad the cigarette hadn’t yet made its way to his mouth, for he would have choked on it. Gosse was a great one for jesting, but Preston perceived no glimmer of humor in the professor’s eyes. Instead, his stare was intense, as focused as a raptor upon its prey.
“No,” he replied when he recovered from his shock. “Not in the literal sense. No.”
“Hm. And what about fairies?”
Preston felt his whole body grow taut. “No.”
“Interesting.” Gosse began to pace back toward him. “No wandering eye for the world’s beguiling obscurities. What do you make of our Sleepers, then? Are their bodies preserved by chemicals, like hothouse flowers—such as the Ministry of Culture claims—or is it magic that keeps them intact, such as the Southern superstitions believe?”
The emphasis with which Gosse saidourmade Preston feel as if he were not included within the scope of the pronoun. His skin prickled with chill and unease, as if the cold winter air had seeped through the window. But perhaps he was making something out of nothing. Perhaps he was just too keenly aware, in that moment, of beingan Argantian national.
“I don’t think there’s anything beyond the capacity of science to explain,” he answered. And yet his voice trembled faintly as he spoke, because Effy was right—he was a terrible liar.
When we were at Hiraeth, and I was sleeping in Myrddin’s study, some mornings I would wake up to the sound of bells outside the window. Did you ever hear them, too?
Even now, the memory of the sound echoed on his mind, resonant and clear. The deep, ancient gonging of a lost city beneath the waves.
No, Effy had replied, and there was such a look of grief on her face that Preston regretted asking.I never heard them.
And so Preston was alone in the knowledge, which felt sometimes like being alone in the world—because he had, unwillingly and with great trial, stepped into a realm that was not governed by reason, where truth and wisdom cracked apart and gave way only to darkness.
“Then you must have found Angharad Myrddin’s diary to be the deranged scrawling of a madwoman,” Gosse said. His tone was light, almost jovial.
Preston curled his fingers into the leather of the armchair. He had known, of course, that this moment would come. He had considered, more than once, whether it would have been wise to redact some parts of the diary. Whether the magic that Angharad wrote of as though it were real would erode the credibility of the rest of her story. The truth was such a fragile thing, slender protection against malicious scrutiny.
But he had never spoken these concerns aloud. He knew that Effy would never allow it, and that it would be a betrayal of Angharad’s faith. Preston wondered if it was cowardly of him, to cling to this notion of truth like a buoy in the thrashing tide, rather thanlet the waves take him and see if he could survive. Effy had done it all her life, adrift alone in that ruthless water. He could at least try.
Did you ever hear them, too?
Yet for all the rumination he had done on the subject over these past weeks, Preston still found himself floundering.
“She’s a writer,” he said. There was a numb quality to his voice that made his words utterly unconvincing. “A very talented one. She created a metaphorical world where she could express her hopes and her fears.”
“And yet,” Gosse said, “if one were to take her stories at their face—stripped of the safety of allegory—one would find oneself believing in magic.”
Preston leveled his gaze at Gosse. Words came to him, a veritable flood of them, but none that he could arrange into speech. For what felt like an agonizingly long time, the room was blanketed in silence.
“You really are desperately loyal to this notion of truth,” Gosse said at last, in a tone that suggested both fondness and contempt. “Be careful with that, Héloury. You may find yourself worshipping blindly at the altar of reason, just as the pious worship at the altar of their saints.”
“I wouldn’t say those two are equivalent,” Preston replied tersely. And then he said no more. At that particular moment he was wishing that some titanic wave would break through the floor and swallow them both whole. Anything to free him from the tyranny of this conversation, which was feeling more and more like an interrogation.
Rather than reply, Gosse bent over. He removed a small golden key from his pocket, which he fitted into the lock of his bottom desk drawer. He riffled through a number of files there before selecting a thick packet of papers, tied up with twine. He closed the door and stood again, hair slightly mussed with exertion, and placed the bundle on his desk. The key returned to his pocket.
Preston leaned forward in his seat to peer at the papers. The handwriting was instantly familiar, and a jolt of uneasy shock went through him. They were photostated copies of Angharad’s diary.
“Let us take, for example, this Fairy King,” Gosse said. “She writes about him at least as often as she writes about the other individuals in her life, her husband and son. As if he were as real as they are.”
Preston’s jaw tightened. “Both Ianto and Emrys were sources of pain for Angharad. It’s not hard to imagine why she would create this separate entity, upon which she could project all of their abuse and depravity, while maintaining her conceptions of her real family as positive and loving.”
“Ah, so you’re saying sheismad.”
“No,” Preston said forcefully. “I’m saying she did what she could to survive.”
Gosse was quiet a moment. He began to shuffle through the photostated papers. When Preston saw that they had been highlighted, annotated and tabbed, and marked up, an unexpected but powerful fury rose up in him. He had known it would be this way, that the artifacts of Angharad’s life would become the subject of scrutiny and the self-important musings of detached academics, but viewing the proof of it made him sick.
“I’m not your enemy, Héloury,” Gosse said at last. He looked up and met Preston’s eyes in a piercing way that seemed to pin him in place. “Not in this matter nor in any other. Think of it as an exercise in creativity. Indulge me by stretching your imagination. Perhaps it is madness alone that allows the full truth to be seen.”
