Page 45 of A Theory of Dreaming
The 31st day of Winter, 80 AD
Dear Diary,
Relief, at last. This past night I slept—not fitfully, not inconstantly, but in oblivious repose.
The solution, as it turns out, is not a peasant healing tincture nor the intervention of the physician, but rather, the joining of two souls who share the same grief. While I lay awake last night, tossing and turning in my bed, I saw the gleam of my father’s candle slip through the crack in the door. I heard him pause and, from the other side of the wood, draw in a breath. I froze, my own breath caught, waiting.
I do not recall wishing consciously for him to enter, only that when he did, I felt both enlivened and relieved. He stood at the foot of my bed in his robe and slippers. I sat up, my hair loose about my shoulders. I wore the puff-sleeved, flowered nightgown of a little girl, and I recall feeling oddly embarrassed by that fact.
For several long moments, no words passed between us; no sound, even, save for the brief flitting of a moth against the windowpane, and no movement, save for the guttering of candles.
“Antonia,” Father said at last. Grief strangled his voice. “You look so much like your mother in this light.”
There was a soft pulsing in my chest. “Please,” I said, “will you stay?”
He set down his candle and came to my bedside. He laid hishand gently over mine, where it rested on the coverlet. And for the ensuing hours of the night I was not alone.
Until next time, Diary
—A.A.
The door to the small room swung abruptly open. Effy’s head snapped up. But it was only Rhia who stood in the threshold, a book tucked under her arm.
“Ready to go?” she asked.
Effy nodded and rose to her feet. A faint sensation of disgust prickled her, Antonia’s words running through her mind. She glanced back down at the portrait on the front of the book, at the girl—the woman—who now was beginning to feel so real to her. Whose grief and fear had reached forward through the centuries and touched her.
Outside, the snow began to skim like white-winged insects against the window glass.
Effy and Rhia returned to their dorm, Rhia to practice her piece, and Effy to sit soberly in her room. She tookLetters & Annalsfrom her satchel and laid it on her desk, but she could not bring herself to open it. To turn back to that page. It was almost a bodily revulsion, something she felt in her stomach and her chest but could not quite make sense of in her mind.
Moved by this unconscious sentiment, she took out her copy ofAngharadand placed it besideLetters & Annals. Their spinestouched. Effy ran her fingers across the covers, one clothbound, one wrapped in protective plastic. And then something unfolded before her eyes. She would have called it a hallucination, but she had been so diligent about taking her pink pills, and she had not seen anything unreal since they’d left the Bay of Nine Bells.
She saw the face of Antonia Ardor rise up, her portrait on the cover becoming a mirage-like wisp of smoke. And beside it, a vision of Angharad rose as well, the young version from the book, the girl Effy’s age. They trembled in the air, like twin ghosts.
There was a knock on the door. The images dissipated. Effy shook her head, blinking, as if just roused from a dream.
“Come in,” she said.
Preston pushed the door open. Standing there in the threshold, snowflakes clinging to the unruly strands of his brown hair, his glasses faintly misted, he smiled at her. It was a hedging, hesitant smile, as though he couldn’t yet discern her mood—but it had been more than a day since Effy had last seen him and she was so relieved that she bounded over and buried herself into his chest.
He wrapped his arms around her and held her tightly. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” she said, her voice muffled against the wool of his coat. “I suppose this means you’re free from Gosse’s tyranny for the day.”
Very subtly, she felt him tense. “Yes, I suppose.”
It was not late at all, just past suppertime, but in the depths of winter, the sky was already black, though flecked with swirling flakes of snow. The early darkness of winter days made Effytired. She led Preston to her bed, where they both perched on the edge, facing each other. There were those familiar red marks on the bridge of his nose, where he had pressed his glasses too forcefully against his skin. The smell of tobacco—earthy, bitter—was stronger than usual. His stress even made his shoulders rise around his ears.
“You can take off your coat, you know,” Effy said. “Don’t be a stranger.”
“Right.” Preston shrugged out of his wool overcoat, but his nervousness didn’t abate. When he spoke again, his tone was tinged with worry. “How was Tinmew’s class?”
Effy’s heart sank. It was the last question she wanted to answer. The truth was, she had not been to Professor Tinmew’s class in over a week. After that last time, with all her fellow students staring, she couldn’t bear it. Whenever she thought of it, nausea swirled in her stomach and her throat began to narrow and her breathing grew strained and hot. That old somatic terror, as ancient as the world: her body telling her she was in danger.
Tinmew’s class was such a large lecture that attendance was not taken, so—presently, at least—all Effy had to lose was her dignity. But with each passing day even that was slipping away from her, too.
“Rather dull,” she replied at last. “As usual. Though—I think I’ve finally stumbled on something interesting.” She rose and went over to her desk, whereLetters & Annalslay. She picked it up and handed it to Preston. “Remember that biography of Ardor I was telling you about? Well, it said that Ardor used his daughter,Antonia, as his amanuensis. She transcribedallof ‘The Garden in Stone’ for him.”
