Page 46 of A Theory of Dreaming
“Oh.” Preston turned the book over in his hands. “And this is all of Antonia’s extant writing?”
“I think so,” said Effy. “It’s the only thing I could find attributed to her in the library. I haven’t gotten up to the part where she starts transcribing the poem, but her recollections of her childhood... they’re very vivid. They’re arresting. I wonder if she had any input on the poem’s content. Orform,” she added, rolling her eyes.
“I suppose it’s possible,” Preston said. “If so, it’s not attested. Of course.” He let out a breath. “What sorts of things does she write about?”
“Her mother’s death. She passed when Antonia was fourteen. It affected her deeply. Well, obviously it would affect anyone, losing their parent, especially that young...” Effy trailed off, realizing with a sudden deep flush that she had quite poignantly put her foot in her mouth.
But Preston just nodded. There was a soft, distant look in his brown eyes. “Ardor had quite a tragic life, didn’t he?”
“Yes.” She recalled Antonia’s words with a prick of pain.The only inevitability of our existence is death. I wish I did not carry this knowledge at only age fourteen. I can only imagine that it will get heavier and heavier as I grow old.“I think maybe—”
Before she could finish, there was a loud, discordant warbling that reverberated through the walls. Effy flinched; Preston almost jumped. It was Rhia, tuning her piano.
“Oh,” Preston said, once he recognized the sound. “This again...”
“She’s practicing for her showcase,” Effy reminded him, wincing in apology. “You don’t have to sleep over, if you don’t want.”
“No,” Preston said hurriedly. “It’s all right. I do.”
As Effy undressed and dressed again in her nightgown, her mind was not at all focused on what she was doing. She was thinking about Antonia Ardor, fourteen, sleepless in her bed while her father paced the halls outside her room. She was thinking about the pale, oval-faced girl in the portrait, neither old nor young, frozen in time, trapped in ink and paper. And then, abruptly, she thought ofAngharad.
I was a girl when he came for me, beautiful and treacherous, and I was a crown of pale gold in his black hair.
In the bathroom, Effy filled her glass with water, hands trembling faintly. The Fairy King was gone, but his words were with her still. Because they were written, they were eternal. As unchanging as a garden of stone.
More than one hundred years had passed, yet here was another sleepless girl, her mind a gyre of grief and confusion. Only Effy had tools that Antonia Ardor had not—far better than peasant remedies. She uncapped the bottle of sleeping pills and poured out three into her palm. Up until recently, one had worked just fine, but over the past weeks, she needed more and more to quiet her thoughts. To smother her dreams.
Effy swallowed the pills and welcomed their oblivion.
Sixteen
This collection of fairy tales, compiled both from the existing work of folklorists and by transcribing, for the first time, oral traditions from across the most far-flung provinces of Argant, represents an effort to articulate an Argantian “national character.” These tales, where beauty is a sign of grace, where destiny is formed at youth, where the humble peasant may one day become king, all represent fundamental truths about humanity, unifying principles, and even ethical doctrines. If there is one thing I have learned, in the years I have spent studying and anthologizing folklore, it is that fairy tales are real.
—from the introduction toLes Contes de Fées d’Argant, by Ulysse Guégan, 144 AD
Preston had begun to feel envious of Effy’s easy, seemingly untroubled sleep. Over these past few weeks he had seen her, inexplicably, slip into the most effortless and tranquil slumbers. It was utterly unlike her, and though Preston should have been cheered by this seeming progress, there was something eerie about it.
Perhaps it was finally vanquishing the Fairy King that had done it for her. If that was so, Preston had to imagine that he now had his own demon that needed exorcising. But was the demon Master Gosse? Was it the king beneath the waves? Was it his own father?
Was it something that lived within him, like a pearl ossifying with every bitten-back word, every hot flash of anger that he couldn’t let himself speak aloud?
And when had he begun to believe in any of this? He was afraid to sleep. Afraid to dream. Afraid of what seemed, moment by moment, to be becoming more real.
As Effy settled into bed—undisturbed by the lamp still aglow on her desk—Preston sat and watched and waited until her eyelids fluttered shut. Until her breathing grew heavy with sleep. She was safe there, cocooned in white sheets, and he felt the stress coiled in his muscles begin to unwind.
Then, when he was satisfied that her slumber was deep and complete, he tookLes Contes de Féesout of his satchel. Preston brushed his thumb briefly across the clothbound cover and felt a memory surge up. A memory of his father, arms braced around him as he read. It was often said that Argantian was nasal-sounding, guttural, but to Preston it was lilting and rhythmic, as comforting as a lullaby.
He opened to the index and ran his finger down the list of tales. He stopped when he found the one he was looking for: “Ville d’Ys.”Ker-Is, it would be, in Argant’s more provincial northern tongue. In Llyrian, it was Caer-Isel, for which the country’sbrutally contested capital had been named. Then he flipped to its page and read.
There was a king who reigned in the age of old, and he was known as a great king, a king for all the island, beloved and wise. He built a grand city of marble and stone. His city bustled with artisans and craftsmen, with bards and poets. It was called the city of Ys. He brought silver from the north and gold from the south to adorn himself and his only daughter, Dahut.
The king was a widower, and so he loved his daughter as well as he had once loved his wife. But Dahut was young and spirited and not always mindful of her duty. She often wandered from her tower in the king’s glorious castle, the tower which rang sonorously with the city’s bells. And during one of these wanderings, she encountered a handsome youth.
The youth loved her at once for her beauty, and she at once loved the youth for his graces and the dreams he put in her head of adventure and freedom. Dahut and the youth began to meet secretly at night, in only the silvery gleam of the moon. He swore he would keep faith with her always, and she swore in turn that she would renounce her crown and her title and live with him as a common maiden, not a princess.
But Dahut knew her father would never relinquish her, and, imprisoned in that gray tower, her days were ill and her nights worse. Her father came and went from her chamber as he pleased. And so, one evening, Dahut stole her father’s silver key and plotted her escape.
The youth came to the castle to aid her, but the king’s men caught him. He was dragged to the throne room, where he confessed all. Dahut was forced to watch as her father killed her life’s great love, and her screams could be heard through every corridor of the castle, her sobs for the dreams that had been stolen.
