Page 64 of A Theory of Dreaming
“Close your eyes,” Master Gosse said.
He did. And the real world slipped away from him at once.
This time, when Preston opened his eyes, he was not alone amid the brine and smoke and the rising marble walls. Master Gosse was kneeling beside him, coughing and spluttering, as if his journey to the palace beneath the sea had not been nearly so easy as Preston’s. In fact, his dark hair flopped over his forehead in soaked curls, and his skin had a sheen of dampness. Preston stood as Gosse remained doubled over, swearing.
“Saints be damned,” he rasped. “It doesn’t get any better, does it?”
Preston didn’t reply. Instead he offered his adviser a hand and pulled him to his feet.
After a moment catching his breath, Gosse glanced solicitously around. “Let’s take our time now, shall we? I’m sure there is so much left to see.”
Something occurred to Preston then. A little flicker of realization, which darted and spasmed through his mind like a moth mid-flight.
“You know where we are, don’t you?” Preston shifted in front of his adviser, barring him from stepping farther through the chamber. “You’ve always known.”
“Well, yes,” Gosse replied easily, “in a sense. It’s clear that this is the sunken palace of Neirin, or at least, it is one’s imagining of such a place. The once-great city fallen beneath the waves.”
“One’s imagining,” Preston repeated. “So you think this is—what? A little boy’s fantasy?”
“You aren’t a little boy, are you?” Master Gosse smiled at him congenially. “I think that nearly anyone on this island, Argantian or Llyrian, young or old, would imagine it much the same. The question is whyyouare here, and they are not.”
Preston was surprised by the surging of rage he felt. Yet it was becoming more familiar, this fury. He had certainly felt it when he tackled Southey to the ground. He thought:This ismydream. You’ve sullied it.But in the end, he stepped away, and let Master Gosse wander farther through the chamber.
Still, the anger smoldered within him like green fire.
Gosse hummed as he strode about the room, occasionally stopping before a statue, examining it and mumbling to himself. Preston stood in silence. And when Master Gosse tired of the first chamber, and walked through the archway to the second, Preston followed without speaking.
Right away Preston noticed something different in this room. There was a heaviness in the air, a moisture, as if water were beginning to leak through the cracks in the walls. The torches on the wall were burning low, more smoke than flame. In the bleary half darkness, Preston made his way to the plinth upon which Effy’s statue stood.
A protective instinct rose in him—he did not want Master Gosse to see it. Did not want his adviser to know that this was his heart, laid bare, that above everything else, this was what he cherished, what he would do anything to protect. He didn’t trust Gosse with the fullest extent of the truth. He had seen what Gosse had already done with incomplete confessions and bald lies.
But Master Gosse didn’t pay the statue any mind. He merely paced on past it, into the third chamber.
And Effy still stood, to Preston’s great relief. He peered up, following the line of her marble body from her bare feet to her face. There were no fissures he could see, but where previously there had been no accumulated grime, nothing to mar her, moss and barnacles now grew along her arms. Seaweed was draped over her shoulders, and a dead, desiccated starfish clung to her cheek. Panicked, Preston stumbled back.
“No,” he whispered, into the sodden and clammy air. “Please...”
If Effy wasn’t safe here, in his dreamed kingdom, then she wasn’t safe in the real world. She wasn’t safe anywhere. His heart started to pound, as loudly as the bells in his ear.
The bells.
He looked back up at Effy, and then through the archway to the third chamber, where Master Gosse had disappeared. Preston dropped to his knees, as if through penitence he could reverse the damage, make the statue clean and whole and new again.
But as he knelt to the ground, he caught a glimpse of something gold and glittering on the marble floor. He reached over and grasped for it. The metal bit into his fingers, and when he opened his hand, he saw the dragon pin—shiny, unmarred, the emerald in its eye still gleaming. Its fall beneath the waves had not damaged it.
Yet it felt cold in his hand, like a dead thing. Preston let it drop to the floor again. Master Gosse noticed nothing; he had nearly reached the threshold to the hall of the king.
Preston looked back up, desperately, at Effy’s statue one last time. Still nothing had changed. It was only now that he saw one more horrifying detail: her eyes were closed.
He got to his feet unsteadily, movements clumsy with fear. It was that fear that sent him clambering after Master Gosse, reaching his adviser just as they both came through the archway and into the third chamber.
The king’s statue was where it had been, silver hand pooling with the light from the green torches, the massive bells above him ringing. Preston didn’t have to ask Master Gosse whether he heard them. His adviser paced forward as if the walls themselves were not shuddering with the sound, as if their peals did not seem to risk cracking the window glass and letting the water pour in.
Master Gosse paused at the foot of the king’s statue. “Neirin,” he said in a friendly way, as if he and the dead ruler were old acquaintances. Then he turned to Preston, an enigmatic smile on his face. “Don’t you think?”
Testily, Preston replied, “Who else could it be?”
“I just find it interesting,” Master Gosse said, putting a hand under his chin, “that you would dream him this way. The way he is portrayed in theNeiriad.”
