Page 66 of A Theory of Dreaming
Nothing.
Gently, he laid a hand against her cheek. It was warm, as if with a fever, though her skin was blanched and colorless.If only she were sick, he thought bitterly. There was medicine for a fever. A simple, facile cure.
That thought made another rise in his mind. Preston glanced around the room until his gaze landed on the glass bottles of pills, lined up on her dresser. The pink tablets that kept the Fairy King and his unreal world at bay. The white tablets that smothered all her wicked thoughts and lulled her to sleep. Both of the bottles were no more than a quarter full.
If even that can’t save her...
Preston did not allow the sentence to go on. Instead, he brushed a strand of golden hair from Effy’s face, and said lowly, “Won’t you speak to me? Please?”
At that, Effy finally shifted, just slightly, to meet his gaze. Her eyes were glazed and terrifyingly empty.
“I don’t know what to say,” she mumbled.
“Just tell me what I can do. How I can help.”
She shook her head, gaze lowering again. “You can’t. You should just go.”
“Come on, Effy,” Preston said. His voice was rising in octaves, strained with desperation. “I’m not leaving.”
“I thought I could do it.” A small, choked breath. “I thought I was strong enough to survive all of this. Anyone else could. There’s just something wrong with me. Something that can’t be fixed.”
“There’s nothing wrong with you.” Preston’s fingers curled into his palm. “And you are strong. You’re stronger than anyone I know. It’s not a fault, to be in pain. It’s braver to hurt than to feel nothing at all.”
“No,” she whispered. “Don’t try to make it into something noble... I’m a burden to you. I always have been.”
Preston didn’t know what to say. How to make her believe it was not true. Words, always his most faithful allies, were insufficient now. He leaned over and, very tenderly, folded her into his arms.
“I chose this,” he murmured, his lips brushing the soft hollow of her cheek. “And I would choose it again, every time. You can’t take that away from me.”
Her chest swelled with a deep, tremulous breath, and for a moment Preston thought she was going to cry. But no tears fell from her eyes. There was only the bleak swelling of silence, blanketing the room like a heavy flurry of snow.
Preston managed to cajole Effy to her feet, and then to the bathroom. He filled the tub and she sat, hunched and naked within it,the notches of her spine pressing up through her skin. He hadn’t noticed the frightening extent of her weight loss until now.
He washed her, and brushed the tangles from her long hair. Preston would have carried her, had he been able, but as it was he managed to bundle her up in her robe and help her walk on unsteady legs back to the bedroom. He was reluctant to let her crawl into bed again. Instead, he maneuvered her toward her desk chair and sat her down in it. Her gaze had grown distant and bleary again, fixed on nothing.
He was desperate to keep her with him, to get her engaged insomething. He cast his eyes around the room. And then he saw Antonia Ardor’s book peeking out from under one of the pillows on her bed. Preston retrieved it and opened it to the page she had marked.
“‘Nothing is ever lost, only changed, and grief is no more than the knowledge that a wilted flower cannot be made again to bloom,’” Preston recited. “You’ve been reading this?”
Effy nodded.
His heart skipped a little bit as he read on. “‘Time even warps the panes of hothouse-glass, till they may be shattered with a wanting breath.’ She writes beautifully. Antonia.”
Again Effy nodded. There was a small silence, and then she said, in no more than a whisper, “There are bits of ‘The Garden in Stone’ where she made her own edits and additions. Like here...” She reached onto her desk for the copy of Ardor’s book, thumbed through it, and then read aloud: “‘The trail of silver light / confounds the errant-knight / the maiden seeks to follow / but in her bed she wallows.’”
Recognition lit up in his mind, sparking like a live wire. “That line?” Preston asked. “You’re sure she wrote it?”
“I think so.”
“May I look?”
Effy passed him the book. His eyes scanned the page, and indeed, the wordsilverwas capitalized and bolded. His memory had not failed him there. And if what Effy said was true, that this was Antonia’s addition... Preston knew that he was coming upon that essential knowledge, but he was not quite there yet. He was overturning stones and soon he would find what he was looking for—
There was a knock on the door.
Twenty-Three
She was like a mermaid for her beauty,
