Page 85 of A Theory of Dreaming
Even the bells, he realized, had gone silent.
He leaned forward again, resting his head on Effy’s pillow, among the tangles and folds of her golden hair. More tears came, streaking his face with salt.
And then he felt it. The subtlest shift, like water moving under its mantle of ice. Preston looked up, and—
Effy took a breath and opened her eyes.
“Oh,” she whispered, before he could react, before he could even speak. “You’re here.”
“Yes.” He let out a shaky sound that was almost a laugh; he was so delirious with relief that it just bubbled out of him. “I’ll always be here.”
She reached up a hand, fingers quivering, and brushed them across his cheek. “You’re crying.”
“I know.”
“I’ve never seen you do that before.”
He let out another tremulous breath. He grasped Effy’s hand and held it there against his face. Tears trickled between their dovetailed fingers. “I know,” he said again. “It’s because I love you.”
Her throat bobbed as she swallowed. “I don’t want to make you cry.”
“It’s all right. There’s always a chance that you’ll cry when you let yourself love someone.”
Effy nodded, and then tears sprang to the corners of her eyes,making their green color shine. “I want to go home,” she said. “Will you—will you take me home?”
“Yes.” He tasted the salt on his tongue. “Always.”
He bent over and lifted her—he would not have had the strength to do it in the real world, in the world above, but this realm had been built for him and, within it, whatever he wished would come true. He slung Effy’s arms around his shoulders and braced his own around her back and below her knees. The bridal carry, he had heard it called. The long, diaphanous train of her white nightgown skimmed the marble floor.
Preston walked from the first chamber without looking back. He left behind the statue of the scholar and the mermaid and the maiden and the knight and the king. He left them behind in their eternal sleep.
The second chamber was not as it had been before. The green torches on the wall burned low, more smoke than fire, casting the room in a filmy light. The air was dense and humid, the scent of salt so thick that Preston struggled to breathe. His clothes grew damp; there was a cold sheen on Effy’s skin.
Panic stirred in Preston’s chest as he looked around. The marble walls were fissuring with cracks. The window glass seemed to have grown thinner, rippling like wax paper. Water was leaking in through narrow spaces, deepening the puddles on the floor, making everything hazy and dim andclose. The world pressed in on him from all sides.
Effy clutched weakly at his shirt, her lashes fluttering. Hetightened his grip as he walked forward, to the base of her statue. Again, he knew what he would see when he reached it, but there was nothing that could assuage the agony he felt when he laid eyes on it, through the briny smog.
Her statue was cracked, right down its center. The crevasse went from the top of her head to her bare feet, and in it grew moss and algae and tiny white barnacles. Seaweed strands were draped over her limbs, dead starfish pasted to her cheek.
Horror rooted Preston to the ground, and for a moment he couldn’t speak. Effy shifted against him, pressing her face to his shirt and giving a soft, plaintive mewling sound. Her fingers slackened slightly.
Whenever he had lingered here before, he had been so desperate to stay, so reluctant to return to the real world in all of its banal miseries. But now, as he walked, he kept squeezing his eyes shut, hoping that, at any moment, he would be thrust back. That he would wake.
You’re running out of time, some voice from within him said.
“Effy.” Preston jostled her slightly. “Stay awake, all right?”
“I’m trying,” she murmured.
He could hear them again now—the bells. Stumbling against the slick ground, Preston turned away from her broken statue and walked toward the archway to the final chamber. His heart thudded unevenly, out of rhythm with the music of the bells. Out of rhythm with his own labored breathing.
Preston stepped into the third chamber and found that he was not alone.
The king’s statue was in the distance, and the bells swung and tolled above, but before him, in the very center of the room, stood Master Gosse.
His adviser turned to him. His face had a ghostly pallor and was dewed with sweat, but when he saw Preston, he smiled.
“Héloury,” he said, “I didn’t expect you so soon.”
