Page 9 of A Theory of Dreaming
“All right.” Preston stood stiffly, hands clenched at his sides, as if he, too, feared to touch her. Did he think she would crumble—like weather-weary, ancient stone? Did he think his touch uniquely ruinous, or her especially fragile?
These questions exhausted Effy. She could have circled the same ones endlessly, her mind an ever-turning gyre. Or, she realized, she could simply sleep.
“I think I’ll go to bed,” she said. The words came out in a gentle lilt—the idea was even more delightful to speak aloud than it was to articulate in her own mind.
Preston frowned. “It’s four thirty.”
Was it? The hours seemed to have compressed, folded in on themselves and then around her, like a black shroud. Effy stepped lightly over to her bedside table and picked up the glass bottle of sleeping pills. It was nearly full, and the heft of it in her hands was by itself a relief.
Preston did not speak as she plucked out one of the tablets, placed it on her tongue, and swallowed. He only watched, throat pulsing, as she turned to undress. The space between them—no more than a few feet—took on a bleary feel, as if he were looking at her through the glaze of a half-remembered dream.
At last Effy lay down. She pulled the covers up to her chin and turned away from Preston, facing the wall. Unlike the pink pills, the sleeping pills rarely failed her. Within moments, she was steeped in exquisite, oblivious darkness.
Four
“My darling girl!” the Fairy King gasped, as I shuddered and wept, flooding the tributaries made by the creases of our sheets with salt water. “Do not tremble—do not fear—let my touch chase away the covetous darkness of your dreams!”
—fromAngharadby Angharad Myrddin, 191 AD
In all the time Preston had known her, Effy had never slept easily. Always he felt her settling and resettling beside him; between the fretwork of his lashes he saw her shift again and again, gingerly sliding herself out of his grasp. His arms would fall from her waist, and she would move infinitesimally away from him on the mattress. All the while he would feign sleep and keep the feeling of bereftness to himself, no more than a twinging flutter in his chest.
Now Preston was astonished to watch her curl between the sheets, clasp her hands below her chin, and let her eyes flutter shut. Her breathing slowed, chest rising and falling with a measured heaviness. It occurred to him almost as a metamorphosis, like in the old myths: a mortal magicked into a fish or a flower, a maiden transformed into a slender, sinuous laurel tree. One living creaturechanged to another. Only—the life of a fish or a tree or a flower was nothing like that of a human’s. It was brief, dull, simple. Perhaps blessedly so.
At that thought, Preston suddenly had the urge to wake her. But her sleep seemed peaceful, dreamless. In the pooling lamplight, her golden hair took on the sheen of sunken treasure, bleary and below-surface, a layer removed from his touch. The tip of her nose was pink, which was how he knew she had been crying—or at least close to it—before he’d come in.
Perhaps he should have asked her about it. Perhaps he should have pressed her. He glanced over at her desk and saw Ardor’s book there, tossed hastily, as if in anger, the corner of the cover bent and the pages ruffled. He picked it up and flipped to the dog-eared page, the prologue to “The Garden in Stone.”
When upon your pallid cheek
The purple twilight lay
I came, an errant-knight oblique,
To trespass the gray arch-way
Preston did not remember being especially impressed with Ardor’s work, and reading it now, he found it rather sparse in meaning. Well, it was a first-year’s subject for a reason, he supposed. Settling into Effy’s chair, he smoothed the book flat and picked up a pen.
As she slept behind him, silent and still but for her breathing, Preston marked up the pages of her book, etching in theappropriate number above each syllable. Effy never woke. When he had finished the scansion, he closed the book again and stood. Outside, night had fallen, swift and total in its blackness, and the window glass was opaque with hardened snow.
He checked his watch. It was only past six, but he felt dreadfully weary himself. When he reached down to unbutton his shirt, his finger brushed against the dragon pin. It had warmed with the heat of his body, and now it felt less foreign to him, less unnatural to his person.
Quietly, and with agonizing slowness, Preston slipped into bed next to Effy. She did not stir as he settled himself against the pillows, the ends of her blond hair tickling his cheek. He reached over to tug the chain on the lamp, extinguishing the room’s only light.
Preston closed his eyes and tried to slow his breathing. For all his fretting, sleep found him quickly, too.
He woke with his cheek pressed to stone, his mouth tasting of salt and smoke.
Preston pushed himself off the ground, and when he rose, the air—which had been an almost solid thing, dense and brackish—seemed to shift with him, as if he were shaking off a heavy velvet cloak. He blinked, and raised a hand to wipe condensation from his glasses, only to find that he was not wearing them. Yet he could see perfectly well; the details of the world were crisp and clear around him.
That was the moment he realized he was dreaming.
He drew in a breath (a rather briny breath) and began to takein these strange surroundings. He was in a long hall of gray-white stone. Cut into the walls on either side was a series of niches, precise and evenly spaced. Within each niche, half-cloaked in shadow and half-doused in rheumy strains of light, was a marble statue.
Preston took a step forward, to the nearest one. Its plinth was engraved with words that had been worn away by water and by time. He could pick out only a few letters. The statue itself was enormous, at least twice as tall as he was, and his eyes strained to follow the line from base to the lintel.
The statue was of a man—a young man, as far as Preston could make out, wearing what looked like full academic dress, a robe-like gown with a hood, the attire that the university required its students wear for formal events. The statue was unpainted marble, so Preston couldn’t discern the color of the lining, which would have told him which college this statue-man attended. Under one arm was a stack of books, and the other arm was raised outward, brandishing a stave.
The hood of his robe was down, baring his rather untidy-looking hair and his face. His expression was almost defiant, chin held aloft. But as Preston drew closer, squinting, he saw that the statue’s eyes were flung open in awe, as if he were being confronted with something he both feared and longed for beyond measure.
