Page 13 of A Theory of Dreaming (A Study in Drowning #2)
“What will you do?” she teased. “Challenge them to a duel in the courtyard?”
“No,” he said, without a hint of humor. “I’ll write them up. They can answer to Gosse.”
“Then they’ll hate you for more than just being a saboteur. They’ll hate you for abusing your position.”
“It’s not abusing . I read the student handbook. ‘Students are not to denigrate, persecute, or maltreat their fellow students; the punishment for this behavior may range from writing lines to, in the most extreme cases, expulsion.’”
Effy wondered when he had found the time to read the five-hundred-plus-page student handbook, much less memorize parts of it word for word.
“Well, I suppose that’s good,” she said. “Though it’s hard for me to think of Gosse as a strict disciplinarian.”
Behind his glasses, Preston’s gaze shifted in an unreadable way. “Gosse is full of surprises.”
The bell rang, and with one last squeeze of her hand, Preston departed.
Drawing a breath, Effy pushed open the door to Master Tinmew’s classroom.
At the very least, attendance was not recorded in these large lectures, so her absence yesterday would not be officially noted—and, she hoped, it was not noticed at all.
She strode purposefully up the aisles and found a seat in an empty row, eyes fixed straight ahead, chin held aloft.
Do not cringe for them.
Only a few students glanced up from their books to watch her.
She hoped the novelty of her presence was wearing off.
It helped, of course, that she had her uniform now, her pleated skirt ironed neatly, her blazer buttoned across her breast. Having lost her black ribbon, Effy had tied up her hair with a white one instead, knotted twice to make sure it held tight.
Dismally she realized that she had already gone from wishing to be exceptional to wishing to be invisible.
Her hands trembled as she removed her book from her satchel.
As she searched for her place, Master Tinmew dawdled his way to the lectern.
He gave a few dry words of greeting and then started the recitation.
This time Effy was prepared; thanks to Preston’s carefully inked numbers, she was able to join in without hesitation.
Her voice mingled with all the rest, and no one gave her any pointed stares.
Invisible indeed. Effy let out a quiet breath of relief.
She’d also had the chance to study Ardor’s poem on her own.
After reading his short biography in Rockflower’s introduction, she’d grown genuinely intrigued; the lines had begun to come alive, like vines reaching slowly and hesitantly out from the earth.
And she had noticed that certain words were written in bold capital letters.
Effy checked her own book against Preston’s and found that it was not an error in her copy.
It had to be intentional on Ardor’s part, but she could find no pattern to it, no relation of the words to each other.
They did not appear in any consecutive sentences; sometimes she could go for pages without seeing one.
And should it PLEASE the maiden fair—
The rust-checked latch sprang FREE —
And yet more. Effy listened raptly to Master Tinmew’s lecture, hoping that he might offer an explanation.
But he only rambled on about meter and rhyme, hardly bothering to inflect his voice with any amount of enthusiasm.
The other students took their dutiful notes, and none even so much as glanced her way.
Her nerves were beginning to ease. Perhaps she did not need to be so cowardly; perhaps her fears had been exaggerated.
By the end of the class, Effy had built her courage. It burned within her like a live ember. For the last few moments she sat at attention, arm coiled, waiting for Tinmew to ask—
“Now then, are there any questions?”
Effy’s arm sprang up.
Several other students raised their hands, and Tinmew cast his gaze lazily over the crowd. When he spotted her, something flickered in his dull brown eyes—an indulgent sort of curiosity, though Effy supposed it was better than contempt.
“Yes,” he said. “Miss Sayre?”
Effy cleared her throat. Though she looked determinedly ahead, at Professor Tinmew and nothing else, she could feel the stares of the other students on her, raking her like invisible claws. She winced, but managed to keep her voice even as she spoke.
“I had a question about the formatting of the text,” she said.
“If you look, beginning on page two and continuing on for the duration of the poem, there are several words on each page that are printed in bold and capitalized. Obviously, since form was so important to Ardor, I wanted to know, what is the significance of the bolded words?”
One of Professor Tinmew’s thin brows arched. There was the sound of shuffling paper as the other students flicked through the pages of their books. After a moment, during which Tinmew seemed barely to be thinking at all, he at last replied.
“Traditionally, one would expect that the bolding and capitalization of text is meant to emphasize the bolded and capitalized words.” His voice had a bored sort of tone; there were several low snickers in the crowd.
“But,” Effy said, “why emphasize these words? They seem chosen at random—”
“ Nothing in Ardor’s work is arbitrary, or, as you put it, ‘chosen at random,’” Tinmew cut in sharply.
“The visual element of the words, the way they appear on the page, is of utmost significance. If you look at this first word, please , on page two, you can see that when it is capitalized, the arch of the letter P has a more domineering appearance, emphasizing the totality of the curse’s power, which has turned the garden into stone, whereas the L , when capitalized, has a right angle, emphasizing the rigidity of the maiden’s captive state, the unchanging nature of the cursed garden. ..”
And so Tinmew went on, explaining how each of the letters highlighted some difficult-to-perceive quality of the text.
Effy looked down at her book and frowned.
She traced the letter P with the tip of her finger, trying to internalize Tinmew’s analysis.
Yet by the time the bell rang, Effy still found herself unsatisfied.
She shoved her materials into her satchel, shrugged on her coat, and walked briskly out of the literature college, back into the unyielding cold.
The ink on her left palm had faded with washing, but the word was still—just barely—discernible. Rockflower. After taking a sweep of the area, checking for reporters cached within the crowd or lurking behind pillars, Effy turned and marched with determination toward the library.
Invigorated by this purpose, Effy climbed the steps to the second floor of the library and walked right up to the circulation desk.
As she breathed in the scent of old paper and watched the dust motes float through shafts of honey-hued light, her mind was invaded with a memory.
Months ago she had been standing in precisely this same place, her body abuzz with nervousness, her heart pounding with a somatic, almost thoughtless terror.
She remembered the boy who had approached her, who had inked his number on her hand.
As the student ahead of her in the line thanked the librarian and left, Effy stepped forward, drawing in a breath.
That was then , she thought firmly. This is now.
The writing on her palm was her own. The fear she felt was an ancient thing, a relic dredged from its sunken tomb.
At least, this was what she tried to convince herself of as she greeted the librarian with a shaky smile.
“Good morning,” she said. “I’m looking for some books by Rockflower—Francis Rockflower. Do you have them in?”
Without greeting her in return, the librarian began to page through her enormous ledger book. “Is it his biography of Laurence Ardor that you’re interested in?”
“Yes.”
The librarian peeled off a scrap of paper from a small notepad and scrawled down a series of numbers. “This is where you’ll find it in the stacks. We should have several copies.”
“Wonderful,” Effy said. Her heart skipped, enlivened by this small victory. “Thank you.”
This had gone far, far better than her last trip to the circulation desk, when she had tried to research Myrddin, only to find that all the books on him had been checked out by some dastardly P.
Héloury . As she made her way through the shadowy, labyrinthine stacks, the memory occurred to her with a sheepish sort of joy.
The past she carried with her did not have to be a heavy thing.
And when she needed to rest, she could put it down.
Following the librarian’s instructions, Effy found the book easily. A Complete Biography of Laurence Ardor, Lord of Landevale , by Dr. Francis A. Rockflower.
It was more worn than she expected—its lavender clothbound cover whitening in places and bent at the corners—and also longer.
In the shuddery, inconstant light of the stacks, it was impossible to read anything lengthy without straining her eyes.
So Effy took the book off the shelf, returned to the circulation desk, and checked it out.
Then, with a spike of adrenaline, Effy did something she had never done before in all her time at the university: she went into one of the library’s large reading rooms.