Page 14 of A Theory of Dreaming (A Study in Drowning #2)
Until now, she had been far too intimidated to enter them.
She had preferred to hide herself away in one of the small, cramped rooms on the library’s upper floors, cached against one of the windows, where she was unlikely to encounter another student.
These reading rooms, with their high vaulted ceilings, their long mahogany tables, and their overstuffed leather armchairs, with the busts of great authors and artists resting on marble plinths at the end of each aisle, felt like a world she was not permitted to enter.
It had not helped, of course, that these rooms were always nearly overcrowded with students, all jockeying for the limited seats, and often hostile in their single-minded focus on essays or sketches or song compositions.
But it was different now. Effy was a literature student; she had helped to author a groundbreaking thesis, and she belonged here, just as much as anyone else.
She had a scholarly inquiry, and a purpose.
So, carrying Rockflower’s book against her chest, she sat down at one of the long tables.
The student to her right, wearing the sable and white of the history college, did not do so much as glance up, absorbed in his own reading.
The student to her left, wearing the music college’s violet, cast her a brief look, appearing more irritable at the interruption than anything, and then returned to his reading as well.
Effy opened the biography and took her notebook out of her satchel.
She had thrown out her architecture college–issued journals, with their red covers and stag head embossing, and though she was supposed to have been given green-and-gold literature college journals, they had not yet arrived.
This notebook was one she had purchased in Laleston, while she and Preston had stayed in the hotel writing their thesis.
Its navy-blue cover was agnostic, neutral—yet it set her apart from her peers, who were all working from their college-issued journals.
Shaking off this worry, and flipping to the section of Ardor’s biography titled “Marriage and Family,” Effy at last set to reading.
There is arguably no force more significant in Laurence Ardor’s life than love, be it romantic or familial; whether for his wife, Claribel Ardor, or for the mysterious “Lady A,” to whom many of Ardor’s later works are addressed.
Indeed, Ardor even wrote reverently of his father-in-law, the 1st Baron Landevale, to whom he owed a great debt—not only the transfer of his title and peerage but the latter years of his informal education, at the hands of the baron’s private tutors.
Laurence Ardor’s corpus could be said to be one magnificent and encompassing “letter of love” to those around him; or even an ode to the act of loving itself, in all of its forms. A romantic and a Romantic, Ardor’s passionate manner of living is echoed in his poetry.
Yet, just as much as Ardor’s life is marked by love, it is also marked by nearly unfathomable loss.
When Ardor was twenty-eight, his father-in-law, the baron, passed away due to a swift and unexpected fever.
Seven years later, his wife, Claribel, died in the same manner, leaving Ardor to raise his daughter and only child, Antonia, alone.
Only two years after that, another fever struck Ardor himself, and while he survived, he was weakened, bedridden, and blind.
It is in this condition that he—astonishingly—composed his magnum opus, “The Garden in Stone.”
Effy’s heart raced with this discovery as she clattered down the steps of the library, Rockflower’s biography tucked into her satchel and her notebook brimming with hastily scrawled notes.
She had found something, which was not exactly hidden, but which had been kept from her; something that, if she had followed the rote instructions of Professor Tinmew, she would have never happened upon at all.
Ardor’s poem had been written while he was blind, so he could not alone have made such meticulous formatting changes, all those scattered, bolded, and capitalized words.
She did not yet have all the pieces to make meaning out of this revelation, but it was enough to set her head spinning, just as it had when she had uncovered another secret, concerning another author—though one that had meant a great deal more to her than Ardor.
Even if things were not perfect, if her new place at the literature college felt precarious and infirm, if reporters were skulking after her and her fellow students were suspicious and cold, it was so much better than the way things had been.
Before Hiraeth. Before Preston. When she had been alone, adrift, with only the capricious comfort of the Fairy King and the unreal world she had built up in her mind, like a seawall against the tide.
Effy decided she would allow herself coffee and a scone at the Drowsy Poet to celebrate, after the turmoil of these past few days.
She was so absorbed in thinking about Ardor, and about this small reward, that she didn’t notice heads turning toward her as she walked.
She didn’t notice the posters until she was right outside the café, hand on the bronze doorknob.
CAMPAIGN FOR REINSTATEMENT OF DR. EDMUND CORBENIC, FMR. MASTER OF ARCHITECTURE
UNJUSTLY ACCUSED AND DECEITFULLY REMOVED
SHOULD ONE STUDENT’S SCURRILOUS CLAIMS RUIN A SUPERB AND DISTINGUISHED CAREER?
SIGN BELOW TO SAVE AN INNOCENT MAN’S REPUTATION AND LIFE!!!
DO NOT LET THE ACCUSER—EUPHEMIA “EFFY” SAYRE—GET AWAY WITH HER LIES!!!
Below were two black-and-white photos. One of them was of Master Corbenic, a face-on portrait, his black hair gelled neatly and the corners of his mouth curled up, just slightly, into a dimpled smile.
It was both the man she had known and not.
His features were familiar, but the camera had not managed to capture the gleam of hunger in his eyes.
Effy’s stomach pooled with that old, resurrected terror—the terror that it seemed she would never, ever be free from.
The second picture was grainy and poorly developed, more like a charcoal sketch than a photo.
Effy had to squint just to recognize the face as hers.
It was taken from the side, and at a slight distance, her blond hair and its black ribbon blurred in arrested motion.
Yet it was, unmistakably, her, walking away from the literature college, not more than two days ago.
And the camera had successfully managed to capture the fear in her gaze.
For just a moment, Effy felt her heart completely cease its beating.
It sputtered like a cold engine, then roared to life again. Students milled around her, pausing to read the posters that had been plastered on nearly every inch of the Drowsy Poet’s large glass window. Someone began to whisper, and the whispers spread through the swiftly gathering crowd.
Effy’s throat closed in on itself. The corners of her vision darkened. And then she strode forward, pushing through the crowd, grasping every poster she could reach and ripping them from the window in long, ragged tears.