Page 19 of A Theory of Dreaming (A Study in Drowning #2)

The third category of historic surnames from northern Argant include concepts such as personal splendor and brilliance—power, dignity, eminence, veneration. From the old Argantian words heluou (“serious”) and ri (“prince”) comes the rare modern surname “Héloury.”

Sleep could not find him. Or perhaps he would not let it.

Effy went to the bathroom to take her pills, returning in her lace-edged silk nightdress and a gauzy, cream-colored robe that made something clench in the bottom of his belly.

Then Preston watched in astonishment as she pulled the covers up, nestled her head against the pillows, closed her eyes, and slept.

I love you , he thought as he looked at her sleeping form. I love you. For some reason it had become so difficult to speak aloud. Perhaps because his next thought, always, was I might lose you.

His mind was starting to escape him. Surely that was the only explanation. A little bit of madness, carried back from Hiraeth, like poison in his blood. It was splicing his sleep with nightmares. It was making him feel unmoored from himself, moved more easily to anger, to fear.

Yet there were some things for which he could conjure no explanation.

The water in his watch. The fact that Master Gosse had been there; he had seen what Preston had seen.

Was it possible for two people to experience the same hallucination?

The words of the strange man in the palace returned to him.

Young unbeliever, your mind as sharp as steel; it is for you and only you that the great bells peal.

These were not the thoughts of a sane person, surely.

Preston’s gaze drew away from Effy, to the bottles of pills on her bedside table.

If he put one of the pink tablets on his tongue and swallowed it, would that eradicate these thoughts?

Obliterate his imagination? And the white tablets, the sleeping pills—would they allow him one peaceful, oblivious slumber?

After they had returned—after they had woken—Master Gosse had grasped Preston forcefully by the collar. His brow was beaded with sweat; his blue eyes were wild and wheeling.

“Did it work, Héloury?” he demanded in a rasp. “I saw nothing but black—I could sense something, at a distance, but I could not reach it. I could not move. My mind could only turn on in my still body. Was it the same for you? What did you see?”

Preston had swallowed, acutely aware of how Gosse’s knuckles were brushing his throat. “I saw—”

And then, blessedly, Effy had rescued him with her knock on the door.

Remembering it, Preston let out a breath of relief.

He could not put off Master Gosse indefinitely, but at least for now, the dream was his own.

And it truly was his own—at least, that was what the man in the palace had said.

Son of Argant. Son of Llyr. This world has been built for you. Now you may mold it to your desires.

And so he had. His father had appeared to him, just as he had been before the accident, before they had tossed dirt upon his coffin and spoken blessings over his corpse in the old language of Argant.

Before his mother had wept and Preston had put his arm around her and pressed her face against his chest to muffle her sobs, because he knew she would have hated the funeral guests to overhear.

Before his brother, Oliver, had locked himself in his room for nearly two days and Preston had to break the lock from the outside, just to find Ollie curled on the floor, tracks of salt drying on his cheeks, his gaze glassy and empty.

Preston closed his eyes, willing these memories away. Instead, he filled his mind with the fresh thoughts of his father, the warmth of his embrace within the palace’s marble walls. The dream felt as real to him as any memory. Realer, perhaps.

Still he had more questions than answers.

Still the bells rang from that unknown source.

And so, sitting there, with the vestiges of the dream washing over him like the foam-lipped tide, Preston decided that he would try to uncover the truth.

Just because these occurrences seemed unreasonable didn’t mean he had to be.

He did not have to give himself over entirely to fairy tales and magic.

But perhaps that would not be a bad place to begin. His father’s voice echoed, bleary and rippling, as if he were hearing it drift upward from below water.

“‘But all was not lost, when the city of Ys sank beneath the waves. Under the sea, mermaids pray in the cathedral. Under the sea, fire burns green.’”

Preston got to his feet with a start. He dug into his satchel for a handful of change, slipped his coat over his shoulders, and hurried outside, to the nearest phone booth.

The wind had gone quiet, but the still air had a sharpness to it, pricking him all over with needles of cold.

It was not much warmer inside the telephone booth, and Preston’s stiff fingers shook as he slotted in the coins.

Putting the receiver to his ear, he listened to the hum of static and then the grating ring. One. Two. Three.

“Hello?”

He felt so relieved to hear his mother’s voice that his knees nearly buckled. “Mother?”

“Preston?” She sounded both bleary and alarmed. It was late—he must have woken her. “What’s going on? Are you all right?”

He exhaled, a white cloud of breath. “Yes,” he said. “I’m fine.”

In a sense this was true; he hadn’t been physically harmed. Perhaps that was why he managed to make his voice convincing enough for his mother to give a relieved sigh in return. There was some shuffling as she adjusted the receiver.

“It’s so late, lovey,” she said. “What are you doing up?”

Preston swallowed so hard he was certain she would be able to hear it on her end of the line. The soft familiarity of her tone, the term of endearment—all of it made him feel quivery and painfully homesick.

“I couldn’t sleep,” he admitted. “For several days now, actually.”

“I read the article, in the Llyrian Times ,” his mother said. He could almost see the way her eyebrows drew together with concern. “They haven’t been bothering you, have they? The reporters?”

“No, not really.” He was not going to tell his mother about Finisterre.

“How about the other students?”

He was certainly not going to tell her about Southey, either. “They’ve been all right.”

Preston cringed at his own unconvincing voice. Effy was right; he was a terrible liar.

His mother sighed softly. “What about Master Gosse? He’s your adviser and the head of the college. Surely he’s able to help.”

Surely , Preston thought, with no small amount of bitterness. “It’s fine, Mother,” he said wearily. “I was prepared for this. Part and parcel of proposing a controversial theory.”

A brief pause. “And what about Effy? How is she?”

His mother had never met Effy, of course, but Preston had spoken of her often during their phone calls.

Often enough that his mother had grown quite invested in their courtship.

So invested, in fact, that she had once, in an overly innocent voice, asked if he would be needing her ring—a family heirloom.

No , Preston had answered quickly, a flush prickling his cheeks.

And then, with a rush of guilt and sadness, he had thought to himself, I wouldn’t be able to put it on her.

He didn’t know what she would do, what she would say—if it would only be a reminder of everything she had lost and could never recover.

“She’s all right,” he said, and in fact, he wasn’t sure if it was a lie or not.

Since they had returned to Caer-Isel, she had not spoken of the Fairy King.

She had not spoken of her dreams, or her nightmares, if indeed she had any.

She had taken her medication fastidiously.

She was not enjoying her classes as much as he had hoped, but. ..

He had to believe that Effy was all right. To conceive of anything else was terrifying. It would ruin him. So Preston drew a breath and said again, “She’s doing all right.”

“Good,” his mother replied, and perhaps she knew not to press him. “I was hoping I might get to meet her soon, but I might have to wait a long while.”

Preston frowned. “Why?”

“Argant has suspended all travel visas from Llyr. I suppose it didn’t make it into any of the Llyrian papers.” Preston’s heart dropped, and quickly his mother added, “It shouldn’t affect you, of course. You have both of your passports at hand.”

“Right,” he said in a weak voice. “I’ll still be home for the holiday break, I promise.”

“I can’t wait, lovey.”

“Me either.” Preston shoved up his glasses so that he could rub his eyes. At last he was beginning to feel tired. “Mother, would you be able to send me something from home?”

“Of course. Is it one of your books?”

“Sort of,” he said. “Or, well—I think it’s one of Father’s.”

Instantly there was silence, cleaved through only with the low bristling of static. He heard his mother draw in a very sharp, short breath.

They never spoke of his father, not even obliquely, not even an offhand mention.

It was a tacit agreement in his family, one that had been observed since the day of his funeral.

It made Preston wonder if they would ever speak of him again.

If the passage of time could resurrect, or if it could only bury.

“A book,” his mother said at last. Her tone was blank, almost alarmingly so. “What book is it?”

“It’s that old book of fairy tales,” Preston said. “He used to read it to me when I was young. I can’t remember the title, but I think it had a green clothbound cover. Do you remember it?”

Another long stretch of silence.

“It’s in Argantian,” he said. “Maybe it’s in one of the boxes in the attic...”

He trailed off, trying to imagine his mother’s face on the other end of the line. Was it pale, horrified? Was she going to cry? He regretted saying anything at all. This is ridiculous , he thought to himself, suddenly angry. He was a scholar, not a dreamer.