Page 26 of A Theory of Dreaming (A Study in Drowning #2)
And so, Effy stared straight ahead at the chalkboard, unflinching and waiting. Months ago she would have fled without looking back. Now—just barely—she managed to hold on. For better or worse, she now had an ironclad grip on what was real.
Professor Tinmew entered several moments later, walking unenthusiastically to the lectern and clearing his phlegmy throat. Effy could feel each staggered, painful beat of her heart.
“Now, if you’ll open to page forty-two, we can begin the scansion...”
Even as the voices of her classmates rose, dutifully counting off their numbers, there was something thick and perturbed in their tone.
Without looking around, Effy knew that their eyes had not left her.
But at the very least, Professor Tinmew did not notice any disturbance and did not pay her any mind.
He cleared his throat again and then began his lecture, which, as much as Effy tried, she could not manage to hear.
Her heart was pounding too loudly in her ears.
She wanted Angharad , and Angharad. Her well-loved copy was back in her bedroom, tucked beneath her pillow, as it always was.
She wanted to feel the familiarity of the pages and think of the woman who had written them, her steady green stare, like a lighthouse in the dark.
But it had been hard to look at the book as of late.
Because even though Angharad’s autograph was on the title page, the front cover still said Emrys Myrddin , and when her eyes passed over the words— “I will love you to ruination,” the Fairy King said —she felt the most awful, perverse longing for him, which sickened her like a fever.
But the Fairy King was gone and he had taken the magic with him. But—perhaps books could still offer her a way to survive. They could anchor her in the real world instead of giving her an escape into a false one. After all, that was the point of Tinmew’s approach, wasn’t it? To do away with dreams?
And so, with trembling hands, she reached into her satchel and removed Rockflower’s biography of Ardor. She placed it noiselessly on her desk and turned to the marked page.
One can imagine, then, why he would have been inspired to compose “The Garden in Stone,” a work about a frozen, unchanging garden, trapped in the sinister rigidity of time.
Within the garden, the maiden sleeps and dreams, her mind at work even when her body is magicked to immortal stillness.
And, of course, there is the gallant knight who comes to her rescue, ultimately freeing the maiden and her garden from this ill fate.
Something began to settle in Effy as she read. A calmness as she was removed a layer from reality. Her grip began to slacken.
Composing this poem while blind was of course no mean feat, and Ardor employed an amanuensis to accomplish it.
An amanuensis is an individual who is hired to transcribe what has been dictated by another.
Historically, this was often a slave or a servant; however, in Ardor’s case, there is no record that any of his servants were literate.
It is therefore generally agreed that his amanuensis was his own daughter, Antonia.
At that, what had been calm within Effy began to pulse, like a passel of birds taking flight.
She flipped more hurriedly through the book, searching on every page for the word, the name, Antonia .
Whenever she saw it, she tore out a scrap of paper from her journal and used it mark the place.
This provided such a welcome distraction that, when Professor Tinmew finally dismissed the class, she was the last one up out of her seat, scrambling to exit the lecture hall and far less concerned about the students’ prying eyes.
The library. It had not become a safe place to her, despite her best efforts these past few weeks, but Effy let her determination cleave through her fear.
She clambered up the steps, her cheeks pink and stinging from the cold, crammed herself into the elevator, and rose into the stacks.
They were as they had always been: nearly as dark as a dungeon, musty, and silent.
Effy made her way to the A section, stepping through the weak, rheumy pools of lamplight. There, she ran her finger across the spines of the books, organized by the authors’ surnames— Aldrich, Amity, Appleton, Ardor . There were six titles under the surname Ardor .
She had not consulted the librarian before heading into the stacks, so this had been a gamble, but astonishingly, it seemed to have paid off. The very first book was a slim paperback, its maroon cover laminated, like a reading primer. Effy rubbed off the dust with the sleeve of her sweater.
Letters I know, yet in spite of this, I am hopeful.
Perhaps foolishly so. Clementina says that Grandfather’s death has marked our family for further doom, and I came back from our tea crying, but Miss Maud told me that Clementina speaks in superstitions overheard from her parents, and has no wisdom herself.
Then Miss Maud made me scones with clotted cream, though I felt too ill to eat.
But that was yesterday, when I was twelve.
I am thirteen now and—Mother says—nearly a woman grown.
I don’t know if this is true, or what it means, if so.
I still have my dolls and my velvet rabbit with buttons for eyes.
I still have my book of fairy tales, which is falling apart for how much I have read it.
I do so like the story of Ys. The city that fell.
Father says I should read the Neiriad (?) if I want the full tale, but when I tried to read the dusty old copy from his library, it made me tired. There are no mermaids in the Neiriad.
For all this talk of being a woman now, Father still tucked me into bed last night.
Perhaps it was the last time? I do like it when he reads to me, and there is a quote from the Neiriad that has been stuck in my mind.
“A king can reign a thousand years from a castle built on clouds.” If only girlhood were such a kingdom. Nothing would ever change.
Until next time, Diary
—A.A.