Page 31 of A Theory of Dreaming (A Study in Drowning #2)

This collection of fairy tales, compiled both from the existing work of folklorists and by transcribing, for the first time, oral traditions from across the most far-flung provinces of Argant, represents an effort to articulate an Argantian “national character.” These tales, where beauty is a sign of grace, where destiny is formed at youth, where the humble peasant may one day become king, all represent fundamental truths about humanity, unifying principles, and even ethical doctrines.

If there is one thing I have learned, in the years I have spent studying and anthologizing folklore, it is that fairy tales are real.

Preston had begun to feel envious of Effy’s easy, seemingly untroubled sleep.

Over these past few weeks he had seen her, inexplicably, slip into the most effortless and tranquil slumbers.

It was utterly unlike her, and though Preston should have been cheered by this seeming progress, there was something eerie about it.

Perhaps it was finally vanquishing the Fairy King that had done it for her. If that was so, Preston had to imagine that he now had his own demon that needed exorcising. But was the demon Master Gosse? Was it the king beneath the waves? Was it his own father?

Was it something that lived within him, like a pearl ossifying with every bitten-back word, every hot flash of anger that he couldn’t let himself speak aloud?

And when had he begun to believe in any of this? He was afraid to sleep. Afraid to dream. Afraid of what seemed, moment by moment, to be becoming more real.

As Effy settled into bed—undisturbed by the lamp still aglow on her desk—Preston sat and watched and waited until her eyelids fluttered shut. Until her breathing grew heavy with sleep. She was safe there, cocooned in white sheets, and he felt the stress coiled in his muscles begin to unwind.

Then, when he was satisfied that her slumber was deep and complete, he took Les Contes de Fées out of his satchel.

Preston brushed his thumb briefly across the clothbound cover and felt a memory surge up.

A memory of his father, arms braced around him as he read.

It was often said that Argantian was nasal-sounding, guttural, but to Preston it was lilting and rhythmic, as comforting as a lullaby.

He opened to the index and ran his finger down the list of tales.

He stopped when he found the one he was looking for: “Ville d’Ys.

” Ker-Is, it would be, in Argant’s more provincial northern tongue.

In Llyrian, it was Caer-Isel, for which the country’s brutally contested capital had been named. Then he flipped to its page and read.

There was a king who reigned in the age of old, and he was known as a great king, a king for all the island, beloved and wise.

He built a grand city of marble and stone.

His city bustled with artisans and craftsmen, with bards and poets.

It was called the city of Ys. He brought silver from the north and gold from the south to adorn himself and his only daughter, Dahut.

The king was a widower, and so he loved his daughter as well as he had once loved his wife.

But Dahut was young and spirited and not always mindful of her duty.

She often wandered from her tower in the king’s glorious castle, the tower which rang sonorously with the city’s bells.

And during one of these wanderings, she encountered a handsome youth.

The youth loved her at once for her beauty, and she at once loved the youth for his graces and the dreams he put in her head of adventure and freedom.

Dahut and the youth began to meet secretly at night, in only the silvery gleam of the moon.

He swore he would keep faith with her always, and she swore in turn that she would renounce her crown and her title and live with him as a common maiden, not a princess.

But Dahut knew her father would never relinquish her, and, imprisoned in that gray tower, her days were ill and her nights worse. Her father came and went from her chamber as he pleased. And so, one evening, Dahut stole her father’s silver key and plotted her escape.

The youth came to the castle to aid her, but the king’s men caught him.

He was dragged to the throne room, where he confessed all.

Dahut was forced to watch as her father killed her life’s great love, and her screams could be heard through every corridor of the castle, her sobs for the dreams that had been stolen.

The king reached out, to take hold of his daughter’s hand and drag her back to her tower. But Dahut had now tasted true passion and pure love and would not be imprisoned again. From the king’s belt she wrestled his sword, and she cut off her own father’s hand to free herself from his grasp.

Distraught by the loss of her lover, Dahut fled the castle and dove into the ocean.

The saints took pity on her and, rather than let her drown, transformed her into a mermaid.

The king was fitted with a silver hand but, so aggrieved by the loss of his daughter, he never lifted a sword again.

Indeed, he rarely left his chambers, and the great city of Ys began to wilt and decay, as a flower garden left dry and unattended.

In retaliation for the king’s cruelty and apathy, it is said that the sea itself rose up and swallowed the city. The great stone cracked and the artisans and bards were drowned.

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. Under the sea, its great bells still toll.

And it is said that the city may one day rise again, lifting from its ocean tomb, and whoever first hears the music of the bells will be its new king.

It was so easy now, to slip into the sea-green water of his dreams. He no longer needed the rigid structure of Master Gosse’s ritual.

Preston only had to lie down beside Effy, feeling the brush of her warm body through the sheets, and close his eyes.

Within moments, the real world shuddered away.

He was kneeling on hard, cool stone. Brine and smoke drifted into his nose.

And when he opened his eyes, he saw the rising of the gray walls without the aid of his glasses, every detail crisp and sharp, just the same as it had been since the very first time.

And he did not even need to think of it to summon his father: already he stood before him, that warm smile on his face, and reached out a hand to pull Preston to his feet.

A part of Preston had hoped he would not hear them—the bells. But in the background, from that third chamber, they rang as sonorously as they ever had. His stomach turned, empty and sick with bewilderment and fear.

“It isn’t true, is it?” he asked. “I mean, it can’t be—none of this is real .”

His protests were pitiful, even to his own ears. He had stepped too far into the waters of magic, of unreality, that he could not return to the shore. A distant memory returned to him, an echo of his words, which he had spoken so many weeks ago to Effy at Hiraeth.

I think magic is just the truth that people believe.

He had been more right and more wrong than he even knew.

“It is whatever you wish it to be,” his father said.

Preston looked out the window. The ocean shivered and glistened with beams of light from the distant surface.

A school of fish, a white-bellied dolphin, something he couldn’t quite make out with bright green scales all darted past. No Master Gosse.

If this was really Preston’s kingdom, he had succeeded in banishing his adviser at last.

“So if this is the drowned city,” Preston said slowly, “then where is its king?”

He had seen him once. Preston now knew that was the man who had appeared to him, with his braided beard and his iron crown, with his deep blue eyes.

And he had also seen the statue, the marble reproduction of the king in that moment of fear, when his daughter, Dahut, had struck him the terrible wound and fled.

Or perhaps it was the moment that the king realized his city was sinking, that the saints were making him pay for his sins.

As if he could read his thoughts, his father replied, “The king is no man.”

“Then who...”

“Isn’t there something else you’d like to know?” his father cut in, not harshly, not unkindly. “You haven’t come here because you believe in fairy tales.”

“No,” Preston admitted. “I came here because...”

Because reality is too much to bear. Because everything else is too fragile, too changeable, too frightening. Because I have no power there.

He did not need to speak any of this aloud; his father knew the thoughts in his mind as if they were his own. The corner of his mouth lifted. He said, “Shall we go, then?”

Preston nodded. And then they walked through the archway, together, into Effy’s chamber and beyond.

As they walked, they talked, but only occasionally.

For the most part, Preston was content to be silent.

His father’s mere presence was enough. The knowledge that he was safe here, and that he would remain here, as long as Preston willed it.

In this world, in the drowned city, there was not even any silver in his father’s hair.

Preston woke to the sound of Effy’s soft weeping.

It was so muffled and quiet that at first he thought he had misheard, or that it was the vague vestige of a dream. But as his eyes fluttered open and his vision adjusted to the light, he knew it was real. He fumbled for his glasses on the nightstand and then sat up, heart thumping in alarm.

“Effy?”

Her face was still buried in the pillow. She drew in a breath that made her shoulders tremble and, without turning toward him, she said, “I’m fine.”