Page 40 of A Theory of Dreaming (A Study in Drowning #2)

Upon her bed of flowers and vines,

The maiden slept, an idol in its shrine.

The errant-knight cut through the thorns,

And knelt, as if to mourn.

Both a HERETIC and a supplicant,

Struck as much by love as he was by SCORN .

—from “The Garden in Stone,” by Laurence Ardor, Lord of Landevale, 82 AD

One day seemed to bleed seamlessly into the next, unmarked by the usual qualities that indicated the passage of time.

The sun must have risen, and then fallen, consumed by the star-pricked night, but Effy would not have known.

She kept the curtains in her bedroom drawn.

She left only to drink, when her throat was so parched she could scarcely swallow, and to eat, though her stomach rarely grumbled with demand.

She went through these motions unconsciously.

Her mind was entirely occupied by the words of Antonia Ardor.

The 2nd day of Fall, 81 AD

He lives. He lives, but only by technicality. The functions of his body are still performed but his soul is gone from him. Even the physician says as much. He urges me to do what I can, to return my father’s spirit to his physical self, to rouse him with emotion, to infect him with sentiment.

Has all my labor not been enough? Have I not struggled and toiled at this task since my mother’s death?

While Miss Maud brings him sweet milk and soft bread to nourish him, and the physician brings him elixirs to ease his pain, I am the only one who tends to his soul.

I am the one who provokes his passions. I am the one who bends to his basest needs.

The sickness has spared me, for now, but I feel that I live on borrowed time.

I go to my father at night, and, even blind—the fever has robbed him of his sight—he seems to know and desire every contour of my form.

Saint Britomart, I am not too far gone to despair to beseech you still.

Please—free me—free me—how much longer must I endure this posthumous existence?

The 13th day of Fall, 81 AD

Something has begun to enliven my father’s soul again. I cannot say precisely what it is. But when he called me into his chamber this morning, he told me to bring a pen and parchment. He told me that he wished for me to write down the words that he spoke.

“A poem,” he said. “I have it in my mind. It will be the greatest work of my life. I only need you to transcribe it for me, Antonia. Stay silent and still; move only the quill across the page.”

I thought—but did not say—that I have had much practice all this time in staying silent. He then began to speak, his voice hoarse and raw-sounding, And I listened, and obeyed, as I always do.

The 15th day of Fall, 81 AD

This poem has become my father’s obsession.

He wishes for me to transcribe it at all hours.

In truth, it is often difficult for me to translate his raspy ramblings to lines of verse with proper rhyme and meter, so I must make some adjustments of my own, in order that the poem should be comprehensible.

I have begun to feel a certain passion rise in me as well, though it is a tangled and winding thing, sometimes perverse. I am helping to create something that I believe—truly—will be a great work of art, which will reverberate beyond the years of my life and into eternity.

Yet this passion twists itself sometimes and becomes akin to rage. This happens most often when I think of my mother in her tomb. I realize that I am angry at her. It is an anger beyond reason, and yet—

I shan’t forgive you, Mother, for leaving me in this stone garden with its cruel sculptor—for did I ever solicit him?—did I ask, even, to be shaped from your clay and his chisel?

Effy put the book down. It was twilight. A time of hopeless heaviness. Dusk—an obliteration of the day’s labors and longings. She could now go quietly and unrepentantly into her dreams.

“Effy?”

The familiar voice stirred her from her slumber. She lifted her head, neck aching, and pulled back the covers. Preston was standing in the doorway.

Her throat was almost too dry to speak. She swallowed once, twice, and then said in a hoarse voice, “What are you doing here?”

“It’s the day of your meeting,” he said, frowning. He looked down at his watch, furrowed his brow in some secret annoyance, and then looked up again. “Isn’t it?”

Bewildered, she pushed herself up on her elbows. The very faintest rays of light were filtering in through the drapes, painting the room in a pale white-gold that almost appeared like a layer of dust. Blinking sleep from her eyes, she said, “Erm... what meeting?”

“With Tinmew. To discuss your paper.”

Dread pooled in the pit of Effy’s stomach. But even that was hardly enough to crack the facade of numbness about her. It was a tiny prick of pain and little more. She was well-insulated by her exhaustion.

“I don’t want to go,” she replied flatly. “There’s no point.”

Preston approached her slowly, as one might a wounded animal.

He hesitated for a moment, then perched on the edge of the bed.

She stared up at him, finding something slightly off .

His glasses, she realized numbly after a moment.

Since the ball, he hadn’t been wearing them.

But the concern and curiosity she should have felt about it simply lilted away, like dead leaves from a vine.

Without his glasses, Preston’s gaze was different. More intense. Probing.

“Of course there’s a point,” he said. “You don’t want to fail the class.”

He didn’t know, of course, that Effy had stopped attending weeks ago, and she certainly wasn’t going to volunteer the information now. She felt a twinge of guilt at her deception. He didn’t deserve this. He didn’t deserve any of this. The miserable work of caring about her.

If she thought about it that way—if she thought about it as doing it for him —it made everything bearable. Possible. Effy drew in a weary breath. But then she began to sit up, in stiff, agonizing increments. Preston put his hand against the small of her back to steady her.

“I can’t go like this,” she muttered. “I look...”

She hadn’t glanced in a mirror in days, but she could feel her long hair falling matted down her shoulders. Her dry, cracked lips hurt whenever she spoke. And she was certain that, despite how much sleep she had gotten, her eyes would still be ringed with deep, dark crescents of violet.

“I’ll help you,” Preston said. “All right? I’ll help.”

And so, as Effy sat there, hunched on the bed, Preston went about the room, gathering her clothes.

He dressed her, maneuvering her limp body with great gentleness.

He even ran a brush through her hair, careful not to tug at the knots.

When he was finished, he brushed the loose strands back from her face.

Then he picked up the length of white ribbon from her dresser.

“Do you want this?” he asked.

Effy shook her head.

He brought her tea and tried to make her drink it. Effy could only manage a few sips; even with sugar and milk, it tasted like nothing and dissolved on her tongue. Then she caught her reflection, dull and rippling, in the surface of the pale brown water. She looked very, very tired.

Preston led her, on unsteady legs, to the literature building. She had managed to make it just in time for her meeting. Pausing at the door of Tinmew’s office, he gave her hand one last squeeze and said, “I’ll be waiting outside.”

Effy nodded. She couldn’t quite manage to thank him.

She would have been more afraid to enter had she not still felt overwhelmingly numb.

Effy pushed through the door. Professor Tinmew’s office was smaller than Dean Fogg’s, but it was all shining mahogany wood and brown leather, and it smelled of pipe smoke.

He was seated behind his desk, a book open in front of him and a pen beside it. He looked up when Effy stepped inside.

“Euphemia,” he said. “Sit.”

He didn’t comment on her weeks of absence—perhaps he simply hadn’t noticed. As Effy moved toward one of the armchairs, she noticed for the first time a figure in the corner. He was another student, in the literature college uniform, his arms crossed over his chest and watching her intently.

“Who’s that?” Effy blurted.

“My teaching assistant,” Tinmew replied, in a clipped tone. “After your... involvement with Master Corbenic, I decided it would be to both of our benefits to have a witness to what transpires.”

Effy’s face burned. She sank down into the chair, trying not to slouch and willing herself not to give it all up and just flee. She was good at escaping. That was one option that was always left to her.

“So let’s discuss your paper, then,” said Tinmew, closing the book in front of him. “I hope you’ve come here today with your topic.”

White noise crackled inside Effy’s head. She cleared her throat and said, “The ethics of an amanuensis. That’s my topic.”

Professor Tinmew gave her a contemptuously befuddled look. “What was that?”

“An amanuensis,” she repeated. “A scribe. Ardor used one, when composing ‘The Garden in Stone.’ His daughter, Antonia. I found a copy of her letters and diary entries in the library. She discusses the writing process. How she helped him, how she even made edits and additions of her own. It seems like an ethical issue, doesn’t it?

Ardor is seen as the sole author, but he isn’t—or, well. ..”

Effy trailed off, shrinking under Tinmew’s remote stare. His eyes had narrowed to slits, but he didn’t say a word. He steepled his hands and rested his chin upon them, as if waiting for her to go on.

“I have the book,” Effy said, leaning down and wrestling it from her satchel.

“Antonia writes about her father’s illness, his blindness, and how she transcribed the poem for him.

I asked you once, why you thought some of the lines were bolded or capitalized.

I think Antonia was secretly leaving her mark, indicating where she was adding her own words. ”