Page 42 of A Theory of Dreaming (A Study in Drowning #2)

What became of the mermaid, Dahut? Was she caught in some sailor’s net and carried to shore as his unwilling bride, like a selkie stripped of its skin?

Did she wash up on the dry-cracked shore and die of thirst, the water just a finger’s reach away?

Or did she remain beneath the waves, in a palace of alabaster coral, a labyrinth of her own design, never again straining for the light of the sun?

Mermaids can breathe water as mortals breathe air, but all living creatures can drown.

“Shall we begin?”

Preston was in Master Gosse’s office, again.

A mere day had passed since he had helped Effy to her meeting with Tinmew.

The pages of Angharad’s diary and the open copy of the Neiriad were spread out across the carpet.

Wearily, Preston shifted from the armchair and to the ground, kneeling among the papers, the back of his neck prickling.

Master Gosse lowered himself to the floor beside him.

It was morning, but the shades were drawn, and the room was illuminated only by the small desk lamp, which emitted a filmy and indistinct light.

The walls, with their dark wood, seemed tight and close, as if they were pressing in on him.

Still, it was better than the museum, where Preston had more to fear than Master Gosse’s fevered delusions.

His adviser, too, had been spooked by the tightened restrictions, that terrible missive handed down by the Ministry.

It would be tempting fate far too much to try to sneak in an Argantian saboteur. Even Master Gosse had his limits.

Gosse’s eyes gleamed with eagerness as he stared at Preston. “Héloury—”

“Why me?” Preston broke in. His voice was strangled. “Why am I the one who...”

He trailed off, unable to complete the thought.

Yet it was the question that had preyed on his mind more than anything over these past weeks.

Why had this happened to him? Why did he hear the bells when no one else did?

Or, perhaps better—perhaps worse—this had not happened to him, and he had done it to himself, simply because he could not bear the world as it was, and wanted to exist in a better one.

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

“I have my theories,” Master Gosse replied. “Of course I have my theories. What sort of academic would I be if I didn’t? And surely you have theories of your own.”

Preston swallowed.

“Close your eyes,” Master Gosse said.

He did. And the real world slipped away from him at once.

This time, when Preston opened his eyes, he was not alone amid the brine and smoke and the rising marble walls.

Master Gosse was kneeling beside him, coughing and spluttering, as if his journey to the palace beneath the sea had not been nearly so easy as Preston’s.

In fact, his dark hair flopped over his forehead in soaked curls, and his skin had a sheen of dampness.

Preston stood as Gosse remained doubled over, swearing.

“Saints be damned,” he rasped. “It doesn’t get any better, does it?”

Preston didn’t reply. Instead he offered his adviser a hand and pulled him to his feet.

After a moment catching his breath, Gosse glanced solicitously around. “Let’s take our time now, shall we? I’m sure there is so much left to see.”

Something occurred to Preston then. A little flicker of realization, which darted and spasmed through his mind like a moth mid-flight.

“You know where we are, don’t you?” Preston shifted in front of his adviser, barring him from stepping farther through the chamber. “You’ve always known.”

“Well, yes,” Gosse replied easily, “in a sense. It’s clear that this is the sunken palace of Neirin, or at least, it is one’s imagining of such a place. The once-great city fallen beneath the waves.”

“One’s imagining,” Preston repeated. “So you think this is—what? A little boy’s fantasy?”

“You aren’t a little boy, are you?” Master Gosse smiled at him congenially. “I think that nearly anyone on this island, Argantian or Llyrian, young or old, would imagine it much the same. The question is why you are here, and they are not.”

Preston was surprised by the surging of rage he felt.

Yet it was becoming more familiar, this fury.

He had certainly felt it when he tackled Southey to the ground.

He thought: This is my dream. You’ve sullied it.

But in the end, he stepped away, and let Master Gosse wander farther through the chamber.

Still, the anger smoldered within him like green fire.

Gosse hummed as he strode about the room, occasionally stopping before a statue, examining it and mumbling to himself. Preston stood in silence. And when Master Gosse tired of the first chamber, and walked through the archway to the second, Preston followed without speaking.

Right away Preston noticed something different in this room.

There was a heaviness in the air, a moisture, as if water were beginning to leak through the cracks in the walls.

The torches on the wall were burning low, more smoke than flame.

In the bleary half darkness, Preston made his way to the plinth upon which Effy’s statue stood.

A protective instinct rose in him—he did not want Master Gosse to see it.

Did not want his adviser to know that this was his heart, laid bare, that above everything else, this was what he cherished, what he would do anything to protect.

He didn’t trust Gosse with the fullest extent of the truth.

He had seen what Gosse had already done with incomplete confessions and bald lies.

But Master Gosse didn’t pay the statue any mind. He merely paced on past it, into the third chamber.

And Effy still stood, to Preston’s great relief.

He peered up, following the line of her marble body from her bare feet to her face.

There were no fissures he could see, but where previously there had been no accumulated grime, nothing to mar her, moss and barnacles now grew along her arms. Seaweed was draped over her shoulders, and a dead, desiccated starfish clung to her cheek. Panicked, Preston stumbled back.

“No,” he whispered, into the sodden and clammy air. “Please...”

If Effy wasn’t safe here, in his dreamed kingdom, then she wasn’t safe in the real world. She wasn’t safe anywhere. His heart started to pound, as loudly as the bells in his ear.

The bells.

He looked back up at Effy, and then through the archway to the third chamber, where Master Gosse had disappeared. Preston dropped to his knees, as if through penitence he could reverse the damage, make the statue clean and whole and new again.

But as he knelt to the ground, he caught a glimpse of something gold and glittering on the marble floor.

He reached over and grasped for it. The metal bit into his fingers, and when he opened his hand, he saw the dragon pin—shiny, unmarred, the emerald in its eye still gleaming.

Its fall beneath the waves had not damaged it.

Yet it felt cold in his hand, like a dead thing. Preston let it drop to the floor again. Master Gosse noticed nothing; he had nearly reached the threshold to the hall of the king.

Preston looked back up, desperately, at Effy’s statue one last time. Still nothing had changed. It was only now that he saw one more horrifying detail: her eyes were closed.

He got to his feet unsteadily, movements clumsy with fear. It was that fear that sent him clambering after Master Gosse, reaching his adviser just as they both came through the archway and into the third chamber.

The king’s statue was where it had been, silver hand pooling with the light from the green torches, the massive bells above him ringing.

Preston didn’t have to ask Master Gosse whether he heard them.

His adviser paced forward as if the walls themselves were not shuddering with the sound, as if their peals did not seem to risk cracking the window glass and letting the water pour in.

Master Gosse paused at the foot of the king’s statue. “Neirin,” he said in a friendly way, as if he and the dead ruler were old acquaintances. Then he turned to Preston, an enigmatic smile on his face. “Don’t you think?”

Testily, Preston replied, “Who else could it be?”

“I just find it interesting,” Master Gosse said, putting a hand under his chin, “that you would dream him this way. The way he is portrayed in the Neiriad .”

Preston ignored the implication—which felt almost like an accusation—that this was his dream. He could not fight that now. It was plain for them both to see. “How else should I have imagined him?”

“Perhaps less like the Old King of Llyr and more like the true figure he was.” Gosse stepped closer, until he was close enough to touch the king’s silver hand. “Even in your own mind, he maintains the prejudicial nationalism that is imposed on him.”

“I don’t understand,” Preston said, beginning to feel slick and nauseous, as if with a fever. Gosse was ruining all that he had built here, all that he had imagined.

“You will,” Master Gosse said. “I don’t doubt that, Héloury. You’ve always been too clever.”

Not clever enough , Preston thought. Not clever enough to change his fate in the real world. He’d had to retreat into the safety of his dream.

“The hand is silver,” Gosse went on, in that same infuriatingly casual tone. “Haven’t you ever wondered why? It could have been iron, to represent strength, or gold, to represent luxury, but as Aneurin tells the tale, it’s silver. Come now. Think.”

“Silver for Argant,” Preston said. That much was obvious.

“His enemies are ‘silver-clad,’ an obvious epithet for Argantians. And they speak ‘the demon Ankou’s tongue.’” He frowned.

“And his daughter betrays him when she falls in love with an enemy prince, an Argantian, so perhaps the hand is silver as a reminder of the evils of Argant...”