Page 63 of A Theory of Dreaming (A Study in Drowning #2)
Here the darkness, there the light,
Here the lady and her knight.
As petals scatter out to sea,
Their tale folds into eternity.
—from “The Garden in Stone,” by Laurence Ardor, Lord of Landevale, 82 AD
Spring came late and hesitant in Argant, but it did come. And it always began with the snowdrops blooming.
They dappled the cliffsides in a flurry of white, standing out against the still-dead grass, which was dry and deep brown from the season’s lack of rain.
But the ground beneath was damp, the soil rich and webbed through with roots.
Soon the seed hulls would crack and the green vines would nuzzle up blindly from the earth and the lilacs and crocuses and daffodils would show themselves, too, turning the mountains into a riot of color.
For now, though, only the snowdrops grew in the graveyard.
They edged the path that Preston walked, hand in hand with Effy, his mother and brother trailing behind.
It had been the better part of a year since Preston had visited, though he knew the route by heart.
Past the mausoleums of aristocrats, underneath the spreading branches of the pear tree, made bare by the winds of winter.
He hardly felt his feet touch the earth.
When he arrived at his father’s marker, all the world seemed to grow silent.
For a long moment, he just stared—at the gray stone, flecked with moss, stained by streaks of rain. He was amazed that it had taken so little time for the stone to show its age.
Effy didn’t speak, but she squeezed his hand.
Preston lifted his gaze from the gravestone and turned to look at her.
Outlined against Argant’s black mountains, her golden hair held back in its white ribbon, her green eyes wide and bright, she looked illusive, an interloper from the fairy isle that was only real when you saw it in a certain light.
He had never imagined that he might see her here someday, in his homeland, over the thorny border wall, past all of its stiff and spiritless guards, arranged like toy soldiers.
He had never imagined that she would want to be here, with him.
Yet here she stood, slightly unreal, like all good things in the world.
“What does it mean?” she asked softly.
It took Preston a second to realize that she meant the engraving on the headstone. Beneath his father’s name, and his dates of birth and death, it read—
“‘So runs this tale, like a stream into the sea,’” Preston recited, translating into Llyrian as he did, “‘not to fade, but to change and to be free.’ It’s from his favorite poem. I can show you the book when we get back to the house.”
Effy nodded. “It’s lovely.”
Ollie came to stand beside him, and then his mother, more slowly. When they had first met, Effy had remarked on how much he looked like her—his mother—and it had struck Preston as strange. He had always thought he more resembled his father.
“He would like this weather,” his mother commented quietly. “Soon there will be all the lambs frolicking on the hillside and the baby rabbits nibbling the grass.”
“It’s beautiful here,” Effy said. “It seems like the perfect place to be when spring comes.”
His mother gave her a quivering smile, her eyes watery. “Yes. The winters are so much more mild in Llyr, of course... but then the spring isn’t nearly as wonderful. Each year it seems like almost a miracle.”
“And the lakes,” Ollie spoke up. “They’re in practically every valley. When the snow melts, the water is as clear as a mirror.”
“I’d love to see them someday.”
“Of course,” his mother said. “You’re welcome to stay as long as you’d like. You’re family now.”
Preston listened to their conversation, but he didn’t see them, not really.
Instead, an image rose up in his mind. It was of the palace beneath the waves and its hall of statues.
Only this time it was not populated by the statues he knew—the kneeling knight, the perched mermaid, the maiden, the scholar with his stave.
The vision rippled like water, and he saw instead his father, made into a cast of marble.
He closed his eyes and felt a wash of calm.
His father’s statue stood in the very center of the chamber, in a pale, silent shaft of light from the sunken window.
His posture was proud, his chin held aloft.
In his arms he cradled a book, though as much as Preston squinted, he could not discern the title.
On his head there was a simple circlet, a crown.
In this world , Preston thought, you are a king.
In this world that never was, and so would always be.
Preston opened his eyes and felt the sudden shiver of wind through the bare branches, ruffling his hair. He heard distant, trilling birdsong. And then he heard Effy say, very gently, “Are you ready?”
“Yes.” Preston turned away from the headstone. “Let’s go home.”