Page 7 of A Theory of Dreaming (A Study in Drowning #2)

In all the time Preston had known her, Effy had never slept easily.

Always he felt her settling and resettling beside him; between the fretwork of his lashes he saw her shift again and again, gingerly sliding herself out of his grasp.

His arms would fall from her waist, and she would move infinitesimally away from him on the mattress.

All the while he would feign sleep and keep the feeling of bereftness to himself, no more than a twinging flutter in his chest.

Now Preston was astonished to watch her curl between the sheets, clasp her hands below her chin, and let her eyes flutter shut.

Her breathing slowed, chest rising and falling with a measured heaviness.

It occurred to him almost as a metamorphosis, like in the old myths: a mortal magicked into a fish or a flower, a maiden transformed into a slender, sinuous laurel tree.

One living creature changed to another. Only—the life of a fish or a tree or a flower was nothing like that of a human’s.

It was brief, dull, simple. Perhaps blessedly so.

At that thought, Preston suddenly had the urge to wake her.

But her sleep seemed peaceful, dreamless.

In the pooling lamplight, her golden hair took on the sheen of sunken treasure, bleary and below-surface, a layer removed from his touch.

The tip of her nose was pink, which was how he knew she had been crying—or at least close to it—before he’d come in.

Perhaps he should have asked her about it.

Perhaps he should have pressed her. He glanced over at her desk and saw Ardor’s book there, tossed hastily, as if in anger, the corner of the cover bent and the pages ruffled.

He picked it up and flipped to the dog-eared page, the prologue to “The Garden in Stone.”

When upon your pallid cheek

The purple twilight lay

I came, an errant-knight oblique,

To trespass the gray arch-way

Preston did not remember being especially impressed with Ardor’s work, and reading it now, he found it rather sparse in meaning. Well, it was a first-year’s subject for a reason, he supposed. Settling into Effy’s chair, he smoothed the book flat and picked up a pen.

As she slept behind him, silent and still but for her breathing, Preston marked up the pages of her book, etching in the appropriate number above each syllable.

Effy never woke. When he had finished the scansion, he closed the book again and stood.

Outside, night had fallen, swift and total in its blackness, and the window glass was opaque with hardened snow.

He checked his watch. It was only past six, but he felt dreadfully weary himself. When he reached down to unbutton his shirt, his finger brushed against the dragon pin. It had warmed with the heat of his body, and now it felt less foreign to him, less unnatural to his person.

Quietly, and with agonizing slowness, Preston slipped into bed next to Effy. She did not stir as he settled himself against the pillows, the ends of her blond hair tickling his cheek. He reached over to tug the chain on the lamp, extinguishing the room’s only light.

Preston closed his eyes and tried to slow his breathing. For all his fretting, sleep found him quickly, too.

He woke with his cheek pressed to stone, his mouth tasting of salt and smoke.

Preston pushed himself off the ground, and when he rose, the air—which had been an almost solid thing, dense and brackish—seemed to shift with him, as if he were shaking off a heavy velvet cloak.

He blinked, and raised a hand to wipe condensation from his glasses, only to find that he was not wearing them.

Yet he could see perfectly well; the details of the world were crisp and clear around him.

That was the moment he realized he was dreaming.

He drew in a breath (a rather briny breath) and began to take in these strange surroundings.

He was in a long hall of gray-white stone.

Cut into the walls on either side was a series of niches, precise and evenly spaced.

Within each niche, half-cloaked in shadow and half-doused in rheumy strains of light, was a marble statue.

Preston took a step forward, to the nearest one. Its plinth was engraved with words that had been worn away by water and by time. He could pick out only a few letters. The statue itself was enormous, at least twice as tall as he was, and his eyes strained to follow the line from base to the lintel.

The statue was of a man—a young man, as far as Preston could make out, wearing what looked like full academic dress, a robe-like gown with a hood, the attire that the university required its students wear for formal events.

The statue was unpainted marble, so Preston couldn’t discern the color of the lining, which would have told him which college this statue-man attended.

Under one arm was a stack of books, and the other arm was raised outward, brandishing a stave.

The hood of his robe was down, baring his rather untidy-looking hair and his face.

His expression was almost defiant, chin held aloft.

But as Preston drew closer, squinting, he saw that the statue’s eyes were flung open in awe, as if he were being confronted with something he both feared and longed for beyond measure.

For some unnamable reason, this frightened him. Preston stumbled backward.

His boots scrabbled against the floor, and he barely managed not to fall. All over, there were puddles of clear water, sparkling like bits of quartz. They held the light that came drifting through the windows, one between each niche.

With a bracing inhale, Preston approached the window beside the statue of the scholar. He expected to see clouds, cirrus and white, and scattered patches of sun. Instead he saw only water.

The water rippled very faintly, shifting only just enough to make him aware of how still it was within the castle.

The palace. Something had snuck the words into his mind.

He would not have thought to call it that on his own.

Spidery green seaweed drifted by. A jellyfish, white and diaphanous as a bridal veil, brushed against the window glass.

The shadow of something larger—the flank of a fish?

—shivered past, briefly casting the hall in darkness.

As Preston watched, transfixed, silence reigned. And then came the sound: impossible, unignorable, and unmistakable. The bells.

They gonged so richly and deeply that Preston felt them in his chest, like a second, shuddering heartbeat. I have to follow them , he thought, and again, it was like the words had been cunningly smuggled into his mind. I have to find them.

He turned away from the window and walked farther down the hall.

He passed more niches, and more statues within them.

There was a mermaid perched on a rock, surf crashing behind her.

The foam-tipped waves were carved in such immaculate detail that it seemed as though they had been frozen in time, magicked to stone by the flick of a sorcerer’s finger.

There was an ancient king who sat slumped in his throne.

There was a maiden with seashells and kelp braided through her hair.

There was a knight in armor, knelt penitently, holding a single rose.

Preston came to an archway of more water-streaked stone. He crossed beneath it, the gonging of the bells growing louder and closer with each step.

In this second hall there were no niches, and no windows. Instead, fixed on the walls were rows and rows of torches, and each one burned with bright green flame.

He would have stopped, taken note of their strangeness, perhaps examined them more closely, if not for what lay ahead.

In the very center of the room, set upon an enormous plinth, there was another statue, twice as large as the largest one in the first chamber, so tall its head nearly scraped the ceiling.

No— her head. Standing on the plinth, in a gauzy, fluttering gown, hair unbound and floating as if caught by the wind, hands clasped at her breast, was Effy.

Her features, sculpted in white marble, were so perfect, so utterly recognizable—so lovely —that Preston dropped to his knees.

He didn’t even feel the pain of the hard stone floor.

He was overcome by her majesty. It was almost divinity.

He knelt there before her as if she were a saint and he a supplicant.

He stared at her so long, and so intently, that even the gonging of the bells faded from his awareness.

The air was still, and so was she. This house—this castle—was infinitely beautiful, and so was she.

Whatever passed outside this place, and beyond this moment, was so unimportant that it began to feel unreal.

And then—a crack . Preston’s gaze snapped up. At the very top of Effy’s head, the finest of fractures appeared, lacing across her nose, down her cheek. The gonging of the bells reasserted itself, sonorous and so very close.

He tried to get to his feet, to stammer out a noise of protest. But instantly the edges of his vision darkened. The floor lurched up at him, but before he could fall, he woke.

He surfaced from this dream in a cold sweat, teeth chattering.

Beside him, Effy stirred, giving a mewling little yawn and propping herself up on her elbows.

Golden hair, mussed with sleep, tumbled over her bare shoulder, and in the thin, early dawn light that filtered through the windows, she looked almost like a dream herself, her skin as pale as marble.

As pale as marble. Preston blinked, and the vision of her statue’s face—the cracked facade—flashed through his mind.

He blinked again, his vision blurring in its familiar way, turning everything fuzzy around the edges.

He felt for his glasses on the nightstand and put them on, exhaling in relief as the world came into focus again.

“Did you sleep well?” Effy asked.

“Oh.” Preston blinked again. “Yes. I slept fine.”

In the back of his mind, the bells were still ringing.

“I wish I could stay here forever,” Effy said with a sigh. She flopped back down on the pillow and rolled over until her back was pressed against his chest. “Don’t you?”

“That would be nice,” Preston said. His voice sounded odd, even to his own ears. Stiff and distant, like an echo from below the water.

He braced his arm around her waist, holding her to him.

His heartbeat returned to a steady rhythm; his breathing slowed.

Outside, the weather was sharp with its coldness, the ice was slippery and treacherous, the men in their black wool coats brusque and indifferent at best—but here, with him, she was safe.

Preston lowered his mouth to place a kiss on the top of her head—

Crack. The image of her stone face, with those hairline fractures, flashed up at him again. He recoiled, heart pattering.

“Effy,” he said urgently, “when you go out, be careful, all right? You could slip and fall. You could crack”—he could barely cough out the word—“your head on the ice.”

Effy looked over her shoulder at him, frowning. “Don’t you think we have more urgent things to worry about?”

“We can’t publish a thesis or defend ourselves against a government inquiry if you’re dead,” Preston said. In his mind, it had sounded darkly funny, but when he spoke it aloud, his tone was strained and bleak.

“Maybe the Sleeper Museum will let me borrow a helmet and a suit of armor,” Effy replied. The corner of her mouth quivered as she tried not to smile.

Preston couldn’t make himself pretend that the thought wasn’t appealing. His whole body felt tense; he was aware of each one of his muscles straining, each tendon pulled taut. He thought of how thin a person’s skin really was, slender protection against the malice and perils of the world.

Finally—reluctantly—he and Effy dragged each other out of bed, Preston only spurred on by the promise of coffee and a morning cigarette.

He reassumed his shirt, the dragon still pinned to its lapel.

He watched Effy comb her hair and pull on stockings, then the uniform he had brought her.

When he recalled Master Gosse’s words— You may need to let it out in the bust —he felt a low, grinding sort of anger that roiled like hunger in his gut.

Effy picked up her bag and slipped Ardor’s book inside. She didn’t seem to notice anything amiss about it. Preston slid his own satchel over his shoulder. The rote mechanics of it all made him calmer.

The dream was just a dream.

He and Effy said their goodbyes just outside her dormitory, beneath a portico that was fanged with icicles.

Preston watched her as she walked down the street, the cobblestones shimmering with glacial danger.

He didn’t turn away until she had vanished into a crowd of other black-clad students, all pressing toward the library.

Preston exhaled, his breath a wisp of white in the cold. He had foolishly volunteered as a teaching assistant for one of Gosse’s classes, and he had to arrive before the students did, so he had a chance to pass out their papers and monographs.

He shook back the sleeve of his coat and looked down at his watch to see the time. But all three hands had stopped turning, frozen at 6:22. Preston frowned and held up his wrist for closer examination. The face of the watch was filled with water.