we must discuss, then, the relationship between women and water. when men fall into
the sea, they drown. when women meet the water, they transform. it becomes vital to ask:
is this a metamorphosis, or a homecoming?
from a meditation on water and femininity in the works of emrys myrddin by dr.
cedric gosse, 211 ad
effy woke the next morning to the sound of iron rasping against stone. the side of her face was
wet and strands of damp hair stuck to her forehead. she wiped it dry with the edge of the green
duvet. when she looked up, she saw a bit of the ceiling was soaked through—the sound she’d
heard last night but couldn’t locate. the nasty, stale water must have been dripping on her for
hours while she slept.
she was just sitting up in bed, gagging, when light cleaved through the open door. her whole
body tensed, half expecting to see wet black hair, a yellow curve of bone. but it was just a boy
standing on the threshold, his dark brown hair wind tossed and untidy, though not remotely wet.
decidedly not the fairy king, but an intruder nonetheless.
“hey!” she gasped, yanking the covers up to her throat. “what are you doing here?”
he didn’t even have the decency to look scandalized. he just backed up halfway out of the
doorway, turning away from her with his hand still on the knob, and said, “wetherell sent me to
make sure you were up.”
already wetherell appeared to have very little confidence in her. effy swallowed, still holding
the duvet to her chin, squinting at the boy, who stared determinedly outside. he wore thin-framed
round glasses, slightly misted by the dewy morning air.
“well?” effy demanded, scowling. “i’m not going to change with you in here.”
that, at last, appeared to offend him. his face turned pink, and without another word, he
stepped outside and shut the door after him, more firmly than seemed necessary.
still glowering, effy got up and pawed through her trunk. even her clothes felt somehow
damp. she put on a pair of woolen trousers, a black turtleneck, and the thickest socks she owned.
she tied her hair back with its ribbon. there was no mirror in the guesthouse, so she would have to
hope her face wasn’t too puffy and her eyes weren’t too red. so far, she was zero for two on first
impressions.
she shrugged on her coat and pushed through the door. the boy—university age, surely not
much older than she—was leaning against the side of the cottage, a small leather-bound notebook
in one hand and a pack of cigarettes in the other. he had a face that seemed both soft and angular
at once, his glasses perched on a narrow, delicate nose.
if effy had been in a more charitable mood, she would have called him handsome.
when he saw her, he put his cigarettes back into his pocket. he was still flushing a little bit,
and resolutely made no eye contact. “let’s go.”
effy nodded, but his rudeness turned her stomach sour. the morning light, even through the
trees, was bright enough to make her head throb behind her temples. ungenerously, she shot back,
“you aren’t even going to ask my name?”
“i know your name. you haven’t asked mine.”
he was wearing a blue coat, flapping open at the front, that seemed, to her, too thin for the
weather, and a white button-down shirt under it. his boots showed some scuffing. all of it made
effy think he’d been at hiraeth for some time now. but he was not a southerner; she could tell.
his complexion was not quite pale enough, and he picked his way through the forest with a
hedging delicacy that bordered on distaste.
effy relented, her curiosity getting the better of her. “what’s your name?”
“preston,” he replied.
a stuffy, prim sort of name common in northern llyr. the name suited him. “do you work for
the myrddin estate?”
“no,” he said, and did not elaborate further. he looked her up and down with a raised brow.
“aren’t you going to bring anything? i thought you were here to design a house.”
effy froze. without another word, she turned on her heel and hurried back into the cottage. she
knelt beside the trunk and yanked out her sketchpad and the first pen she could find, then stomped
out again. she no longer felt cold. her cheeks were burning.
preston had already continued down the path. she took three comically large steps to catch up
with him, trying to account for the difference in the length of their legs. though he had a slight,
almost waifish frame, preston had to be a head taller than her.
they went on in silence for a few moments, effy’s eyes still adjusting to the light. in the
morning, the forest was less terrifying but even stranger. everything was too green: the moss
growing over every stone and up the trunks of the trees and the long, soft grass under their feet.
overhead the leaves rustled with a sound like the nickering of horses, and the morning dew on the
leaves turned crystalline in the sunlight. for some reason, the way the light trickled in reminded
effy of being in a chapel. memories of dusty pews and prayer books made her nose itch.
the path curled upward, leading them over fallen branches and broken rocks. effy’s legs were
already aching when the trees began to thin. preston ducked under a low-hanging branch, heavy
with moss, and held it up so she could go through after him. the unexpected display of chivalry
vexed her. rather than saying thank you, she shot him a sulky glare.
and then, all at once, they were standing on the edge of a cliff.
the wind was blowing hard enough to make her eyes sting, and effy blinked furiously. the
salt-streaked stone of the cliffside tumbled down to a rocky shoreline, where the waves rolled in
over and over again, drenching the pebble beach. the sea stretched out to the line of the horizon,
choppy and blue gray and dotted with caps of white foam. seabirds swooped through the iron-
colored sky, water glistening on their beaks.
“it’s beautiful,” she said. preston just stared ahead, frowning.
she was going to make a snippy remark about how standoffish he was being. but then she
heard a sound—a terrible sound, like the wrenching of a tree from its roots, loud and entirely too
close.
effy looked down in horror: the rock was crumbling under her.
“watch out!” preston’s hand closed around her arm. he pulled her to safety just as the
outcropping where she’d been standing fell down into the sea.
the shattered rocks vanished beneath the water, each crash grim and final.
effy stumbled back against preston’s chest. her head was jammed under his chin and she
could feel the throb of his pulse, the heat of his body through his shirt.
they both jerked away from each other, but not before she managed to get a good glimpse of
his notebook, near enough now to read the name embossed on its cover: p. héloury.
“don’t stand so close to the edge of the cliff,” he snapped, buttoning his jacket shut as if he
wanted to forget that—saints forbid—they had ever touched. “there’s a reason the naturalists are
up in arms about a second drowning.”
“it’s you,” effy said.
his eyes narrowed. “what?”
she felt breathless. she had spent the last weeks conjuring a wicked version of p. héloury in
her mind, a perfect amalgam of everything she despised. a literature student. a shrewdly
opportunistic myrddin scholar.
an argantian.
“you’re the one who took out my books,” she said at last, the only words she could summon
as her blood pulsed with adrenaline. the memory of standing in front of the circulation desk, the
boy’s number in bleeding ink on the back of her hand, filled her with a jilted anger anew. “on
myrddin. i went to the library and the librarian told me they had all been checked out.”
“well, they’re not your books. that’s the entire premise of a library.”
effy just stared at him. her hands were shaking. she had practiced arguments in her mind
against her imagined version of p. héloury, but now that she was standing before him, all eloquent
reasoning had abandoned her.
“what are you even doing here?” she bit out. “pawing through a dead man’s things so you can
steal what you need for some . . . for some scholarly article? i’m sure you can write a paragraph or
two about the coffee rings on his desk.”
“myrddin has been dead for six months now,” preston said tonelessly. “his life story is more
than fair game.”
the wind snatched at effy’s hair in a fury, nearly yanking it free from its black ribbon. preston
folded his arms over his chest.
his impassive reply made her stomach roil. she searched the morass of thoughts in her mind,
trying to find something she could use, an arrow that could pierce his stubborn facade. at last, an
idea.
with a trembling voice, effy said, “how did you even get here? argantian students with
temporary passports can’t leave caer-isel.”
behind his glasses, preston’s gaze was unflinching. she might as well have not spoken at all.
“my mother is llyrian,” he said. “regardless, i could have gotten a scholar’s visa. i’m here
with permission from dean fogg. collecting myrddin’s letters and documents for the university
archive.”
she hadn’t noticed his very faint accent before, but she heard it now: the little catch in his
throat before the hard consonants, his barely aspirated h’s. effy had never spent so long speaking
to an argantian before. for a moment, she was fixated on the particularly delicate way preston
rounded his lips when he said his long vowels, but then she blinked and all her anger returned.
“i don’t know why you care about myrddin at all,” she said. unexpectedly, her throat
tightened, on the verge of tears. “he’s our national author. not yours. have you even read his
books?”
“i’ve read them all.” preston’s expression hardened. “he’s a perfectly valid subject of
scholarly inquiry no matter the background of the scholar in question.
she hated the way he talked, so full of aloof confidence. for weeks she had steeled herself for
precisely this confrontation, but now they were arguing and he was winning.
effy remembered what the librarian had said to her. “you want be the first to tell his life
story,” she said. “you’re—you’re just the academic equivalent of a carpetbagger.” an argantian
trying to write the narrative of a llyrian icon’s life—of myrddin’s life—it was so aberrant that she
was at a loss for further words.
“no one owns the right to tell a story,” he said flatly. “besides, i’m not pushing any particular
agenda. i’m just here for the truth.”
effy took a deep breath, trying to untangle the various strands of her rage. underneath the
righteous anger she felt about an argantian perverting myrddin’s legacy, there was something
deeper and more painful.
what’s the point in studying literature if you don’t want to tell stories? she wanted to ask him,
but she was afraid that if she opened her mouth, she might actually cry.
and then, over preston’s shoulder, she saw a figure pacing down the cliffside. he was
enormously tall and clad in all black, and despite the wind, his dark hair lay flat upon his head,
almost as if it were wet.
effy thought of the creature in the road, and her chest seized. but by the time the figure
reached them, she could tell he was an ordinary man—broad shouldered and square jawed and
enormous, but mortal after all.
“i was beginning to worry you’d fallen right into the sea,” he said. he was middle-aged,
around forty. the same age as master corbenic. “the cliffs have been particularly unsound of
late.”
“no,” preston said. “we’re fine.”
“then the sea is behaving itself today.” the man’s gaze flickered briefly to the seething gray
expanse below. “you both know the rumors about the second drowning, i’m sure. have you been
explaining our predicament to ms. sayre?”
preston stiffened. effy wondered if he would mention their argument. well, it had been more
of a verbal assault on her part. but what would that achieve, aside from making them look like
squabbling children?
“i thought i would leave that to you,” preston said at last. effy noticed the way he dug his
thumbnail into the spine of his notebook.
“excellent,” the man said smoothly. he turned to effy, his pale eyes gleaming. “it’s very nice
to finally meet you, ms. sayre. i can’t express enough how pleased i am that you’ve agreed to
come. i’m ianto myrddin. the late illustrious author was my father.”
under his stare, effy felt her stomach swoop like the gulls. ianto had a coarse, rough-edged
handsomeness, as if he’d been born right out of the rough-hewn rocks. his knuckles pressed up
beneath taut skin. when she shook his hand, her palm came away prickling, almost raw from his
calluses.
“thank you for inviting me,” she said. “your father—he was my favorite author.”
it was an understatement, but she figured there would be plenty of time for gushing praise.
ianto smiled at her, highlighting the one crooked dimple that slashed his left cheek. “i could tell
from your design. that’s why i chose it, of course—it’s something my father most certainly would
have loved. treacherous but beautiful. i suppose that characterizes all of the bay of nine bells,
doesn’t it, ms. sayre?”
“effy,” she said. she had not expected to sound so dumbstruck, or for her knees to feel so
weak. “just effy.”
beside ianto, preston looked very thin—and very uneasy. effy didn’t miss the way his throat
pulsed when ianto spoke.
“i’m going back to the house,” preston said. “i have work to get done.”
“yes, there’s a stack of my father’s letters waiting for you,” ianto said. “and for you, effy,
breakfast and coffee. i’m sorry you have to endure the guest cottage, but my mother insisted. she’s
very elderly. fragile.”
“it’s not a problem,” she said. her voice sounded, to her own ears, oddly vacuous. she had the
sudden and familiar sensation that she was underwater, the tide rolling ceaselessly over her. she
had not taken any of her pink pills this morning.
“well then.” ianto smiled again, and effy felt the same way she had when the cliff had
crumbled beneath her, the awareness of being at a great height pulsing in the soles of her feet. “let
me show you hiraeth.”
a faint morning fog was coming over the cliffside. it crept in pale and slow, like lichen consuming
a dead tree. out of the mist rose hiraeth manor, gray and black and green, as if it were an
extension of the cliffs themselves.
ianto led them up a stone staircase, the steps uneven and carpeted in moss. the wooden double
doors were damp and moldering; effy could smell the rot before she even reached the threshold.
the brass door knocker was huge as a bullring and flaking with rust. ianto had to jam his shoulder
against the door several times to force it open, until at last the ancient hinges relented with a
dismal and ominous groaning sound.
“welcome,” ianto said. “try not to slip.”
effy looked down before she looked up. the tile floor was scummy, like the surface of a pond,
and the red carpet that led up to the staircase was thick with mildew. when she lifted her gaze, she
saw the staircase itself, the wood termite-eaten and wet, cobwebs strung through the banister like
weaving on a loom. portraits hung askew over peeling wallpaper, which looked like it might once
have been an attractive peacock blue, but water stains had turned it a grimy shade of gray.
“i—” she began, but stopped abruptly, unsure of what to say. the air tasted thick and sour.
when she had recovered her faculty of speech, blinking profusely against the dust in the air, she
managed to ask, “has it been this way since your father passed?”
ianto gave a huff that was half amusement, half dismay. “it’s been in various states of disrepair
since i was a child. my father wasn’t much for home improvement, and the climate in the bay
doesn’t exactly make for easy upkeep.”
there was a faint splash from her left. preston had stepped through a small, filmy puddle. “i’m
going upstairs,” he said shortly. “i’ve wasted enough of the morning already.”
effy knew that was a hidden gibe at her, and she narrowed her eyes back at him.
“at least have some coffee.” ianto’s tone did not suggest preston had much choice in the
matter. “and then perhaps you can help me give ms. sayre a tour. i imagine you’re more familiar
than i am with some parts of the house by now. my father’s study, for example.”
preston drew in a sharp breath, but didn’t protest. effy felt no more pleased at the prospect of
him tagging along, though for ianto’s sake, she tried not to show any obvious displeasure.
the kitchen was off the foyer — small, cramped, and tumbledown, half the cabinet doors
hanging off their hinges. the white tiles were laced so thoroughly with filthy grout that they
looked like crooked teeth in an old man’s mouth.
ianto gave effy coffee in a chipped mug. the back of his hand was covered in black hair, just
like master corbenic’s.
effy took one sip, but the coffee tasted as sour as the air. preston held his own mug but didn’t
drink from it. his hand kept fluttering back to his pocket, and effy remembered how he had stuffed
his cigarettes in there. his fingers were long, thin, nearly hairless. feeling heat rise to her cheeks,
she tore her gaze away.
“i really should get back to work,” he said, but ianto was already ushering them into the dining
room. there was a long table with a moth-eaten white cloth over it, the ends stained like the
muddy hem of a dress.
an odd and very dusty chandelier dangled precariously from the ceiling. effy had never seen
anything quite like it before: shards of mirrored glass, carefully cut into narrow diamonds like
icicles, light bouncing from one to the next in a rippling glimmer. it almost made it look like it
was moving, even though the air in the room was oppressively still.
“that’s lovely,” effy said, pointing up. “where did you get it?”
“i think it was an acquisition of my mother’s. i don’t truly remember. i can’t say we’ve done a
lot of dining in here recently,” said ianto, and gave a short laugh that fell limply in the silence.
they passed through the rest of the rooms on the first floor: a pantry that even rats and roaches
had abandoned, a living room that had certainly not seen very much living lately, and a bathroom
that made even ianto frown in tacit apology.
by that point, effy’s stomach was churning so viciously, she thought she might retch.
ianto took them up the stairs, pointing out each of the portraits on the way. none were of real
people—the myrddin family had no aristocratic pedigree and therefore no ancestral heirlooms.
emrys had been the son of a fisherman. no, these were paintings of characters and scenes from
myrddin’s books.
effy saw angharad in her marriage bed, pale hair strewn out among the pillows, iron girdle
glinting at her waist. she saw the fairy king, black hair streaming past his shoulders like a slick of
fetid water, his colorless eyes seeming to follow her as she climbed. effy paused mid-step, heart
lurching. that hair, those eyes, the slender, jagged form like a gash in the fabric of the world—
“mr. myrddin—um, ianto,” she said. “i saw something last night, in the dark—”
“what’s that, effy?” two steps ahead of her, ianto’s voice sounded distant, disinterested. but
preston was looking at her with an inscrutable expression, as if waiting for her to keep speaking.
“nothing,” she said after a moment. “never mind.”
the entrance to the upstairs landing was a wooden archway decorated with carvings. intricate
vines and seashell outlines surrounded the solemn faces of two men.
“saint eupheme and saint marinell,” preston said. then he ducked his head, as if regretting
that he had spoken at all.
saint eupheme was the patron of storytellers, and saint marinell the ruler of the sea and the
patron of fathers. ordinarily she might have been curious to see who myrddin had chosen to bless
his threshold. but now she only felt vaguely ill.
“i know you might think it blasphemous to have a portrait of the fairy king beside the
likeness of saints,” ianto said, breaching the archway. “but my father was a southerner through
and through. he never left this estate, did you know that? after the publication of angharad. he
took no interviews, gave no speeches. they called him mad, his critics, but he didn’t care. he
didn’t leave this house until the sleeper museum came to load his corpse into their car. and—
well, i won’t bore you with the details. all i meant to say is that despite his thoroughly southern
upbringing, my father never sought to humanize or pardon the fairy king in any way.”
effy thought of myrddin’s fairy king: charming, cruel, and, in the end, pitiful in his corrosive
desires. he had loved angharad, and the thing he loved the most had killed him. she frowned.
surely there was nothing more human than that.
“i would suggest the opposite, actually.” preston spoke up unexpectedly, his tone cool.
“stripped down to his essence, as he is in the end when angharad shows him his own reflection in
the mirror, the fairy king represents the very epitome of humanity, in all its viciousness and
vulgar fragility.”
that was how angharad had finally slain him: by showing the fairy king his own
countenance in the mirror. there was a beat of silence. ianto turned slowly toward preston, pale
eyes narrowing.
“well,” he said in a low voice, “i suppose you are the expert among us. preston héloury,
student of cedric gosse, the university’s preeminent myrddin scholar. or perhaps i should say
gosse’s errand boy—i presume he’s far too busy to pick through old letters in a house at the
bottom of the world.”
preston said nothing after that, but around the spine of his notebook, his knuckles turned
white. effy stood still for a moment in shock. he had been bold enough, articulate enough, to
voice precisely what she had only thought quietly to herself. she had absolutely no interest in
letting him know it, of course, but it seemed that on the topic of the fairy king . . . she maybe
almost agreed with him.
effy pushed it out of her mind. she didn’t want to share any common ground with preston,
especially not when it came to angharad.
ianto led them down the hallway, naked glass bulbs flickering on the walls. the first door on
the left was cracked open.
“the library,” he said, turning to effy. “i’m sure you’ll agree there’s the most work to be done“the library,” he said, turning to effy. “i’m sure you’ll agree there’s the most work to be done
in here.”
effy followed him into the room. a single greasy window poured light onto the overflowing
bookshelves, the three-and-a-half-legged desk, the melted-down candles. a stained armchair
peered out from behind one of the shelves like an old cat, ornery at being disturbed. the rotted
wood floor creaked and moaned under their feet, heavy with so many stacks of books. they were
overflowing the shelves and spilling onto the ground, spines ripped and pages torn out, sitting in
puddles of their own bled ink.
it was several moments before effy was able to speak. the question that rose to her lips
surprised her. “was it like this all your life?” she managed. “did your father keep it this way on
purpose—”
“unfortunately,” ianto said in a clipped tone. “my father was a genius in many respects, but it
often meant he had little care for the mundane, unpleasant tasks of daily life.”
should she have been taking notes? she felt woozy. myrddin had been an odd man, a recluse,
but there was no reason he had to live in such squalor. effy could no longer see him as the
enigmatic man in his author photo. she could only picture him now as a crab in its slippery tide
pool, oblivious to being drenched over and over again by the water.
“let’s keep going,” she said, hoping her voice did not betray how weary she felt. in her
peripheral vision, she saw a little furrow appear between preston’s brows.
the door to the next room was closed. ianto pushed it open, and preston immediately pressed
forward, lodging himself in the threshold.
“this is the study,” he said. “i’ve been keeping my things in here.”
what could he possibly have to hide? maybe he was examining myrddin’s coffee rings after
all. maybe he had dug up myrddin’s dentures. another wave of nausea washed over her.
“i’d really like to see it,” effy said. sick as she felt, she didn’t want to miss an opportunity to
goad him. and his caginess had made her curious.
preston eyed her with immense disdain, lips going thin. but as it turned out, there was nothing
incriminating or embarrassing in the study: there was a ripped chaise, a blanket tossed over its
back, that he had clearly been sleeping on, and a desk scattered with papers. cigarette butts lined
the windowsill.
it was neater than every other room in the house by miles, but it was still not as immaculate as
she’d expected from the smug, pedantic p. héloury.
as they left the study, the floor groaned deafeningly under them, and effy lurched for the
nearest wall. momentarily she was certain the wood was going to collapse under her, just like the
rock had on the cliffs.
ianto gave her a sympathetic grimace, and she righted herself, cheeks hot. her mother’s voice
thrummed in her mind. bad decision after bad decision.
they came to a door at the end of the hallway, and ianto said, “i would show you the
bedrooms, but my mother doesn’t want to be disturbed.”
myrddin’s widow. effy didn’t even know her name; didn’t know a single thing about her other
than that she’d ordered ianto to have her stay in the guest cottage. but she’d allowed preston
inside the house. effy couldn’t help but think the widow did not want her here.
she could feel the beginnings of panic buzzing in the tips of her fingers and toes, her vision
whitening at the edges. she wished she had her pink pills, but in her rush she’d left them behind
on the nightstand. preston’s fault, she decided, but she couldn’t even imbue the thought with the
malice she wanted.
“that’s all right,” she said. “i’ve seen enough.”
all three of them went downstairs again, effy gripping the moist, slippery banister all the way.
she wanted nothing more than to leave this terrible house and its thick, briny air. but as ianto led
her back toward the kitchen, insisting upon scones and kippers, effy’s eyes landed on something
she hadn’t noticed before: a small door, its frame badly slanted and the wood at its base speckled
with tiny white barnacles. looking at it, she swore she could hear the waves more clearly, like an
enormous pulse of blood from the heart of the house itself.
“where does that door lead?” she asked.
ianto didn’t reply, but reached below the collar of his black sweater and produced a key,
strung around his neck on a thin piece of leather. he fitted the key into the lock and the door
swung open.
“be careful,” he said. he moved aside so effy could see through the opening “don’t fall
down.”
the door opened onto a set of stairs, half submerged in murky water. only the first few steps
were visible. salt smell curled into her nose, along with the peculiar scents of old leather and wet
paper.
“those were my father’s archives, in the basement,” ianto said. “but several years ago, the sea
level rose too high and flooded the whole floor. we haven’t managed to get anyone to come all the
way down here and try to drain it.”
“aren’t there very valuable documents in there?” effy was surprised at herself for asking such
a question. it sounded prying, opportunistic, like something preston might say. maybe he already
had.
“of course,” said ianto. “my father was very protective of his personal and professional
affairs. whatever papers are down there, i’m sure they’re properly sealed away, but they’re
impossible to reach, unless you fancy a very cold, very dark swim.”
effy watched the water ripple, bunching and then flattening like black silk. “shouldn’t the
water have drained on its own? when the tide went down?”
ianto gave her the same pitying look that wetherell had given her in the car. “the cliffside
here is sinking. the very foundation of the house is waterlogged. the whole bay of nine bells, in
fact. we are closer to drowning every year.”
effy hadn’t realized how literal talk of the second drowning was, more than mere southern
superstition. she felt ashamed for dismissing it now.
above the stairs was another archway. the stone was wet and draped with moss, words etched
on its surface between carvings of waves.
she read the engraving aloud, her voice tipping up at the end to make it a question. “‘the only
enemy is the sea’?”
and then, to her complete surprise, it was preston who spoke.
“everything ancient must decay,” he said, and it had the cadence of a song. “a wise man once
said thus to me. but a sailor was i—and on my head no fleck of gray—so with all the boldness of
my youth, i said: the only enemy is the sea.”
effy just stared at him while he recited the lines, his gaze steady behind his glasses, his tone
hushed and reverent. she recognized the words now.
“‘the mariner’s demise,’” she said softly. “from myrddin’s book of poems.”
“yes,” he said, sounding taken aback. “i didn’t realize you knew it.”
“literature students aren’t the only ones who can read,” she snapped, and then instantly
regretted the razor edge to her voice. she’d shown her bitterness and envy too plainly. perhaps
preston could already guess why she loathed him so much.
but all he said was, “right.”
his voice was short, his gaze cold and aloof again. effy shook her head, as if trying to dispel
the hazy vestiges of a dream. she wanted to evict from her mind that one fragile moment she and
preston had shared.
ianto cleared his throat. “my father was always his own greatest admirer,” he said. he waited
for effy to step aside and then shut the door, returning the key to his collar. “let’s all go eat some
breakfast. i won’t have you making a churlish host of me.”
but effy excused herself, insisting that she needed air. it wasn’t a lie. she could scarcely breathe
in that ruin of a house.
she clambered up the moss-laden steps and through the path onto the cliffside. this time she
was careful not to stand too close to the edge. the crumbling white stone looked like the slabs of
ice that floated down the river naer in the winter: churning and fickle, nothing you could trust to
hold beneath you. effy squeezed her eyes shut against the biting wind.
perhaps there had been no other applicants to the project at all. perhaps she was the only
student who had looked at the poster and seen a fantasy, while the others had seen the dreadful
reality.
at last effy understood: this was why ianto had sought out a student. no seasoned architect
would try to build a house on the edge of a sinking cliff, on a half-drowned foundation. not even
in reverence to emrys myrddin.
it’s beyond you, master corbenic had said, and he was right. he was like a splinter she
couldn’t get out from under her nail. the memory of him stung at the oddest times, when she’d
done as little as curl her fingers to reach for a coffee mug.
far below, the waves gnawed at the cliffside. effy could no longer see it as anything but
consumption, dark water eating away at the pale stone. her knees buckled beneath her and she
sank hopelessly down onto the rippling grass.
the truth was, she had seen many fine and beautiful things underneath all the damp and rot,
like chests of treasure waiting to be dredged up from a shipwreck. plush carpets that must have
cost a fortune, candelabras made of solid gold. but none of it could be salvaged from the rot and
the rising sea.
it was the task of a fairy tale, the sort of hopeless, futile challenge the fairy king himself
might have set. in her mind, she saw that creature from the road. it turned toward her, opened its
devouring mouth, and spoke: sew me a shirt with no seam or needlework. plant an acre of land
with one ear of corn. build a house on a sinking cliff and win your freedom.
she had never thought myrddin would set a task so cruel. but she did not know this man, the
one who had kept his own family trapped in a sinking, fetid house, the one who had let everything
around him fall to ruin. the man she had spent her whole life idolizing had been strange and
reclusive, but he had not been coldhearted. it all felt so terribly wrong. like a dream she wanteddesperately to wake up from.
it was preston’s voice in her ear now, his hushed recitation. the only enemy is the sea.
