i can hear the mermaids singing
beneath the rolling, wanton waves,
their hair as lush as meadowsweet,
their maidenheads as ripe for plunder
as the gold inside their sunken chests.
from “great captain and his sea-bride,” collected in the poetical works of emrys
myrddin, 196–208 ad
morning was the pale gray color of a trout’s belly, and the waves were lolling gently against the
shoreline. effy woke with a start slightly after dawn, the purple and green miasmas of her
nightmares still swirling in the corners of her mind.
her sleeping pills were meant to eliminate even her dreams, to plunge her into total, oblivious
blackness, but they hadn’t worked last night, either. she’d spent hours in the throes of nightmares,
tossing and turning so violently that the moss-colored duvet slipped off the bed and onto the floor.
she had dreamed of him, of course. the fairy king and his bone crown. she could not
remember a time when she had ever dreamed of anything else. sometimes the nightmares were
sliced through with images of master corbenic, but they flipped back and forth so rapidly that at
some point, they appeared identical. it was all black hair and reaching hands and water rising to
her throat.
effy knew preston would not be pleased with her being late. she hurriedly jammed her arms
into her sweater sleeves and her feet into her boots. she hesitated at the door, fingers hovering
above the iron knob. now that she had seen the fairy king in daylight, her old survival tactics
could not be entirely trusted.
she slipped two of the pink pills into her mouth and swallowed them dry. then effy wrenched
the door open and ran, skidding breathlessly up the path toward hiraeth.
by the time she arrived, she was panting, her skin buzzing with adrenaline. she’d seen no
flashes of damp hair in the gaps between trees. as she passed the front of the house, she looked in
the driveway for ianto’s car, but—blessedly—it was gone.
two seabirds were pecking at something in the tire marks instead. a run-over animal, mangled
and flat. effy didn’t get close enough to tell what it was. she saw only the matted, bloody fur and
her stomach turned over on itself. she clambered up the stairs into the house.
preston was waiting for her in the study, a mug of coffee in his hands and a reproachful look
on his face. “you’re late.”
effy glanced out the window, which held a tender pink light. “it’s still dawn. besides, that’s
not fair. you slept here.”
“and i had time to get coffee and everything.” preston looked down meaningfully at his mug.
“if you’d been here at dawn, you could’ve gotten some, too.”
she drew a breath and resisted rolling her eyes, but the utter predictability of his reaction was
oddly comforting. after all the strangeness, her nightmares, ianto’s violently shifting moods,
preston’s reliable fussiness was almost like a balm.
not that she would ever tell him that.
“you asked me not to fight you at every turn, but you promised to be fifteen percent less
condescending,” she reminded him. “so you have to let me win sometimes.”
preston’s lips thinned. “fine,” he relented. “you can win this one, whatever that means to
you.”
pleased by his acquiescence, effy considered what a suitable trophy would be. “it means you
have to give me your coffee.”
he heaved an enormous, persecuted sigh, but passed her the mug. purposefully keeping eye
contact with preston over the rim, effy swallowed a small sip and gagged.
of course preston héloury took his coffee black. she put down the mug, trying to hide her
grimace.
“did you see ianto leave?” preston asked.
“no, he was already gone.” effy thought about the animal carcass in the road. it had been too
small to be a deer but too large to be a rabbit, large enough that ianto would have seen it through
the windshield, and kept his foot pressed down on the gas pedal anyway.
the image of the fairy king sitting there in the driver’s seat blinked across her vision. effy
had to dig her fingernails into her palm to make it vanish again.
“we should hurry,” preston said. “i think llyrian services only last an hour, but you would
know better than me.”
as they began walking toward the door, effy said, “so my suspicions were correct —
argantians are heathens.”
“not all argantians,” he said, nonplussed, almost cheerful. “just me.”
“i’m sure your llyrian mother is very pleased with you.”
“she does her best to make me feel guilty about it.” they started down the hall.
“but she can’t really be that sanctimonious,” effy said as they rounded the corner to the
bedchamber, “or else she wouldn’t have married an argantian.”
“you’d be surprised how much cognitive dissonance people are capable of.”
“do you ever get weary of being so snootily unsentimental?”
preston huffed a laugh. “no, it comes very naturally to me.”
“you know, you could have said that love transcends petty theological squabbles.”
“love conquers all?” preston arched a brow. “i suppose i could say that, if i were a romantic.”
effy snorted, but for some reason her heart thumped unevenly. she told herself it was
nervousness about their assuredly ill-fated plan, and—as preston reached for the door—the
memory of the ghost surged forward in her mind. her white hair lashing like a cut sail, her skin so
pale it was almost translucent.
a similar coldness prickled effy’s skin, and she almost said, wait, stop. but it would be
useless to mention the encounter to preston. she knew without asking that he was not the type to
believe in ghosts.
mrs. myrddin, on the other hand, was perhaps worth bringing up. “be quiet,” she said tersely.
“the widow must be in here.”
“i know,” preston whispered back. “i’m being as quiet as i can.”
effy held her breath as preston turned the knob and pushed open the door to the private
chambers. what spooled out in front of them was a narrow hallway, dust-choked and dark. the
wooden floor was pocked with termite holes and the walls were bare, save for a small, rust-
speckled mirror.
effy was surprised to see it. yet when she examined the mirror more closely, she realized the
glass had been oxidized so thoroughly that there was no way to see a reflection in it. an odd
disappointment settled in her belly.
she and preston paused in the hallway and listened, but no sound echoed from either of the
doors ahead. and just as it had the night before, even the thrashing of water against the rocks had
gone silent. if mrs. myrddin was in her chambers, she must have been sleeping.
or, a small voice nagged at effy, she might not exist at all. it was not a thought she had any
proof of, but when she thought of the ghost, her heartbeat quickened.
keeping her voice low, she said, “ianto’s room is on the left.”
“i hope he hasn’t locked it.”
there was something wrong with this section of the house. it seemed to exist in another world,
cold and silent and strange, like a shipwreck on the ocean floor. the rest of hiraeth creaked and
groaned and swayed, protesting its slow destruction. the air here was stiff and heavy, and effy
moved through it almost in slow motion, as if she were wearing sopping wet clothes. in truth, it
was as though this wing of the house had already been drowned.
ianto’s door opened without so much as a shudder.
effy didn’t know what she had expected to see on the other side. a beached mermaid on the
bed, a heap of selkie skins? the ghost herself? the bedroom was disappointingly ordinary, at least
as far as hiraeth was concerned. there was an enormous canopy bed, not unlike the one effy slept
in herself, with moth-eaten gossamer curtains and dark blue satin sheets that made the mattress
appear waterlogged. as far as she could tell, there was no mirror.
there was a wardrobe, its doors firmly shut, between which the sleeve of a black sweater was
caught like a badger in a trap. a badger, effy thought suddenly. perhaps that had been the animal
in the road.
there were piles of yellowed newspapers, but none of them pertained to emrys myrddin. the
headlines were very arbitrary: an article about an art installation in laleston. one about a series of
burglaries in corth, a town not far east of saltney. another was about a pony that had become a
hero for bravely facing down a mountain cat; in the end, the pony had succumbed to its injuries
and died.
effy let the newspaper drift back down to the floor. “nothing.”
“i’m not quite ready to surrender yet,” said preston. “where was that white space in the
blueprints?”
“along the western wall.” effy pointed.
the western wall was just one huge bookshelf, only about half full. silently effy and preston
went about examining the spines, but they found no works of emrys myrddin there. ianto’s
reading taste appeared to be more lurid. mostly mysteries and romances, the sorts of books she
knew preston would call pedestrian.
one erotic title stuck out to her: dominating the damsel. effy slid it back into place with a
shudder.
“i don’t understand,” preston said, letting out a heated breath. “there can’t just be nothing.
what sort of man scrubs a house so thoroughly of his dead father’s memory?”
it was the second time preston had brought that up, and she wondered why the fact seemed to
bother him so much. “i don’t know,” she said. “everyone has their own way of grieving. you
can’t know what you’d do until it happens to you.”
“as it happens,” preston replied, “my father is dead.”
he said it so casually, so conversationally, that it took effy a while to react. she looked at him,
half turned toward her, the meager light clinging to his profile. his eyes, which were a pale brown,
seemed intense but steady, like he was staring at something he had been watching for a long time
already.
“look at us,” she said finally. “two fatherless children marooned in a sinking house. we
ought to be careful that ianto doesn’t decide to slit our throats over the new foundation.”
she’d meant to lighten the moment, but preston’s mouth went thin. “if there’s anyone who
would still believe in an old custom like that, it’s ianto. did you see the horseshoe over the door?”
“no,” she admitted. “but that’s an old folk tradition, to keep the fairies out of your house.”
preston nodded. “and all the trees planted around the property are mountain ash. for someone
who doesn’t keep any of his father’s books around, he certainly seems to have studied their edicts
closely.”
mountain ash, iron. effy had even noticed a crush of red berries outside the cottage. rowan
berries were meant to guard against the fair folk, too.
ianto had his father’s commissioned portraits of the fairy king and angharad hanging right
above the stairs. maybe that was another aegis. if he could keep the fairy king trapped inside a
frame, inside one of myrddin’s stories, it would stop him from slipping through the front door.
effy wondered if perhaps that was what ianto truly wanted from her: a house that could protect
him from the fairy king. what if he, too, had seen the creature in the road, with its bone crown
and wet black hair?
but what would the fairy king want with ianto? he came for young girls with pale hair to gild
his crown. men slept soundly in their beds while their wives and daughters were spirited away.
that was what the stories said.
and the shepherd had told her as much when he gave her the hag stones. a pretty young girl
alone on the cliffs up there . . .
she shook her head to dispel the thoughts. preston, who had been gripping the edge of the
bookcase with both hands, stepped back, sighing.
the bookcase wobbled, not inconsiderably—enough to reveal a knife-slit of space between the
shelf and the wall. effy and preston looked at each other.
without needing to speak, they both went to the far end of the bookcase and pulled. it made a
heaving sound that effy was sure would disturb the mistress—if she was indeed in the next room
—but her pulse was racing and her mind didn’t linger on the possibility that they might be caught.
when they had gotten the bookcase far enough away, effy could see that there was no wall
behind it at all. just an empty black space that became, as she stepped into it, a small room gouged
into the side of the house.
“be careful,” preston said. “effy, wait. i’ll get a candle.”
she didn’t want to wait. her heart was pounding, but it was so dark that she didn’t really have
a choice. she stood there in the cold room, seeing nothing on all sides, and oddly she was not
afraid. it was so silent, the air so still. effy could only imagine that whatever was in the room with
her, if it had ever been alive at all, was already dead.
preston came back with a candle and slid into the room beside her. it was a tight fit, and their
shoulders were pressed together. she could feel his arm rise with his breathing, just a little hitched,
just a little quick.
he shined the candle around, revealing dust-coated walls and cobwebbed corners, peeling
plaster and gray spots of mold. where the paint had been stripped away, a patch of brickwork was
exposed, and the mortar was dyed black, as if with ink.
there was nothing in the room save for a single dented tin box. it was in the exact center of the
floor, placed there with purpose.
effy went to kneel beside it, but preston thrust out his arm, pinning her back.
“what?” she demanded. “what is it?”
“your knees,” he said, lowering the candle to point at them. “i’m sure they’re still raw and—”
he looked flustered, one hand brushing through his untidy hair, and it took another moment for
him to finally say, “just let me.”
“oh.” effy watched as preston knelt down on the floor. “i thought you were going to tell me
the box was haunted.”
she couldn’t see his face, but she heard preston’s now familiar huff of laughter. “it does look a
bit haunted, doesn’t it?”
“i’m glad you don’t entirely lack imagination.”
preston gave the box a gentle shake. “it’s locked.”
“no,” effy said, her voice edging on petulant. “let me see.”
preston stood up, brushing off his trousers, and handed her the box. like the rest of the room,
it was covered in dust. effy had to blow on the front to read the words stamped on it: property
of e. myrddin.
her heart leaped. she tamped down her eagerness as she examined the rest of the box. below
his name was a little engraving of the same two saints, eupheme and marinell, their beards
swollen like titanic waves. effy got the same feeling she had felt while paging through those old
books in the university library—like she was discovering something arcane and secret and special,
something that belonged, in some small way, to her.
and to preston, of course. she could tell from the dust that no other fingers had touched this
box for a long, long time. there was a small keyhole in the front, but the metal felt very flimsy, no
more substantial than the tin where effy’s grandfather kept his neatly rolled cigars.
she heaved the box against the wall, which it hit with a deafening clatter. there was the crush
of metal as the corner of the box folded in on itself like a crumpled napkin.
preston actually yelped. “effy! what are you doing?”
“opening it,” she replied, which she thought was obvious.
“but ianto,” he choked out. “he’s certainly going to notice that his father’s box has been
smashed and pilfered.”
“the whole thing was covered in dust,” effy said. “i don’t think he even knows that it’s here.”
preston made another vague, strangled noise of protest, but effy had already pried open the
damaged lock. she flipped the lid of the box open, rusted hinges whining.
inside was a small leather-bound notebook, wrapped up with a length of twine.
her breath caught in her throat. here it was, something emrys myrddin had actually written in.
this was better than any obscure tome she’d ever found in the library. better than any treasure a
deep-sea diver could uncover.
she stole a glance at preston, whose eyes were wide, mouth slightly ajar, and found she didn’t
even mind that he was discovering it with her.
“i can’t believe it,” preston said. “i never really thought we would find—well, i suppose we
don’t know what’s inside yet. it could be a weather almanac. it could be a book of recipes.”
effy gave him a withering look. “no one keeps their recipe book locked away in a secret box,
in a secret room.”
“with myrddin, i wouldn’t be too shocked,” preston said dryly.
he picked up the diary and something slipped out from between its pages. several things, in
fact. nearly a dozen photographs, washed out and worn thin with time.
her fingers trembling, effy took one. through the pearlescent sheen of age, she could see it
was a photo of a girl, no older than she was, with long, pale hair. she was curled on the chaise
longue in myrddin’s study wearing a satin robe, which had slipped up to reveal a white calf.
preston frowned. “who is this?”
effy found she couldn’t speak. the air in the room suddenly felt very heavy, very thick.
she picked up the next photograph, which featured the same girl, on the same chaise, only she
had changed position: her legs were straight now, bare feet dangling over the edge of the chaise,
and her robe had rucked up farther, exposing the curve of her thigh.
though effy already knew what she would see, she needed to pick up the next photo. for so
long the girl had been secreted away, gathering dust. that was why something might become a
ghost—its life had meant so little, no one had even mourned it.
in the next photo the girl was on her back, robe cleaved open to bare her tight, round breasts.
the buds of her nipples were small and pinched, as if it had been cold in the study that day. she
was not looking at the camera. her gaze was elsewhere and empty. her arms were arced over her
head but in a stiff and unnatural way, as if they had been positioned there by someone else’s hand
or whim.
her body was as flat and bare as a butcher’s drawing, all parts accounted for. two legs and
two arms, her head and her golden hair, her flat belly and perfectly symmetrical breasts. if you slit
her down the middle like a fish, both sides would be identical.
effy’s grip tightened on the photo, crumpling its edges. a hard knot rose in her throat.
preston had taken up another photo. his face was very red, gaze darting around hurriedly,
trying to look anywhere else but at the naked girl. “who do you think she is?” he asked again.
“i don’t know.” effy’s voice sounded slurred, like a reverberation from below water. “these
could be ianto’s . . .”
“ianto doesn’t need to keep his, ah, adult materials under lock and key.” even the back of
preston’s neck was pink now. “you saw his bookshelves.”
adult materials was the sort of euphemism only an academic would come up with. if the
circumstances had been different, effy might have laughed.
but the girl wasn’t an adult, not really. she couldn’t be. she looked effy’s age, and effy
certainly didn’t feel like an adult.
the photographs made her dizzy, her vision blurring at the corners.
“they have to be myrddin’s, then.” the certainty of it was like a fist against her windpipe. her
breath came now only in rough, hot spurts.
preston looked at her, frowning. “effy, are you all right?”
“yes,” she managed. but she couldn’t bear to look at the girl anymore. she turned the
photograph over.
there was something scrawled on the other side, in hasty but delicate script.
preston read it aloud, his voice wavering slightly. “‘i will love you to ruination.’”
it was what the fairy king had said to angharad, the first night they had lain together in their
marriage bed. his long black hair had spilled out over the pillow, tangling with her pale gold.
the handwriting was not ianto’s.
there was a thump from downstairs, followed by the scrape of a door opening, and they both
jumped. effy felt her stupor lift. she put the box down on the floor and closed it, dented as it was,
while preston tucked the diary into his jacket pocket. they hurried out of the small room and
shoved the bookcase back into place.
they left the photographs inside the box. effy never wanted to see them again. she had no way
of knowing, but she felt very certain that the girl in the pictures was dead.
by the time they made it back to the study, effy was breathless. her nose was itching with dust,
her blood pulsing and hot, and when preston removed the diary from his pocket, his hands were
shaking.
he unwrapped the twine, long fingers working dexterously, and effy watched, oddly
hypnotized. they were both huddled over the desk, close enough that their shoulders were nearly
touching. she could feel the heat of his body next to hers and the frenetic hum of energy that
radiated from him.
behind his glasses, his brow was furrowed with consummate focus. the twine drifted to the
ground.
effy couldn’t help herself; she reached forward and opened the notebook to the first page. in
doing so, she brushed against preston’s hand, the nub of her missing ring finger grazing his thumb.
he looked down for a moment, his attention briefly diverted, and then turned his gaze back to the
diary.
the first page was dense with myrddin’s vexing, spidery scrawl. both effy and preston bowed
their heads, squinted, and read.
10 march 188
visited blackmar at penrhos. he gave me some notes on the youthful knight, which were
good. he also offered to introduce me to his publisher, some mister marlowe, in caer-isel.
blackmar seemed to think the head of greenebough books would be charmed by my
impoverished upbringing—what he called, a bit too self-importantly, my “rough edges.”
three of his daughters were there as well. the wife, i assume, banished.
that was the end of the first page. preston lifted his gaze from the book and up to effy. it was
the first time she had seen him completely slack-jawed.
“i can’t believe it,” he said. “this is myrddin’s actual diary. part of me hoped, of course, i
could find some of his unpublished work, but i didn’t even dare to imagine it would be a full
journal. do you know how valuable this is, effy? even if we don’t discover any evidence of a
hoax, this diary . . . well. gosse is going to have a stroke—honestly, i think every academic at the
literature college would amputate his left arm for it. as a museum artifact, it would be worth
thousands. maybe millions.”
“i think you’re getting a little ahead of yourself,” effy said. but her voice was weak, heart
spluttering. “ianto must not have known it was there. or else he would’ve tried to sell it himself.”
“or,” preston said, his face darkening, “there’s something in it he didn’t want anyone to
know.”
they read on.
30 january 189
the youthful knight will be published. greenebough appears cautiously optimistic, but i
do not expect much success. the youths themselves may read it, but i think it is too dry a
tome. what do youths these days care for chivalry and modesty? not very much, as far as i
can tell. when i visited penrhos i saw blackmar’s daughters again. the eldest is very fair,
and took an interest in my work. but a woman’s mind is too frivolous, and though she was
an unusually sober example of her sex, i could tell she was more preoccupied with dance
halls and boys. she has written a few poems of her own.
effy stared and stared at the line a woman’s mind is too frivolous. it stung her like a snakebite,
a sudden whiplash of pain. angharad was anything but frivolous. she was shrewd and daring, her
mind always scheming, imagining, conjuring new worlds. she was strong. she had defeated the
fairy king.
if myrddin really thought so little of women, why had he written angharad at all?
“the youthful knight was myrddin’s first effort,” preston said, “but it was released to relative
silence. emrys myrddin wasn’t a household name until—”
“until angharad,” effy finished. her chest hurt.
“let’s see what myrddin had to say about that.”
they flipped forward to 191, the year of angharad’s publication.
18 august 191
blackmar delivered angharad to me in the dead of night. the rain and humidity this time
of year is unbearable. i don’t take much stock in the fretting of the naturalists, but these
summer storms are enough to make me mind their warnings about a second drowning.
blackmar was happy to be free of her; she has been vexing him terribly of late.
publication is set for midwinter. mr. marlowe is greatly excited for the reinvention of
emrys myrddin.
preston let out a soft breath. his brown eyes were shining. “effy, i can’t believe this.”
it did seem damning. but even though the words a woman’s mind is too frivolous still gnawed
at her, effy wasn’t willing to relent. “who is blackmar?”
preston blinked, as if to banish the awestruck look from his face. “colin blackmar,” he said.
“another one of greenebough’s authors. you probably know his most famous work, ‘the dreams
of a sleeping king.’”
“oh. yes,” effy said. “that awful, tediously long poem we all had to memorize bits of in
primary school.”
the corner of preston’s mouth lifted. “do you remember any of it now?”
“‘the slumbering king dreams of sword-fights and slaughter,’” effy recited. “‘he feels the
steaming blood of his enemies through his mail, and his dream-self dreams of cool river water. he
sees the dragon’s long body uncoil, the flash of scales, the bright blades of its teeth, and oh, the
sleeping king is foiled!—for he is both the knight and the dragon in the battlefield of his dream-
world.’”
she tried to make her recitation sound suitably dramatic, even though her head was spinning
and her knees felt weak.
“you really do have the best memory of anyone i’ve ever met,” preston said. there was no
denying the admiration in his tone. “your schoolteachers must have all been very impressed.”
“it’s drivel,” effy said. “surely you can’t think there’s any merit to it.”
“blackmar has always been a more commercial author. he was never a critical darling like
myrddin. no one in the literature college is studying ‘the dreams of a sleeping king,’ that’s for
certain.” when effy gave him a dour look, he went on: “and no, i’ve never personally been a fan.
i find his work to be . . . well, tedious.”
finally, something they could agree on. “did you know myrddin and blackmar were friends?
why was blackmar bringing angharad to him in august of 191?”
“i have a few ideas,” preston said. “but this is something big, effy. even if you’re right and
myrddin was exactly who he said he was—an upstart provincial genius—there’s so much else this
diary could prove. so many things other myrddin scholars have only been able to speculate on.
gosse is going to choke on his mustache.”
“if it turns out myrddin isn’t a fraud,” said effy. but she was unable to imbue her words with
the confidence she wanted. her gaze kept darting back to the green chaise in the corner. she could
imagine the girl there, robe flayed open like an oyster shell. “this proves that myrddin was at least
literate, but . . . it doesn’t quite read like the thoughts of a once-in-a-lifetime genius.”
preston blinked rapidly at her, raising a brow. “did i hear that correctly? are you actually
starting to come around?”
“no!” effy burst out, face heating. “i mean, not entirely. it’s just . . . the things he said about
women. i don’t see how you could write a book like angharad if you really believed women were
empty-headed and frivolous.”
she tried to sound coolly rational like preston always did, removed from emotion. but her
throat was thick with a knot of unshed tears. the myrddin from the photograph on the jacket of
angharad and the myrddin of this diary were like two yoked oxen pulling in opposite directions,
and as much as effy tried, she could not hold them together.
“cognitive dissonance,” preston said. when effy glowered at him, he quickly added, “but
you’re right. angharad isn’t something your common misogynist would write.”
to call myrddin a common misogynist was strong language. it was probably the boldest, most
unequivocal statement she’d ever heard preston make. it made the lump in her throat rise.
“you can’t write him off on just one line in a diary entry, though,” she tried weakly. “maybe
he was just, i don’t know—having a bad day.”
the argument was pitiful; she knew it. preston drew a breath as if about to argue, but then
snapped his mouth shut. perhaps he saw the look of misery on her face. they both stood there for
a moment in silence, and effy felt the pull of the chaise longue in the back of her mind. as if she
might turn around and find the girl lying there, a corpse now, blue white and maggot ridden,
buzzing with flies. the image made her want to retch.
“i like to hedge my bets,” preston said at last, and effy was grateful to him for breaking the
silence, the spell those photographs had cast over her. “but seeing all this, if i had to make a
gamble . . . i would bet on us, effy.”
behind his glasses, his eyes were clear. the determination in his gaze made effy’s chest swell.
she had never thought she’d feel anything close to camaraderie with preston héloury—loathsome
literature scholar, untrustworthy argantian. yet even camaraderie did not feel quite like the right
word.
meeting his stare, she realized what she felt was closer to affection. even—maybe—passion.
and effy couldn’t help but wonder if he felt the same.
“there’s something here that someone has gone to great lengths to keep hidden,” preston said.
his gaze never left her. “it’s something others would—if i know my colleagues well enough—kill
for. but if we’re careful, we can—”
he was interrupted by the door banging open. effy hadn’t even heard any footsteps in the hall.
but ianto stood in the threshold, his clothes soaked, his black hair plastered to his scalp.
preston’s reflexes were impressively quick. he thrust the diary behind his back and under a
pile of scattered papers on his desk.
effy let out a soft, choked gasp, but no one else heard it over the sound of water sluicing onto
the floor. it was dripping off ianto’s clothing and the barrel of the musket he held over his
shoulder.
she was almost relieved to see him standing there, perfectly mortal even in his anger. half of
her had expected to see the fairy king appear in the doorway.
“the storm started so suddenly,” ianto said. “as soon as i returned from saltney i began my
weekly patrol around the property—wetherell swears he saw the tracks of a wolf—he keeps
telling me to hire a groundskeeper, but i do like the fresh morning air. the two of you look cozy.”
how had he found the time to traverse the grounds after returning from church? surely they
had not spent more than an hour looking for myrddin’s diary. but his car had been gone, and she
had seen that dead thing decaying in the driveway.
or at least, she thought she had. she had taken her pink pills this morning, two, for good
measure, but after last night—after the ghost—she no longer trusted the medication entirely.
maybe there had been no animal at all, no blood.
she pressed her lips shut, skin itching.
preston’s face went very pale. “effy was just, ah, telling me about her work. i have a passing
interest in architecture. i was always curious about the differences between classical argantian and
llyrian homes . . .”
he trailed off, and despite her dread, effy was charmed to learn what an abysmal liar preston
was.
“we go to the same university in caer-isel,” she said smoothly. “as it turns out, we even have
some mutual friends. small world.”
the discrepancy in their narratives was obvious, but preston hadn’t given her too much to
work with. did he really expect ianto to believe he cared about the difference between a sash
window and a casement? preston’s fingers were curled tautly around the edge of the desk, his
knuckles white.
ianto just stared, as if neither of them had spoken at all. very slowly he let the musket slide off
his shoulder and hang parallel to the ground, its barrel pointed somewhere in the vague direction
of preston’s knees. effy’s throat tightened.
“i believe,” he said, each syllable staccato and deliberate, “that i have been quite generous in
allowing you both into my home, and very patient in allowing inquests into my father’s life and
family history, things that are, of course, highly personal to me. if i were to learn that my patience
and generosity were being exploited, for any reason—well. i suppose we would all rather not
discover what might come to pass.”
“right,” preston said, too quickly, throat bobbing as he spoke. “of course. sorry.”
effy resisted the urge to elbow him. he had to be the most guilty-looking person alive.
“it’s nothing like that,” she said, trying to keep her voice even. “we were just having coffee
and chatting before getting to work. did you enjoy your trip to town?”
“mm,” ianto said vaguely. the end of his musket was a gaping hole, depthless black. around
him a puddle had formed on the wooden floor. “perhaps you’ve done enough chatting for today,
ms. sayre. mr. héloury. effy, i’d like to see some new sketches by this afternoon.”
it was as if he had forgotten everything from yesterday: their time at the pub, her jumping out
of the car. his eyes were turbid again, unreadable. even if effy had felt brave enough to try, she
could not have divined anything from staring into them.
without another word, ianto turned and slammed the door shut behind him. all that remained
was the puddle of water on the floor.
the whole incident was enough to convince effy that ianto was hiding something, even if he
didn’t know about the diary. as she tried to work on her sketches downstairs at the dining room
table, odd glass chandelier rippling overhead, she could not stop thinking about the photographs of
the girl on the chaise. each one was like a stake driven through her brain.
they were clearly old, though how old, effy couldn’t say. she thought again of the line
scrawled on the back of the last one: i will love you to ruination. the handwriting matched the
handwriting in myrddin’s diary.
and her mind turned even further on that line from myrddin’s diary: a woman’s mind is too
frivolous. something was wrong with it, all of it—maybe not in the way preston thought, but in a
way that made her chest ache and her eyes burn. at this point, the best possible outcome was that
the diary itself was a forgery. that myrddin had never written those things about women. but that
seemed highly unlikely, given the great pains someone—perhaps myrddin himself—had gone to
hide it.
that left her with two options: that myrddin had believed all those things and still written
angharad (cognitive dissonance, like preston had said), or that he hadn’t written angharad at all.
in that moment, effy wasn’t sure which would be worse.
she worked half-heartedly on her sketches, fingers trembling around her pencil. it was a good
thing she had plenty of practice fumbling her way through architecture assignments with little
enthusiasm. but strangely, ianto never came down to check on her, even as the thin gray light
bleeding in through the windows grew dimmer, and finally vanished.
effy peered through the smudged glass. it was almost totally dark out now, the sun making
itself small against the horizon. she folded up her papers and got to her feet.
she meant to return to the guesthouse—really, she did—but somehow her legs were carrying
her up the stairs, past the portrait of the fairy king, who blessedly remained trapped in his frame,
past the carvings of the saints, past the door to the study where preston was certainly poring over
the diary.
it had been about this time last night that she had seen the ghost. dusk, when the war between
the waning light and the hungering dark made everything look shuddery and unreal. effy told
herself she only meant to bring the sketches to ianto, like he had asked. but as she crept toward
the door leading to the private chambers, she found herself moving stealthily, trying not to make a
sound.
there was the same oppressive stillness she’d felt when she and preston had entered the
chambers earlier. but she did not see the ghost: no flash of a white dress or a naked calf, no
curtains twitching. effy was about to turn back, disappointed, when she heard a voice.
“had to get out—”
she froze, like a deer at the end of a hunter’s rifle. it was ianto.
“i didn’t have a choice,” he said, and it was a low, moaning sound, as if he were in pain. “this
house has a hold on me, you know that, you know about the mountain ash . . .”
he stopped speaking suddenly. effy’s blood turned to ice.
and then he spoke again: “i had to bring her back. isn’t that what you wanted?”
effy waited and waited, her whole body shaking, but ianto said no more. when she had the
strength to move, she lurched unsteadily down the stairs, fear thrumming in her like a second
pulse. it was like ianto had been talking to himself—or talking to something that couldn’t speak its
reply.
something like a ghost.
