Five

Five

Myrddin’s reception is as curious as the man himself. Some critics accuse him of excessive romanticism (see Fox, Montresor, et al.). Yet Angharad is grudgingly accepted, even by his detractors, as a profound and surprising work. His admirers—and there are many, both critical and commercial—insist that the relatability of his work, the universalism, is intentional, reflecting a keen understanding of the human condition. In this manner, he is generally considered worthy of his status as national author.

From the foreword to The Collected Works of Emrys Myrddin, edited by Cedric Gosse, 212 AD

The next morning was cloud-dense and sunless, and Effy rose in a pale, rheumy gray light. She had not returned to Hiraeth yesterday, even at Ianto’s urging, and had instead sat in the guesthouse, her mind running dismally through her few and narrowing options.

She tried the rusted taps above the tub, twisting them back and forth until her fingers ached and her palms were gritty with rust. At last she managed to get a slow drip from one of them, and cupped her hands under the trickling stream. It took the better part of an hour to scrub herself clean and wash her hair, but she refused to go into town filthy. She had that much dignity left.

When she was finished, Effy put her pill bottle in her purse and slid on her coat. She left her trunk ajar and abandoned. What did she need that couldn’t be replaced? She considered it as she began her stumbling walk down the cliffs toward Saltney. Some clothes, her drafting linens, a cheap set of protractors and compasses. She would not miss any of it.

Effy had finally settled on a plan late last night, lying under the green duvet, waiting for her sleeping pill to do its work. As rancid water dripped onto the pillow beside her, she decided she couldn’t afford to wait, or plead with Wetherell for a ride. She would leave Saltney first thing in the morning, and she would walk herself, the sea be damned.

The dark-haired creature be damned, too. She knew the stories, and she knew her own mind. The Fairy King did not show his face in the light of day. But she took one of her pink pills, for good measure.

Her plan had seemed sound enough until it started drizzling. Effy went on stubbornly, her boots scrabbling against the loose rocks, as the road turned steeper and steeper. The sprinkle of rain was enough to turn the packed dirt into mud, and soon every step was a labor, the muck sucking at her shoes. Water trickled down her face.

Her vision blurring, Effy stared determinedly ahead, trying to gauge how much of her journey was left. There was a sharp bend in the road, and the cliffs rose jaggedly above it, blocking her view of Saltney. She could see no smoke chuffing from chimneys in the distance, no thatched roofs along the horizon.

She rubbed at her cheeks. To her left the sea was lapping at the edge of the road, in broad tongues of salt and foam. A wave crested over the rock and washed the toe of her boot.

Panic was rising in her chest when Effy heard the rumble of a car engine behind her. A black car was clattering down the road, its windows speckled with raindrops, its hood sleek and wet.

Effy stepped aside to let it pass, but instead it slowed to a halt beside her. The driver’s-side window rolled down.

Preston stared at her in silence for several moments, his arms braced on the steering wheel. His hair looked as untidy as it had yesterday, and his eyes were unblinking behind his glasses. At last, he said, “Effy, get in.”

“I don’t want to,” she said mulishly.

Of course the rain chose that precise moment to pick up, the fat droplets catching on her lashes. Preston’s gaze was flat with skepticism. “The road is all but washed away down there,” he said. Then, in complete deadpan, he added, “Are you planning to swim?”

She glanced down the muddy road, glowering, and said, “Is this how you entice all the girls into your car?”

“Most girls don’t give me the chance, since they’re sensible enough not to try and saunter down cliffs in the rain.”

Her face turned magnificently warm. She stomped around the other side of the car, cheeks flaming. In one furious motion, she jerked open the car door and plunked into the passenger seat.

She looked stubbornly forward as she said, “I object to the word saunter.”

“Your objection is noted.” His gaze didn’t shift from her. “Put your seat belt on.”

He was trying to humiliate her, to treat her like a child. “My mother doesn’t even make me wear my seat belt,” she scoffed.

“I don’t suppose your mother spends a lot of time driving you down half-sunken roads.”

She couldn’t think of a clever reply to that. Preston had his seat belt on, and she was too cold and wet to argue. As she buckled herself in, she thought, You are so insufferable. She almost said it out loud.

They drove on in silence for several moments, the wheels of the car spinning hard against the muck. Every time the rain picked up, Effy’s mood turned fouler. It was like the weather was mocking her, reminding her how stupid and helpless she’d been, and how Preston, dryly logical, had come to her rescue. She sank down in her seat, scowling.

The inside of Preston’s car smelled like cigarettes and leather. It was not, as much as she loathed to admit it, entirely unpleasant. There was something almost comforting about it. She stole a glance at him, but his eyes were fixed determinedly on the road as the car wound down the cliffside.

“Why are you going into Saltney?” she asked.

He looked surprised to hear her speak. “I go to the pub to work sometimes. It’s hard to focus in that house, with Myrddin’s son breathing down my neck.”

A flare of anger in her belly. “Maybe Ianto doesn’t like soulless academics rifling through his dead father’s things for little anecdotes to pad their thesis.”

Preston’s head snapped up. “How did you know it’s for my thesis?”

Effy was so pleased her bait had worked, she had to keep herself from smiling. For the first time, she felt she had gained some ground, had some advantage over him. “I just assumed you had an ulterior motive. You were so uneasy when Ianto tried to show me the study.”

“Well, congratulations on your powers of observation.” Preston’s tone took on a bit of bitterness, which pleased Effy even more. “But just so you know, not a single literature student would pass up the opportunity.”

Not a single literature student. Was he trying to belittle her, to rile her? Had he guessed the real reason she despised him so much? Effy tried to hide her frustration and envy. “The opportunity to what? Write some gossipy little thesis and get a gold star from the department chair?”

“No,” Preston said. “The opportunity to find out the truth.”

That was the second time he’d said it—the truth. Like he was trying to make his self-interested scheming sound more noble. “Why did Ianto even invite you here?” she bit out.

“He didn’t. Obviously he didn’t object to the university creating a collection out of his father’s papers, but he didn’t invite me.” Preston’s eyes darted briefly toward her, then back to the road. “Myrddin’s widow did.”

The mysterious widow again, who hadn’t even left the bedchamber to greet Effy, who had insisted on marooning her in the guesthouse. Why was she playing patron to a scurrilous university student?

The car sloshed through a mess of salt water and foam, a wave that hadn’t yet receded. A sudden stop sent Effy lurching forward, her seat belt catching her before she smacked her face into the glove box.

Still unwilling to concede, she righted herself and stared straight ahead in surly silence. She could have sworn she saw the ghost of a smirk on Preston’s face.

As the car turned down the last bend in the road, he sobered and asked, “Why are you so desperate to get to Saltney?”

Her stomach knotted instantly. The last thing in the world she wanted to do was confess that she was planning to leave Hiraeth after only one day. Even in the face of such an impossible task, surrender was humiliating. Doubly humiliating, because Preston had been living and working in that awful house for weeks, undeterred by the rot and ruin and sinking cliffs. Admitting the truth would mean accepting he was cleverer, more resourceful, more determined.

And it would be worse to tell him the deeper, more painful truth: that seeing Hiraeth had ruined her childish fantasy, ruined the version of Myrddin she had constructed in her mind, one where he was benevolent and wise and had written a book meant to save girls like her.

Now when she imagined him, she thought only of the crumbling cliffs, the rocks falling out from under her feet. She thought of that drowned room in the basement, of Ianto saying, My father was always his own greatest admirer.

“I need to call my mother,” she said.

It was the first lie that came into her head, and it wasn’t a very good one. Effy’s cheeks warmed. She felt like a child caught shoplifting, embarrassed by the clumsiness of her artifice.

Preston lifted a brow, but his expression didn’t seem disdainful. “Does she know you’re taking time off from your studies?”

His tone was casual, unassuming, but it stopped Effy’s heart for a brief moment. They went to the same university. Different colleges, of course, but it was possible that they’d passed each other in the library, or while drinking coffee in the Drowsy Poet. Being the only girl in the architecture college was like being under a bell jar, everything she did closely scrutinized. The rumors had started so easily, and traveled so far. It wasn’t unrealistic to imagine that he had heard about Master Corbenic.

Now that her mind had conjured the possibility, her belly pooled with terror and dread. She had the abrupt urge to fling open the car door and pitch herself into the sea.

She managed to calm herself and reply icily, “That’s none of your business.”

Behind his glasses, Preston’s gaze hardened. “Well,” he said. “I’ll drop you off by the phone booth.”

Mercifully, the rest of the car ride was short. By the time Preston pulled into Saltney, the rain had stopped, too. Dirty puddles pocked the road. The main street housed a church, made from the same crumbling white stone as the cliffs, a fish shop with a wooden sign hanging slanted above the door, and the pub, soft golden light gleaming from behind its rain-streaked windows.

“You can let me out here,” Effy said. “I’ll walk.”

Preston pulled over without a word. Effy tried to open the door, but the handle just flapped uselessly. She pulled it over and over again, frustration rising to a fever pitch, her face burning.

“It’s locked,” Preston said. His voice was tight.

It was a petulant sort of stubbornness that kept Effy yanking at the handle, even though the door wouldn’t budge. After several more moments, she heard Preston draw a breath, and then he reached over, fumbling for the lock.

His shoulder was pressed against her chest, their faces close enough that Effy could see the muscle feathering in his jaw. His skin was very lightly tan, and from this vantage point she noticed the faint scattering of freckles on his cheeks. She hadn’t seen them before. There were two red marks where his glasses had dug in, tiny nicks that winged the bridge of his nose.

She wondered if they hurt. She almost wanted to ask. It was a strange thought, and she wasn’t sure why it had occurred to her. Her heart was shuddering unsteadily, and she was certain Preston could feel it through the wool of her sweater and his coat.

At last the door clicked open. Preston pulled back, letting out a quiet huff. Effy only then realized that she, too, had been holding her breath.

Cold air wafted in from the open door, bringing with it the smell of the sea. She clambered out of the car as quickly as she could, her bottom lip stinging where she’d bitten it nearly to bleeding.

The train station was not far from the pub, but as soon as she started to walk, Effy’s legs began to go numb beneath her. She watched from the street as Preston climbed out of the car, the collar of his jacket pulled up around his ears.

There was a pale flush painting his cheeks, and Effy was sure she wasn’t imagining it. He gave her one stiff, tight nod and then vanished into the pub. While the door was briefly open, Effy heard the muffled music of the record player.

She turned toward the train station. There was no use waiting, she figured, if she was indeed going to leave. On the way, her left foot plunged into a puddle, soaking the hem of her pant leg. Already she missed Caer-Isel and coffee shops and Rhia. She even missed Harold and Watson.

Mostly, she missed paved streets.

There were no other cars aside from Preston’s, and the street was dreary and empty. The train station was nothing more than a small ticket booth and a stretch of silent tracks, water beading on the booth’s window and dripping off the awning.

She didn’t know when the next train was coming, and there didn’t appear to be any sort of schedule posted. Effy glanced over her shoulder, as if she might catch Preston watching her. But why would he care enough to investigate her lie?

Effy was only a few paces away from the station when she saw the telephone booth—its glass, too, misted thoroughly with condensation.

She wasn’t sure exactly what made her enter it and pick up the phone. She owed no loyalty to the stupid lie she’d told Preston. And yet she found herself dialing her mother’s number again.

A very small part of her did want to hear her mother’s voice. It was the urge that a dog had to nose the same old beehive, forgetting the fact that it had been stung before.

“Hello? Effy? Is that you?”

“Mother?” The relief she felt almost bowled her over. “I’m so sorry for not calling you back sooner.”

“Well, you should be,” her mother said. “I was frantic. I told your grandparents. Where are you?”

“I’m still in Saltney.” Effy swallowed. “But I’m going to leave now.”

There was a rustling sound; she imagined her mother shifting the receiver so it was cradled between her shoulder and her ear. “What made you finally change your mind?”

Finally was a little pinch of cruelty. It had only been one day. “I just realized you were right. I was taking on more than I could handle.”

Her mother made a low, approving sound. There were the faint noises of cars rattling down the street in the background. Effy pictured her mother standing by the open window, telephone cord wrapped around her lithe body. She imagined the armchair in the living room where she used to curl up after school and do her homework; she imagined her grandparents shuffling about in the kitchen downstairs, cooking venison and mincemeat pies. She imagined her bedroom, with the same pastel pink wallpaper she’d had since she was a child and the stuffed bear she’d been too embarrassed to bring to university but missed every night.

“Well, thank the Saints,” her mother said. “I can’t handle any more trouble from you.”

“I know,” said Effy. “I’m sorry. I’m coming home now.”

The words shocked her the second she uttered them. A moment ago, she’d been missing Caer-Isel, but she realized now that even if it was familiar, it wasn’t safe. A beat of silence. Her mother inhaled sharply.

“Home? What about your studies?”

“I don’t want to go back to Caer-Isel.” The knot of tears rose in her throat so suddenly, it was painful to speak. “Something happened, Mother, and I can’t—”

She wanted to tell her mother about Master Corbenic, but any capacity for speech abandoned her. It still only came back to her in flashes; there was no narrative, no story with a beginning, middle, and end. There was only the haziness of dread, the dry-mouthed panic, the nightmares that sent her jolting awake at night.

And she knew exactly how much sympathy her mother had for her nightmares.

“Effy.” Her mother’s voice was so razor-edged, it made Effy’s stomach curdle. “I don’t want you to come home. You can’t. I have work and you’re an adult now. Whatever mess you’ve made, you need to sort it by yourself. Go back to school. Take your medication. Focus on your studies. Let me have my life. You are taking your pills, aren’t you?”

Effy wished, in that moment, that her senses would dull again. She wanted to go to that deep-water place, where she could hear only the churning of the waves above her.

But her mind wouldn’t carry her there. Instead she felt acutely the cold press of the telephone against her ear, and the tightening of her throat, and the panicked, off-kilter beat of her heart. She lifted her hand to rub at the knob of scar tissue where her ring finger should be.

“I’m taking them,” Effy said. “But that’s not—”

She cut herself off. She meant to say that’s not the problem, but wasn’t it? At any point when she’d been in Master Corbenic’s office, she could have run. That’s what the boys in her college whispered: that she’d wanted it. After all, why else would she have stayed? Why had she never pushed him away? Why had she never said that simple word, no?

Trying to articulate the inarticulable fear she’d felt as she sat in his green office chair would lead her down the same road it always had. It would end with her mother telling her there was no such thing as monsters. That there was nothing watching her from the corner of her room, no matter how many nights Effy could not sleep under its cold, unblinking gaze.

“Haven’t I done enough?” Her mother’s voice was trembling faintly, like a needle against a scratched record. “For eighteen years it was just you and me, and by the Saints, you didn’t make it easy?.?.?.”

She considered reminding her mother that her grandparents had done just as much, that they had paid for her schooling, taken her on trips, helped with her homework, tended to her while her mother nursed her gin headaches or stayed in bed for days under a gloom of exhaustion. But Effy had listened to this record turn a thousand times. There was no use saying any of that, no use saying anything at all.

“I know,” was all she managed, in the end. “I’m sorry. I’ll go back to school now. Goodbye, Mother.”

She hung up before her mother could answer.

Effy stepped out of the phone booth, her boots crunching the wet gravel. She had expected to feel a tight cord of panic lace up her spine, but instead she felt oddly serene. It was the removal of choice that calmed her. There were only two roads ahead of her now, one of them well-trod and dark, the other half lit and waiting.

She had thought she could go down that dark road, but the more she thought of the whispers in the hall and Master Corbenic, the more she realized she could not bear it. That made her next decision easy. She knelt to roll up her wet pant leg and then stood and marched down the empty street, the train station blurring in her peripheral vision.

Effy hadn’t gone more than a dozen paces when she saw someone coming down the road toward her. He was an older man with a weather-beaten face and a shepherd’s crook, and there were a number of bleating sheep at his back. She couldn’t count how many until he grew closer.

It was city-bred instinct that had Effy clutching her purse against her body, but the man paused more than an arm’s length away from her, wizened fingers curled around the crook. His eyes were the color of sea glass, a matte and cloudy green.

“I know you aren’t from here,” he said, in a garbled Southern accent that Effy struggled to understand. “A pretty young girl alone on the cliffs up there—you haven’t been reading your fairy tales.”

Effy felt deeply offended. “I’ve read plenty of fairy tales.”

“Haven’t been reading them right, then. Are you a religious girl? Do you pray to your Saints at night?”

“Sometimes.” Truthfully, she hadn’t been to church in years. Her mother had only brought her out of vague obligation, citing her grandmother’s faith and devotion to Saint Caelia, patron of maternity. The nearest chapel in Draefen was dedicated to Saint Duessa, the patron of blessed liars. Effy had sat there in a starched white dress, swinging her legs beneath the pews and counting the number of red bits in the stained glass windows. Once or twice she had caught her mother nodding off.

“Well, your prayers are no use,” the old shepherd said. “They won’t protect you against him.”

The wind picked up then, brittle and cold. It blew the grass on the hilltops flat and carried the salt spray of the sea from the shoreline. One of the black-faced sheep bleated at her anxiously. There were seven of them, horns curled against their flat heads like mollusks.

Electricity sparked along Effy’s skin. She lowered her voice and leaned closer to the shepherd. “Do you mean the Fairy King?”

The man did not immediately reply, but his eyes shifted left and then right, toward the hills and then toward the sea, as if he expected something to come rising or lumbering out of either one.

Effy thought of the creature in the road, its wet black hair and bone crown. She had seen it. Wetherell had seen it. Perhaps the shepherd had seen it, too. Her whole body felt like a live wire, blood running with adrenaline.

“Guard yourself against him,” the shepherd said. “Metal on your windows and doors.”

“Iron. I know.”

The old man reached into his left pocket and dug around for several moments. Then he held out his hand. Cupped in his palm were a bevy of stones, white and gray and rust-colored, like the pebbles on the beach. Each one had a small hollow in its center, through which Effy could see the man’s wrinkled, ancient skin.

“Hag stones,” the shepherd said. “The Fairy King has many clever disguises. Look through these and you’ll see him coming, in his true form.”

He grasped Effy’s wrist and pried her fingers open, then deposited the stones in her palm before she could protest. They were heavier than they had looked when the old man held them. She put the stones in the pocket of her trousers.

When she looked up again, the shepherd had turned around and was walking down the road, away from her, up toward the green hills. His sheep bobbed after him like buoys on the water. One paused in the road and looked back at her.

Her skin was still electric. Effy reached into her pocket and lifted one of the stones to her eye, peering through the hollow in the middle. But she only saw the sheep staring back at her, unblinking and frozen.

She lowered the stone again, feeling foolish. Fairy tales or not, back in Caer-Isel, she never would have stopped to listen to the ramblings of some strange old man in the street. She put the stones back in her pocket and wiped the sea spray off her cheeks. It occurred to her that she’d just been the exact opposite of pickpocketed.

The pub had a name, but the sign was so damp and wood-rotted that Effy couldn’t make it out. She pushed through the door with more confidence than she felt. The hairs on her neck were stiff and risen from listening to the shepherd’s words.

At once she was bathed in the pub’s warm, golden light. There was a stone fireplace in the corner that crackled with a sound like twigs snapping under the tread of a boot. Above it, the mantel bore old sepia-toned photographs. The room was crammed with a number of circular tables and two booths in the far back corner. The wood on the booths was shinier, newer, clearly an effort at modernizing.

Behind the bar were rows and rows of liquor bottles, some of them clear, others green or amber, gleaming like hard candies. The record she’d heard earlier was still turning, playing a song by a supine-voiced woman Effy didn’t recognize.

The pub was empty save for two older men sitting by the window—fishermen, judging by their thick sweaters and rubber boots—and the bartender, a woman about her mother’s age, with hands that looked like they’d worked as many years as Effy had been alive. And Preston, whose untidy hair she spotted over the top of one of the booths. She darted around the nearest table so he wouldn’t see her.

She had only been to a pub once or twice in her life, when Rhia had taken her. She didn’t know any of the unspoken etiquette. She didn’t drink, either. Alcohol, the doctor had said, reacted poorly with her medication, and Effy already had enough trouble discerning what was real.

The bartender gave her a pitiless, glowering look. “You going to order something?” she asked, her accent as incomprehensible as the shepherd’s had been.

Effy took a step toward the bar. “Yes. Sorry. I’ll have a gin and tonic, please.”

It was her mother’s drink of choice and the first thing that came to mind. The bartender raised a brow but busied herself fetching a glass. Effy felt her cheeks heat. It was only just past nine in the morning, but she hadn’t known what else to order.

She let her gaze wander toward the fishermen, who had stopped their conversation to watch her, eyes small and keen under their bushy brows.

The shepherd’s words thrummed in the back of her mind. Look through these and you’ll see him coming, in his true form.

To religious Northerners, the fairies were demons, underworld beings, the sworn enemies of their Saints. To smarmy, agnostic scientists and naturalists, the Fair Folk were as fictitious as any other stories told in church. But to Southerners, fairies were a mere fact of life, like hurricanes or adders in your garden. You took precautions against them. You shut your windows and locked your doors. You didn’t go overturning any large rocks.

Effy almost raised the hag stone to her eye again, but she would have felt stupid, here in open sight of the bartender and these men. Besides, the Fairy King was vain until his very last breath. He would choose a more dignified disguise.

The sound of a glass being placed on the bar jolted her from her thoughts. The bartender looked at her expectantly.

“How much?” Effy asked. The bartender told her, and Effy dutifully counted out the coins. The fishermen were still watching. The bartender took the money and Effy picked up her glass. “What’s the most popular drink here?”

“Usually scotch. But seeing as it’s winter now, most people order hot cider.”

Effy clutched her cold glass, flushing. As soon as the bartender went back to wiping the counter, she scurried away.

Once she was out of sight of the bartender, she considered her options. She could sit at one of the tables, in full view of the leering fishermen, or she could take the booth right next to Preston’s and—what? Sip her drink in silence, while Preston worked on the other side, both acutely aware of the other’s presence with only the thin glossy wood between them like a church confessional?

Effy could scarcely imagine anything more awkward. And after the episode in the car, she felt as if she needed to reclaim some of her lost dignity. Before she could lose her nerve, she marched toward Preston’s booth and sat down across from him.

He startled at once, slamming his book shut. With the flush painting his cheeks and his darting eyes, he looked like a guilty schoolboy. She supposed that was what he was, only she didn’t know what he had to feel guilty about.

“I guess you finished your phone call,” he said.

“Yes,” Effy replied. By Preston’s elbow was a glass of scotch, half full, which made her feel less foolish for ordering a drink at nine in the morning. She still hadn’t decided if she was actually going to take a sip, but she was glad she had it—it made her feel more like Preston’s equal.

He slid his book back into his satchel, but not before Effy saw the title on the spine: The Poetical Works of Emrys Myrddin, 196–208 AD.

He caught her looking and gave a defiant look back. “One of your library books,” he said. “I didn’t mean to salt the wound.”

She decided not to let him fluster her. “You must have just been reading it, then. ‘The Mariner’s Demise.’”

“It’s not one of Myrddin’s well-known works. I’m surprised you recognized it.”

“I told you. He’s my favorite author.”

“The scholarly consensus is that Myrddin’s poetry is generally middling.”

Effy’s face heated, anger curdling her stomach. “Why bother studying something you clearly find beneath you?”

“I said that was the scholarly consensus, not my personal opinion.” Which of course he wasn’t going to share. He was much better than Effy at keeping his cards close to the vest. His glasses had slipped a bit down the bridge of his nose; he pushed them up again. “And anyway, you don’t have to love something in order to devote yourself to it.”

He said it so offhandedly, she knew he hadn’t meant to rile her, but that only made it worse—that he had to do so little to wound her so much. “But what’s the point otherwise?” she managed. “You scored high enough on your exams to study whatever you want, and you chose literature on a whim?”

“It wasn’t a whim. And maybe architecture is your life’s passion, maybe it’s not. We all have our reasons for doing what we do.”

Another flare of anger. “I don’t see any reason for studying literature unless you care about the stories you’re reading and writing.”

“Well, I study theory, mostly. I’m not a writer.”

That crushed her like something caught in the tight, relentless snarl of a riptide. How could he be satisfied only studying literature, never writing a word of his own? Never getting to put to paper the things he imagined? Meanwhile, the banal reality of her own life made her miserable: sketching plans for things she didn’t know how to build, drawing houses other people would call home. It was enough to make her want to cry, but she dug her fingernails into her palm to keep the tears from pricking her eyes.

“Well,” she said at last, trying to match the cool flatness of his tone, “I can’t imagine what an Argantian would learn from reading Llyrian fairy tales, anyway. Myrddin’s our national author. You wouldn’t understand his stories unless you grew up hearing your mother read them.”

“I told you,” he said slowly, “my mother is Llyrian.”

“But you grew up in Argant.”

“Obviously.”

That earned her a scowl—it was the first time Effy had seen him appear chastened, defensive. But the small victory tasted less sweet than she had thought it would. Of course Preston was aware of his accent and his unmistakably Argantian surname. She remembered her conversation with the literature student in the library, who had echoed her question: I mean, how many Argantians want to study Llyrian literature?

Underneath it was a second, unspoken question: What gives them the right?

She didn’t want to be like that boy, didn’t want to be like those Llyrians, small-minded and bigoted, believing all the absurd superstitions and stereotypes about their enemies. No matter how much she disliked Preston, it wasn’t his fault for being born Argantian, any more than it was her fault for being born a woman.

And Effy remembered the reverence in his tone when he’d recited those lines from “The Mariner’s Demise.” We all have our reasons for doing what we do.

Maybe there was a reason he’d attached himself to Myrddin. Maybe it wasn’t just shameless opportunism. Suddenly, and against all odds, she actually felt sorry for goading him.

Preston lifted his glass and downed it in a single swig, without even grimacing. When he was finished, he glanced toward her untouched gin and tonic. “Are you going to drink that?”

Effy looked down at her glass, the ice melting, tonic water fizzing. She thought of her mother’s bloodshot eyes after a night of drinking and felt vaguely nauseous. “No.”

“Then let’s go.”

“What?”

“I’ll drive you back to Hiraeth.”

“I thought you were going to work here,” she said. “What about Ianto breathing down your neck?”

“At the house it’s Ianto, here it will be you.” Preston caught the beginnings of an objection on her lips, and hurriedly went on: “It’s not your fault. You just won’t have anything to do in town except drink gin and stare at me while I work. I’m not happy to be the most interesting thing in Saltney, but regrettably I can assure you that that is the case.”

“I don’t know about that.” Effy thought of the shepherd, the stones in her pocket. She decided not to mention any of that. Instead she said, “Not to wound your ego, but I saw some very interesting sheep dung on my way over here.”

Preston actually laughed. It was a short, surprised little huff of air, but there was no malice in it, only genuine amusement. And Effy found—regrettably—that she liked the sound of it.

She returned her still-full glass to the bartender and followed Preston out into the street. It had started to drizzle again, and the water caught in his hair like tiny bright beads of morning dew.

Effy licked a drop of rain off her lips as Preston reached into his pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. He put a cigarette in his mouth and lit it one-handed, the other hand braced on the driver’s-side door. His long, thin fingers wrapped around the handle entirely.

“Can I have one?” she asked.

She wasn’t exactly sure why she said it. Maybe she wanted to prove something to him, to make up for the glass of gin she’d left melting on the bar.

Maybe she was just distracted by the way his lips rounded gently when he smoked them. Effy shook her head, trying to dispel the unwelcome thought.

Preston looked as surprised as she felt. But without a word, he plucked out another cigarette, put it in his mouth, lit it, and passed it to her over the hood of the car.

Effy let out a short laugh of her own. “You don’t trust me with your lighter?”

She was very pleased to see his cheeks pink. “I was trying to be polite,” he said. “I won’t make that mistake again.”

They got into the car. Effy put the cigarette to her lips and inhaled, trying not to cough. She’d never smoked before, but she didn’t want Preston to know that. She also didn’t want Preston to know that she was thinking intently about how the same cigarette had touched his lips mere moments ago. Her gaze kept darting to his mouth, the way he held his cigarette delicately between his teeth while he drove.

The car wound up the hillside, cigarette smoke curling in the quiet air, the sea thrumming its ceaseless rhythm against the rocks. Perhaps it was the cigarette, perhaps the oddly comforting smell of Preston’s car, but Effy felt a sort of numbing calm come over her.

She reached for the stones in her pocket anyway, running her finger along the hollows, as she was delivered to Hiraeth once again.