Seventeen
What wisdom do you want from a death-marked girl? I can say only this: In the end I learned that the water was in me. It was a ghost that could not be exorcised. But a guest, even uninvited, must be attended to. You make up a bed for them. You pour from your best bottle of wine. If you can learn to love that which despises you, that which terrifies you, you can dance on the shore and play in the waves again, like you did when you were young. Before the ocean is friend or foe, it simply is. And so are you.
From Angharad by Angharad Myrddin （née Blackmar）， 191 AD
It took some time, of course, for Effy and Preston to compile and index the letters, to copy the pages of Angharad’s diary using the wheezing mimeograph in Laleston, and for Preston to write it all up on the old typewriter that Laleston’s chief librarian grudgingly permitted them to use. They had spent two weeks in Laleston, and had now been away from Caer-Isel more than a month.
Preston had a cigarette in his mouth while he worked, smoke curling out the window of their hotel room. Sometimes he got up to pace, mussing his already mussed hair, muttering about omniscient narration and melodrama. Effy understood all the theory only vaguely, but she offered insight where she could.
She felt, as did Preston, that she understood Angharad on a level that was almost inarticulable: it was as primal and unconscious as her lungs pumping and her heart beating.
“Why don’t you take a break?” Effy offered as she perched on the edge of the hotel bed, mug of coffee in hand. “I can write for a while.”
“You don’t have to.” He had told her, at the beginning, that he thought it might be difficult for her. To read all the words, to write in such a stilted, formal manner about a life that so neatly mirrored her own.
“I want to,” Effy said. She handed him her coffee. “I want it to be finished. I want it all to be done.”
What she meant was that she wanted it all tied up neatly. No more questions, no more doubting. No more scolding about how what she knew and what she believed weren’t real.
Preston frowned. “I don’t think scholarship is ever really done,” he said. “If anything, this is only the beginning. Academics and tabloid journalists alike are going to be hounding us, hounding her. There are going to be a hundred papers, even books, arguing against our thesis. Not to mention the Sleeper Museum . . . are you ready for all that?”
It didn’t make her happy. But Effy knew he was right.
She nodded as she slipped into the seat he had vacated. “Yes,” she said. “Let’s just get it all down.” Seeing the look of alarm on Preston’s face, she added, “Not all of it. But the parts the academics will believe.”
If she and Preston published a paper arguing for the literal existence of the Fairy King, they would be laughed out of the university. Effy accepted that. It was enough—for now—that she and Angharad knew the truth.
And of course, though she had seen the Fairy King, Preston had not. Effy knew he believed her, in his own way, in a way that didn’t compromise his cynicism. She wasn’t exactly sure how he made sense of it in his head. There was plenty to believe in—Ianto’s possession, the details in Angharad’s diary—but there was plenty to doubt, as well. Ianto’s demise could have been ordinary. And Effy had never heard the bells. There was a small prickle of grief when she thought about it, how perhaps she and Preston would never quite see eye to eye.
But he believed her fear, her grief, her desire. That had to be enough.
Two weeks later, they had a finished draft. The title page bore both of their names in bold, unequivocal black lettering: Euphemia Sayre and Preston Héloury. Her true name, stark against the white paper. If there was anything to attach her true name to, it was this. Her true name held so much sorrow and suffering, but it also held strength. Hope. The yearning to make the old saint’s name mean something new.
Effy picked the title. Uncovering Angharad: An Inquiry into the Authorship of Major Works Attributed to Emrys Myrddin.
Angharad had rented an apartment nearby in Laleston, with flowers in the window boxes and a view of the bustling street below. From every room you could hear horns blaring and cars braking, people shouting. It was not a quiet apartment. Effy sensed that Angharad had known enough silence to last the rest of her life.
She and Effy sat together, right by the large windows that let in the deep golden light of late afternoon. Angharad’s silver hair had been cut; it was no longer the gossamer, slightly wild locks of a young maiden. It was a bit severe, the cut, like that of a schoolteacher or a governess, someone with quiet authority. Effy liked it.