Her sleeping pills and her pink pills lay untouched on the bedside table inside. It grew darker and darker. Over and over again Preston’s words thrummed in her mind: I believe in your grief and your fear. Isn’t that enough?
No. It wasn’t enough. As long as that was the only thing he believed, she would always be just a scared little girl making up stories in her head. She would be infirm, unstable, untrustworthy, undeserving of the life she wanted. They put girls like her in attic rooms or sanatoriums, locked them up and threw away the keys.
Effy waited until it was black as pitch and she couldn’t even see her own hand in front of her face. Then she lit a candle she’d brought from the house and held it out into the dense darkness.
I was a girl when he came for me, beautiful and treacherous, and I was a crown of pale gold in his black hair.
I was a girl when he came for me, beautiful and treacherous, and I was a crown of pale gold in his black hair.
I was a girl when he came for me, beautiful and treacherous, and I was a crown of pale gold in his black hair.
She repeated the line over and over again in her mind, and then she spoke it out loud, into the black night and its uncanny silence.
“I was a girl when he came for me, beautiful and treacherous, and I was a crown of pale gold in his black hair.”
She was not afraid. She needed him to come.
And then, behind the tree line, a flash of white. Wet black hair. Even a sliver of face, pale as moonlight.
All her fear came piling down again, and Effy’s mind thrashed like something caught in the foaming surf. She staggered to her feet, dropping the candle. The wet grass instantly snuffed it out, and she was plunged into darkness.
She felt for the handle of the door, wrenched it open, and hurled herself through. She slammed it shut behind her, the iron brace scraping against stone.
Her heart was pounding against her sternum like a trapped bird. Effy’s knees shook so terribly that she fell forward again, and had to crawl across the cold floor until she reached the bed. Her fingers were trembling too much to light another candle. She just heaved herself into bed and pulled the green duvet over her head.
He had come for her, just like he had promised all those years ago. She had seen him. He was real. She was not mad.
As long as the Fairy King was real, he could be killed, just as Angharad had vanquished him.
If he was not real, there would never be any escape from him.
Effy crammed two sleeping pills into her mouth and swallowed them dry. But even the pills could no longer stop her from dreaming of him.
Eleven
Most scholars of Myrddin view him as somewhat in conversation with Blackmar, though the extent to which their works bear any genuine thematic or stylistic similarities is still debated. While Myrddin, in what few interviews he gave, was adamant that he did not seek to be known as a “Southern writer,” Blackmar, though a Northerner himself, was very much inspired by the aesthetic and folkloric traditions of the South. In this paper, I argue that Blackmar perceived the South as a fanciful realm of whimsy, trapped in a time long past, existing merely for Northern writers to project their fantasies upon. In that regard, I contend that Blackmar is indeed a Southern writer—but only in the South of his own imagining.
From The Question of the South: Colin Blackmar, Emrys Myrddin, and Northern Fascination by Dr. Rhys Brinley, 206 AD
When they met the next day, Preston did not bring up the Fairy King or changeling children. Effy was grateful to him. She did not want to try to justify herself, nor tell him that she’d spent the night in the cold darkness, waiting for the Fairy King to show himself. Preston had treated her kindly—more kindly than anyone else she’d told the truth to ever had—but still, he didn’t believe her. It stung, but the memory of him saying Isn’t that enough? thrummed in her mind, and there was a small reassurance in it. At least he had not called her mad.
Instead, there was just the matter of convincing Ianto to let them go see Blackmar. It would not be an easy task. Preston had become so jumpy around him （“He did wave a gun at us, Effy,” he’d said, in an oddly high-pitched tone, when she’d confronted him about it）。
She did not relish the idea of beseeching Ianto to let her go away from the house. And Preston didn’t like any of her proposed lies.
“Ianto isn’t an idiot,” he said. “I don’t see how you can relate this to your project—and I don’t see how you could convince him that I would need to come along, too. Saints, it would be easier to just tell him we were sneaking off for some midnight tryst.”