A Study in Drowning

by Ava Reid

Time felt both compressed and infinite. It rolled over her, like she was a sunken statue on the seafloor, but it tossed and thrashed her, too, a limp body in the waves.

Besides the overly-figurative language, what is this sentence structure?

The solitude that had once comforted her had become an enormous empty space where so many bad things could happen. She did not know what, exactly—it was only a roiling, imprecise dread. The silence was a span of time before inevitable disaster, like watching a glass teeter farther toward the edge of a table, anticipating the moment it would tip and shatter. She did not entirely understand why the things that had once been familiar now felt hostile and strange.

Great description of anxiety and PTSD.

The arched ceilings and the fretwork of wood across them made her feel as if she were inside a very elaborate antique jewelry box. Dust motes swam in columns of golden light.

I like this. Reid doing figurative description right and not going ham.

“You’re so pretty. You really are. You’re the most gorgeous girl I’ve ever seen. Do you know that?” If she said yes, I do, she was a conceited harpy. If she shook her head and rebuffed the compliment, she was falsely modest, playing coy. It was fae-like trickery. There was no answer that wouldn’t damn her.

Someone shouldered roughly past her, and Effy realized she had been blocking the doorway to the library.

Oof.

A storm could come on as quickly as an eyeblink. The rain would cause a sudden bloom of black umbrellas to rise up like mushrooms, and it would wash all the tourists out of the street.

Love this description.

Just faintly, through the ever-present rheum of fog, Effy could glimpse the other side of the lake, and the green land that lay there.

Everyone had told her the university dorm rooms were disgusting, but when she arrived, she’d thought of it as sort of an adventure, like camping in the woods. Now it was just boringly, inanely gross. The grout between the tiles was filthy, and there was a sickly orange ring of soap scum around the edge of the tub.

So clean it, then? Make a schedule with your roommate to switch every other week. Like, come on. 😐

Mist rolled down from Argant’s green hills and hung about Caer-Isel like a horde of ghosts. The university’s bell tower wore its fog as if it were a widow’s mourning veil. Students stopped smoking underneath the library portico because they were afraid of getting impaled by hanging icicles.

The room was crammed with a labyrinth of bookcases, which created many dusty, occulted corners. She pulled down a large atlas from a shelf and found herself one of those corners, right beneath an ice-speckled window.

The sky was clouds and factory smog, and the line of the horizon was cut up with the crests of white sails, like the fins of lake monsters that no one from the North believed in anymore.

Rhia chewed her lip, then managed one of her incandescently bright smiles as the train sang like a teakettle behind them. “Be safe. Be smart. Be sweet.” “All three? That’s a lot to ask.” “I’ll settle for just two, then. Your pick,” Rhia said. She reached around Effy to embrace her, and for a moment, with her eyes shut and her face pressed into Rhia’s fluffy brown hair, Effy felt calmer than the windless sea.

Or, worse: a ruse to lure a young girl to a faraway and dangerous place she’d never come back from.

The phrase "young girl" keeps being used wrong. It refers to a child. "Girl" already refers to youth, so adding "young" is a signifier of a girl on the younger side—not a teenager and definitely not a young woman.

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.

He just walked in?!

“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.

So he has no grasp on social etiquette / zero social skills, apparently. 😆

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.”

Is Reid going for autism characterization for Preston? I'm getting those vibes.

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.

How do leaves rustling sound anything like horses nickering? HOW AVA?

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.

Is this "chilvalry"? Or just common decency?

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.

Villaining a stranger for an imagined slight? Also, bringing his heritage into it. What a xenophobic weirdo ! 😅

“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.”

“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.

It's like he's talking to a child because she is so immature. (Crying aside, I understand she is experiencing mental issues. I'm talking about her mindset.)

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.”

Wtf is wrong with her?

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.

What kind of question is this? Does she not understand what academia is, actually...?

Preston stiffened. Effy wondered if he would mention their argument. Well, it had been more of a verbal assault on her part.

At least she had *some* self awareness, I guess ?

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.

“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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

“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.”

“‘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.”

Jeez. She needs to chill. 🫥

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.

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 wanted desperately to wake up from. It was Preston’s voice in her ear now, his hushed recitation. The only enemy is the sea.

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?”

“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.

She's making a lot of assumptions here. It's just a basic thing to wear a seatbelt in the car. It's needlessly unsafe to not wear one, lacking a basic level of self-preservation.

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.

Oof. Some illogical and off-putting thought processes, but she is not mentally well so it tracks.

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.”

Honestly what the fuck. *Soulless?* Myrddin was an iconic author—of course academia would want to have insight into 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?

She's so eager to believe he's mean-spirited and trying to demean her. That makes sense for a woman who has been diminished by people her whole life, but he did nothing to make her feel that way about him.

“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.

Does Effie actually understand what academia *is*? Does she not know what *drives* academics?

he didn’t invite me.” Preston’s eyes darted briefly toward her, then back to the road. “Myrddin’s widow did.”

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.

Girl, calm down. She has a raging hate-boner for this guy for no reason.

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.

Ah, the immature need to idealize meeting the reality of everyone just being a person. "Kill your heroes", Effy.

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.

Why didn't she just unlock it? This girl is super immature.

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.

Oh, author had the FMC act like an immature weirdo for a mini "forced proximity" moment with the MMC. And look romantasy girlies : his jaw is "feathering" ! 🙄

She clambered out of the car as quickly as she could, her bottom lip stinging where she’d bitten it nearly to bleeding.

Jeez. This author has a thing with characters tearing their lips up.

“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.

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.

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.

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.

Another example of how Effy is a naive and immature person.