A Study in Drowning

by Ava Reid

The Fairy King had never appeared to her in the daylight before.

What would Preston say if she confessed what she had seen—if she had really even seen it at all? It would be no different than it had ever been, with her mother and her grandparents, with the doctor, with the teachers and priests. At best Preston would blink at her bemusedly, certain she was making some sort of joke. More likely he would scoff and secretly regret that he had tethered his academic future to some mad girl who needed pills to tell what was real and what wasn’t.

Why would she think that? He's been nothing but understanding towards her.

“What are you doing?” she choked out. “If you don’t wipe away the dirt, your cuts will get infected. Infections can lead to blood poisoning, which, if it remains untreated, will eventually necessitate amputation. And in a way, it would be all my fault if you had to have your legs amputated at the knee, because I was the one who asked you to get the blueprints in the first place.” He said all this with complete sincerity.

Nice of him.

True to his word, Preston began delicately picking the pebbles from her wounded knees. His touch was so gentle, she felt only the faintest nips of pain. His eyes were narrowed behind his glasses, as focused as he’d looked when poring over one of Myrddin’s books.

He's being very sweet with her. Honestly, it's too sweet for someone who constantly attacks him verbally and has shown him very little kindness. Effy seems to have pretty privilege with Preston, though. Like, he's obsessed with her according to his notes repeating her name. I just don't buy the obsession. Just because she is pretty and memorized Myrddin's work, the only author she has seemingly ever read by choice? Ava you have some explaining to do.

Effy curled her fingers into the fabric of his shirt. His skin, underneath, was warm, and she could feel his muscles flexing. “How many skinned knees have you treated in your career as an academic?” “I have to say you’re my first.” She laughed, almost in spite of herself. “You’re very strange, Preston Héloury.” “You’re the one who jumped out of a moving car, Effy Sayre.” “It’s only because I wasn’t wearing my seat belt,” she replied. It was the second time she’d heard him laugh, and Effy remembered how much she liked the sound of it: low and breathy, his shoulder shaking just slightly under her grip.

Honestly, the few conversations they've had with laughs out loud weren't funny enough for that response. The author's attempts to lighten their interactions just doesn't feel like organic chemistry to me, but forced.

“They look all right,” Preston conceded. “I’m confident this will not be what does you in.” He had a little smear of her blood on his cheek where he’d raised his red-stained hand to adjust his glasses. Effy decided not to tell him. “That’s a relief,” she said. “I would hate for you to be responsible for my untimely demise.” Preston laughed again. “I’d never overcome the guilt.”

See what I mean? The out-loud laughter just doesn't fit. Just have them use dry humor and smile, you know? That fits them and is believable.

She drew in a breath. Where would she even begin with explaining it all? She certainly could not tell him about the Fairy King. Preston had been clear enough on how he felt about Southern superstition. Confessing to any of it would reveal her as precisely the sort of unstable, untrustworthy girl Effy was so desperate not to be.

Effy could just say Ianto made her uncomfortable by doing and saying inappropriate things, and that she was scared from how he was driving. She doesn't even *need* to bring up the Fairy King. Preston has shown himself to be someone trustworthy. He wouldn't tell her she was overreacting if she told him what Ianto said to her in the car and how he acted in the pub.

By then it had grown dark, and only a pale trickle of starlight bled through the window. The moon was pearl white and not quite full, cobwebbed with lacy clouds.

“You’ve never met the mistress of the house, right?” she asked. “No,” Preston said. “I’ve never even spoken to her on the phone. She’s old, and I imagine she values her privacy.” But a chill prickled the back of her neck. “If she values her privacy so much, she wouldn’t have invited the university to poke around here.”

Exactly! Go talk to her.

He folded his arms across his chest and replied defensively, “I’m only looking through her husband’s things, not hers. Whoever Mrs. Myrddin is, she’s not relevant to my scholarly inquiries.”

This is ridiculous. How is she *not* relevant? Preston is supposed to be a good scholar! He should know to speak to everyone he can who is closely connected to Myrddin. This is just poor plot contrivance.

haven’t you wondered—outside of your scholarly inquiries—why she’s so reclusive?” All of it felt wrong, had felt wrong ever since she came to Hiraeth, and certainly ever since she saw the Fairy King. “When I’ve asked Ianto about her, he hasn’t said much.” “We’re not writing a thesis on Myrddin’s widow, Effy. We should just be relieved she’s staying out of our way.”

Making Preston so stupid here just to keep the mystery going. AVA, you are killing me.

“Preston?” she said. Her voice sounded strange: small, wondering. Almost hopeful. He glanced up. “Yes?” “Thank you.” “For what?” “For caring whether or not I die of sepsis,” she said. “Oh,” he said. “Well, you can never be too cautious. People have died in much more banal ways.”

“Thank you for giving me the chance to die of something interesting, then.” “As long as you don’t throw yourself out of any more moving cars.” There was a slight quiver on the left side of his mouth, as if he were trying not to smile. Behind his glasses, his eyes were solemn. “There are far more interesting deaths out there.”

See this is a perfect, natural-feeling interaction. No laughs out loud that feel forced.

There was the ragged hem of a dress and a flash of long silver hair. She caught just the end of each, and the heel of a bare foot, pressing up from beneath the surface of her phantom skin like a fisherman’s tangled net and the fleshy sea-thing caught in it.

This book has so many stretched sea similes and metaphors. Most of them I never highlighted because I cringe and move on quickly.

Effy had always believed the sunlight made her safe from him. In Angharad, the Fairy King had come for her at night, when her father and brothers were sleeping too soundly to notice. There was something wrong here, in Hiraeth, in perhaps all of the Bottom Hundred. Old magic and wicked—or worse, ambivalent—gods. The Fairy King had more power here. The unreal world was close to breaking its fetters.

I like this connection of nature and magic, rural places still retaining it whereas the city has been stripped of it.

Her cheeks and brow were soaked in a cold film of sweat. Whatever reassurances the doctor had given her, they did not matter now. His pills were not enough to stop the waves from crashing over her.

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.

She slipped two of the pink pills into her mouth and swallowed them dry.

She does this all the time, but it's actually dangerous. 1. You can choke 2. A pill can stay in your throat without choking you, it's coating causing inflammation in the short-term and damaging your esophagus and causing ulcers in the long-term. And, just in general, it's not good to do because medication needs water to properly go through the system and be most effective.

“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.

She is soo immature. Dear Lord 😬

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.

🙄

“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.

Her Argantian "jokes" aren't funny. 🙄

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.”

Why am I supposed to want to see them get together? WHY

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.

Then who wrote to the college? Obviously the widow exists because she wrote the college, Ianto talked about her like she is alive, and if she isn't alive then why would he pose as her to write the college, who he is only begrudgingly allowing in?

“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?”

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.”

Preston is supposed to be smart! Obviously the horseshoe and trees are things that were like that before Ianto. He didn't plant those trees; they need decades to grow.

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.

The Fairy King wants to posess Ianto and use him to be corporeal, obviously. How does she not realize that? These two are supposedly smart, but I ask where this intelligence is.

“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.”

She is so rude. 🙈

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.

Boom! There she is !

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.

“Passion”? What?! Since when? Like, all of five minutes ago? But… I guess he *has* been her only lifeline in this mess, gently cleaned her wounds, and hasn’t been sexually harassing her like every other guy in her life. So I guess I can see how she would be responding to him the way she is. It just reads as disengenuous when she was attacking him and hated him the week before. 😐

For most people, that truth is whatever helps them sleep at night, whatever makes their lives easier. It’s different from objective truth.”

Yet even though he held to his principles, he wasn’t as close-minded as she’d initially imagined him to be. He truly considered all the things she said, all the new information presented to him—and he’d even told her he was perfectly willing to be proven wrong.

Exactly. She was hard on him but *she* is attached to her bias and has to break away from narrow-minded thinking more than he does.

Where’s the flattery? The beseeching? You could’ve at least pretended to be a fan of his work.” “I told you, I don’t like lying.” “This is for a good cause. Isn’t it worth lying a little bit, if it helps get to the truth?” “Interesting paradox. Llyr doesn’t have a patron saint of blessed liars for nothing.

“He grew up in dire poverty, as you know. He hardly had more than the clothes on his back, and his father’s little fishing boat. When he finally did have something of his own, he was loath to let it go.” Another beat of silence. “This house—he let it decay rather than have any stranger come to fix the leaking pipes or broken windows, much less the crumbling foundation. It’s a good metaphor, I think, but I’m no literary scholar like our other guest.”

“I will love you to ruination,” the Fairy King said, brushing a strand of golden hair from my cheek. “Yours or mine?” I asked. The Fairy King did not answer.

Maybe she didn’t want to know about the ghost, about Myrddin’s widow, about whatever secrets Ianto was hiding. It was all tangled up like catch in a fishing net, nearly dead things thrashing as they choked on air. Maybe Preston was right about why people believed in magic. The truth was an ugly, dangerous thing. “Well,” Effy said, “I’ll try my best to stay out of your mother’s way.”

Whyy (I ask again for the third time)? Obviously she knows something. Even if Effy doesn't realize who she actually is, she should assume the person closest to Myrddin would *know something* !! This poor plot contrivance is killing me.

“You should have more faith in me. I can be very charming, you know.” Preston gave a huff of laughter. “I actually do know that.”

Honestly, he shouldn't. She has been awful to him the whole time. She just went from angrily saying xenophobic things to making "ironic" jokes—but it's all micro-agreessions. You don't make those kind of jokes unless you really know the person and it's a running joke between you. Effy never said sorry for her verbal attacks and Preston has no reason to think she isn't still hateful. This isn't a positive relationship—it has all the makings of a toxic, verbally abusive one.

“You don’t have to answer, of course, and honestly, please feel free to hit me or call me a twat for asking at all, but—were you a changeling child?” Effy let the room sink into silence. She had gone by her nickname for so long, she had almost forgotten the significance of her real one: that a saint’s name was the mark of a changeling.

They change the name you had at birth if you're later suspected as a changeling?

The old, barbaric custom was this: In the South, it was believed that some children were simply born wrong, or were poisoned by the fairies in their cradles. These changeling children were awful and cruel. They bit their mothers when they tried to nurse them. They were always given the names of saints, to try to drive the evil away.

So do they rename them or do babies not get names until they're older?

“You said you believe in ghosts,” she said thickly. “What’s so different about this?”

No he didn’t, lol

“No,” she said. “It’s not enough. You are being rude. You’re being mean. It’s not—no one believed Angharad, either. And because no one believed her, the Fairy King was free to take her.”

He isn't being rude or mean 😵‍💫 He’s actually being really understanding. Most people would back off at this point and distance themselves from her due to thinking she was crazy.

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.

The way Effy thinks about mental illness is strange to me. From what we've seen of her grandparents and mother, they trust modern medicine to regulate Effy's "episodes". They could have just committed her when she was younger and taken care of their "changeling problem", but they didn't. What does she have to worry about if she just admits she has hallucinations? It's true there's social stigma and Effy would have seen that in literature, but growing up in the family she did would have insulated her. With that kind of background, I'm skeptical she would be this scared of being committed.

He was sitting so perilously close to the edge of the cliff, looking more like an outcropping of rock than a man. He had been born in the Bottom Hundred, in this very house. The danger of the sea was as familiar to him as breathing. Unexpectedly she felt a twinge of sympathy. He really did want to stay here, sinking foundation and all. She wondered if you could love something out of ruination, reverse that drowning process, make it all new again.

“What’s the point,” he began, as they climbed back into the car, “of drinking coffee if you’re going to dilute it to that degree?” Effy took a long, savoring sip. “What’s the point of drinking coffee that doesn’t taste good?” “Well, I would argue that black coffee does taste good.” “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that someone who drinks scotch straight would think that black coffee tastes good,” Effy said, making a face. “Or else you’re secretly a masochist.”

An argument about coffee, lol

“I don’t know about that. I find you very charming, underneath all the smugness.” “You think I’m smug?” Effy had to laugh at that. “You aren’t exactly the most approachable person I’ve ever met. But I suppose that’s because you’re also the smartest, most eloquent person I’ve ever met.”

He isn't as bad as Effy is making him out to be, though. Like not at all. She just disliked Preston out of an illogical and petty principle from the start, treated him like shit constantly saying xenophobic things because of it, and when he calmly stood up for himself and spoke logically she got mad at him for being right. This isn't a positive relationship, I repeat, and will probably end up repeating again...

“There’s a lot to compensate for, when you’re the only Argantian in Llyr’s most prestigious literary program.” All at once Effy was suffused with sympathy—and with guilt. She remembered how she had berated him on the cliffside, and then again in the pub, pricking at him, questioning his loyalties. “I’m sorry if people have treated you cruelly. I’m sorry for the things I said, when we first met.” “It’s really all right,” he said, turning to look at her. “It’s just whispers and looks in the hall, mostly. I’m sure you’ve gotten your fair share as the only woman in the architecture college.”

"When we first met"? All throughout the relationship, you mean! Is she HIGH? Does she think that because she doesn’t *angrily* say something xenophobic that it doesn’t mean it is? A micro-aggression is a micro-aggression, no matter if you say it calmly or present it as a joke. She others him constantly, contributing to the alienation he feels (and in a place where he in actuality has *citizenship through his mother*), I don't like this character and the way she is presented by the author. Effy is horrible. Just because she is persecuted doesn't mean she gets a free pass to persecute someone else. Preston is being way too understanding about this. It’s sad.

Although everything they’d learned so far appeared to be pushing toward Preston’s theory of Blackmar as the true author, Effy just couldn’t force herself to accept it.

Yeah, because obviously he wasn't. They're supposed to be smart but the clues went right over their heads. They won’t even go talk to the widow who could tell them everything. Maybe they'll find a clue in a painting of the family or find her old bedroom while poking around.

His eyes were fascinating from this vantage point, light brown ringed with green, gold daubs around the irises.

Pretty 👁✨

Unlike Effy, he looked very tired. Behind his glasses, his eyelids had begun to droop. That was something funny: his left eyelid seemed to droop slightly more than his right.

How is that funny?

“I’ll tell you if you promise you won’t flinch at the sound of our heathen tongue.” The corner of his mouth twitched upward. Effy just laughed softly. “I promise.”

AVA. Wtf? This is not cute. 😐 She needs a goddamn sensitivity reader.

Amusement crinkled his eyes. “‘The sea is treacherous, but women are even more treacherous.’” Effy flushed. “That doesn’t sound like something your grandmother would say.” “You’re right. She would clap me on the back of the head for that one.”

Miss Reid. 😑 Why would you have this phrase made light of by a character you’re trying to show is above sexism? Or was she not trying to do that? It seemed like a heavy-handed attempt, I was sure that's what she was going for.