“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.
Six
The Drowning was more than a climatological event. It came to define social, political, and economic history in the region, and gave rise to a distinctive and ever more salient subculture among residents of the Bottom Hundred. Somewhat paradoxically, it caused an upswing in Southern nationalism, a hardening of Llyr’s North-South divide. It can thus be said that the Drowning structures the core of Southern identity, even nearly two centuries later.
From the introduction to A Compendium of Southern Writers in the Neo-Balladic Tradition, edited by Dr. Rhys Brinley, 201 AD
The next morning was the first truly cloudless day in the Bay of Nine Bells since Effy had arrived, and she took it as a sign. As soon as she awoke, she dressed quickly and scampered up the path toward the house, her boots sliding in the soft dirt.
Below, even the sea appeared to be behaving itself, the waves a hushed murmur against the stone. Sunlight glinted off the white peaks of foam. In the distance, she saw two seals at play in the water, their gray heads pebble-small from her vantage point.
Yesterday’s calm had given way to a fledgling determination. Sitting in the car beside Preston, tobacco smoke filling the cab, Effy had decided she would try. She could not give up before she even started.
You don’t have to love something in order to devote yourself to it, Preston had said. In the moment she had chafed at his condescension, but now she realized—with some reluctance—that it was actually good advice.
And maybe she had been wrong about Myrddin in a few aspects, but that didn’t mean she was wrong about everything. He was still the man who wrote Angharad. He was still the man who put iron on the doors of the guesthouse.
Angharad had once thought her tasks impossible, too. At first she had never believed she could escape the Fairy King.
Effy was no great designer, but she was an excellent escape artist. She was always chipping away at the architecture of her life until there was a crack big enough to slip through. Whenever she was faced with danger, her mind manifested a secret doorway, a hole in the floorboards, somewhere she could hide or run to.
At last the house came into view, starkly black against the delicate blue sky. Effy had her sketchpad with her original design for Hiraeth Manor and three pens, lest one or two of them run dry. She was panting with pleasant exhaustion by the time she climbed the mossy steps.
Ianto was waiting for her at the threshold. He looked pleased to see her, perhaps even relieved. “You look as though you’re feeling better,” he remarked.
“Yes,” she said, feeling a fresh wave of embarrassment as she remembered how she’d fled from the house. “I’m sorry about not coming yesterday—I’m still, um, getting used to the air down here, I think.”
“Understandable,” Ianto said, generously. “You’re a Northern girl through and through, I can tell. But I’m glad to see you looking less green.” She didn’t know whether he was commenting on her appearance or her attitude, until he added, “Your skin is a lovely color.”
“Oh,” she said. Her face heated. “Thank you.”
Ianto’s pale eyes were shining. “Let’s begin, then,” he said, and beckoned Effy through the doorway.
Effy shook off the slight feeling of unease and followed after him. She had been chosen on the strength and inventiveness of her original design, but that had been done before seeing Hiraeth itself. Ianto’s initial entreaty had made it sound like there would be nothing but a large empty field waiting for her, ready to be filled with a new foundation. Not a dilapidated monstrosity. After returning from Saltney yesterday, Effy had sat down on the edge of the bed, sketchpad balanced on her knees, and tried to marry her initial vision with the ugly reality she’d seen.
The result was, at least to her novice’s eyes, not half bad. She figured the plan would evolve over time—Ianto wanted a finalized design before she returned to Caer-Isel—but she could do it. She needed to do it.
Ianto led her into the foyer, which, despite the sun and cloudless sky, was still only half filled with gloomy gray light. The puddles on the floor were murky and salt-laced. Wetherell was standing by the entrance to the kitchen, looking stiff and dour and hard-edged. When she said good morning to him, he responded with only a nod.
Effy refused to let him temper her enthusiasm. “This is where I want to start, actually,” she said. “The foyer. It should be flooded with light on a sunny day.”
“That will be difficult,” Ianto said. “The front of the house faces west.”
“I know,” she replied, reaching into her purse for her sketchpad. “I want to flip the whole house around, if we can. The foyer and the kitchen facing east, overlooking the water.”
Ianto assumed a pensive look. “Then the entrance would have to be along the cliff.”
“I know it sounds impossible,” she acknowledged.