It is theorized that the goddesses Acrasia and Amoret were once a single female figure, rather than the two-headed goddess worshipped in Llyr today. When did Llyrians begin to see love as strictly dichotomic, rather than of a vast and multitudinous quality? Why was this dichotomy characterized by submission versus dominance? I put forth the argument that this doctrinal transformation is tied to the evolving role of women in Llyrian society, the fear of female advancement, particularly in the decades immediately following the Drowning.
From The Social History of a Sainthood by Dr. Auden Davies, 184 AD
Preston drove fast down the unlit roads, the green hills invisible in the dark, only fat smudges like thumbprints on a windowpane. They passed by with dizzying speed, the blackness racing alongside them. Effy did not sit in cars often, and when she did, they were almost never going at such a pace. She leaned back in her seat, feeling vaguely nauseous.
She couldn’t blame Preston for not taking notice; he was staring straight ahead with intense, almost unblinking focus, headlights carving tunnels through the dark. She trusted him, of course, but this had to be the most reckless thing either of them had done so far—including sneaking around right under Ianto’s nose and, for her, jumping out of a moving car.
That car had been going a lot more slowly.
Effy closed her eyes. Again and again, in the theater behind her eyelids, she watched the progression of the photographs, the satin robe pulling apart, the girl’s breasts bared to the cold room. She watched the letters trembling in her shaking hands, Myrddin’s hasty scrawl rolling past: My sly and clever girl. My foolish and lovely girl. My beautiful and debauched girl.
Call her by her name, Effy wanted to shout, but at no one in particular, because Myrddin was dead. The girl probably was, too. Blackmar’s daughter. Myrddin’s . . . conquest. She had been lost to the ages, just like those drowned churches.
In all her time at Hiraeth, Effy had never heard the bells.
Suddenly she was crying. The tip of her nose burned, her eyes grew fierce with water, and a strangled sob forced its way out of her throat. She clapped her hand over her mouth, trying to stifle the sound, trying not to distract Preston from his task, but her breaths were coming hot and fast, and tears were running paths down her cheeks.
“Oh, Effy,” Preston said. And then, absurdly, he pulled the car over. “I’m sorry. There’s very little worse than when our heroes fail us, is there?”
“I didn’t know Myrddin was your hero. I thought you didn’t like him.”
“I do like him,” Preston said. “I mean, I did. I still like the words that are attributed to him. I like that he wrote about death as decay. Deaths that last years and years, the same way the Drowning—well, never mind. Those words still mean something, even if Myrddin didn’t write them. Even if he did.”
“It’s just . . .” Outside the darkness settled around them, slowing like low tide. “Preston, I’ve read Angharad a hundred times. You know I can quote it word for word. It saved me, believing all the things Myrddin wrote—or didn’t write. Every story is a lie, isn’t it? A story about a girl who’s kidnapped by the Fairy King, but defeats him through her courage and cleverness . . . if that’s not true, then everything I’ve always believed is a lie, too. You told me that the Fairy King never loved Angharad. That he was the villain of the book. I think you were right.”
“Effy.” Preston drew in a breath, but he didn’t go on.
“There’s no Fairy King at all,” she said. Speaking the words aloud terrified her. They felt like walls closing in, crumbling on top of her. “I thought Angharad was some ancient story made new, and Myrddin was some otherworldly genius, magic like the rest of the Sleepers. But he was just some lecherous old man, and Angharad was just some shrewd attempt by his publisher to make money. There’s no magic in it at all. Or at least there isn’t anymore, because I’ve stopped believing in it. Now it’s just another lie.”
And what of all the times she had paged through Angharad, trying to discover its secrets, taking heart in the way Angharad’s life so clearly mirrored her own? What of all the nights she had slept with her iron, with her mountain ash, seeing the Fairy King through her slitted eyes?
None of it was real. She was a mad girl, one whose mind could not be trusted, precisely the kind of girl her mother and the doctor and her professors and Master Corbenic had said she was.
That was the truth at the very center of everything, the truth she had tried her whole life to evade: there were no fairies, no magic, and the world was just ordinary and cruel.
She ought to have been embarrassed, with how much she was whimpering and blubbering, her vision blurred with tears. But Preston only looked at her in concern, his brows drawn together. He shrugged out of his jacket and held it out to her.
“Here,” he said. “Sorry I don’t have any tissues.”
It was all so absurd. Effy blew her nose on a sleeve. “Why are you being so nice to me?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
She huffed a pitiful laugh. “Because I’ve been awful to you. Pestering you just to pester you, trying to get under your skin, being foolish—”
“You don’t see yourself very clearly, Effy.” Preston shifted in his seat so that they were facing one another. “Challenging me isn’t pestering. I’m not always right. Sometimes I deserve to be challenged. And changing your mind isn’t foolish. It just means you’ve learned something new. Everyone changes their mind sometimes, as they should, or else they’re just, I don’t know, stubborn and ignorant. Moving water is healthy; stagnant water is sickly. Tainted.”
Effy wiped her eyes. She still felt embarrassed, but her heartbeat was returning to its ordinary rhythm. “Which one of your heroes failed you?”
Preston sighed. It was a very weary sigh that could have belonged to someone thrice his age. “I told you before that my father is dead. Well, plenty of people have dead fathers; it’s hardly an uncommon backstory. But the manner of his death—I can’t really imagine anything worse.”
“You don’t have to talk about it.” The sadness in his tone made her feel bad about asking.
“No, it’s all right. My mother is Llyrian, as I’ve said. Her family is from Caer-Isel, quite well-to-do, seven advanced degrees among her immediate family. Scholastically inclined people. My father is from very far north, up the mountains—it’s a bit like the Bottom Hundred, a very rural place, but sustained by mining rather than fishing. It was a torrid story of forbidden love, as far as I can tell. They moved to a suburb of Ker-Is—Caer-Isel—on the Argantian side of the border, close enough that we could visit my mother’s family often. My father could never go—no Llyrian passport. Anyway. He worked as a construction manager, nothing prestigious or glamorous.”
Preston was a good storyteller. He paused in all the right places, and his voice grew grave whenever it was appropriate. Effy tried to stay as silent as she could, hardly even daring to breathe. It was the first time Preston had spoken so openly about himself, and she didn’t want to risk shattering the delicate moment.
“He was working late one night, during a bad storm. It was summer; I was sixteen. The roads were slick and deadly. His car skidded out on a sharp turn.”
“Oh,” Effy said. “Preston, I’m so sorry.”