Effy left Master Corbenic’s office with her eyes stinging, but she refused to cry. On her way back through the college lobby, she saw the class roster, her last name crossed out and replaced with whore.
After checking to make sure no one was coming, Effy tore the paper down, balled it up, and carried it out of the building. Her heart was pounding. The Bottom Hundred is the sort of place that young girls escape from, not go running off to. Perhaps she was running away. Perhaps she was making life more difficult for herself. But she couldn’t bear it, the rush of floodwater in her ears, the haze that fell over her eyes, the nightmares smothered only by the annihilating power of her sleeping pills. She wasn’t a Southerner, but she knew what it was like to drown.
She walked past the library and out onto the pier. She stood there, leaning over the railing, wind biting her cheeks, and then she threw the crumpled paper into the ice-choked waters of Lake Bala.
Three
What is a mermaid but a woman half-drowned,
What a selkie but an unwilling wife,
What a tale but a sea-net, snatching up both
From the gentle tumult of dark waves?
From “Elegy for a Siren,” collected in The Poetical Works of Emrys Myrddin, 196–208 AD
Effy tucked her copy of Angharad into her purse. Her trunk was packed full of trousers and her new turtleneck sweaters and warm woolen socks. Rhia went with her to the train station.
“Are you sure I can’t convince you not to do this?” Rhia asked.
Effy shook her head. Passengers milled past them in blurs of gray and tawny. Rhia was generous and open-minded and clever, and kind enough to never mention the rumors about Effy and Master Corbenic.
But she didn’t know about the pink pills, the ones Effy kept at her side always, in case the edges of things started to blur. She didn’t know about the Fairy King and had never read a single page of Angharad. She didn’t understand what Myrddin meant to Effy, and she didn’t understand what Effy was escaping from. Rhia was a Southerner—but she didn’t know what it was like to drown.
A woman in a blue cloche shoved by and stepped on Effy’s foot. “I’ll miss you. Tell Maisie she can have my room.”
“I will.” 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.
“That’s far more reasonable,” Effy mumbled. They broke apart as a mother trailing two ornery-looking children shouldered past them. “Thank you.”
Rhia frowned. “What for?”
Effy didn’t reply. She didn’t really know. She was just grateful not to be standing on the platform alone.
The other passengers were breathing in clouds of white, belts and wallet chains jangling, high heels striking the tiled floor with a tinny sound. Effy dragged her trunk on board and watched from the window as the train pulled out of the station. She didn’t look away until Rhia, waving, vanished into the crowd.
She’d meant to work on the train; she’d even brought her sketchpad and pen in her purse. But as soon as the train started down the bridge that led south over Lake Bala, her mind filled with a vague yet obliterating dread. The blank white page of her sketchpad and the bright midmorning light glancing off the lake made her eyes water. The woman sitting next to her crossed and recrossed her legs over and over again, and the sound of silk hissing against leather was so distracting, Effy couldn’t think of anything else.
Northern Llyr spooled past her, emerald green in the winter. When she had to switch trains in Laleston, she shuffled off and crossed the platform in a haze, dragging her trunk behind her. Though she couldn’t see outside, the air felt humid and thick, and there was rainwater trickling down the windows.
They arrived in Saltney just as the clock ticked past five. In Caer-Isel, even in winter, the sun would have still been holding stubbornly to the line of the horizon. In Saltney, the sky was a dense and dusky black, storm clouds roiling like steam in a pot.
As the last few passengers disembarked, Effy stood in a rheumy puddle of lamplight, staring down the dark and empty road. She didn’t know where to go.
Her mind felt cloudy. Even though she’d read Ianto’s letter so many times, now she couldn’t remember the name of his barrister, who was supposed to pick her up at the station—Wheathall? Weathergill? No one had given her a number to call. And as she peered down the dimly lit street, there were no cars in sight.
There was only a row of small, dingy buildings, their doors and windows as black as mounds of dirt. Farther down, she could see a cluster of thatched-roof houses, rising out of the stubbly grass like broken teeth. There was the faint, distant sound of water breaking on rocks.
The wind picked up, and it seemed to blow right through Effy’s coat and thick woolen sweater, lashing her hair around her face. She could taste the sea salt in it, grit gathering on her bottom lip. She squeezed her eyes shut, but a tremendous pain was sharpening in the center of her forehead, right between her brows.
There was only the wind and the cold and the dark, stretching out all around her, solid and endless. There would be no other trains before morning, and what would she do until then? Maybe no one was coming at all. Perhaps the whole project had been a farce, a joke played at a naive first-year’s expense.
Or, worse: a ruse to lure a young girl to a faraway and dangerous place she’d never come back from.
Everyone had said there was something off about the whole affair. Something strange. Rhia had warned her; even Master Corbenic had warned her. And yet she had flung herself toward it like a sparrow against a windowpane, oblivious to the sheen of glass.
A panicked sob rose in her throat. Through the glaze of unshed tears, she could see a rectangular blur in the distance. She shuffled closer and it took shape: a telephone booth.
Effy picked her trunk back up and dragged it with her into the booth. With shaking fingers, she reached into her pocket and pulled out a few coins, cramming them into the slot.
She hesitated before dialing. One part of her wanted to slam the phone down; the other was desperate just to hear a familiar voice. So she dialed the only number that she knew by heart.
“Hello?”
That familiar voice split through the silence. “Mother?”
“Effy? Is that you? Where are you calling from?”
“I’m in Saltney,” she managed thickly. “In the Bottom Hundred.”
She could almost see the little pinch of her mother’s brow. “Well, what in the name of all Saints are you doing there?”
At that, a strange hollow opened up in Effy’s chest. She shouldn’t have called.
“There’s this project I’m doing,” she said. “For the estate of Emrys Myrddin. A bunch of architecture students sent in designs, and they picked mine.”
There was a stretch of silence. Effy could almost see her mother curled up in her armchair, one sip of gin still left in her glass. “Well, then why are you crying?”
Effy’s throat felt very tight. “I’m at the train station. I don’t know if anyone is going to pick me up, and I don’t have a number to call . . .”
Her mother drew a quick, sharp breath. And then: the sound of ice clinking as she poured herself a new glass. “You didn’t think to get a phone number before you went to some no-name town—what, six hours south of Draefen? I can’t listen to this right now, Effy. It’s just bad decision after bad decision with you.”
“I know.” Effy’s hand tensed around the receiver. “I’m sorry. Can you ask Grandfather if he can—”
“You can’t always expect someone to bail you out,” her mother cut in. “I’m not going to ask Grandfather to drive six hours into the Bottom Hundred in the dark. Listen to yourself.”
But Effy could only hear the muffled sound of the sea.