Nine
I can hear the mermaids² singing
Beneath the rolling, wanton waves,
Their hair as lush as meadowsweet,
Their maidenheads as ripe for plunder³
As the gold inside their sunken chests.
From “Great Captain and His Sea-Bride,” collected in The Poetical⁴ Works of Emrys
Myrddin, 196–208 AD
Morning was the pale gray color of a trout’s belly⁵, and the waves were lolling gently against the
shoreline. Effy woke with a start slightly after dawn, the purple and green miasmas⁶ of her
nightmares still swirling⁷ in the corners of her mind.
Her sleeping pills were meant to eliminate even her dreams, to plunge⁸ her into total, oblivious⁹
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 flipped¹⁰ back and forth¹¹ so rapidly that at
some point, they appeared identical. It was all black hair and reaching hands and water rising to
her throat.
Effy knew Preston would not be pleased with her being late. She hurriedly jammed her arms
into her sweater sleeves and her feet into her boots. She hesitated at the door, fingers

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