Lev Grossman - The Magician King

“What’s on it?” Quentin asked. “What’s over there?”

“Nothing. And everything.”

When this was over Quentin was ready for a long vacation from gods and demons and all their cryptic utterances.

“There is another world there, waiting to be born. A world for which Fillory was in a sense merely a rough draft. You might make an analogy: the Far Side is to Fillory as Fillory is to your Earth. A greener place. A realer, more magical place.”

This was a new wrinkle. He and Poppy and Josh got up from the sand, feeling a little silly. They brushed themselves off and stood at attention.

“Each of you has a choice, whether to go or to stay. I cannot guarantee that anyone who passes through the door will be able to return here. But if you do not go now, there will never be another chance.”

“But what’s really there?” Quentin said. “What’s it like?”

She looked at Quentin, calmly and directly.

“It’s what you want, Quentin. It’s everything you’re looking for. It is the adventure of all adventures.”

There it was. The real end of the story, the happy ending. All he could think was: Alice. She could be waiting for him there. Elaine surveyed the group, where they stood in a loose half circle in front of the door. Her eyes met Eliot’s first. He shook his head slowly.

“I’m High King.” His voice was as serious as Quentin had ever heard it. “I can’t go. I’m not going to leave Fillory.”

She turned to Bingle, who still had the sloth on his back, peeking over his shoulder like a baby koala. Bingle closed his hooded eyes.

“It was never my destiny to return,” he said. He stepped forward. So he was right after all. Quentin supposed that by now Bingle had earned a free pass on the dramatics.

“I also will go,” the sloth said over his shoulder, in case anybody had forgotten about her.

Elaine stood aside and indicated that they should proceed. Without hesitating Bingle walked up to the doorway and opened it all the way.

He was silhouetted against the immense twinkling emptiness. In the night sky beyond him a comet rocketed past, sparking and sputtering merrily like a cheap firework. This was what passed for outer space in Fillory, Quentin supposed. At the bottom of the doorway he could see just the tip of one of the silver moon’s horns. It was rising, on its way to its regular appearance in the night sky of Fillory.

It felt like you could be sucked out through the doorway if you got too close, like through an air lock. But Bingle just stood there, looking around.

“It’s down,” Elaine said. “You have to climb.”

There must have been a ladder. Bingle turned to face them, got to his knees, moving slowly to avoid dislodging the sloth, and felt around with his foot till he evidently got it on a rung. He nodded goodbye to Quentin and began to climb down, step by step. His narrow olive face disappeared below the edge.

“Once you get halfway gravity turns around,” Elaine called after him. “And you start climbing up. It’s not as tricky as it sounds,” she added to the rest of them.

She turned to Quentin.

Two times before Quentin had made this same decision. He’d stood on the threshold of a new world and then stepped over it. When he’d arrived at Brakebills he’d thrown his whole life away, his whole world and everyone he knew, in exchange for a shiny magical new one. It had been easy, he’d had nothing worth keeping. He’d done it again when he came to Fillory, and it wasn’t much harder the second time. But it was harder now, the third time, very hard. Now he had something to lose.

But he was stronger now too. He knew himself better. It turned out his journey wasn’t over after all. He wasn’t going to go back. He looked at Eliot.

“Go,” Eliot said. “One of us should.”

God, was he that easy to read?

“Go,” Poppy said. “This is for you, Quentin.”

He put his arms around her.

“Thank you, Poppy,” he whispered. Then he said it to all of them: “Thank you.”

His voice caught on the phrase. He didn’t care.

Standing in the doorway, he took a deep breath as if he were about to climb down into a pool. He could look out and survey it all: he was backstage at the cosmos. Far below he could see Bingle and the sloth, tiny, still climbing down what looked like an endless column of iron rungs. The entirety of the moon was hanging right there in front of him, bright and glorious in the abyss, glowing with its own light. It looked like he could jump to it. It was smooth and white, no craters. He hadn’t realized the tips of the horns were so sharp.

He knelt down to start his climb.

“That’s odd.” The Customs Agent frowned. “Wait a moment. Where’s your passport?”

Quentin stopped, on one knee.

“My passport?” he said. This again. “I don’t have it. I gave it to the kid in hell.”

“In hell? The underworld?”

“Well, yes. I had to go there. That’s where the last key was.”

“Oh.” She pursed her lips. “I’m sorry, but you can’t go through without a passport.”

She couldn’t be serious.

“Well, but hang on,” Quentin said. “I have a passport. Eleanor made it for me. I just don’t have it on me. They have it in the underworld.”

Elaine smiled, a tired smile that wasn’t completely devoid of sympathy, but wasn’t exactly brimming over with it either.

“Eleanor can only make you one passport, Quentin. You’ve used yours. I’m sorry. I can’t let you through.”

This couldn’t be happening. He looked past her to the others, who were standing watching him blankly, the way the passengers in a car look at the driver when he’s been pulled over for speeding. He tried to make his face communicate something, something on the order of, can you believe this shit? But it wasn’t easy. He was being asked to be a good sport, but this cut deeper than that. This was his destiny here, and she wasn’t going to take it away on a technicality.

“There has to be a loophole.” He was still kneeling on the threshold, looking up at her, halfway out the door. He could feel the Far Side pulling at him, bright and joyful, with its own gravity. This was where his story led. “Something. I had no choice, I had to go to the underworld. And not to put too fine a point on it, but if I hadn’t we never would have opened the door. We wouldn’t be here. The world would’ve ended—”

“That is what makes this all the harder.”

“—so you know,” Quentin kept talking, louder, “if I hadn’t gone to the underworld there wouldn’t be any going to the Far Side of the World.” He knew if he stood up it would be over. “There wouldn’t be any Far Side left. All of this would be gone.”

Her expression didn’t change. The woman was psychotic. She wasn’t going to give in, no matter what he said.

“All right,” he said. He waited as long as he could, then he stood up. He held up his hands. “All right.”

If there was one thing he’d learned on this fucking quest it was how to take a punch. He dropped his hands. He was still a king, for Christ’s sake. That would do for a destiny. He had no complaining to do. He’d had more than his fair share of adventures. He knew that. Quentin went over and stood next to Poppy, the woman he’d just tried to abandon. She put her arm around his waist and kissed him on the cheek.

“You’ll be okay,” she said. Her hands felt cool on his. Elaine was closing the door.

“Wait,” Julia said. “I want to go through.”

The agent stopped, but she didn’t look as if she thought she’d made a mistake.

“I’m going through,” Julia said. “My tree is waiting for me there. I can feel it.”

Elaine conferred with her partner quietly, but when they were done they both shook their heads.