Lev Grossman - The Magicians

“And that’s pretty much it. I can’t even imagine what they told the boy’s parents. I hear he was from a magical family, so they probably got some version of the truth. But, you know, the clean version.”

There was a long silence. A bell was clanging far away, a boat on the river. The shadow from the trees had flooded all the way over them, deliciously cool in the late-summer afternoon.

Alice cleared her throat. “What happened to the professor?”

“You haven’t figured it out?” Janet didn’t bother to conceal her glee. “They gave him a choice: resign in disgrace… or transfer to Antarctica. Brakebills South. Guess which one he took.”

“Oh my God,” Josh said. “It was Mayakovsky.”

“That explains a hell of a lot,” Quentin said.

“Doesn’t it though? Doesn’t it just?”

“So what happened to Emily Greenstreet?” Alice asked. “She just left school?” There was a trace of ground steel in her voice. Quentin wasn’t totally sure where it was coming from. “What happened to her? Did they send her to a normal school?”

“I hear she does something businessy in Manhattan,” Janet said. “They set her up with an easy corporate job, I don’t know, management consulting or something. We own part of some big firm. Lots of magic to cover up the fact that she doesn’t do anything. She just sits in an office and surfs the Web all day. I think part of her just didn’t survive what happened, you know?”

After that even Janet stopped talking. Quentin let himself drift among the clouds. He felt spinny from the wine, like the Earth had come untightened and was wobbling loose on its gimbaled base. Apparently he wasn’t the only one, because when Josh stood up after a few minutes he immediately lost his balance and fell over again on the turf. There was scattered applause.

But then he stood up again, steadied himself, did a slow, deep knee bend, and executed a perfect standing backflip. He stuck the landing and straightened up, beaming.

“It worked,” he said. “I can’t believe it. I take back everything bad I ever said about Viking shamans! It fucking worked!”

The spell had worked, though for some reason Josh was the only one who got anything out of it. As they picked up the picnic things and shook the sand out of the blanket, Josh did laps around the field, whooping and making huge superhero leaps in the fading light.

“I am a Viking warrior! Cower before my might! Cower! The strength of Thor and all his mighty hosts flows through me! And I fucked your mother! I… fucked… your… motherrrrrrrrrr!”

“He’s so happy,” Eliot said dryly. “It’s like he cooked something and it came out looking like the picture in the cookbook.”

Eventually Josh disappeared in search of other people to show off to, loudly singing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Janet and Eliot straggled off in the direction of the Cottage, Alice and Quentin toward the House, sunburnt and sleepy and still half drunk. Quentin had already made up his mind to nap through dinner.

“He’s going to hurt somebody,” he said. “Probably himself.”

“There’s some damage resistance built in. Strengthening the skin and the skeleton. He could put his fist through a wall and probably not break anything.”

“Probably. If he can, he will.”

Alice was even more quiet than usual. It wasn’t until they were deep in the twilight alleys of the Maze that Quentin saw that her face was slick with tears. His heart went cold.

“Alice. Alice, sweetheart.” He stopped and turned her to face him. “What is it?”

She pressed her face miserably into his shoulder.

“Why did she have to tell that story?” she said. “Why? Why is she like that?”

Quentin immediately felt guilty for having enjoyed it. It was a horrible story. But there was something irresistibly gothic about it, too.

“She’s just a gossip,” he said. “She doesn’t mean anything.”

“Doesn’t she?” She pulled back, fiercely wiping her tears with the backs of her hands. “Doesn’t she? I always thought my brother died in a car crash.”

“Your brother?” Quentin froze. “I don’t understand.”

“He was eight years older than me. My parents told me he died in a car crash. But that was him, I’m sure it was.”

“I don’t understand. You think he was that boy in the story?”

She nodded. “I think he was. I know he was.” Her eyes were red and rubbed with rage and hurt.

“Jesus. Look, it’s just a story. There’s no way she could know.”

“She knows.” Alice kept walking. “It all works out, the timing of it. And he was like that. Charlie — he was always falling in love with people. He would have tried to save her himself. He would have done that.” She shook her head bitterly. “He was stupid that way.”

“Maybe she didn’t know. Maybe Janet didn’t realize it was him.”

“That’s what she wants everybody to think! So you won’t realize what a howling cunt she is!”

Howling was a big word at Brakebills that year. Quentin was about to keep defending Janet when something else clicked.

“That’s why you weren’t Invited here,” he said quietly. “It has to be. Because of what happened to your brother.”

She nodded, her eyes unfocused now, her relentless brain chewing away at this wrinkle, fitting other things into the bleak new picture it created.

“They didn’t want anything to happen to me. As if it would. God, why is everybody else in the world but us so fucking stupid?”

They stopped a few yards short of the edge of the Maze, in the deep shadow that pooled where the hedges grew close together, as if they couldn’t face the daylight again, not quite yet.

“At least now I know,” she said. “But why did she tell that story, Q? She knew it would hurt me. Why would she do that?”

He shook his head. The idea of conflict within their little clique made him uncomfortable. He wanted to explain it away. He wanted everything to be perfect.

“She’s just bitter,” he said finally, “because you’re the pretty one.”

Alice snorted.

“She’s bitter because we’re happy,” she said, “and she’s in love with Eliot. Always has been. And he doesn’t love her.”

She started walking again.

“What? Wait.” Quentin shook his head, as if that would make all the pieces fit together again. “Why would she want Eliot?”

“Because she can’t have him?” Alice said bitterly, without looking back at him. “And she has to have everything? I’m surprised she hasn’t come after you. What, you think she hasn’t slept with Josh?”

They left the Maze and climbed the stairs to the rear terrace, lit by the yellow light coming through the French doors and littered with premature autumn leaves. Alice cleaned herself up as best she could with the heels of her hands. She didn’t wear much makeup anyway. Quentin stood by and silently handed her tissues to blow her nose with, adrift in his own thoughts. It never failed to astonish him, then or ever, how much of the world around him was mysterious and hidden from view.

Then September came, and it was just Quentin and Alice. The others were gone, in a swirl of falling leaves and a crackle of early frost.

It was a shock to see them go, but along with the shock, mixed in with it like the liquor in a cocktail, was an even greater feeling of relief. Quentin wanted things to be good between them, to be better than good, to be perfect. But perfection is a nervy business, because the moment you spot the tiniest flaw it’s ruined. Perfection was part of Quentin’s mythology of Brakebills, the story he told himself about his life there, a narrative as carefully constructed and reverently maintained as Fillory and Further , and he wanted to be able not just to tell it to himself but to believe it. That had been getting progressively more difficult. Pressure was building up in some subterranean holding tank, and right at the end there things had begun to come apart. Even Quentin, with his almost limitless capacity for ignoring the obvious, had begun to pick up on it. Maybe Alice was right, maybe Janet really did hate her and love Eliot. Maybe it was something else, something so glaringly obvious that Quentin couldn’t stand to look at it directly. One way or another the bonds that held them together were starting to fray, they were losing their magical ability to effortlessly love one another. Now, even though things would never be the same, even though they’d never be together in the same way, at least he could always remember it the way he wanted to. The memories were safe, sealed forever in amber.