Lev Grossman - The Magicians

It was a falling down, a plunge: outbound from the Neitherlands meant descending. It was like they were parachuting, only it was too rapid for that, somewhere between parachuting and straight free-falling, but with no rushing wind. For a long silent moment they could see everything: a sea of flourishing leafy canopies extending all the way to the horizon, pre-industrially verdant, giving way to square meadows in one direction that Quentin tentatively tagged as north, as reckoned by a pallid sun in a white sky. He tried to keep an eye on it as they went in. The ground rushed up to slam them.

Then, just like that, they were down. Quentin flexed his knees instinctively, but there was no impact or sense of momentum absorbed. All at once they were just standing there.

But where was there? It wasn’t a clearing exactly. It was more like a shallow ditch, a trench running through a forest, the bottom clogged with dead leaves and loam and twiggy arboreal detritus. Quentin steadied himself with one hand on the sloping bank. Light trickled down thinly through the massed branches overhead. A bird chattered and then left off. The silence was deep and thick.

They had been scattered by the transition, like a freshly deployed stick of paratroopers, but they were still in sight of one another. Richard and Penny were fighting their way out of a huge dead bush. Alice and Anaïs were seated on the trunk of a colossal tree that had fallen athwart the ditch, as if they’d been carefully placed there by a giant child arranging dolls. Janet was sitting on the ground with her hands on her thighs, taking deep breaths, the color flooding back into her face.

The whole scene had a deeply uncurated feel to it. This was not a forest that had been culled or thinned. This was primeval. This was the way trees lived when they were left to their own devices.

“Penny?” Josh stood on the edge of the ditch, gazing down at the rest of them, hands in pockets. He looked incongruously natty in a jacket and a nice shirt, no tie, even though they were all soaked to the bone. “It’s cold, Penny. Why the fuck is it cold?”

It was true. The air was dry and bitter; their clothes were freezing fast. Their breath puffed out white in the frigid stillness. Fine light snow sifted down from the white sky. The ground was hard under the fallen leaves. It was deep winter.

“I don’t know.” Penny looked around, frowning. “It was summer before,” he said a little petulantly. “Just a second ago! It was hot!”

“Will someone please help me down, please?” Anaïs was looking down at the ground dubiously from her perch on the giant tree trunk. Josh gallantly took her by her narrow waist and lifted her down; she gave a pleased little squeak.

“It’s the time thing,” Alice said. “I just thought of it. It could be six months since Penny was here, in Fillory time. Or more like sixty years, the way the seasons work. This always happens in the books. There’s no way to predict it.”

“Well, I predict that I’m going to freeze my tits off in five minutes,” Janet said. “Somebody go back for the jackets.”

They all agreed that Penny should go back and get the parkas, and he was an instant away from touching the button when Eliot suddenly lunged at him and grabbed his arm. He pointed out, as calmly as possible, that if the time streams of Fillory and the Neitherlands moved at different speeds, then if Penny went back by himself, it could easily be days, or years, before he got back to Fillory with the gear, at least from the Fillorian point of view, by which time they could have frozen to death or died of old age or accumulated countless other equally serious problems. If they were going to go, they would all have to go together.

“Forget it.” Janet shook her head. She still looked green. “I can’t go back there. Not yet. I’d rather freeze my tits off than puke my guts out.”

Nobody argued. Nobody wanted to leave quite yet anyway, not now that they were finally here in Fillory, or wherever they were. They weren’t going anywhere without at least poking around. Penny began making the rounds with his clothes-drying spell.

“I think I can see a way to go,” said Alice, who was still perched up on the tree trunk. Snow had begun to settle in her dark hair. “On the other side. It sort of turns into a path through the forest. And there’s something else, too. You’re going to want to see this for yourselves.”

If they took off their packs, there was enough space at the bottom of the ditch to scramble under the huge trunk on all fours, single file, their hands and knees sinking into the thick layer of frostbitten leaves. Eliot came through last, passing the packs ahead of him. They stood up on the other side, slapping dirt off their hands. Penny rushed to hand Alice down from where she sat, but she ignored him and jumped down herself, although it meant crashing down on her hands and knees and picking herself up again. She didn’t seem to be particularly relishing her adventure of the night before, Quentin thought.

To one side of the path was a small spreading oak. Its bark was dark gray, almost black, and its branches were gnarled and wiggly and all but empty of leaves. Embedded in its trunk at head height, as if the tree had simply grown up around it, was a round ticking clock face a foot across.

One by one, without speaking, they all scrambled up the sloping bank to get a closer look. It was one of the Watcherwoman’s clock-trees.

Quentin touched the place where the tree’s hard rough bark met the smooth silver bezel around the clock face. It was solid and cold and real. He closed his eyes and followed the curve of it with his finger. He was really here. He was in Fillory. There was no question about it now.

And now that he was here it would finally be all right. He didn’t see how yet, but it would. It had to be. Maybe it was the lack of sleep, but hot tears poured helplessly down his cheeks, leaving cold tracks behind them. Against all his own wishes and instincts he got down on his knees and put his head in his hands and pushed his face into the cold leaves. A sob clawed its way out of him. For a minute he lost himself. Somebody, he would never know who, not Alice, put their hand on his shoulder. This was the place. He would be picked up, cleaned off, and made to feel safe and happy and whole again here. How had everything gone so wrong? How could he and Alice have been so stupid? It barely even mattered now. This was his life now, the life he had always been waiting for. It was finally here.

And it flashed into his head with sudden urgency: Richard was right. They had to find Martin Chatwin, if he was somehow still alive. That was the key. Now that he was here, he wasn’t going to give it up again. He must know the secret of how to stay here forever, make it last, make it permanent.

Quentin got to his feet, embarrassed, and blotted his tears on his sleeve.

“Welp,” Josh said finally, breaking the silence. “I guess that pretty much tears it. We’re in Fillory.”

“These clock-trees are supposed to be the Watcherwoman’s thing,” Quentin said, still sniffling. “She must still be around.”

“I thought she was dead,” Janet said.

“Maybe we’re in an earlier time period,” Alice suggested. “Maybe we went back in time. Like in The Girl Who Told Time .”

She and Janet and Quentin didn’t look at each other when they spoke.

“Maybe. I think they left some of these still growing, though, even after they got rid of her. Remember they even see one in The Wandering Dune .”

“I could never finish that book,” Josh said.

“I wonder.” Eliot eyed it appraisingly. “Think we could get this thing back to Brakebills? That would make a hell of a present for Fogg.”