Lev Grossman - The Magicians

Janet rolled her eyes.

“What do you think, Q?” Penny said. “Doesn’t this feel right to you?”

Without knowing how it happened Quentin had Penny’s ratty T-shirt bunched in his fists. Penny weighed more than he’d counted on, but Quentin still managed to get him off balance and push him backward until his head clunked against the damp trunk of a pine tree.

“Never speak to me,” Quentin said evenly. “Do you understand? You do not address me directly, ever. You do not speak to me.”

“I don’t want to fight you,” Penny said. “That’s exactly what the Watcherwoman wants—”

“Did you not just hear what I said?” Quentin clunked Penny’s head against the tree again, hard this time. Somebody said his name. “You lardy little fucking nub? Did you not just fucking hear what I fucking said? Was I unclear in any way?”

He walked away without waiting for an answer. Fillory had better give him something to fight soon or he was going to lose it completely.

The novelty of actually, physically being in Fillory was wearing thin. In spite of everything a mood of general grumpiness was growing, a spoiled-picnic mood. Every time a bird perched overhead for more than a few seconds Josh would say, “Okay, this is the one,” or “I think it’s trying to tell us something,” or eventually, “Hey asshole, fly away from me, please. Okay, thanks.”

“At least the Watcherwoman hasn’t shown up,” Eliot said.

“If that even was the Watcherwoman before,” Josh said. “Supposedly they got her in the first book, right? So.”

“Yeah, I know.” Eliot had a handful of acorns and was chucking them at trees as they walked. “But something’s a little off here. I don’t understand why that nymph wasn’t boring us about Ember and Umber. They’re always so pushy about Them in the books.”

“If there’s a war between the rams and the Watcherwoman still going on, we’re going to want to get with Ember and Umber stat,” Alice said.

“Oh, yeah,” Janet said. She made quotey-fingers. “ ‘Stat.’ ”

“If They want us on Their side, They will find us,” Penny intoned. “We need have no fear on that score.”

No one answered him. It was becoming increasingly clear that Penny’s encounter with the nymph had put him in an altered state. That was how he was dealing with Fillory. He’d undergone a conversion experience, flipped into full-on Renaissance Faire role-playing mode.

“Watch it, watch it! ” Richard yelled. They registered the drumming thuds of hooves on soft earth almost too late. A carriage drawn by two horses tore past them at a full gallop, scattering them into the trees on either side of the road. The carriage was closed and dark; on its side it bore what looked like a coat of arms that had recently been painted over in black.

The coachman was bundled up in a black cloak. He — she? it was impossible to tell — signaled the horses to slow to a walk, then a stop, a hundred feet ahead of them down the road.

“The thick plottens,” Eliot said dryly.

It was about damn time something happened. Quentin, Janet, and Anaïs walked boldly toward it, all competing to be the reckless one, the hero, the one who pushed things forward. In his present state of mind Quentin felt fully prepared to go right up and knock on the shutters, but he found himself pulling up a few yards away. So did the others. The black coach did look ominously funereal.

A muffled voice spoke from inside the carriage.

“Do they bear the Horns?”

This was evidently directed not at them but at the coachman, who had the better vantage point. If the coachman replied, he/she did so inaudibly.

“Do you bear the horns?” This voice was louder and clearer.

The advance party exchanged looks.

“What do you mean, Horns?” Janet called. “We’re not from around here.”

This was ridiculous. It was like talking to the Once-ler in Dr. Seuss.

“Do you serve the Bull?” Now the voice sounded shriller to his ears, with high, twittering overtones.

“Who’s the bull?” Quentin said, loudly and slowly, as if he were talking to somebody who didn’t speak English or was mildly retarded. There was no bull in the Plover books, so—? “We are visitors to your land . We do not serve the bull , or anybody else for that matter .”

“They’re not deaf, Quentin,” Janet said.

Long silence. One of the horses — they were black, too, as was the tackle, and everything else — whickered. The first voice said something inaudible.

“What?” Quentin took a step closer.

A trapdoor banged open on top of the carriage. The sound was like a gunshot. A tiny expressionless head and a long green insect torso popped up out of it — it could only have been a praying mantis, but grown grotesquely to human size. It was so skinny and it had so many long emerald-colored legs and graceful whip antennae that at first Quentin didn’t notice that it was holding a green bow with a green arrow nocked.

“Shit!” Quentin yelped reflexively. His voice cracked. It was close range, and there was no time to run. He cringed violently and fell down.

The horses took off like a shot the moment the mantis released. The trapdoor banged shut again. Dust and twigs spun up into the air in the carriage’s wake, its four big wheels fitting neatly in the ruts in the road.

When Quentin dared to look up again, Penny was standing over him. He held the arrow in one hand. He must have used a spell to speed up his reflexes, Fillorian Circumstances be damned, then plucked it out of the air in midflight. It would have neatly speared Quentin’s kidney.

The others came straggling up to watch the carriage recede into the distance.

“Wait,” Josh said sarcastically. “Stop.”

“Jesus, Penny,” Janet breathed. “Nice catch.”

What, was she going to fuck him now? Quentin thought. He stared at the arrow in Penny’s hand, panting. It was a yard long and fletched in black and yellow like a hornet. The tip had two angry curly steel barbs welded to it. He hadn’t even had time to panic.

He took a shaky breath.

“That all you got?” he yelled after the dwindling carriage, too late for it to be funny.

Slowly he got to his feet. His knees were water and wouldn’t stop shaking.

Penny turned and, in an odd gesture, offered him the arrow. Quentin snorted angrily and walked away, slapping leaf junk off his hands. He didn’t want Penny to see him trembling. It probably would have missed anyway.

“Wow,” Janet said. “That was one angry bug.”

The day wore on. Light was leaking out of the sky, and the fun was leaking out of the afternoon. Nobody wanted to admit they were frightened, so they took the only other option, which was to be irritable instead. If they didn’t go back soon, they’d have to find somewhere to make camp for the night in the woods, which maybe wasn’t such a good idea if they were going to get shot at by giant bugs. None of them had enough medical magic to handle a barbed shaft to the small intestine. They stood and argued on the dirt road. Should they go back to Buffalo, maybe pick up some Kevlar after all? There were only so many arrows Penny could catch. Would Kevlar even stop an arrow?

And what kind of political situation were they walking into here? Bugs and bulls, nymphs and witches — who were the good guys and who were the bad guys? Everything was much less entertaining and more difficult to organize than they’d counted on. Quentin’s nerves were thoroughly jangled, and he kept touching the place on his stomach under his sweater where the arrow would have gone in. What, was it mammals vs. insects now? But then why would a praying mantis be fighting for a bull? The nymph had said this wasn’t their war. Maybe she had a point.