Lev Grossman - The Magicians

“It’s amazing what you can accomplish if you put your mind to it. I made some very interesting friends in the Darkling Woods. Very helpful chaps.” He spoke genially, expansively, like a toastmaster at a dinner party. “Mind you, the kinds of things you have to do to work that kind of magic — well, your humanity is the first thing to go. You don’t stay a man once you’ve done the things I’ve done. Once you know the things I know. I hardly miss it now.”

“Friends,” Quentin said dully. “You mean the Watcherwoman.”

“The Watcherwoman!” Martin seemed to find this hilarious. “Oh, my! That is amusing. Sometimes I forget what’s in those books. I’ve been here a very long time, you know. I haven’t read them in centuries.

“No, not the Watcherwoman. Goodness, the crowd I run with make her look like — well, they make her look like you. Amateurs.

“But enough chit-chat. Who’s got the button?”

The button was, of course, in Penny’s bag, which lay right at Quentin’s feet. I did this, he thought, with a pang that ran all the way through him. This is twice. Twice I’ve summoned the Beast. I’m a curse on everyone around me.

“Button, button, who’s got the button? Who’s got it?”

Penny began backing away from the thing in the gray suit, at the same time starting up a spell — another secret weapon, maybe, Quentin didn’t recognize it. But Martin moved invisibly fast, like a poisonous fish striking. In a blur he had both of Penny’s wrists in the grip of one hand. Penny struggled wildly; he bent at the waist and kicked Martin in the stomach, then braced his legs against his chest and pushed to try to get free, grunting with the effort. The Beast barely seemed to notice.

“I’m afraid not, dear boy,” he said.

He opened his mouth wide, too wide, as if his jaw were unhinging like a snake’s, and placed both of Penny’s hands in his mouth. He bit them off at the wrists.

It wasn’t a clean bite. Martin Chatwin had blunt human teeth, not fangs, and it took an extra shake of his calm, middle-aged head to fully crush the wrist bones and detach Penny’s hands. Then the Beast dropped him, chewing busily, and Penny fell back on the sand. Arterial blood sprayed crazily from the stumps, then he rolled over and they were underneath him. His legs thrashed like he was being electrocuted. He didn’t scream, but frantic snuffling noises came from where his face was pushed into the sandy floor. His sneakers scrabbled in the dirt.

The Beast swallowed once, twice, his Adam’s apple bobbing. He grinned, almost embarrassed, holding up one finger while he chewed: give me a moment. His eyes narrowed with pleasure.

“Shit shit shit shit shit…” somebody wailed, high and desperate. Anaïs.

“Now,” Martin Chatwin said, when he could speak again. “I’d like the button, please.”

They stared at him.

“Why,” Eliot said numbly. “What are you?”

Martin took out his handkerchief and dabbed Penny’s blood from the corner of his mouth.

“Why, I’m what you thought that was.” He indicated Ember’s motionless body. “I’m a god.”

Quentin’s chest was so tight that he kept taking tense irregular little breaths, in and out.

“But why do you want it?” he asked.

Talking was good. Talking was better than killing.

“Just tying up loose ends,” Martin said. “I would have thought it was obvious. The buttons are the only things I know of that could force me to return to Earth. I’ve got almost all of them rounded up. Just one more after this. Goodness knows where the bunnies got them. I still haven’t figured that out.

“Do you know, when I first ran away, they hunted me like an animal? My own siblings? They wanted to bring me home. Like an animal!” His urbane manner cracked for an instant. “Later Ember and Umber came looking for me, too, to try to deport me, but by then it was much too late for that. Much too late. I was too strong even for them.

“That bloody cunt of a Watcherwoman is still at it, with her damned clock-trees. Mucking about with time. Even now their roots go halfway through this bloody world. She’s next after you, she’s still got a button. The last one. Once I’ve got hers I really don’t think there’ll be any way to get rid of me at all.”

Penny rolled over onto his side. He looked up at Quentin, his face strangely ecstatic, though paler than ever and covered in sand. His eyes were closed. He had the stumps of his wrists pressed tight against his chest. His shirt was wringing wet with blood.

“Is it bad, Q?” Penny asked. “I’m not going to look. You tell me. How bad is it?”

“You’re all right, man,” Quentin muttered.

Martin could not suppress a joyless clubman’s chuckle at that. He went on.

“I’ve been back once or twice, of course, by myself. Once to kill the old bugger, Plover.” His smooth brow crinkled, and he looked thoughtful. “He earned that. That and more. I wish I had him to kill again.

“And I nipped through once when your Professor March bungled a spell. Just to keep an eye on things. I thought somebody at Brakebills might be planning something — I get a sort of sense of the future sometimes. It appears that I was right. Though I must have eaten the wrong student.”

Martin clapped his hands together and rubbed them in anticipation.

“Well, that’s all bygones,” he said, perking up. “Let’s have it.”

“We hid it again,” Alice said. “Like your sister Helen. We buried the button. Kill us and you’ll never find it.”

My brave Alice. Quentin gripped her hand. I brought this on us. His knees were trembling uncontrollably.

“Oh, well played, my girl. Shall I start ripping people’s heads off, one by one? I think you’ll tell me before it comes to that.”

“Wait, why would you kill us at all?” Quentin asked. “Fuck it, we’ll just give you the button. Just leave us alone!”

“Oh, I wish I could do that, Quentin. I truly do. But you see, this place changes you.” Martin sighed and waggled his extra fingers, his hands like pale spiders. “It’s why the rams didn’t like humans staying here too long. As it is, I’ve almost gone too far. I’ve got quite a taste for human flesh now. Don’t you go anywhere, William,” he added, nudging Penny’s twitching body with the toe of his shoe. “Fauns just don’t have the same savor.”

William, Quentin thought. That must be Penny’s real name. He never knew it before.

“And you know, I can’t have you lot running around trying to overthrow me. Treason, that is. Everybody notice that I’ve crippled your principal spellcaster? You got that?”

“You pathetic fucker.” Quentin said evenly. “It wasn’t even worth it, was it? That’s the funny part. You came here for the same reason we did. And are you happy now? You found out, didn’t you? There’s no getting away from yourself. Not even in Fillory.”

Martin snarled and made an enormous bound forward, covering the thirty feet that separated them in a single leap. At the last second Quentin turned to run, but the monster was already on his back, his teeth in Quentin’s shoulder, his arms hugging Quentin’s chest. The Beast’s jaws were like a huge hungry pliers gripping his collarbone. It bent and cracked sickeningly.

The jaws regripped, getting a better hold on him. Quentin heard himself make an involuntary groan as the air was crushed out of his lungs. He was so afraid of the pain, but when it came down to it it wasn’t so much the pain as the pressure, the incredible, unbearable pressure. He couldn’t breathe. Quentin thought for an instant he might be able to manage some magic, maybe something grand and strange like he had that first day at Brakebills, in his Examination, but he couldn’t speak to cast a spell. He reached back with his hands — maybe he could find Martin’s eyes with his thumbs, or rip his ears — but all he could do was pull Martin’s thin gray English hair.