The Magicians

  Quentin’s feet were killing him breaking in his brand-new hiking boots. He’d never dried off the foot he’d soaked in the stream before, and now it felt hot and blistered and mildewy. He imagined painful fungal spores taking root and flourishing in the warm wetness between his toes. He wondered how far they’d walked. It had been about thirty hours since he’d slept.

  Both Penny and Anaïs were adamantly against turning back. What if the Chatwins had turned back? Penny said. They were part of a story now. Had anybody actually ever read a story? This was the hump, the hard part, the part they’d be rewarded for later. You just had to get through it. And not to go on, but who are the good guys here? We are the good guys. And the good guys always survive.

  “Wake up!” Alice said. “This isn’t a story! It’s just one fucking thing after another! Somebody could have died back there!” She obviously meant Quentin but didn’t want to say his name.

  “Maybe Helen Chatwin was right,” Richard said. “Maybe we’re not supposed to be here.”

  “You don’t get it, do you?” Janet stared them down. “It’s supposed to be confusing at the beginning. The situation will get explained in time. We just have to keep moving. Keep picking up clues. If we leave now and come back it’ll be like five hundred years from now and we’ll have to start all over again.”

  Quentin looked from one to the other of them: Alice smart and skeptical, Janet all action and thoughtless exuberance. He turned to Anaïs to ask her how far she thought they’d walked, on the vague theory that a European person might have a more accurate sense of these things than a bunch of Americans, when he realized he was the only one of the party who wasn’t staring off into the forest to their right. Passing them through the darkening trees, on a parallel course, was the strangest thing Quentin had ever seen.

  It was a birch tree, striding along through the forest. Its trunk forked a meter from the ground to form two legs on which it took stiff, deliberate steps. It was so thin that it was hard to keep track of in the half-light, but its white bark stood out from the dark trunks around it. Its thin upper branches whipped and snapped against the trees it pushed past. It looked more like a machine or a marionette than a person. Quentin wondered how it kept its balance.

  “Holy crap,” said Josh.

  Without speaking they began to trail after it. The tree didn’t hail them, but for a moment its crown of branches twisted in their direction, as if it were glancing over a shoulder it didn’t have. In the stillness they could actually hear it creaking as it foraged along, like a rocking chair. Quentin got the distinct impression it was ignoring them.

  After the first five minutes of magical wonderment passed it began to be socially awkward, blatantly following the tree-spirit-thing like this, but it didn’t seem to want to acknowledge them, and they weren’t about to let it go. As a group they clung to it. Maybe this thing was going to put them in the picture, Quentin thought. If it didn’t turn around and beat them all to death with its branches.

  Janet kept a close eye on Penny and shushed him whenever he looked like he might be about to say something.

  “Let it make the first move,” she whispered.

  “Freak show,” Josh said. “What is that thing?”

  “It’s a dryad, idiot.”

  “I thought those were girl-trees.”

  “They’re supposed to be sexy girl-trees,” Josh said plaintively.

  “And I thought dryads were oaks,” Alice said. “That’s a birch.”

  “What makes you think it’s not a girl-tree?”

  “Whatever it is,” Josh said under his breath, “it’s pay dirt. Fuckin’ tree-thing, man. Pay fuckin’ dirt.”

  The tree was a fast walker, almost bouncing along on its springy, knee-less legs, to the point where soon they would have to break into a half jog to keep up with it. Just when it looked like they were either going to lose their only promising lead so far or segue into an undignified chase scene, it became obvious where it was heading anyway.

  HUMBLEDRUM

  Ten minutes later Quentin was sitting in a booth in a dimly lit bar with a pint of beer on the table in front of him, as yet untasted. Though unexpected, this felt like a good development for him. Bar, booth, beer. This was a situation where he knew how to handle himself, whatever world he was in. If he’d been training for anything since he left Brakebills, it was this.

  Identical pints stood in front of the others. It was late afternoon, five thirty or so, Quentin guessed, though how could you know? Were there even twenty-four hours in a day here? Why would there be? Despite Penny’s insistence that the tree had been “leading” them here, it was pretty clear they would have found the inn on their own. It was a dark, low-roofed log cabin with a sign outside featuring two crescent moons; a delicate little clockwork mechanism caused the two moons to revolve around each other when the wind blew. The cabin was backed up against, and appeared almost to emerge from, a low hillock that humped up out of the forest floor.

  Cautiously pushing inside, through swinging doors, they discovered what could have passed for a period room in a museum of Colonial America: a long narrow chamber with a bar against one wall. It reminded Quentin of the Historick Olde Innes he’d wandered through when he was visiting his parents in Chesterton.

  Only one other booth was occupied, by a family(?)—a tall, white-haired old man; a high-cheekboned woman who might have been in her thirties; and a serious little girl. Obviously locals. They sat perfectly silent and erect, staring balefully at the empty cups and saucers in front of them. The little girl’s hooded eyes expressed a precocious acquaintance with adversity.

  The walking birch tree had disappeared, presumably into a back room. The bartender wore a curious old-fashioned uniform, black with many brass buttons, something like what an Edwardian policeman might have worn. He had a narrow, bored face and heavy black five o’clock shadow, and he slowly polished pint glasses with a white cloth in the manner of bartenders since time immemorial. Otherwise the room was empty, except for a large brown bear wearing a waistcoat sitting slumped in a sturdy armchair in one corner. It wasn’t clear whether the bear was conscious or not.

  Richard had brought along several dozen small gold cylinders in the hope that they would work as a kind of universal interdimensional currency. The bartender accepted one without comment, weighed it expertly in his palm, and returned a handful of change: four dented, wobbly coins stamped with an assortment of faces and animals. Two of them bore mottos in two different unreadable scripts; the third was a well-worn Mexican peso from the year 1936; the fourth turned out to be a plastic marker from a board game called Sorry. He set about filling pewter tankards.

  Josh stared into his dubiously and took a fastidious sniff. He was as fidgety as a third-grader.

  “Just drink it!” Quentin hissed irritably. God, people were such losers sometimes. He lifted his own tankard. “Cheers.”

  He swished the liquid around in his mouth. It was bitter and carbonated and alcoholic and definitely beer. It filled him with confidence and a renewed sense of purpose. He’d had a scare, but it’s funny how it—and the beer—were now focusing his mind wonderfully. Quentin shared his booth with Richard, Josh, and Anaïs—he had successfully avoided sitting next to either Alice or Janet, or Penny—and they exchanged multiple transverse glances over their foamy pints. They were a long way from where they’d started out that morning.

  “I don’t think that bear is stuffed!” Josh whispered excitedly. “I think that’s a real bear!”

  “Let’s buy it a beer,” Quentin said.

  “I think it’s asleep. And anyway it doesn’t look that friendly.”

  “Beer might help with that,” Quentin said. He felt punchy. “This could be the next clue. If it’s a talking beer, I mean a talking bear, we could, you know, talk to it.”

  “About what?”

  Quentin shrugged and took another sip.

  “Just get a feel for what’s going on around here. I mean, what else are we doing her
e?”

  Richard and Anaïs hadn’t touched their drinks. Quentin took another big gulp just to spite them.

  “We’re playing it safe, is what we’re doing,” Richard said. “This is strictly reconnaissance. We’re avoiding any unnecessary contact.”

  “You’re kidding me. We’re in Fillory, and you don’t want to talk to anybody?”

  “Absolutely not.” Richard sounded shocked, shocked, at the very idea. “We’ve made contact with another plane of existence. What, that’s not enough for you?”

  “As a matter of fact, it’s not. A giant praying mantis tried to kill me earlier today, and I’d like to know why.”

  Fillory had yet to give Quentin the surcease from unhappiness he was counting on, and he was damned if he was leaving before he got what he wanted. Relief was out there, he knew it, he just needed to get deeper in, and he wasn’t about to let Richard slow him down. He had to jump the tracks, get out of his Earth-story, which wasn’t going so well, and into the Fillory-story, where the upside was infinitely higher. Anyway, the mood he was in, Quentin was willing to take any position on any subject with anybody if it meant he could pick a fight.

  “Barkeep!” Quentin said, louder than necessary. As an afterthought he gave himself a thick Wild West drawl. If it feels right, go with it. He jerked his thumb at the bear. “ ’Nother round fer mah friend the bar there in the corner.”

  A bar in a bar. Clever. In the other booth Eliot, Alice, Janet, and Penny all turned around in unison to look at him. The man in the uniform just nodded wearily.

  The bear, it emerged, drank only peach schnapps, which it sipped from delicate thimble-size glasses. Given its bulk, Quentin guessed it could consume a more or less unlimited amount of it. After two or three it ambled over on all fours and joined them, dragging over the heavy armchair, the only piece of furniture in the room capable of supporting its weight, by hooking its claws into the chair’s much-abused upholstery and pulling. It looked way too big to be moving around in a confined space.

  The bear was named Humbledrum, and it was, as its name suggested, a very modest bear. It was a brown bear, it explained in deep sub-subwoofer tones, a species larger than the black bear but much much smaller than the mighty grizzly bear, though the grizzly was in fact a variety of brown bear. It was not, Humbledrum reiterated periodically, half the bear that some of those grizzlies were.

  “But it’s not just about who’s the biggest bear,” Quentin offered. They were bonding. He wasn’t sure exactly what he wanted from the bear, but this seemed like a good way to get it. He was drinking Richard’s beer, having finished his own. “There’s other ways to be a good bear.”

  Humbledrum’s head bobbed enthusiastically.

  “Oh yes. Oh yes. I am a good bear. I never meant to say that I’m a bad bear. I’m a good bear. I respect territories. I’m a respectful bear.” Humbledrum’s terrifyingly huge paw fell on the table emphatically, and it put its black muzzle very close to Quentin’s nose. “I am a very. Respectful. Bear.”

  The others were conspicuously silent, or talked among themselves, elaborately play-acting that they were unaware of the fact that Quentin was conversing with a drunk magic bear. Richard had bailed out early, swapping places with the always-game Janet. Josh and Anaïs huddled together, looking trapped. If Humbledrum noticed any of this, it didn’t seem to bother it.

  Quentin understood that he was operating outside most of the group’s comfort level. He could see out of the corner of his eye that Eliot was trying to shoot him warning glances from the other table, but he avoided them. He didn’t care. He had to push things forward; he was afraid of staying still. This was his play, and he was playing it, and he was going to play it his way till it was played out. Everybody else could either get on board or button their candy asses on back to Drop City.

  It wasn’t like what he was doing was easy. The range of Humbledrum’s interests was suffocatingly narrow, and its depth of knowledge in those areas abysmally profound. Quentin still vaguely remembered being a goose, how laser-focused he’d been on air currents and freshwater greenery, and he realized now that all animals were probably, at heart, insufferable bores. As a hibernating mammal Humbledrum had far more than the layman’s familiarity with cave geology. When it came to honey, it was the subtlest and most sophisticated of gastronomes. Quentin learned quickly to steer the conversation away from chestnuts.

  “So,” Quentin said, flatly interrupting a disquisition on the stinging habits of the docile Carniolan honeybee (Apis mellifera carnica) as contrasted with those of the slightly more excitable German honeybee (Apis mellifera mellifera, aka the German black bee). “Just to be clear, this is Fillory we’re in, right?”

  The lecture ground to a halt. Under its fur Humbledrum’s massive brow furrowed, producing a vivid equivalent of human befuddlement.

  “What is, Quentin?”

  “This place we’re in, right now,” Quentin said. “It’s called Fillory.”

  A long moment passed. Humbledrum’s ears twitched. It had impossibly cute, round, furry teddy-bear ears.

  “Fillory,” it said slowly, cautiously. “That is a word I have heard.” The giant bear sounded like a kid at the blackboard hedging his bets against what might or might not be a trick question.

  “And this is it? We’re in Fillory?”

  “I think it . . . may once have been.”

  “So what do you call it now?” Quentin coaxed.

  “No. No. Wait.” Humbledrum held up a paw for silence, and Quentin felt a tiny pang of pity. The enormous hairy idiot really was trying to think. “Yes, it is. This is Fillory. Or Loria? Is this Loria?”

  “It has to be Fillory,” Penny said, leaning over from the other booth. “Loria is the evil country. Across the eastern mountains. It’s not like there’s no difference. How can you not know where you live?”

  The bear was still shaking its heavy muzzle.

  “I think Fillory is somewhere else,” it said.

  “But this definitely isn’t Loria,” Penny said.

  “Look, who’s the talking bear here?” Quentin snapped. “Is it you? Are you the talking fucking bear? All right. So shut the fuck up.”

  Outside the bar the sun had set, and a few other creatures trailed in. Three beavers sipped from a common dish at a round café table in the company of a fat, green, oddly alert-looking cricket. In one corner, by itself, a white goat lapped at what looked like pale yellow wine in a shallow bowl. A slender, shy-looking man with horns jutting through his blond hair sat at the bar. He wore round glasses, and the lower half of his body was covered in thick bushy hair. The whole scene had a dreamlike quality, like a Chagall painting come to life. In passing, Quentin noted how disturbing it was to see a man with goat’s legs. Those backward-bending knees reminded him of the crippled or the gravely deformed.

  As the inn filled up the silent family rose as one and shuffled out of their booth, their expressions still somber. Where could they be going? Quentin wondered. He’d seen no sign of a village nearby. It was getting late, and he wondered if they had a long walk ahead of them. He pictured them trudging down the grooved dirt road in the moonlight, the little girl riding on the old man’s narrow shoulders and then later, when she was too tired even for that, drooling drowsily on his lapel. He felt chastened by their gravity. They made him feel like a bumptious tourist, rattling drunkenly around what was, he kept forgetting, their country, a real country with real people in it, not a storybook at all. Or was it? Should he run after them? What secrets were they taking with them? When she reached to open the door, Quentin saw that the woman with the elegant cheekbones had lost her right arm below the elbow.

  After another round of schnapps and scintillating persiflage with Humbledrum, the little silver birch sapling emerged from wherever it had been concealing itself and threaded its way through the room toward them, padding on feet of matted roots which still had clods of dirt clinging to them.

  “I am Farvel,” it said chirpily.

  It l
ooked even stranger in the full light of the bar. It was a literal stick figure. There were talking trees in the Fillory books, but Plover was never very precise in describing their appearance. Farvel spoke through what looked like a lateral cut in its bark, the kind of wedge that a single hatchet blow might have left. The remainder of its features were sketched out by a spray of thin branches covered in fluttering green leaves, which roughly limned the outlines of two eyes and a nose. He looked like a Green Man carving in a church, except that his flat little mouth gave him a comically sour expression.

  “Please pardon my rudeness earlier, I was disconcerted. It is so rare to meet travelers from other lands.” It had brought a stool from the bar, and now it bent itself into a rough sitting position. It looked a little like a chair itself. “What brings you here, human boy?”

  At last. Here we go. The next level.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Quentin began, casually throwing an arm over the back of the booth. Obviously, he was emerging as the designated point person, the team’s natural first-contact specialist. The bartender joined them as well, having been replaced at his station by a solemn, dignified chimp with a hangdog face. “Curiosity mostly, I guess. We found this button? That let us travel between worlds? And we were all sort of at loose ends on Earth anyway, so we just . . . came over here. See what we could see, that kind of a thing.”

  Even half drunk, that sounded a lot lamer than he’d hoped. Even Janet was looking at him with concern. God, he hoped Alice wasn’t listening. He smiled weakly, trying to play it cool. He wished he hadn’t had quite so much beer on quite such an empty, weary stomach.

  “Of course, of course,” Farvel said companionably. “And what have you seen so far?”

  The bartender watched Quentin steadily. He sat back-to-front on a cane chair, his arms resting on the seat back.