The Magician King_ A Novel - Lev Grossman [104]
“It was like drugs more than anything else, but I hadn’t taken any drugs. I remember one night in my bedroom lying there smelling spices in the darkness, one after the other. Cinnamon, jasmine, cardamom, something else—something wonderful I couldn’t place. Paintings started to change as I walked by them. Just the backgrounds. The clouds would move, or the sky would go from day to night.
“Then I saw a hunting horn hovering before me at dinner. Some of the others saw it too. And one night in the middle of the night I opened the bathroom door, and it opened onto deep forest instead. It’s all the same when it comes to taking a piss, I suppose, but still. It put me right off my game.
“For a while I thought I was going mad, literally mad, until the tree came. A clock-tree grew up right in the middle of the throne room, right through the carpet, in broad daylight. It did it all at once, all in one go, with the whole court watching. And then it just stood there, silently, like a hallucination, ticking and sort of swaying with the energy of its just having grown. It was as if it were saying, ‘Well, here I am. This is me. What are you going to do about it?’
“After that I knew it wasn’t me that had gone mad. It was Fillory.
“I don’t mind telling you I found the whole business more than a little provoking. I was being called, you understand, and I most definitely did not want to come. I understand the appeal this sort of thing has for you, quests and King Arthur and all that. But that’s you. No offense, but it always seemed a bit like boy stuff to me. Sweaty and strenuous and just not very elegant, if you see what I mean. I didn’t need to be called to feel special, I felt special enough already. I’m clever, rich, and good-looking. I was perfectly happy where I was, deliquescing, atom by atom, amid a riot of luxury.”
“Nicely put,” Quentin said. Eliot must have mounted this set piece before.
“Well, and then that damned Seeing Hare came bolting through the room during our afternoon meeting. Scattered the whiskey service and frightened one of my more sensitive protégés half to death. Everyone has a limit. Next morning I called for my hunting leathers, saddled a horse, and went riding out alone into the Queenswood. And you know, I never go anywhere alone, not anymore, but these things have certain protocols and not even the High King—or I suppose especially not the High King—is exempt.”
“The Queenswood,” Quentin said. “Don’t tell me.”
“But I am telling you.” Eliot finished his wine, and a rangy, shaven-headed young man refilled his glass without his having to ask. “I went back to that ridiculous meadow of yours, the round one. You see, you’d been right to want to go in. It was our adventure after all.”
“I was right.” Quentin felt crestfallen. He stared down at his hands. “I can’t believe it, I was right!”
If he hadn’t been so tired, and a bit drunk, it probably wouldn’t have struck him the way it did. But as it was he felt himself filling up with a sense of—how could he put it? He thought he’d learned a lesson about the world, and now he was realizing that the lesson he learned might have been the wrong one. The right adventure had been offered to him, and he’d walked away. If being a hero is a matter of knowing your cues, like the fairy tale said, he’d missed his. Instead he’d spent three days faffing around on Earth for nothing, and nearly got stuck there forever, while Eliot was off on a real quest.
“It’s true,” Eliot said. “Statistically, historically, and however else you want to look at it, you are almost never right. A monkey making life decisions based on its horoscope in USA Today would be right more often than you. But in this case, yes, you were right. Don’t spoil it.”
“It was supposed to be me, not you!”
“You should have gone on