The Magician King_ A Novel - Lev Grossman [139]
He’d been wrong, of course. In actuality that knowledge had lasted about five seconds—just up until Alice had punched him in the face for cheating on her with Janet. It turned out that everything was not going to be all right. Everything was chance and nothing was perfect and magic didn’t make you happy, and Quentin had learned to live with it, which it turned out that most people he knew were already doing anyway, and it was time he caught up with them. But you didn’t forget that kind of happiness. Something that bright leaves a permanent afterimage on your brain.
But the Neitherlands he knew had always been warm and peaceful and twilit. This Neitherlands was pitch-dark, and bitter cold, and it was snowing here. More snow had drifted in the corners of the square, huge creamy swaths of it.
And the skyline was different. Of the buildings around the square, the ones on one side looked exactly the way they always had, but the ones on the other side were half-gone. Their black silhouettes stood out jagged against the deep-blue sky, and the snow in front of them was mixed with big blocks of fallen stone. You could see all the way through to the next square over, and through that into the next.
“Quentin,” Poppy said. She looked back for the door too, trying to account for both his presence and her surroundings. “I don’t understand. What are you—where are we?”
She hugged herself against the cold. They really weren’t dressed for this. She wasn’t panicking though.
“This isn’t Earth,” Quentin said. “This is the Neitherlands. Or these are the Neitherlands, I’ve never really made up my mind which it is. This is the world in between Earth and Fillory and all the other worlds.”
“Right.” He’d told her about the Neitherlands. “Okay. Well, it’s nice and all, but it’s cold as hell. Let’s get out of here.”
“I’m not actually sure how we’re going to do that. You’re supposed to come in through the fountains, but you need a button to do that.”
“Okay.” Their voices vanished in the frozen air as soon as they spoke. “Well, but do a spell or something. Why did it take us here?”
“I don’t know. They’ve got a sense of humor, those keys.” It was hard to think in the bitter cold. He studied the empty air they’d just appeared out of, his breath smoking. There was really nothing left of the portal back to Fillory. Poppy walked stiff-legged over to the fountain. They were in the Fillory square; the fountain had a statue of Atlas in it, coiled and braced under the crushing weight of a marble globe.
The water in the fountain was frozen. The level of the ice was actually above the stone rim. She felt it with her hand.
“What the shit,” she said quietly. She didn’t sound like herself.
It was dawning on Quentin how much trouble they were in. It was cold here, really cold. It couldn’t have been more than 15 or 20 degrees. There was no wood, nothing to make a fire with, nothing but stone. Quentin remembered Penny’s warning not to do magic here. They might have to test that.
“Let’s go over to the Earth fountain,” he said. “It’s a couple of squares from here.”
“Why? What good would it do if we don’t have a button?”
“I don’t know. Maybe there’s somebody there. I don’t know what else to do, and we have to start moving or we’re going to freeze to death.”
Poppy nodded and sniffed. Her nose was running. She looked more frightened now than she had back on the island, when they were fighting for the key.
They started to walk but immediately broke into a jog instead, to warm up. Apart from their footsteps the silence was absolute. The only light was starlight, but their eyes were adjusting rapidly. All Quentin could think was that this wasn’t going to work, and after it didn’t work things would get very