The Magician King_ A Novel - Lev Grossman [167]
“Nobody else died. I got stabbed in the side.” Not much to brag about under the circumstances. “But what I wanted to tell you is that it was important, what we were doing. You didn’t die for nothing. Those keys—we’re going to use them to save Fillory. There was a point to it all. Without them all magic is going to go away, and the whole world will collapse. But we can use the keys to fix it.”
Benedict’s expression didn’t change.
“But I didn’t do anything,” he said. “My dying didn’t make a difference. I could have just stayed on the boat.”
“We do not know what would have happened,” Julia said.
Benedict ignored her again.
“He cannot hear me,” Julia said to Quentin. “Something strange is going on. No one here can see or hear me. He does not know I am here.”
“Benedict? Can you see Julia? She’s sitting right next to you.”
“No.” Benedict frowned the way he used to, like Quentin was embarrassing him. “I don’t see anybody. Just you.”
“I am like a ghost here,” she said. “A ghost among ghosts. A reverse ghost.”
What was different about Julia, that the dead couldn’t see her? It was a serious question, but not one they were going to answer right now. Instead they watched the crowd some more, and listened to the kuh-tik kuh-tak of the Ping-Pong games. For all the time they had to practice, the dead didn’t seem to be that good at it. Nobody ever tried for a slam, or a fancy serve, and the rallies only ever went a few shots before the ball hit the net or went bouncing off into the crowd.
“This whole place,” Benedict said. “It’s like somebody almost tried to make it nice, with all the games and stuff, but then they didn’t quite care enough to think it through. You know? I mean, who gives a shit? Who wants to play games forever? I’m just so bored of everything, and I haven’t even been here that long.”
Somebody. Those silvery gods, probably. Benedict kicked at his solitaire game, messing up the nice straight rows.
“You don’t even get powers. You can’t even fly. I’m not even see-through.” He held up his hand, to demonstrate his opacity, and let it drop again. “Because you know, that would have been too cool or whatever.”
“What else can you do here? Besides the games and such?”
“Not a lot.” Benedict put his hands in his hair and looked up at the ceiling. “Talk to the other shades. There’s nothing to eat, but you don’t get hungry. A few people fight or have sex or whatever. You can totally watch them do it even. But after a while, I mean, what’s the point? It’s just the new people who do it.
“Once they did a human pyramid, to try to reach up to the lights. But you can’t reach them. They’re too high. I never had sex,” he added. “In the real world. Now I don’t even want to.”
Quentin talked on for a while, filling Benedict in on everything that had been happening.
“Did you have sex with that Poppy girl yet?” Benedict said, interrupting.
“Yes.”
“Everybody said you were going to.”
They did? Julia, a ghost’s ghost, smirked.
Out of the corner of his eye Quentin couldn’t help but notice that they were attracting some attention. Nothing obvious, but a couple of people were pointing at them. A kid—he might have been thirteen—stood there watching him fixedly. Quentin wondered how he died.
“I am starting to understand,” Julia said. “It is really gone. The part of me that was human, the part of me that could die—it is gone, Quentin. I have lost it forever. That is why they canot see me.” She was talking to him, but her black eyes were fixed on the distance. “I am never going to be human again. I did not understand it till now. I have lost my shade. I suppose I knew it. I just did not want to believe it.”
He started to answer, to tell her he was sorry for what she had lost, sorry he couldn’t do more, sorry for everything that had and hadn’t happened, whatever it was. But there was so much he didn’t understand. What did it mean, losing your shadow? How did it happen? How did it feel? Was she less than human now, or more? But she held up her hand, and then Benedict spoke.
“I hope you fail,” he said suddenly, as