The Magician King_ A Novel - Lev Grossman [186]
“So not a Klein bottle?” Josh said.
“I have so many questions,” Poppy said. “Like how does gravity work?”
“As such,” Elaine went on, ignoring them, “Fillory has another side. A verso, if you will.”
“What’s on it?” Quentin asked. “What’s over there?”
“Nothing. And everything.”
When this was over Quentin was ready for a long vacation from gods and demons and all their cryptic utterances.
“There is another world there, waiting to be born. A world for which Fillory was in a sense merely a rough draft. You might make an analogy: the Far Side is to Fillory as Fillory is to your Earth. A greener place. A realer, more magical place.”
This was a new wrinkle. He and Poppy and Josh got up from the sand, feeling a little silly. They brushed themselves off and stood at attention.
“Each of you has a choice, whether to go or to stay. I cannot guarantee that anyone who passes through the door will be able to return here. But if you do not go now, there will never be another chance.”
“But what’s really there?” Quentin said. “What’s it like?”
She looked at Quentin, calmly and directly.
“It’s what you want, Quentin. It’s everything you’re looking for. It is the adventure of all adventures.”
There it was. The real end of the story, the happy ending. All he could think was: Alice. She could be waiting for him there. Elaine surveyed the group, where they stood in a loose half circle in front of the door. Her eyes met Eliot’s first. He shook his head slowly.
“I’m High King.” His voice was as serious as Quentin had ever heard it. “I can’t go. I’m not going to leave Fillory.”
She turned to Bingle, who still had the sloth on his back, peeking over his shoulder like a baby koala. Bingle closed his hooded eyes.
“It was never my destiny to return,” he said. He stepped forward. So he was right after all. Quentin supposed that by now Bingle had earned a free pass on the dramatics.
“I also will go,” the sloth said over his shoulder, in case anybody had forgotten about her.
Elaine stood aside and indicated that they should proceed. Without hesitating Bingle walked up to the doorway and opened it all the way.
He was silhouetted against the immense twinkling emptiness. In the night sky beyond him a comet rocketed past, sparking and sputtering merrily like a cheap firework. This was what passed for outer space in Fillory, Quentin supposed. At the bottom of the doorway he could see just the tip of one of the silver moon’s horns. It was rising, on its way to its regular appearance in the night sky of Fillory.
It felt like you could be sucked out through the doorway if you got too close, like through an air lock. But Bingle just stood there, looking around.
“It’s down,” Elaine said. “You have to climb.”
There must have been a ladder. Bingle turned to face them, got to his knees, moving slowly to avoid dislodging the sloth, and felt around with his foot till he evidently got it on a rung. He nodded goodbye to Quentin and began to climb down, step by step. His narrow olive face disappeared below the edge.
“Once you get halfway gravity turns around,” Elaine called after him. “And you start climbing up. It’s not as tricky as it sounds,” she added to the rest of them.
She turned to Quentin.
Two times before Quentin had made this same decision. He’d stood on the threshold of a new world and then stepped over it. When he’d arrived at Brakebills he’d thrown his whole life away, his whole world and everyone he knew, in exchange for a shiny magical new one. It had been easy, he’d had nothing worth keeping. He’d done it again when he came to Fillory, and it wasn’t much harder the second time. But it was harder now, the third time, very hard. Now he had something to lose.
But he was stronger now too. He knew himself better. It turned out his journey wasn’t over after all. He wasn’t going to go back. He looked at Eliot.
“Go,” Eliot said. “One of us should.”
God, was he that easy to read?
“Go,” Poppy said. “This is for you, Quentin.”
He put his arms around her.
“Thank you, Poppy,” he whispered. Then he said it to all of