The Magician King_ A Novel - Lev Grossman [73]
He didn’t understand how it was even possible that Josh was here, but it didn’t matter. Probably it would, but not yet. He didn’t even care that Josh had messed with their heads. What mattered now was that they weren’t going to have a new disaster. They weren’t going to have a fight. Quentin’s knees were shaking. It was like he’d sailed so far from the safe, orderly world he knew that he was coming back around the other way, from the other side, and there was Josh: an island of warmth and familiarity.
Josh disengaged himself tactfully.
“So,” he said, “welcome to the suck, man!”
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“Me? This is my house! What are you doing here? Why aren’t you in Fillory?”
He was the same Josh: round-faced, overweight, grinning. He looked like a beer-brewing abbot, not visibly older than the last time Quentin had seen him, which was more than three years now. Josh carefully closed the door behind him.
“Can’t be too careful,” he said. “Got an image to protect. Kind of a Wizard of Oz thing going on, if you see what I mean.”
“What’s with the bowl?”
“Eh, I didn’t have a lot of time. I just thought it was creepy. You know. ‘Look in the bowl . . . look in the bowl . . .’ ” He did the voice.
“Josh, Julia. You guys know each other.”
They’d met once before, in the chaotic run-up before the great return to Fillory, before Josh had set off into the Neitherlands on his own.
“Hi, Julia.” Josh kissed her on both cheeks. He must really have gone Euro over here.
“Hi.”
Josh waggled both eyebrows at Quentin lewdly in a way that didn’t seem like it should be physically possible. It was starting to sink in for Quentin just what a colossal stroke of luck this was. Josh would have the magic button. He was their ticket back to Fillory. Their wandering days were over.
“So listen,” he said. “We’ve got some problems.”
“Yeah, you must if you came here.”
“We don’t even really know where here is.”
“You’re in my house, that’s where here is.” Josh waved his arms grandly. “Here is a huge fuck-off pa-lots-o on the Grand Canal.”
He gave them the tour. The palazzo was four floors, the lower two for business, the upper two for Josh’s private apartments, to which they retreated. The floor was massive pink-swirled marble slabs, the walls crumbling plaster. All the rooms were odd sizes and seemed to have been built as they were needed, on a series of whimsical impulses that it was now impossible to reconstruct.
All glory to the great quest for Fillory, but they needed a break. Julia requested a hot bath, which frankly she badly needed. Quentin and Josh retired to the tremendous dining room, which was lit by a single modest chandelier. Over plates of black spaghetti, Quentin explained as best he could what had happened and why they were here. When he was done Josh explained what had happened to him.
With Quentin, Eliot, Janet, and Julia safely installed on the thrones of Fillory, Josh had taken the button and embarked on an exploration of the Neitherlands. He’d seen as much as he ever wanted to see of Fillory, and it hadn’t been pretty, and anyway he was sick of scraping along in the others’ shadows. He didn’t want to be co-king of Fillory, he wanted to do his own thing his own way. He wanted to find his own Fillory. He wanted to get laid.
Josh could be careless about a lot of things—what he ate, wore, smoked, said, did—but you don’t get into Brakebills without being a genius of some kind or another, and given the right stakes he was fully capable of being highly methodical, even meticulous. In this case the stakes were just right. He began a careful survey of the Neitherlands.
This was not a thing to be undertaken lightly. As far as anyone knew the squares and fountains of the Neitherlands extended an infinite distance in all directions, never repeating themselves, and each one led to a different world, and maybe a whole different universe. It would take no effort at all to get so lost that you could never find your way home.
Josh had it in mind to go to Middle Earth, as in the setting of Tolkien’s The Lord of the