The Magicians - Lev Grossman [150]
The tension faded, and for a minute they all chattered among themselves, giving one another shit and just geeking out on the sheer alien magic of it all. Was she corporeal? Did she become fluid once she entered the stream? How else could she submerge herself in such shallow water? And how had she canceled Quentin’s spell? What was her function in the magical ecosystem? And what about the horn? Alice was already paging through her worn Fillory paperbacks for references to it—didn’t Martin find a magic horn in the first book . . . ?
After a while it began to sink in that they’d been outside for forty-five minutes in deep winter wearing nothing but jeans and sweaters. Even Janet admitted it was time to head back to the City. Eliot corralled the stragglers and chatterers, and they all linked hands on the bank of the stream.
They stood in a circle, still a little giddy, and for a moment happy conspiratorial glances flew between them. There was some bad personal stuff going down, but that didn’t have to ruin everything, did it? They were doing something really important here. This was what every one of them had been waiting for, looking for, their whole lives—what they were meant to do! They’d found the magic door, the secret path through the hidden garden. They’d gotten ahold of something new, a real adventure, and it was only just beginning.
It was in that hush that they heard it for the first time—a dry, rhythmic ticking sound. It was almost lost in the twittering of the brook, but it grew louder and more distinct. One by one they stopped talking to listen. It was snowing more heavily now.
Out of context it was hard to place. Alice was the first to twig.
“It’s a clock,” she said. “That’s a clock ticking.”
She searched their faces impatiently.
“A clock,” she repeated, panicky now. “Watcherwoman, that’s the Watcherwoman!”
Penny fumbled hastily for the button. The tick-tock grew even louder, like a monstrous heart beating, right on top of them, but it was impossible to tell what direction it was coming from. And then it didn’t matter, because they were floating up through cold, clear water to safety.
This time it was all business. Back in the City they gathered up the cold-weather gear—all except for Janet, who lay limply on the ground doing yoga breathing—and then got back in the fountain, where they linked hands along the edge with what was becoming practiced ease. Janet found the strength to make a joke about Anita Ekberg in La Dolce Vita. They nodded once all around and slipped back in in unison.
They were in Fillory again, set down by the stream they’d just left, but the snow was gone. It was an early fall day now, the air full of lukewarm mist. The temperature felt like high sixties. It was like time-lapse photography: the branches of trees that had been bare five minutes ago now swarmed with turning leaves. One golden leaf floated tinily, impossibly high in the gray sky on some fluky updraft. The grass was littered with glassy puddles from a torrential autumn rain that must have ended only minutes earlier. They stood around in the mild air, hugging their bundles of parkas and woolly gloves and feeling foolish.
“Overdressed again,” Eliot said. He dropped his bundle in disgust. “Story of my life.”
No one could think of a reasonable alternative to just leaving the winter gear lying there on the wet grass. They could have gone back to the Neitherlands to store it, but then it might have been winter all over again when they got back. It seemed ridiculous, a bug in the system, but it didn’t matter, they were energized now. They filled their canteens from the stream.
A bridge spanned the creek fifty yards downstream, a gentle arch made of intricate, curly Fillorian ironwork. Quentin was sure it couldn’t have been there before, but Richard insisted they just hadn’t seen it through the snow-laden branches. Quentin looked at the flowing , burbling water. There was no sign of the nymph. How much time had passed since they were last here? he wondered. Seasons in Fillory could last a century. Or had they