The Magicians - Lev Grossman [155]
“I don’t think that bear is stuffed!” Josh whispered excitedly. “I think that’s a real bear!”
“Let’s buy it a beer,” Quentin said.
“I think it’s asleep. And anyway it doesn’t look that friendly.”
“Beer might help with that,” Quentin said. He felt punchy. “This could be the next clue. If it’s a talking beer, I mean a talking bear, we could, you know, talk to it.”
“About what?”
Quentin shrugged and took another sip.
“Just get a feel for what’s going on around here. I mean, what else are we doing here?”
Richard and Anaïs hadn’t touched their drinks. Quentin took another big gulp just to spite them.
“We’re playing it safe, is what we’re doing,” Richard said. “This is strictly reconnaissance. We’re avoiding any unnecessary contact.”
“You’re kidding me. We’re in Fillory, and you don’t want to talk to anybody?”
“Absolutely not.” Richard sounded shocked, shocked, at the very idea. “We’ve made contact with another plane of existence. What, that’s not enough for you?”
“As a matter of fact, it’s not. A giant praying mantis tried to kill me earlier today, and I’d like to know why.”
Fillory had yet to give Quentin the surcease from unhappiness he was counting on, and he was damned if he was leaving before he got what he wanted. Relief was out there, he knew it, he just needed to get deeper in, and he wasn’t about to let Richard slow him down. He had to jump the tracks, get out of his Earth-story, which wasn’t going so well, and into the Fillory-story, where the upside was infinitely higher. Anyway, the mood he was in, Quentin was willing to take any position on any subject with anybody if it meant he could pick a fight.
“Barkeep!” Quentin said, louder than necessary. As an afterthought he gave himself a thick Wild West drawl. If it feels right, go with it. He jerked his thumb at the bear. “ ’Nother round fer mah friend the bar there in the corner.”
A bar in a bar. Clever. In the other booth Eliot, Alice, Janet, and Penny all turned around in unison to look at him. The man in the uniform just nodded wearily.
The bear, it emerged, drank only peach schnapps, which it sipped from delicate thimble-size glasses. Given its bulk, Quentin guessed it could consume a more or less unlimited amount of it. After two or three it ambled over on all fours and joined them, dragging over the heavy armchair, the only piece of furniture in the room capable of supporting its weight, by hooking its claws into the chair’s much-abused upholstery and pulling. It looked way too big to be moving around in a confined space.
The bear was named Humbledrum, and it was, as its name suggested, a very modest bear. It was a brown bear, it explained in deep sub-subwoofer tones, a species larger than the black bear but much much smaller than the mighty grizzly bear, though the grizzly was in fact a variety of brown bear. It was not, Humbledrum reiterated periodically, half the bear that some of those grizzlies were.
“But it’s not just about who’s the biggest bear,” Quentin offered. They were bonding. He wasn’t sure exactly what he wanted from the bear, but this seemed like a good way to get it. He was drinking Richard’s beer, having finished his own. “There’s other ways to be a good bear.”
Humbledrum’s head bobbed enthusiastically.
“Oh yes. Oh yes. I am a good bear. I never meant to say that I’m a bad bear. I’m a good bear. I respect territories. I’m a respectful bear.” Humbledrum’s terrifyingly huge paw fell on the table emphatically, and it put its black muzzle very close to Quentin’s nose. “I am a very. Respectful. Bear.”
The others were conspicuously silent, or talked among themselves, elaborately play-acting that they were unaware of the fact that