The Magicians - Lev Grossman [34]
“Not that way,” Alice said.
After hours the French doors were set to trigger a magical alert in the bedroom of whatever faculty member was on call, Infallible Alice explained, to discourage students from breaking curfew. She led him around to a side door he’d never seen before, unalarmed and concealed behind a tapestry, that opened out into a snow-covered hedge. They squeezed themselves through it and into the freezing darkness.
Quentin was easily eight inches taller than Alice, most of it in his legs, but she kept pace with him doggedly. They navigated the Maze together in the moonlight and set out across the frozen Sea. The snow was half a foot deep, and they kicked little spills of it ahead of them as they walked.
“I come out here every night,” Alice said, breaking the silence.
In his sleep-deprived state Quentin had almost forgotten she was there.
“Every night?” he said stupidly. “You do? Why?”
“Just . . . you know.” She sighed. Her breath puffed out white in the moonlight. “To clear my head. It gets noisy in the girls’ tower. You can’t think. It’s quiet out here.”
It was strange how normal it felt to be alone with the usually antisocial Alice. “It’s cold out here. You think they know you break curfew?”
“Of course. Fogg does, anyway.”
“So if he knows, why bother—”
“Why bother taking the side door?” The Sea was like a smooth clean sheet laid out around them, tucked in at the corners. Except for a few deer and wild turkeys, nobody else had been across it since the last snowfall. “I don’t think he really cares that much if we sneak out. But he appreciates it if you make an effort.”
They reached the edge of the great lawn and turned and looked back toward the House. One light was on, a teacher’s bedroom on a lower floor. An owl called. A hazy moon bleached the clouds white above the blocky outline of the roof. The scene was like an unshaken snow globe.
Quentin flashed on a memory from the Fillory books: the part in The World in the Walls when Martin and Fiona go wandering through the frozen woods looking for the trees the Watcherwoman has enchanted, each of which has a round ticking clock embedded in its trunk. As villains went the Watcherwoman was an odd specimen, since she rarely did anything particularly evil, or at any rate not where anybody could see her do it. She was usually glimpsed from a distance, rushing around with a book in one hand and an elaborate timepiece in the other; sometimes she drove a terrifyingly elaborate ormolu clock-carriage that ticked loudly as it raced along. She always wore a veil that covered her face. Wherever she passed she planted her signature clock-trees.
Quentin caught himself listening for ticking, but there was no sound except for an occasional frozen crack from deep in the forest, its origin unguessable.
“This is where I came through the first time,” he said. “In the summer. I didn’t even know what Brakebills was. I thought I was in Fillory.”
Alice laughed: a surprising, hilarious shout. Quentin hadn’t actually meant it to be quite that funny.
“Sorry,” she said. “God, I used to love those books when I was little.”
“So where did you come through?”
“Over there.” She pointed at an another, identical stretch of trees. “But I didn’t come through like you. I mean, through a portal.”
They must have had some special, extra-magical form of conveyance for Infallible Alice, he thought. It was hard not to envy her. A phantom toll-booth, or a chariot of fire, probably. Drawn by thestrals.
“When I came, I walked here? I wasn’t Invited?” She was talking in questions, with exaggerated casualness, but her voice was suddenly wobbly. “I had a brother