They had been scattered by the transition, like a freshly deployed stick of paratroopers, but they were still in sight of one another. Richard and Penny were fighting their way out of a huge dead bush. Alice and Anaïs were seated on the trunk of a colossal tree that had fallen athwart the ditch, as if they’d been carefully placed there by a giant child arranging dolls. Janet was sitting on the ground with her hands on her thighs, taking deep breaths, the color flooding back into her face.
The whole scene had a deeply uncurated feel to it. This was not a forest that had been culled or thinned. This was primeval. This was the way trees lived when they were left to their own devices.
“Penny?” Josh stood on the edge of the ditch, gazing down at the rest of them, hands in pockets. He looked incongruously natty in a jacket and a nice shirt, no tie, even though they were all soaked to the bone. “It’s cold, Penny. Why the fuck is it cold?”
It was true. The air was dry and bitter; their clothes were freezing fast. Their breath puffed out white in the frigid stillness. Fine light snow sifted down from the white sky. The ground was hard under the fallen leaves. It was deep winter.
“I don’t know.” Penny looked around, frowning. “It was summer before,” he said a little petulantly. “Just a second ago! It was hot!”
“Will someone please help me down, please?” Anaïs was looking down at the ground dubiously from her perch on the giant tree trunk. Josh gallantly took her by her narrow waist and lifted her down; she gave a pleased little squeak.
“It’s the time thing,” Alice said. “I just thought of it. It could be six months since Penny was here, in Fillory time. Or more like sixty years, the way the seasons work. This always happens in the books. There’s no way to predict it.”
“Well, I predict that I’m going to freeze my tits off in five minutes,” Janet said. “Somebody go back for the jackets.”
They all agreed that Penny should go back and get the parkas, and he was an instant away from touching the button when Eliot suddenly lunged at him and grabbed his arm. He pointed out, as calmly as possible, that if the time streams of Fillory and the Neitherlands moved at different speeds, then if Penny went back by himself, it could easily be days, or years, before he got back to Fillory with the gear, at least from the Fillorian point of view, by which time they could have frozen to death or died of old age or accumulated countless other equally serious problems. If they were going to go, they would all have to go together.
“Forget it.” Janet shook her head. She still looked green. “I can’t go back there. Not yet. I’d rather freeze my tits off than puke my guts out.”
Nobody argued. Nobody wanted to leave quite yet anyway, not now that they were finally here in Fillory, or wherever they were. They weren’t going anywhere without at least poking around. Penny began making the rounds with his clothes-drying spell.
“I think I can see a way to go,” said Alice, who was still perched up on the tree trunk. Snow had begun to settle in her dark hair. “On the other side. It sort of turns into a path through the forest. And there’s something else, too. You’re going to want to see this for yourselves.”
If they took off their packs, there was enough space at the bottom of the ditch to scramble under the huge trunk on all fours, single file, their hands and knees sinking into the thick layer of frostbitten leaves. Eliot came through last, passing the packs ahead of him. They stood up on the other side, slapping dirt off their hands. Penny rushed to hand Alice down from where she sat, but she ignored him and jumped down herself, although it meant crashing down on her hands and knees and picking herself up again. She didn’t seem to be particularly relishing her adventure of the night before, Quentin thought.
To one side of the path was a small spreading oak. Its bark was dark gray, almost black, and its branches were gnarled and wiggly and all but empty of leaves. Embedded in its trunk at head height, as if the tree had simply grown up around it, was a round ticking clock face a foot across.
One by one, without speaking, they all scrambled up the sloping bank to get a closer look. It was one of the Watcherwoman’s clock-trees.
Quentin touched the place where the tree’s hard rough bark met the smooth silver bezel around the clock face. It was solid and cold and real. He closed his eyes and followed the curve of it with his finger. He was really here. He was in Fillory. There was no question about it now.
