The Magicians полностью

“A gift from the river. Use it when all hope is lost.”

She tossed it at them overhand. Quentin caught it one-handed; he was relieved out of all proportion to its actual importance that he didn’t bobble it. Thank God for his old juggling reflexes. When he looked up again, the nymph was gone. They were alone with the chattering brook.

Quentin was holding a small ivory horn chased with silver.

“Oh-kay!” Josh shouted. He clapped his hands and rubbed them together. “We are definitely not in Kansas anymore!”

The others gathered around to look at the horn. Quentin handed it to Eliot, who turned it over a few times, peered into one end, then the other.

“I don’t feel anything on it at all,” Eliot said. “Looks like something you’d buy in an airport gift shop.”

“You wouldn’t necessarily feel it,” Penny said proprietarily. He took it and stowed the horn in his pack.

“We should have asked her if this is Fillory,” Alice said quietly.

“Of course it’s Fillory,” Penny said.

“I’d like to be sure. And I’d like to know why we’re cursed.”

“And what’s this war?” Richard asked, his heavy brows knotted. “This raises a lot of questions.”

“And I didn’t like those teeth,” Alice added.

“Jesus,” Josh said. “Jesus! That was a naiad, people! We just saw a river nymph! How cool is that? How cool are we? Huh? Fuckin’ Fillory, people!”

He grabbed Quentin’s shoulders and shook him. He ran at Richard and made him bump chests.

“Can I just say that she was pretty hot?” said Janet.

“Shyeah! I’ll take that over a faun any day,” Josh said. Anaïs swatted him.

“Hey, that’s Penny’s girlfriend you’re talking about,” Janet said. “Show some respect.”

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.”