“Tonight please read the first chapter of Le Goff’s
“And if you find Lady Popper’s rather quaint eighteenth-century English difficult, keep in mind that next month we will be starting Middle English, Latin, and Old High Dutch, at which time you will look back on Lady Popper’s eighteenth-century English with fond nostalgia.”
Students began stirring and gathering up their books. Quentin looked down at the notebook in front of him, which was empty except for one anxious zigzaggy line.
“Final thought before you go.” March raised his voice over the shuffling clatter. “I urge you again to think of this as a purely practical course, with a minimum of theory. If you find yourself becoming curious about the nature and origins of the magical powers you are slowly and very, very painfully cultivating, remember this famous anecdote about the English philosopher Bertrand Russell.
“Russell once gave a public lecture on the structure of the universe. Afterward he was approached by a woman who told him that he was a very clever young man but much mistaken in his thinking, because everyone knew that the world was flat and sat on the back of a turtle.
“When Russell asked her what the turtle was standing on, she replied, ‘You’re very clever, young man, very clever. But it’s turtles all the way down!’
“The woman was wrong about the world, of course, but she would have been quite right if she’d been talking about magic. Great mages have wasted their lives trying to get at the root of magic. It is a futile pursuit, not much fun and occasionally quite hazardous. Because the farther down you go, the bigger and scalier the turtles get, with sharper and sharper beaks. Until eventually they start looking less like turtles and more like dragons.
“Everyone take a marble, please, as you go.”
The very next afternoon March taught them a simple chant to say over their marbles in a crooked gypsy-sounding language that Quentin didn’t recognize (later Alice told him it was Estonian), accompanied by a tricky gesture that involved moving the middle and pinky fingers on both hands independently, which is a lot harder than it sounds. Those who completed it successfully could leave early, the rest had to stay until they got it right. How would they know when they got it right? They would know.
Quentin stayed until his voice was hoarse and his fingers were on fire, until the light in the windows had softened and changed color and then sunk away completely, until his empty stomach ached, and dinner had been served and cleared away in the distant dining room. He stayed until his face was warm with shame, and all but four other people had stood up—some of them pumped their fists in the air and said
He didn’t say anything, just put his head down on his desk, hiding his face in the crook of his elbow, and let the blood in his head throb in the darkness. The wooden desk was cool on his cheek. It hadn’t been a fluke, or a hoax, or a joke. He had done it. Magic was real, and he could do it.
And now that he could, my God, there was so much of it to do. That glass marble would be Quentin’s constant companion for the rest of the semester. It was the cold, pitiless glass heart of Professor March’s approach to magical pedagogy. Every lecture, every exercise, every demonstration was concerned with how to manipulate and transform it using magic. For the next four months Quentin was required to carry his marble everywhere. He fingered his marble under the table at dinner. It nestled in the inside pockets of his Brakebills jacket. When he showered, he tucked it in the soap dish. He took it to bed with him, and on those rare occasions when he slept he dreamed about it.
