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“Are you playing with your wang, Quentin?” James asked

Quentin blushed

“I a”

“Nothing to be ashamed of” James clapped him on the shoulder “Clears the mind”

The wind bit through the thin material of Quentin’s interview suit, but he refused to button his overcoat He let the cold blow through it It didn’t matter, he wasn’t really there anyway

He was in Fillory

Christopher Plover’s Fillory and Further is a series of five novels published in England in the 1930s They describe the adventures of the five Chatwin children in a ical land that they discover while on holiday in the countryside with their eccentric aunt and uncle They aren’t really on holiday, of course—their father is up to his hips in mud and blood at Passchendaele, and their mother has been hospitalized with a ical in nature, which is why they’ve been hastily packed off to the country for safekeeping

But all that unhappiness takes place far in the background In the foreground, every sum schools and return to Cornwall, and each time they do they find their way into the secret world of Fillory, where they have adventures and explore entle creatures who live there against the various forces that est and ure known only as the Watcherwoical enchant all of Fillory at five o’clock on a particularly dreary, drizzly afternoon in late September

Like rade school Unlike ot over them They here he hen he couldn’t deal with the real world, which was a lot (The Fillory books were both a consolation for Julia not loving him and also probably a major reason why she didn’t) And it was true, there was a strong whiff of the English nursery about theot to the parts about the Cozy Horse, an enormous, affectionate equine creature who trots around Fillory by night on velvet hooves, and whose back is so broad you can sleep on it

But there was a erous truth to Fillory that Quentin couldn’t let go of It was almost like the Fillory books—especially the first one, The World in the Walls—were about reading itself When the oldest Chatwin, randfather clock that stands in a dark, narrow back hallway in his aunt’s house and slips through into Fillory (Quentin always pictured hi aside the pendulum, like the uvula of athe covers of a book, but a book that did what books always proet you out, really out, of where you were and into somewhere better

The world Martin discovers in the walls of his aunt’s house is a world of ht, a landscape as black and white and stark as a printed page, with prickly stubblefields and rolling hills crisscrossed by old stone walls In Fillory there’s an eclipse every day at noon, and seasons can last for a hundred years Bare trees scratch at the sky Pale green seas lap at narrohite beaches s mattered in a way they didn’t in this world In Fillory you felt the appropriate es happened Happiness was a real, actual, achievable possibility It came when you called Or no, it never left you in the first place

They stood on the sidewalk in front of the house The neighborhood was fancier here, ide sidewalks and overhanging trees The house was brick, the only unattached residential structure in a neighborhood of row houses and brownstones It was locally fa played a role in the bloody, costly Battle of Brooklyn It seehts around it with racious Old Dutch past

If this were a Fillory novel—Quentin thought, just for the record—the house would contain a secret gateway to another world The old man who lived there would be kindly and eccentric and drop cryptic remarks, and then when his back was turned Quentin would stumble on a mysterious cabinet or an enchanted duaze ild surmise on the clean breast of another world

But this wasn’t a Fillory novel

“So,” Julia said “Give ’em Hades”

She wore a blue serge coat with a round collar that irl

“See you at the library maybe”

“Cheers”

They buaze, embarrassed She kne he felt, and he knew she knew, and there was nothingto be fascinated by a parked car, while she kissed Jaood-bye—she put a hand on his chest and kicked up her heel like an old-timey starlet—then he and James walked slowly up the cement path to the front door

James put his arm around Quentin’s shoulders

“I knohat you think, Quentin,” he said gruffly Quentin was taller, but James was broader, more solidly built, and he pulled Quen tin off balance “You think nobody understands you But I do” He squeezed Quentin’s shoulder in an almost fatherly way “I’m the only one who does”

Quentin said nothing You could envy Ja handsoood More than anybody else Quentin had ever met, James reminded him of Martin Chatwin But if James was a Chathat did thataround James was that he was always the hero And what did that make you? Either the sidekick or the villain

Quentin rang the doorbell A soft, tinny clatter erupted somewhere in the depths of the darkened house An old-fashioned, analog ring He rehearsed a oals, etc He was absolutely prepared for this interview in every possible way, except maybe his incompletely dried hair, but now that the ripened fruit of all that preparation was right in front of him he suddenly lost any desire for it He wasn’t surprised He was used to this anticli, where by the ti you don’t even want it anys he could depend on

The dooras guarded by a depressingly ordinary suburban screen door Orange and purple zinnias were still blooic, in a random scatter pattern in black earth beds on either side of the doorstep Hoeird, Quentin thought, with no curiosity at all, that they would still be alive in Noveloved hands into the sleeves of his coat and placed the ends of the sleeves under his aran to rain

It was still raining five ain, then pushed lightly It opened a crack, and a wave of warer’s house

“Hello?” Quentin called He and Jalances He pushed the door all the way open

“Better give him another minute”

“Who even does this in their spare time?” Quentin said “I bet he’s a pedophile”

The foyer was dark and silent and s Still outside, James leaned on the doorbell No one answered

“I don’t think anybody’s here,” Quentin said That Jao inside atekeeper to the ht, it was too bad he wasn’t wearing more practical shoes

A staircase went up On the left was a stiff, unused-looking dining rooht a cozy den with leather ar by itself in a corner Interesting An old nautical map taller than he was took up half of one wall, with an ornately barbed coht switch There was a cane chair in one corner, but he didn’t sit