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It reminded Quentin of when he used to catch a portal back to Brakebills at the end of summer Usually they’d send him down soht of it ignited a hot coal of nostalgia in his chest, for a time when he didn’t know better
"Let me just see how much of this I remember"
Josh pulled a crumpled piece of paper out of his pocket, on which he’d scribbled neat columns of coordinates and vectors Poppy, as taller than him, kibitzed over his shoulder
"See, it’s not direct," he said, "but there’s a junction you can use, it’s out in the English Channel soh Belfast?" Poppy said "Everybody does Then you double back south It’s actually shorter in astral geo "This is way , if youswim to Guernsey"
Josh stuffed the paper in his back pocket and squared off into his spellcasting stance He spoke the words quietly and clearly, without hurrying With a lot , hehis fingers rapidly through different positions Then he squared his shoulders, bent his knees, and hooked his fingers fir to haul open an especially heavy garage door
Sparks flew Poppy yipped in surprise and stepped back in a hurry Josh straightened his back and heaved upward Reality cracked, and the crack sloidened revealing behind it soht When the portal was halfway open Josh stopped and shook out his hands, which sers, then the sides--one side wasn’t quite straight, and he accidentally snipped off soain and pulled and pushed it open the rest of the way
Quentin kept glancing at theon He heard voices, but nobody walked by Josh stopped to check his work Now in the le of cooler, solish noon Josh bunched his sleeve in his fist and rubbed off a last sood?" His pants were scored with pinhole burns froood
They stepped through, one by one, gingerly--the bottom of the doorasn’t quite flush with the pavee if you weren’t careful But the connection was tight, with no sensation as you went through It was a totally other level of workht with satisfaction, froh between the safe houses
They had skipped Penzance after all, as well as Belfast: Josh brought them out in a public park not far from the center of Fowey This kind of precision over that o, but Google Street Vieas an absolute boon to the art and craft of creating long-distance portals Josh went through last and scrubbed it out behind them
Quentin didn’t think he’d ever seen anywhere as quintessentially English-looking as Fowey Or , he wasn’t sure what the difference was Poppy would know Either way it was a small town at the mouth of a river that was also called Fowey, and Beatrix Potter could have drawn it The air was cool and fresh after the su and shinsplintingly steep The sheer volume of floralboxes overhead almost blocked out the sun
At the little office of tourism in the center of town they learned that the various Foere all pronounced "Foy," and that even aside fro of a hotbed of fictional settings Manderley from Rebecca was supposed to be nearby, as was Toad Hall from The Wind in the Willows Plover’s house was a few miles out of town The National Trust owned it now; it was enormous, and some days it was open to tourists The Chatwins’ house was privately owned, and not on any tourist end, and all the biographies, it abutted Plover’s property directly
They sat on a bench in the thin English sunlight, like clarified butter, while Poppy went off to rent a car--she was the only one of them who carried the full complement of valid IDs and credit cards (When Julia pointed out that she could have stolen one just as easily, Poppy looked at her ordless horror) She returned in a peppy silver Jag--ould have thought you could even get one out here in Smurftown? she said They knocked back a pub lunch and set out
It was Quentin’s first tiot up the coastal slope and out of town, out into the luether with dense dark hedges, it looked ht anywhere on Earth could Even more than Venice Why hadn’t anybody told him? Except of course they had, and he hadn’t believed therinned at him via the rearview iven this world enough credit Zipping along the narrow highways and shady lanes of rural Cornwall, the four of theular people, civilians, and would they have been any less happy? Even without rass and that blessed country solitude and the sun flickering past between the branches and the solace of an expensive car that so for What kind of an asshole wouldn’t be satisfied with that? For the first time in his life Quentin seriously considered the idea that he could be happy without Fillory--not just resigned, but happy
They were certainly as close to Fillory as you could get on Earth They were closing in on the Chatwins’ house Even the place names sounded Fillorian: Tywardreath, Castle Dore, Lostwithiel It was as if the green landscape of Fillory was hidden right behind this one, and this was a thin place, where the other world showed through
Cornas certainly having a good effect on Julia She was alift of not getting carsick while she read, so as they drove she paged through the Fillory books, applying stickies to certain passages, reading others out loud She was cootten through: a practical traveler’s guide to leaving this world behind
"In The World in the Walls Martin gets in through the grandfather clock, and so does Fiona In the second one Rupert gets in from his school, so that does not help us, and I believe Helen does too, but I cannot find it In The Flying Forest they get in by cliht be our best bet"
"We wouldn’t have to break into the house," Quentin said "And we could all fit"
"Exactly And in The Secret Sea they ride a ic bicycle, so let us keep an eye out for that Maybe there is a garage or a shed with old things in it"
"You realize the fans have probably picked this place clean like years ago," Josh said "We can’t be the first people to think of this"
"Then in The Wandering Dune Helen and Jane are painting in ashot, but if we have to we can go back to Fowey for art supplies And that is it"
"It’s not quite it" Sorry, but nobody one-upped Quentin on Fillory trivia, not even Julia "Martin gets back in in The Flying Forest, at the end, though Plover doesn’t say how he did it And there’s a book you’re icians, which is Jane’s book about how she went back to Fillory to find Martin She used the et in, which she found in the well, where Helen threhole box of the around"
Julia turned around in her seat
"How do you know that?"
"Ibetter froht Martin After Alice died"
There was silence in the car, broken by the ticking of the turn signal as Poppy took a fork in the road Julia studied him with those empty, unreadable eyes