page17 (1/2)
Froht no luggage Frole Channel did indeed look forbiddingly cold, a flat gray stripe of sea lapped at by glaciers on either side But they couldn’t do anything from dry land For the actual transformation they’d have to be in deep water
Chartering a boat would have been the sensible thing to do, if they were tourists, or sport fishericians, so they waited until ht, then cast spells on their shoes and hiked out onto the channel on foot
It was tricky at first, till they ot used to the rhythm of the swells It was only their shoes that were buoyant, so if they fell over they’d get wet like anybody else Once they were a couple hundred yards fro the beach, it got quiet and very dark and very cold
“I feel vaguely blasphe this,” Plum said “Like, only Jesus is allowed to do this”
“I really don’t think he’d mind”
“How do you knohat Jesus wouldon the walking It was not wholly unlike trying to walk on a black, cold, unusually violent bouncy castle “Did you like Brakebills South?”
“I don’t think anybody likes it But it was good for me I learned a lot”
“Yeah I liked it ere animals”
“That was good Did they turn you into foxes?”
She shook her head
“Bears and seals For some reason they don’t do foxes anymore”
When they’d gotten on the plane thatBrakebills South had seemed very far away, but now they were here, just a short splash across the Drake Passage from Antarctica, and suddenly it was very close, and his memories of it felt very fresh They’d been so innocent then, he and Alice, even after what happened when they were foxes Their feelings had been so big and raw and urgent, and they’d had absolutely no idea what to do with theain He would try to be a nicer, stronger person
Except that wasn’t quite it What he really wished was that he had Alice back now, in the present
“Did you do that thing at the end, where you race to the pole?” Plum said “I bet you did”
“Yup You win”
Plu back
“I bet you got there first”
“That one you lose”
“Ha!” Her laughter got lost areat Professor Coldwater got beat to the pole! Who beat you?”
“A better ician than me Did you win your year?”
“I sure did,” she said “By a mile”
The ht, a wafer of white phosphorus, but the black water seeht rather than reflect it Even a ripple was enough to trip over, so they wound up taking big exaggerated steps Farther out froer The few lighted s in Ushuaia, which shut down after ten o’clock, looked inexpressibly cozy Fortunately they earing war underwear, which if all went according to plan they would never see again
They hiked out about a halfto the nautical charts Quentin had consulted that was far enough They stopped and bobbed up and down on the water in place, comically, not quite in sync They’d prepared as much of the spell as they could ahead of time
Quentin took a deep breath and rolled his shoulders It was rare for ic, but stories that ended that way usually began so like this
“All right?”
Plum chewed her lip and nodded
“All right”
Quentin peeled open a Tupperware container full of a revolting paste he’d ginned up back in New York based on whalebone dust scraped froht at an antique store They each dipped in two fingers and anointed their foreheads
“Maybe we should stand farther apart,” Plu”
“Right”