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“But I mean so why are you still here?” she said “In Antarctica? If you’re this great wizard? I don’t get it I mean, look at all this stuff! You could be famous!”
“I could be” Mayakovsky said it sourly; the shoas gone “But why? Why should I care if people know my name? People do not deserve Mayakovsky!”
“So you like being here? Alone like this? I don’t understand”
“Why shouldn’t I like it?” He stuck out his lower lip He didn’tOutside there is nothing for me Here I can do my work”
“But she’s right, it makes no sense” Quentin found his voice “You’ve probably solved probleainst for years You have to go back and tell everybody”
“I have to do nothing!” And then o back I am done with that”
Even with his ordinary, averagely brilliant brain Quentin was beginning to understand He knew a few things about Mayakovsky’s personal history: how he’d had an affair with a student named Emily Greenstreet that ended so disastrously that he’d had to flee to Brakebills South And Quentin knew so out from the world, too He’d done his fair share of it He’d been so depressed and traumatized after what happened to Alice that he withdrew froain If he never risked anythingmore He could never hurt anybody else
But it hadn’t lasted It wouldn’t do Never risking anythingeither Life is risk, it turned out Eliot and Janet and Julia had coone back to Fillory after all He’d risked again, and won, and lost, and it hurt but he didn’t regret it, not any of it
“You’re wrong,” Quentin said “Fine, you’re a genius, but you’re wrong about this You could go back It wouldn’t be as bad as you think”
“Do not tell me what I can do Do not tell me who I ae me”
“I’—”
“You—you are not such a er like a dried sausage “You think I do not know you? They threw you out of that place, that other world you go to Yes? And you came back to Brakebills But they would not have you there either! So out you go again!”
Jesus, he must know about Fillory, or at least the Neitherlands Mayakovsky advanced on Quentin, who gave ground
“Well, yeah,” Quentin said “But you’ll notice I’ about it”
“No! No! Now you want to be a cri to Daddy, begging for help!”
“My dad’s dead”
Quentin stopped backing up
“I ician,” he said, “but at least I’m not a weird recluse who yells at people I’ done And I’ll tell you so else, I think you kno to break an incorporate bond In fact”—oh enius—“in fact, I think you’re under one yourself That’s what’s keeping you here Isn’t it?”
Mayakovsky had been very well prepared for their visit Too well, even for hi shot—but Mayakovsky hesitated, and Quentin kneas close
“Tell e “You ured it out, even if you’re too scared to do it yourself Tell e!”
He’d touched a nerve, because so went cold behind Mayakovsky’s eyes, and he slapped Quentin across the face Quentin had forgotten how he liked to do that It stung like hell, though not as much as it would have if he hadn’t already been drunk on lichen vodka It , but his face was already two-thirds numb
He was drunk enough that he did so he’d alanted to do, which was to slap Mayakovsky back With his grizzly hide it was like slapping a crocodile Mayakovsky broke out in his sulfurous yellow grin
“There it is!” he shouted “Again!”
Quentin slapped hiain
With no warning Mayakovsky threw his thick ar It was hard to follow the emotional about-face, but Quentin ith it Why not? Over Mayakovsky’s shoulder he saw Plu to teleport herself out of the rooh sheer force of will But fuck it, why shouldn’t twoeach other in a basement in the middle of Antarctica? He patted Mayakovsky’s back with his free hand This poor fucking guy
And Quentin’s father was dead Who else was he going to hug? This ht Thistheir parents Good old Mayakovsky They weren’t so different after all
“I arave I bury myself here”
“That’s ridiculous,” Quentin said “It’s stupid You can break the bond You can come back anytime Come with us!”
Mayakovsky pulled away He held Quentin at arth
“You keep your shit world! You hear me? You keep it! I will stay here I am done!”
He patted Quentin’s cheek
“It is over for me You are a pathetic mediocrity, but you are braver than me You will not end like Mayakovsky It is not over for you”
He held out the bottle Christ, Quentin thought they’d finally finished it, but there it was, practically full again He ic
Quentin didn’t remember much after that Later he would have a hazy recollection of Mayakovsky singing and laughing and weeping but it all got mixed up with the lichen-flavored dreams he had after he passed out, and he could never separate the fact from the hallucinations In his drea the bottle around, and Mayakovsky told them about how he’d been there in the Neitherlands too, when the big blue gods returned and tried to take their ons, how he’d ridden bareback on the great white dragon of Lake Vostok How he’d s and thunder from his own hands
—
The nextQuentin woke up in his own bed Not in Brakebills South, in his own bed back in the Newark Airport Marriott He had no ot there Mayakovsky h a portal after all, the same way he’d sent Quentin back to Brakebills after the race to the South Pole
Though Jesus, itportals in the state they’d been in Alcohol and portal reat combination
When Quentin sat up he immediately wished he had in fact died in a catastrophic teleportation accident Every hangover feels like the worst hangover you’ve ever had, but this one was definitely a classic One for the ages He felt like all the water had been forcibly sucked out of his body, like an apricot in a dehydration chary adder