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Lying there in bed in the half-light, rain spattering on the , he forgot all about the bird and the Couple and the ot about Brakebills He even let hiic: half enchant for new kingdoical place, a place like Fillory

But not in Fillory He would build it here on Earth

—

“I don’t want to make you sound like a crazy person,” Plu make a land”

“I am Or we are We could That’s what it does, Rupert’s spell”

Plum frowned

“I don’t get it,” she said “You can’t just make a land”

“It helps if you don’t say it like that”

“You mean with rocks and trees and stuff?”

“That’s exactly what I mean”

“Wow” She stretched, then plunked her chin in her hands They were having breakfast at their brand new Ikea dining table “Wow Well, that would be a hell of a spell Great granddad wasn’t ood thief Do you think it’s actually possible?”

“I think we should find out”

“But I don’t get it Why? I antic pain in the ass”

It was hard to put into words The land would be a good place to hide from the bird, if they needed to hide, but that wasn’t the point Thisto hiood way: not a country of exile, a ician’s land

Plu to change his hed

“So if we do ods of it?”

“I don’t think so,” Quentin said “I don’t think this land would have any gods Or maybe it would But we’d have to make those too”

With Pluressed y and unappealing wizard in the South Bronx who sold hi metal box which he swore up and down contained a sample of ununoctium, a synthetic element with an atomic number of 118, the very last entry on the periodic table Its existence was still ether a few atoms of it at a time, and ordinarily it decayed in about a ically frozen, or at least vastly slowed down Or at least they were supposed to be It had cost hiood chunk of the money left over from his first-day payment from the bird

“Do you think it’s really in there?” Plum studied the box skeptically

“I don’t know,” Quentin said “We’ll find out”

“How?”

“The hard way, I guess”

Quentin had a very expensive, very cool-looking staff purpose-built for the project It was rainless tropical wood cello bows are made of—and shod and chased with silver Quentin didn’t noric ands and staves, but in this case he thought he s were co completely apart

He had to hide it all, to avoid attracting the bird’s attention, but it went beyond that: Quentin was pretty sure the spell would be highly illegal froical society There weren’t veryan entire land and concealing it inside a Manhattan townhouse would violate a goodly portion of they was concerned the house had to be watertight The power levels required would be rateful they hadn’t used up Mayakovsky’s coins on the incorporate bond He’d have to use one now It wasn’t what he’d ht Mayakovsky would like the idea anyway

Quentin dug seven long lines of Fillorian script into the hardwood floor of the workshop with a gouge and acurls of platinum wire in the plaster In places he stripped the walls and nailedthe bare studs The only piece of the puzzle that was co in action was that dae Incredibly it had turned up in Rupert’s spell as well Quentin wasn’t sure it was absolutely crucial, but either way he still couldn’t identify it, so they’d just have to scrape by without it

One night, after they’d both worked the li there in the aftero to bed

“So how big is this land of yours even supposed to be?” Plum said

“I don’t know yet Not giant, I don’t think Ten acres maybe Like the Hundred Acre Wood in Winnie-the-Pooh”

“Except with ten”

“Yeah I’ to specify it in a couple of places,” Quentin said, “but it’s hard to know exactly what goes where”

“But it won’t take up any space in the real world”

“I hope not”

“Quentin, why are you doing this?”

He recognized the iht there on the couch, he felt like he wasinto it But he tried to answer it before that happened

“What do you think ic is for?”

“I dunno Don’t answer a question with a question”

“I used to think about this a lot,” Quentin said “I mean, it’s not obvious like it is in books It’s trickier In books there’s always soer, evil’s on the rise, but if you’re really quick and take this ring and put it in that volcano over there everything will be fine

“But in real life that guy never turns up He’s never there He’s busy handing out advice in the next universe over In our world no one ever knohat to do, and everyone’s just as clueless and full of crap as everyone else, and you have to figure it all out by yourself And even after you’ve figured it out and done it, you’ll never knohether you were right or wrong You’ll never know if you put the ring in the right volcano, or if things one better if you hadn’t There’s no answers in the back of the book”