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“But I wanted to know if I could do it When I pulled his head off it wasa cork A toast to my new life! You want to knohat it’s like to be a deht, and that everyone and everything else is wrong”
She smiled at the memory
“I could just as easily have killed you all So easily”
“Why didn’t you?” Quentin honestly wanted to know
“Why would I?” she spat “Why would I bother? There was so much else to do!”
This had gone badly wrong, and he should have seen it co Her body was back, but her mind—you don’t spend seven years as a demon without consequences She was traumatized Of course she was
“So you left”
Keep her talking Maybe she would talk herself out
“I left I went right through the wall I barely felt it, it was like h the stone into the black earth I re in a tropical ocean at night, warm and rich and salty and dark”
Alice paused there, and she didn’t speak for a full minute Quentin fetched water for her She see, but then it found her again
“I liked it in the earth It was dark and dense Re I was to everybody? For the first time in my life I could just be That was always part of the problem, Quentin I felt like I had to be interested in you all the tiht it was ive it to you Poor little lost boy! That’s not love, that’s hell And I was getting a taste of heaven I was a blue angel now
“I swaical dinosaurs, e of them I followed the spine of one for a whole day Caves, too, and ancient earthworks, and round city once, where the roof had fallen in, a long tio It was full of bodies A hundred thousand dwarfs buried alive
“Even farther down there are black seas, with no outlets, buried oceans full of eyeless sharks that breed and die in the darkness There are stars down there too, the understars, burning underground, eht have stayed down there forever But in the end I broke through to the other side”
“We know about the Far Side,” Quentin said
“But you haven’t been there I know that I watched you so from inside the wall, when they turned you away I followed you there in your little ship, nine fathoms deep, like the spirit in the Ancient Mariner I watched your friend die on the island I watched you fuck your girlfriend I watched you go to Hell”
“You could have helped us, you know”
“No, I couldn’t No, I couldn’t!” Her face was full of a crazy joy “That’s the thing! And do you knohy? Because I didn’t care”
She stopped and sniffed
“Funny I couldn’t smell when I was a niffin”
But she didn’t laugh
“Then I went the other way I let myself rise and float up and out like a balloon, into the outer darkness I jostled the stars on my way up I entered the sun, spent a week in its heart, riding it around and around and around I was indestructible, nothing could touch me, not even that
“I went farther Did you ever wonder, Quentin, whether the universe of Fillory is like ours? Whether it goes on and on, and there are other stars and other worlds? There aren’t Fillory is the only one I went out there, out past the sun and the h the last layer of stars—the stars were the only things in all h—and then nothing I flew and flew for days, never getting tired, never getting bored, and then I turned around and looked back, and there was Fillory It looks hilarious froine: a flat whorled disk, in a crowd of stars, balanced on a tottering tower of turtles like in Dr Seuss It’s ridiculous A little toy land, looking for all the world like a piece of spin art, inside a buzzing swar tio back It’s the closest thing I ever felt to sadness”
She fell silent The fridge buzzed Eliot got up and shoved it
“But you did go back,” Quentin said
“I went back I did whatever I wanted Once I boiled a lake with everything in it I chased birds and animals and burned them Everyone was afraid of me, I was a bluebird of unhappiness Soed me Once—”
Alice gasped suddenly, as if so cold had touched her
“Oh God I killed a hunter” A quick, convulsive sob gripped her, al to kill a deer I didn’t want hi It took no time at all He never saw me”
She was breathing hard, hoarsely, one hand on her chest, like she was trying not to pass out or throw up Her gaze darted around the room
“It’s all right now, Alice,” he said softly “It’s not your fault”
That seemed to revive her Alice slapped her palain
“It isto take away her most precious possession “I killed him, me! I did that! No one else!”
She put her head down on her arms Her shoulders were tense
“I hated him But I hated everyone And more than anyone I hated you, Quentin Hate isn’t like love, it doesn’t end It goes on forever You can never get to the bottom of it And it’s so pure, so unconditional! Do you knohat I see when I look at you? I see dull, stupid, ugly creatures full of es are corrupt and contaminated, and half the ti You’re too stupid and too nurieve and you don’t even feel it”
Quentin stayed very still It wasn’t even that she rong It was true, that’s what people were like But she’d forgotten that he knew that too, and that once upon a tiether
But he didn’t say that Not yet She stopped and sat up again