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“I’os Marzipan” She frowned “And—what’s it called? Fennel? Then it goes away It’s been so long since I tasted anything”

Her voice when she said that last was the closest thing to the old Alice that he’d heard since she woke up

“I had so much power So much power After a while I realized I could let myself slip backward in tih time all the time, one second forward every second, but you don’t have to You can just let yourself stop I could almost do it even now—it’s as if you’re on a rope tow, up a ski slope, and you just let your ers, and you slon and stop There goes the present, rolling on without you, it’s gone, and just like that you’re in the past It’s a wonderful feeling

“But you can’t change anything, you can only watch I watched the Chatwins come to Fillory I watched people be born and die I saw Jane Chatwin have sex with a faun!” She snorted with laughter “I think she was a very lonely person Sometimes I just watched people read or sleep It didn’tfunny

“Once I letof Fillory The beginning of everything, or this everything anyway It was as far as you could go You bu

“You couldn’t call it a pretty sight, the dawn of creation It wasdesert and a shallow, dead-looking sea No weather, no wind, just cold The sun didn’t ht wasunpleasant Like an old fluorescent light that a bunch of flies had died in Looking back now I think the sun and le deformed heavenly body

“I watched the sea for a long ti could be so still Finally a big old tigress ca down to the water Her ears were notched, and she’d lost an eye and it had healed shut You could see her padding along frooddess

“She cae of the water She looked at her reflection for a bit, then she went trotting into the water, up to her shoulders She stopped then, and shuddered, and sneezed once

“Obviously it was distasteful to her, but she did it anyway She see until she was totally sub She had drowned herself I saw her body float up to the surface, on its side, slowly turning in place in the slack tide, and then it sank again for good

“For a long tiathered itself into a wave, and the wave threw up two big curly shells on the shore They lay next to each other for a while, and then another wave came and left behind it a sheet of foam The sand underneath them kind of stirred and shook itself and it sat up, and that was Ember The foam was His wool The shells were His horns

“E down the beach until He found a couple ed them around for a bit till they were next to each other and then stood next to them so that His shadow fell over them, and then the shadow stood up, and that was Uether up into the sky

“They took turns licking at the big ain, and then E, and Uain And that was the beginning of Fillory

“But ive a shit about shit like that Do you knohat my favorite parts of the past were? I liked to watch myself sleep with Penny, because it hurt you And o back to when I died and hide in the walls and watch it happen Over and over again”

“Could you see the future?” Eliot asked

“No,” she said, in the sahtso to do with timelines and information flow, I think”

“Maybe it’s just as well,” Quentin said

“If I could have I sure as shit wouldn’t have come back here”

“That’s what I meant”

“At first I couldn’t even get to Earth, but soed The barrier softened and I could I found out by accident: I likedat myself without flesh—and then one day I touched one and went through into a weird space inside it It was in between, like the Neitherlands Mirrors within mirrors took you farther down, deeper and deeper, and at some point they became mixed up with the mirror-spaces of other worlds I spent months in there It was cold, and e around, trying to get out When I came back up it was into this world, not Fillory

“I didn’t ic there, and a lot of ht find my brother there, but I didn’t But I found you, Quentin You were a scab I wanted to keep picking You hurtI enjoyed

“And the people were interesting I could tell Pluh I’ to fuck her”

“Why does literally everybody think that?” Plum muttered

“And then you tried to hter for a few seconds “Oh my God, it’s so pathetic! You—Quentin, you could never ! Don’t you see? How could so that was alive? You’re a hollowinside you All you could make was that cold, dead mirror-house

“And do you knohy? Because all you ever do is what you think people expect you to do, and then you feel sorry for yourself when they hate you”

“I’ve changed a lot, Alice,” Quentin said “Maybe that was true once, I don’t know But I’ve changed a lot in seven years”

“No You haven’t”

“Think about this: could the Quentin you knew have ain?”

Alice was silent for a few seconds, long enough that Plum jumped in

“Why are you telling us all this anyway?” Pluh of Alice “Iand all, but it’s sort of not e expected”

“I a you this,” Alice hissed, “so that he knohat he did” She was answering Plum, but she stared at Quentin

“Tell ed—they weren’t quite the same eyes she’d had before “I want to know”

“Then listen: you robbedsteary anymore “I was perfect I was immortal I was happy You took all that away frorateful? Did you? I didn’t want to be hued me back into this body”

She held up her hands like they were low-grade meat, a butcher’s discards

“I lost everything, twice The first tiave it up But the second time you stole it”