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“Are those fireflies?” he asked “The lights?”
“No, the air is just kind of sparkly here It’s a thing You don’t notice it during the daytime”
Tiny lights were bobbing along in their wake, too, strea out behind them, like the phosphorescent trail of a ship in a tropical sea The sunset was in different colors froreens and purples
She set thearden It n, like a French forarden, all ruled lines and perfect curves and coo to seed, shrubs overflowing onto paths, vines winding the off into withered brown traceries, exquisite in their oay It rearden he’d wandered into long, long ago in Brooklyn, chasing the paper note that Jane Chatwin had given him, before he came out the other side and into Brakebills
“I thought you’d like it Of course it was different when it was new, but then when it started to get overrun everyone thought it looked better this way, and they let it go But it’s ic Keep your eye on one spot and you’ll see”
Quentin did, and he saw Slowly, but far faster than they would have in nature, so up before his eyes and bursting back into bloo tiny crackles and whispers as they did It , but he couldn’t quite place it
Julia could
“Rupert mentions it in his h I don’t knohy The plants aren’t just plants, they’re thoughts and feelings A new thought happens and a new plant springs up A feeling fades away and the plant dies Soer, happiness, love, envy They’re quite unruly, they grow like weeds Certain basic o away either But others are quite rare Complex concepts, extreme or subtle emotions Awe and wonder are harder to find than they once were Though there—I think those irises are a kind of awe Once in a while you even see a new one”
The peace in the garden was inexpressibly cal It made Quentin never want to leave, and at the sa was itself arden He wondered where, and whether he’d know it if he saw it
Julia stooped to one knee—an awesoiven the scale of her divine frame
“Look This one is very rare”
Quentin kneeled down too, and a few of the sparkly athered around them helpfully, for illu shrub with a few sprays of leaves—a Charlie Brown Christ heart, and its leaves browned and spotted, but then it caught itself, filled out again and stiffened and even grew an inch A couple of seedpods sprouted from its branches
He recognized it It was the plant he’d seen drawn on the page froiven up on ever finding it, and now here it was, right in front of him Julia must have known All unexpectedly his eyes were full of hot tears, and he sniffled and wiped the over a plant—he hadn’t cried when he killed E a loyal old friend he’d never even ently
“This is a feeling that you had, Quentin,” she said “Once, a very long tiht years old, and you opened one of the Fillory books for the first ti all at once You felt thely, Quentin You dreamed of Fillory then, with a power and an innocence that not an for you You wanted the world to be better than it was
“Years later you went to Fillory, and the Fillory you found was a much more difficult, complicated place than you expected The Fillory you dreamed of as a little boy wasn’t real, but in some ways it was better and purer than the real one That hopeful little boy you once as a tremendous dreaift, it was that”
Quentin nodded—he couldn’t quite talk yet He felt full of love for that little boy he’d once been, innocent and naive, as yet unscuffed and un that was to come He was such a ridiculous, vulnerable little person, with so many strenuous disappointht of him in years
He wasn’t that boy anyo He’d become a man instead, one of those crude, weather-beaten, shopworn things, and he’d alet, to survive growing up But noished he could reassure that child and take care of hi to turn out anything like the way he hoped, but that everything was going to be all right anyway It was hard to explain, but he would see
“So it now,” Quentin said “What I felt That’s why it’s green”
Julia nodded “Someone somewhere”
Though even now the plant shrank and dried and died again Delicately, Julia pinched off one hard seedpod and straightened up
“Here Take this with you I think you should have it”
It looked like a seedpod from any ordinary plant anywhere, brown and stiff and rattly, but it was une He’d have to find a way to show it to Hamish He put it in his pocket The plant didn’t seeain, sooner or later
“Thank you, Julia” Quentin dried his eyes and took a last look around It was alo back now”
—
They found Alice where they’d left her, but she wasn’t alone now The others had coh while he was off on the Far Side—Eliot, Janet, Josh, Poppy—and they were standing around talking animatedly about plans to rebuild Castle Whitespire Penny had stayed at his post in the Neitherlands, but Plu around and trying to take it all in She was seeing Fillory for the first tiht her eye, and she sht she probably wanted to be alone with it for a few minutes
He remembered the first time he saw Fillory He’d cried his eyes out in front of a clock tree Not ive her some time
“Nothing was always bullshit I don’t kno the dwarfs sold them on that in the first place”
“I hear you,” Eliot said “I’et back If they come back”
“But listen, what about the color?” Josh said “Is that on the table? Because I gotta tell you, the white never did it for , you could see it a mile away I know Castle Blackspire was a house of unspeakable evil or whatever, but you have to admit it looked pretty badass”
“What about the nae that too”
“Ooh, good point,” Josh said “I guess we can’t live in Castle Mauvespire or whatever Or could we? Hi, Quentin!”
“Hi, guys Don’t let me interrupt”
They didn’t They kept talking, and he just listened It was good seeing theain, it made him happy, but there was a distance between hiap, even between him and Eliot They never would have ad—but the truth was that he wasn’t quite in the club anymore He would always be part of Fillory, especially now that he’d held the entire world in his temporarily divine hands—it would always have his vast, invisible fingerprints on it, forever, like the paths of spiral labyrinths But he knew his place too, and he was starting to think it wasn’t here He’d cos and queens now