Of course there were other words in there to think about. There was a lot to take away from that brief conversation. The old gods were returning. Something about being a hero. All definitely important. Of paramount importance. But the first door: that was the action item. He had the scent. He was going to do it, he was going to follow the clues, and get them out of here and back where they belonged. He was going to be a hero, damn it all, whatever the dragon said. He would lose whatever he had to lose, if that’s what it took to win.

Poppy woke him up the next morning at seven. It was like Christmas morning for her. She was just so excited, and she’d waited as long as she could. She wasn’t even jealous. She’d already had three cappuccinos, and she’d brought him one. Australians. He thought she was going to start bouncing on his bed.

They all worked through the possibilities together over breakfast.

“The first door,” Josh said. “So it’s some primal, like, door. Like Stonehenge.”

“Stonehenge is a calendar,” Poppy said. “It’s not a door.”

In the course of general orientation Poppy had almost incidentally been brought up to speed on the existence of Fillory. Irritatingly, she took it in stride, the way she did everything else. She was interested in it from an intellectual point of view. She assimilated the information. But it didn’t set her imagination burning the way it had Quentin’s.

“Maybe it’s like a time-lock. Like on a vault.”

“Dude!” Quentin said. “Forget Stonehenge! It must be something in Venice, like a sea-gate or something.”

“Venice is a port. That’s a kind of door. A portal. The whole city is a door.”

“Yeah, but the first?”

“Or it’s a metaphorical door,” Poppy said. “The Bible or something. Like in Dan Brown.”

“You know, I bet it’s something about the pyramids,” Josh said.

“It means the Chatwins’ house,” Julia said.

The conversation stopped.

“What do you mean?” Poppy said.

“Their aunt’s house. In Cornwall. Where they discovered Fillory. That was the first door.”

It was nice to see Poppy beaten to the punch for once.

“But how do you know?” Poppy asked.

“I know,” Julia said. Quentin hoped that she wouldn’t say what she was about to say next, but she said it anyway. “I can feel it.”

“What do you mean, feel it?” Poppy said.

“Why do you care?” Julia said.

“Because I’m curious.”

Quentin intervened. Julia seemed to have taken an instinctive, prickly dislike to Poppy.

“It makes sense. What’s the first way people got into Fillory? Through the Chatwins’ house. The clock in the back hall.”