But in a way it was incredible that he hadn’t been there already. The Chatwin house wasn’t open to the public, but its general whereabouts weren’t a secret. It was a matter of historical-slash-Wikipedian record. Nobody had torn it down. It’s not like somebody was going to stop them, other than possibly the current owners and the local constabulary. It was about time he went there, if only to pay his respects at what was basically the Trinity test site of the Fillorian mythos.

As far as getting there went, Josh swore up and down that he’d been doing serious work with opening portals lately, and he was pretty sure he could get one through to Cornwall. Quentin asked Josh where he thought Cornwall was, then immediately rephrased and said he would give Josh a hundred dollars if he could tell him whether Cornwall was in England, Ireland, or Scotland. Smelling a trick question, Josh went nonlinear and guessed Canada.

But when Quentin actually showed Josh where it was on a map, way down at the southwestern tip of England, Josh redoubled his swearing—that shit’s practically next door! it’s in Europe—and went into a very technically sophisticated disquisition on lines of magnetic force and astral folding. It really was time Quentin got out of the habit of underestimating him.

Poppy said she wanted to come too.

“I’ve never been to Cornwall,” she said. “I’ve always wanted to meet a native speaker.”

“Of English?” Josh said. “Because you know, I can probably introduce you.”

“Of Cornish, jackass. It’s a Brythonic language. Meaning it’s indigenous to Britain, like Welsh and Breton. And Pictish. Before everything was polluted by the Anglo-Saxons and the Normans. There’s tons of power in those old languages. Cornish died out a couple hundred years ago, but there’s a big revival happening now. Where are we going exactly?”

They were still sitting around the breakfast table, which over the course of the morning had become the lunch table. Espresso cups and wobbly towers of plates and silverware had been transferred to the floor to make room for a massive atlas Josh retrieved from the library, along with the Fillory books and a biography of Christopher Plover.

“It’s called Fowey,” Quentin said. “It’s on the south coast.”

“Hm,” Poppy said. She put a fingertip on the map. “We could come in through Penzance. It’s a couple of hours’ drive from there, tops.”

“Penzance?” Josh said. “Like as in the pirates of? Since when is that a real place?”