“Thank you for asking me.” She seemed to mean it, to take it in the spirit in which it was offered. She put a hand on her chest. “But I’ve got my whole life here. I can’t go to Fillory.”

Quentin looked at Julia, who’d taken off her shades in deference to the gloom of the top floor. Just you and me, kid. Together they stepped forward. Quentin got down on one knee. The roar of their imminent escape thundered in his ears.

As soon as he got up close he could see that it wasn’t going to work. The thing wasn’t ticking, but more than that it just looked too solid. The clock was what it was and nothing more—it was brute, mundane matter, wood and metal. He turned the little knob and opened the glass case and looked in at the hanging pendulum and chimes and whatnot other brass hardware, dangling there impotently. His heart had already gone out of it.

It was dark in here. He reached in and rapped the back of the case with his knuckles. Nothing. He closed his eyes.

“Goddamn it,” he said.

Never mind. It wasn’t over. They could always try climbing trees. Though at that moment he felt less like climbing a tree than he’d ever felt like doing anything in his entire life.

“You’re doing it wrong, you know.”

Their heads turned in unison. It was a little kid’s voice, a boy. He was standing at the end of the corridor in his pajamas, watching them. He might have been eight years old.

“What am I doing wrong?” Quentin said.

“You have to set it going first,” the boy said. “It says in the book. But it doesn’t work anymore, I tried it.”

The boy had fine tousled brown hair and blue eyes. A more quintessential English moppet it would have been hard to find, right down to his having a spot of trouble pronouncing his l’s and r’s. He could have been cloned from Christopher Robin’s toenail clippings.

“Mummy says she’s going to send it to the shop, but she never does. I climbed the trees too. And I did a painting. Lots of them actually. D’you want to see?”

They stared at him. Not finding himself rebuffed, he walked over on bare feet. He had that dismal air of sprightly self-possession that some English children have. Just looking at him, you knew you were going to have to play a game with him.

“I even had Mummy pull me round in an old wagon we found in the garage.” He said it garage. “It’s not the same as a bicycle, but I had to try it.”

“I can see that,” Quentin said. “I can see where you would have to do that.”

“But we can keep looking though,” he said. “I like it. My name’s Thomas.”