Quentin slumped over behind Poppy’s warm back, onto the infinitely soft and sweet-smelling pillows. From this point of view it was apparent that Poppy was wearing a thong. The bed was not entirely stable. The drinks were catching up with him. It wasn’t clear whether the spins were going to spin themselves out or gather speed and power and wreak a terrible vengeance upon him for his many transgressions. Well, time would undoubtedly tell.

“Caw!” Josh said.

“Enough already,” Quentin said.

“Caw! Caw!”

“Seagull! I said seagull!”

The light hurt his eyes. It was uncomfortably bright in Thomas’s room. That was enough drinking for tonight. Quentin sat up.

“I know, man,” Josh said. “I heard you.”

“Caw!”

The cawing didn’t stop, nor did the spinning. The bed was definitely in motion, not so much spinning as rocking gently. They all froze.

Poppy reacted first.

“No way.” She lunged off the bed and landed in water. “Goddamn it! No fucking way!”

The sun was hot overhead. A curious albatross was circling over them, making respectful inquiries.

Quentin jumped up on the bed.

“Oh my God! We did it. We did it!”

They had broken through. It wasn’t the end, it was all about to start all over again. He spread his arms wide to the daylight and let the hot sun slam straight down into his face. He was a man reborn. Julia was looking around her and sobbing as though her heart would break. They were back. The dream was real again. They were adrift on the high seas of Fillory.

BOOK III

BOOK III

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 17

“Thomas will be so disappointed,” Poppy said. “He missed everything.”

She sat glumly on a sail locker on the deck of the Muntjac, wrapped in a rough ship’s blanket. Her curly hair was flat from the salt water. She’d tried to swim away, back to Earth, back to Thomas’s little-boy bedroom, but when she saw that she had no shot she stroked back to the bed instead, and they’d hauled her dripping back up onto it to await rescue. She was a strong, easy swimmer, which was somehow not surprising.

The bed, while a top-quality bed that contained a fair amount of actual bona fide wood—Thomas’s parents had spared no expense—was only so-so as a raft and had trended downward rapidly as the bedclothes and then the mattress soaked through and lost their buoyancy. Josh sat heavily on it, crisscross applesauce, resigned, Buddha going down with the ship, while the bed gradually swamped, and the cold seawater lapped up over his knees.