He took her foot in his lap to rub. She had new calluses from walking around the ship barefoot, and he picked at one. She snatched the foot back.

“No. But yes, my dissertation on dracology. I’m sorry if that seems very boring to you, but it’s my thing and I happen to like it.”

“There are dragons in Fillory. I think. Well, maybe there aren’t. I’ve never see one.”

“You don’t know?”

“You could find out. You could apply for a royal research grant. I can promise you your application would be looked upon favorably.”

“I would have to start all over again. I’m not ripping up four chapters of my dissertation.”

“Anyway, what’s wrong with a little unreality?” Quentin said. “Unreality is underrated. Do you know how many people would kill to be where you are?”

“What, in bed with you?”

He pushed up her shirt and kissed her stomach, which was flat and covered in very fine downy hair.

“I meant here in Fillory,” he said.

“I know.” She sighed, prettily and genuinely. “I just wish I were one of them.”

It was all very well to decide that Poppy was going back to the real world—or not very well, but it was what it was—but it was an open question how they were going to get her there. They could be confident that at some point Ember would turn up to kick her out of Fillory, as He always did with any visitors. But that could take weeks, or months, you never knew, and she didn’t want to wait. Quentin might have been in paradise, but Poppy was in exile.

In the end they decided to try the keys. They didn’t have the one from After, which had gotten Quentin and Julia to Earth so efficiently, but they all looked more or less the same apart from the size. They started with the last and biggest, the one they’d found on Benedict Island. It was stowed in Quentin’s cabin, still in the wooden box it came in. They brought it up on deck. Poppy had come with nothing, and she had nothing to pack. Quentin supposed Josh would want to go back too, in the fullness of time, but he didn’t seem to be in any hurry. He was already talking about which room he’d get back at Whitespire. And Quentin preferred to give Poppy a private send-off.

The key had lain in its box so long, its three-toothed jaw had worn a shadow of itself into the red velvet. He offered it to her, like a fancy cigar. She picked it up.

“Careful.”

“It’s heavy.” Poppy turned it over in her fingers, weighing it. “Wow. It’s not just the gold, it’s magic. The spellwork on this thing is thick. Dense.”

They looked at it, then at each other.