There must have been a ladder. Bingle turned to face them, got to his knees, moving slowly to avoid dislodging the sloth, and felt around with his foot till he evidently got it on a rung. He nodded goodbye to Quentin and began to climb down, step by step. His narrow olive face disappeared below the edge.

“Once you get halfway gravity turns around,” Elaine called after him. “And you start climbing up. It’s not as tricky as it sounds,” she added to the rest of them.

She turned to Quentin.

Two times before Quentin had made this same decision. He’d stood on the threshold of a new world and then stepped over it. When he’d arrived at Brakebills he’d thrown his whole life away, his whole world and everyone he knew, in exchange for a shiny magical new one. It had been easy, he’d had nothing worth keeping. He’d done it again when he came to Fillory, and it wasn’t much harder the second time. But it was harder now, the third time, very hard. Now he had something to lose.

But he was stronger now too. He knew himself better. It turned out his journey wasn’t over after all. He wasn’t going to go back. He looked at Eliot.

“Go,” Eliot said. “One of us should.”

God, was he that easy to read?

“Go,” Poppy said. “This is for you, Quentin.”

He put his arms around her.

“Thank you, Poppy,” he whispered. Then he said it to all of them: “Thank you.”

His voice caught on the phrase. He didn’t care.

Standing in the doorway, he took a deep breath as if he were about to climb down into a pool. He could look out and survey it all: he was backstage at the cosmos. Far below he could see Bingle and the sloth, tiny, still climbing down what looked like an endless column of iron rungs. The entirety of the moon was hanging right there in front of him, bright and glorious in the abyss, glowing with its own light. It looked like he could jump to it. It was smooth and white, no craters. He hadn’t realized the tips of the horns were so sharp.

He knelt down to start his climb.

“That’s odd.” The Customs Agent frowned. “Wait a moment. Where’s your passport?”

Quentin stopped, on one knee.

“My passport?” he said. This again. “I don’t have it. I gave it to the kid in hell.”

“In hell? The underworld?”

“Well, yes. I had to go there. That’s where the last key was.”

“Oh.” She pursed her lips. “I’m sorry, but you can’t go through without a passport.”

She couldn’t be serious.

“Well, but hang on,” Quentin said. “I have a passport. Eleanor made it for me. I just don’t have it on me. They have it in the underworld.”