He was opening a door in the air, tall enough for him to walk through without stooping. It was bright in there, and there was warmth, and sunlight, and green. This was it. Already the gray stone of the After Island looked insubstantial. This was what he’d been missing—call it adventure or whatever you wanted to. He wondered if he was going somewhere in Fillory or somewhere else entirely.

He stepped through onto grass, leading Julia through after him. There was light all around them. He blinked. His eyes began to adjust.

“Wait,” he said. “This can’t be it.”

He lunged back for the doorway, but it was already gone. There was nothing to lunge through, no way back, just empty air. He lost his balance and caught himself with his hands, skinning both his palms on the warm concrete sidewalk in front of his parents’ house in Chesterton, Massachusetts.

BOOK II

BOOK II

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 9

“Okay,” he said. “Okay. It’s disappointing.” He sat on the curb, elbows on his knees, staring up at the power lines, and attempted to reason with himself. His scraped hands smarted and throbbed. It felt like late summer. For some reason it was the power lines more than anything else that looked weird, after two years in Fillory.

That and the cars. They looked wrong, like animals. Angry alien animals. Julia was sitting on the grass, hugging her knees and rocking slightly. She looked worse off than he did.

Quentin’s heart was sinking out of his chest and out of his body and down into the dirt of this goddamned useless planet. I was a king. I had a ship. I had a beautiful ship, my own ship!

It was like somebody was trying to send him a message. If so he got it. Message received.

“I get it,” he said out loud. “I hear you. I get it already.”

I am a king, he thought. Even in the real world I’m still a king. Nothing can take that away.

“It’s all right,” he said. “We’re going to make this all right.”

It was an experiment in saying what he wanted to be true, to see if that would make it any truer.

Julia was on all fours now. She heaved up something thin and bitter onto the grass. He went over and knelt beside her.

“You’re going to be all right,” he said.

“I don’t feel well.”

“We’re going to fix this. You’ll be all right.”

“Stop saying that.” She coughed, then spat on the lawn. “You do not understand. I cannot be here.” She paused to rummage for words. “I should not. I have to go.”

“Tell me about it.”

“I have to leave!”