It was the middle of the afternoon. Quentin didn’t even know what day it was. They sat on a bench on a historic green where a minor battle had been fought in the Revolutionary War. Sun-dazed tourists drifted past them. It was not a time for able-bodied twentysomethings like him to be out and about with nothing to do. He should have been at the office, or acquiring a graduate degree, or at the very least playing touch football stoned. Quentin felt the daylight bleaching the energy out of him. God, he thought, looking down at his leggings. I really have to get out of these clothes.

Though Chesterton was one of the East Coast’s premier venues for colonial reenactments. That ought to make them a little less conspicuous.

“So that went well,” he said. “Starbucks?”

Julia didn’t laugh.

They were becalmed. They sat in silence under the old oaks: the king and queen of Fillory, with nothing to do. The air was full of weird modern hums and drones he never used to notice before he lived in Fillory: cars, power lines, sirens, distant construction, planes in the jet stream laying double-ruled lines across the clear blue sky. It never stopped.

He’d met Julia here once, he reminded himself, or not that far from here, in the graveyard behind the church. That was when she told him that she still remembered Brakebills.

“You do not have a plan, do you?” Julia stared straight ahead.

“No.”

“I do not know why I thought you would.” That haughty anger was back. She was waking up again. “You have never really been here. Out here in the real world.”

“Well, I’ve visited.”

“You think magic is what you learned at Brakebills. You have no idea what magic is.”

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s say I don’t. What is it?”

“I am going to show you.”

Julia stood up. She looked around, as if she were sniffing the wind, then set off abruptly across the street at a scary angle. A silver Passat honked and scritched to a stop to avoid hitting her. She kept walking. Quentin followed more cautiously.

She led them away from Chesterton’s main drag, such as it was. The neighborhood turned residential fast. The din of traffic and commerce died away, and big trees and houses bloomed on either side of the street. The sidewalk became bumpy and irregular. Julia was paying a lot of attention to the telephone poles for some reason. Every time they passed one she stopped and studied it.

“Been a while since I did this,” she said, mostly to herself. “Has to be one around here somewhere.”

“One what? What are we looking for?”

“I could tell you. But you would not believe me.”