“That’s right,” Eliot said. “That’s what we do.”

She weighed this suggestion.

“OK. But I’m coming this time. Last time I got stuck babysitting the country and you guys were gone for like a year and a half. When do we leave?”

“ASAP.”

“And what if we can’t?” Poppy said. “What if we can’t head it off?”

Janet shrugged.

“I guess we go back home. I mean, to our other home. Our former home.”

“That’s what the Neitherlands is for,” Josh said.

“Guys, listen.”

Eliot leaned forward. He put on his High King face and his High King voice. At times like this he wanted to look as much as possible like Elrond, Lord of Rivendell, from The Lord of the Rings, and he didn’t think he was a million miles off base. He made eye contact with each one of them in turn.

“I know I don’t speak for all of you. Not in this. But if Ember is right, if Fillory really is ending, I’m going to stay and see it end. This land is where I became who I am, who I was meant to be. Who I am is who I am in Fillory, and if Fillory dies, then I’ll die with it.” He studied his kingly fingernails. “I think I made that choice a long time ago. I don’t expect you to make it with me, but I want you to know, there isn’t any going back. Not for me.”

The crescent moon was already visible, early today, opposite the sunset, hooking a pale horn over the rim of the world. Eliot could picture it, the rim of the world, now that he’d been there, with its endless brick wall and its narrow gray strip of beach and its single door to the Far Side. The tower was high enough that sometimes you could kid yourself that you could really see it, on a clear day, which this was.

Josh cocked his head and screwed up his face and studied Eliot with one eye. He pointed at him, hesitantly.

“Fuck you.”

Eliot cracked his crooked grin. Everybody relaxed.

“Look, it sucks,” he said. “I hate it. But we’ll take it as far as we can, then we’ll walk away. We’ll go back to Earth, have a decent drink for a change. We’ll see what Quentin’s up to.”

“Oh, God,” Janet said. “I think death might be preferable.”

Everybody laughed except for Poppy, who was still thinking.

“I just wish—”

She broke off and gave a shaky sigh, to try to calm herself down. It mostly worked. Josh took her hand under the table.

“What is it, sweetie?”