“That’s right, on bloody Earth! I’m bloody well stuck here! Do you know, I’ve taken to cramming myself into cubbies and closets and I don’t know what else just on the off chance I’ll find a way through? Whenever I see a squirrel I take off running after it, in case it might be a magic one on its way to Fillory. The other boys think I’m mad, but I don’t care. I’d do anything to get out of here.”

“Come on, Mart,” I said. “You know how these things are. It’ll come around to you again.”

“Did the rams say anything about me? I’m out of favor, aren’t I?”

“Honestly, they haven’t! Half the time I can’t understand what They mean anyway, but I’m sure They haven’t said anything about you. I would’ve told you.”

“But you’ll ask Them, won’t you? When you see Them?”

“Course I will, Mart. Course I will.”

“I have to do something.”

He kicked at a heavy black lump like a shrunken head that might once have been a cricket ball.

“But look,” I said. “I know how you feel, I hate it when I’m not asked. But it’s not as bad here as all that, is it? I mean, Fillory isn’t everything.”

“But it is.” He stopped walking and looked me in the eye. “It is everything. What else is there? This? Earth?” He picked up the dead cricket ball and threw it as hard as he could. “Listen: will you come and get me?”

He grabbed my arm—he was pleading with me.

“You know sometimes it comes on slowly. Like that time it was you and Jane, and it was just patterns in the wallpaper at first, you said. Took you ten minutes to go all the way through. You could come get me when it starts. We’ll go together, like back in the old days.”

“I’ll try, Mart. I really will.” But we both knew that wasn’t how it worked. Ember and Umber decided who came, and that was that. “You were the first one in. You started it all. You found the way. We both know you’ll go again, it’s only a question of when. You’re the High King!”

“I’m the High King,” he repeated unhappily.

At the time I believed it, mostly. I was ten, and he was twelve, but the gap between us had always seemed wider. I looked up to Martin. I literally couldn’t imagine myself having something he did not, doing something he could not.