But we didn’t all feel the same way about what he’d done. Helen in particular—always the arch-Ramsian—was scathing about it, excoriating Martin for defying Ember and Umber’s will, as she saw it. But I believe that we all understood it and even, on some level, admired it. I know that I did. It must have taken great will and resourcefulness to seek out Umber, to strike the deal and then to go through with it. He was many things, and God only knows what he is now, but Martin was not stupid, and he wasn’t a coward.

Though it was difficult to reconcile Martin’s escape into Fillory with the damage it caused in the real world. One of the secrets Martin must have learned down below the Northern Marsh was how not to care about some things, and there was power in that, the power to live as though his actions had no consequences. It fell to us to witness the consequences, and they were ugly. Our mother’s nerves were always fragile, and Martin’s disappearance finally and permanently annihilated her. We saw her more and more rarely, and when we did, in one or other dispiriting institutional setting, she never failed to accuse us of keeping Martin from her. Her own children seemed sinister and alien to her. She knew, somehow, that we knew. And she was right.

But I never saw Martin again. I always looked for him, though as time passed I became more and more worried about what would happen if I found him. He could or would not show himself to me. I’ve never understood why not.

He certainly had the chance. There were more adventures left for us in Fillory, most of which ended up in A Secret Sea and The Wandering Dune. I didn’t turn them down. Even after what I’d seen that day, even with my heart half broken, I still could never say no to Fillory.

And then Fillory said no to us. By the end of A Secret Sea I was twelve, and after that I was never asked back. One by one we became too old. Helen had one final adventure, in the company of Jane, and the two girls returned bearing a box of magical buttons which Jane claimed could have given them free entry to Fillory forever. But Helen considered the buttons to be a perversion of magic, she thought using them would be a blasphemy against the rams, and she disposed of them immediately and could not be persuaded to divulge their hiding place. Her arguments were very Ramsian indeed, and everyone sided against her, even Jane. It was a schism, and after it we Chatwin children were never as close again, and our integrity as a tribe was diminished even further.