Janet grabbed her hand. Josh hugged her. Poppy, in the spirit of the moment, grabbed her other hand, even though they’d never actually met before.

“Oh my God,” Janet said. “Oh my God, Alice.”

“I know,” Alice said gravely. “But just tell us.”

“OK. OK.” Janet didn’t let go of her hand; it was like she needed a lifeline to hang on to. “The sun fell down. Everything started fighting everything else, even the trees. It was terrible. Then Julia came back from the Far Side and sent us back here.”

“Shit.” Eliot looked up at the night sky and shouted: “Shit!”

The city sent him back a faint echo.

“Where’s Julia?” Quentin asked.

“She must have stayed behind.”

Janet couldn’t meet his eyes.

“So that’s it?” Plum said. She looked as stricken as the rest of them did. Quentin stepped up to the fountain. If he was going to try, he’d better try.

“Quentin, stop,” Janet said. “It’s dead.”

“In that case I’ll view the body.”

“There’s nothing there.”

“The fountain’s still here. There has to be something left.”

“No, there doesn’t,” Janet said. “And there isn’t. Please, Quentin.”

Even as she said it the statue of Atlas in the fountain began to move. It bent forward slowly and reached up to the enormous black marble globe it supported on one shoulder. It was preparing, at long last, to set its burden down.

“Hey!” Quentin said. “Not so fucking fast!”

If Fillory was going to be dead it was going to have to prove it to him personally, to his face. He side-vaulted over the rim into the water—it should have been cold, but it was hot and getting hotter. Probably in a few minutes it would start boiling away to nothing. Josh grabbed his arm, but Quentin shook him off. Atlas glared at him, but even though he was twice as tall as Quentin and made of stone he must have seen something truly murderous in Quentin’s face because he straightened up a little and grudgingly shrugged the globe back into position.

Everybody was shouting at him.

“Don’t be an idiot, Quentin!” Janet yelled. “For once!”

“Quentin, don’t,” Eliot said. “You don’t have to.”

“But I do.”

Quentin fumbled awkwardly in his coat pocket for the button while trying to tread water at the same time. Somebody had his arm again, and he tried to jerk away, but at the same moment his finger touched the button and the bottom dropped out.

Once again he was free-falling down toward the magic land of Fillory. He never thought he’d see it again. It made him feel almost painfully tender—after all this, everything that had happened, Fillory was taking him back. The whole country was spread out below him, and he was inbound like a deorbiting space capsule.