Julia paused, hovering. For him it would have been exhausting, but for Julia flying was nothing, and as long as he was with her it was nothing for him too. Her large hand encased his completely; the feeling reminded Quentin of being a child. It was twilight on the Far Side; the sun had just set there as it rose on Fillory. He couldn’t see much, just hushed fields and valleys. The difference was subtle, but even from this distance it was quieter and more intense than Fillory—richer in whatever made Fillory magical, more densely infused. There was an air of excited expectation. Curious little motes of light sparkled in the dusk, like tiny glowing gnats.

“I can’t show you everything,” Julia said. “Not even I have those permissions. But there’s something in particular I think you might like.”

When they moved the wind moved with them, so that the air around them remained still as they flew. Down below there were dark rivers and pale chalk roads. Quentin spotted what might have been an elaborate tree house in a forest, and a castle on an island in a moonlit lake.

“Are those fireflies?” he asked. “The lights?”

“No, the air is just kind of sparkly here. It’s a thing. You don’t notice it during the daytime.”

Tiny lights were bobbing along in their wake, too, streaming out behind them, like the phosphorescent trail of a ship in a tropical sea. The sunset was in different colors from a terrestrial or even a Fillorian sunset: it ran more to greens and purples.

She set them down in the center of a grand, rambling garden. It must once have been laid out according to a precise design, like a French formal garden, all ruled lines and perfect curves and complex symmetries. But it had been left to go to seed, shrubs overflowing onto paths, vines winding themselves lasciviously through wrought iron, rose beds dying off into withered brown traceries, exquisite in their own way. It reminded him of nothing so much as the frozen community garden he’d wandered into long, long ago in Brooklyn, chasing the paper note that Jane Chatwin had given him, before he came out the other side and into Brakebills.

“I thought you’d like it. Of course it was different when it was new, but then when it started to get overrun everyone thought it looked better this way, and they let it go. But it’s more than a garden, it’s deep magic. Keep your eye on one spot and you’ll see.”

Quentin did, and he saw. Slowly, but far faster than they would have in nature, some of the plants were dying and reviving, crisping up before his eyes and bursting back into bloom, rising up and sinking down in slow motion, making tiny crackles and whispers as they did. It made him think of something, but he couldn’t quite place it.

Julia could.