And it flashed into his head with sudden urgency: Richard was right. They had to find Martin Chatwin, if he was somehow still alive. That was the key. Now that he was here, he wasn’t going to give it up again. He must know the secret of how to stay here forever, make it last, make it permanent.

Quentin got to his feet, embarrassed, and blotted his tears on his sleeve.

“Welp,” Josh said finally, breaking the silence. “I guess that pretty much tears it. We’re in Fillory.”

“These clock-trees are supposed to be the Watcherwoman’s thing,” Quentin said, still sniffling. “She must still be around.”

“I thought she was dead,” Janet said.

“Maybe we’re in an earlier time period,” Alice suggested. “Maybe we went back in time. Like in The Girl Who Told Time.”

She and Janet and Quentin didn’t look at each other when they spoke.

“Maybe. I think they left some of these still growing, though, even after they got rid of her. Remember they even see one in The Wandering Dune.”

“I could never finish that book,” Josh said.

“I wonder.” Eliot eyed it appraisingly. “Think we could get this thing back to Brakebills? That would make a hell of a present for Fogg.”

Nobody else seemed inclined to pursue that line of speculation. Josh made double pointy-fingers at Eliot and mouthed the word douche.

“I wonder if that’s the correct time,” Richard said.

Quentin could have stood there and stared at the clock-tree all day, but the chill wouldn’t let them stand still. The girls were already wandering away. He followed them reluctantly, and soon they were all trooping off together in a ragged group along the ditch-cum-path, deeper into Fillory. The sound of their feet shuffling through the dry leaves was deafening in the quiet.

No one spoke. For all their careful practical preparations there had been very little discussion of strategy or objectives, and now they were here it was obvious anyway. Why bother planning an adventure? This was Fillory—adventure would find them! With every step they took they half expected a marvelous apparition or revelation to come trotting out of the woods. But nothing much presented itself. It was almost anticlimactic—or was this just the buildup to something really amazing? The remains of ragged stone walls trailed off into the underbrush. The trees around them remained still and stubbornly inanimate, even after Penny, in the spirit of exploration and discovery, formally introduced himself to several of them. Here and there birds chirped and flitted and perched, high up in the trees, but none of them offered them any advice. Every little detail looked superbright and saturated with meaning, as if the world around them were literally composed of words and letters, inscribed in some magical geographical script.