Quentin and Alice embraced without speaking. The others made their way over. Stories were exchanged. It was a reunion. Somehow everybody had managed to make it out of the banquet hall unscathed, or at least not too badly scathed. Anaïs showed everybody where her golden curls got crisped off in the back as she ran. Janet was the only one who hadn’t escaped out a side door; instead she ran all the way to the end of the hall, which it turned out did have an end after all, though it took her an hour to get there (“Three years of cross country,” she said proudly). She’d even had a glass of the wine with no ill effects, apart from mild intoxication.

They all shook their heads. What they’d all been through. Nobody would ever believe it. Quentin was so tired he could hardly think, except to think: we did it, we really did it. Eliot passed the flask, and everybody drank. It had been a game at first, and then it all got horribly real, but now it was starting to feel like a game again, something like what they’d been imagining on that terrible, wonderful morning back in Manhattan. Good fun. A real adventure. After a while they ran out of things to say, just stood in a circle looking at each other and shaking their heads with silly punch-drunk smiles on their faces.

A deep, dry cough interrupted them.

“Welcome.”

It was the ram. He had opened His eyes.

“Welcome, children of Earth. Welcome, too”—here he acknowledged Dint—“you valiant child of Fillory. I am Ember.”

He was sitting up. He had the strange, horizontal, peanut-shaped pupils that sheep have. His thick wool was the color of pale gold. His ears stuck out comically beneath the heavy horns that curled back magnificently from His forehead.

Of them all, only Penny knew what to do. He dropped his backpack and walked over to stand in front of the ram. He got down on his knees in the sand and bowed his head.

“We sought a crown,” he said grandly, “but we have found a king. My lord Ember, it is my honor and privilege to offer You my fealty.”

“Thank you, My child.”

The ram’s eyes half closed, gravely and joyfully. Thank God, was all Quentin could think. Literally, thank God. It was really Him. It was the only explanation. It wasn’t like they’d done anything especially heroic to deserve this re-reversal of fortune. Ember must have brought them here. He had saved them. This was it, the closing credits. They’d won. The coronation could begin.