“Listen to me carefully,” Fogg was saying. “Most people are blind to magic. They move through a blank and empty world. They’re bored with their lives, and there’s nothing they can do about it. They’re eaten alive by longing, and they’re dead before they die.

“But you live in the magical world, and it’s a great gift. And if you want to get killed here, you’ll find plenty of opportunities without killing each other.”

He stood up to go.

“Will we be punished, sir?” Penny asked.

Punished? He must honestly believe they were still in high school. The Dean paused at the door. The light from his finger was almost extinguished.

“Yes, Penny, as a matter of fact you will be. Six weeks of washing dishes, lunch and dinner. If this or anything like it happens again, you’re expelled. Quentin—” he stopped to consider. “Just learn to handle yourself better. I don’t want any more problems.”

The door closed behind him. Quentin exhaled. He closed his eyes, and the room drifted silently off its moorings and out to sea. He wondered, with no special interest either way, whether Penny was in love with Alice.

“Wow,” Penny said, apparently unfazed by the prospect of spending the next month and a half with pruny fingertips. He sounded like a little kid. “I mean, wow. Did you hear what he said? About magic consuming you? I didn’t know any of that. Did you know any of that stuff?”

“Penny,” Quentin said. “One, your hair is stupid. And two, I don’t know what it’s like where you come from, but if you ever do anything that could get me sent back to Brooklyn again, I won’t just break your nose. I will motherfucking kill you.”

THE PHYSICAL KIDS

THE PHYSICAL KIDS

Six months later, in September, Quentin and Alice spent the first day of their Third Year at Brakebills sitting outside a small square Victorian outbuilding about a half mile from the House. It was a piece of pure folly architecture, a miniature house, white with a gray roof, complete with windows and gables, that might at one time have been servants’ quarters, or a guest cottage, or a largish garden shed.

There was a weathervane on top, wrought iron and shaped like a pig, that always pointed somewhere other than where the wind was blowing. Quentin couldn’t make out anything through the windows, but he thought he heard snatches of conversation coming from inside. The cottage stood on the edge of a wide hayfield.

It was midafternoon. The sky was blue and the early autumn sun was high. The air was silent and still. A rusted-out old piece of farm machinery stood half drowned in the same long grass it used to mow.

“This is bullshit. Knock again.”

“You knock,” Alice said. She released a convulsive sneeze. “I’ve been knocking for twenty . . . for twenty . . .”