The Magician's Land (The Magicians, #3)(96)

The world outside the window had become lower Manhattan again, even that odd little window in the corner. Quentin raised his head and straightened up. He peered around, up at the ceiling, into the dark corners of the room, curiously. He looked over at Plum.

She pointed behind him.

A red door had appeared in the wall. It was painted wood banded with black iron that had been worked into elaborate curves and fairy spirals. Quentin dropped the staff, and it clattered to the floor.





CHAPTER 21


Plum watched him take a few slow, cautious, disbelieving steps toward the door and then stop again, as the dust settled and the ringing died away. Plum felt wrung out, shivery, like she’d gone for a run on an empty stomach, but she couldn’t take her eyes off the red door.

“We did it,” Quentin said solemnly. “It really worked. We made a new land.”

It had one brass knob, placed in the center. Quentin touched it and then put his hand on it, hesitantly, as if he expected an electric shock, or as if he thought his hand might go right through it. But it was solid. He turned the knob and pushed—wrong—then pulled the door toward him. It opened easily.

A cold wind breathed into the room. It cooled Plum’s overheated forehead, but it chilled something deeper inside her.

“Quentin,” she said.

He didn’t move, and she stepped forward to stand beside him on the threshold.

“Are you going in?”

Like he was waking from a dream Quentin looked over at her.

“In a minute.” He held up his hand. “I was sure I was going to have a scar there from Mayakovsky’s coin. Like in Raiders. It felt like it was burning. But there’s nothing.”

Plum had no idea what he was talking about, but she didn’t say anything. It didn’t seem like the moment.

The land didn’t look like the Hundred Acre Wood. It wasn’t even an orchard. It wasn’t even outside. Looking through the door was like looking in that mirror back at Brakebills, after Darcy’s reflection had vanished: it was exactly like the room they were standing in, except for the fact that they weren’t standing in it. And it was all reversed.

“Through the looking glass,” Quentin said.

This wasn’t what she’d expected. Quentin picked up a long-handled spoon from the worktable and tossed it underhand through the doorway. It clanged and slid along the floor in the other room. It seemed safe enough.

“What is this?” she said.

“I think it’s our land.”

“But why does it look like that? Is that what it’s supposed to look like?”

“I don’t know.”

“Was this what you were expecting? I thought you were going to do an orchard. Is this what you were trying to do?”

“No.”

“Why would you make a land that looks exactly the same as the one you’re already in?”

“That’s a good question.”

Quentin walked through the door and into the other room. She watched him look around. She had to hand it to him, he didn’t look all that freaked out. Just checking out the scene.

“Classic,” he said. “It’s completely reversed. It’s opposite-land. You gotta like the respect for tradition.”

He spread out his arms.

“Come on in if you want to, I think it’s safe.”

Plum went on in. It really was the weirdest thing. It was like the house had acquired a Siamese twin, attached to it at the door. She was struggling with a sense of anticlimax.

“It sort of worked,” Plum said. “I mean, we did make a land, right?”

Quentin nodded.

“Or a house anyway. Let’s be careful, Plum, this feels a little off.”

It was a very, very quiet house. The original house was magically soundproofed, so it was quiet too, but this was different. This place was sonically dead—it was as if the walls were covered in that egg-carton foam they used to line the walls in music studios.

And there was something else. The place had a claustrophobic feel. She couldn’t put her finger on it till it was literally staring her in the face.

“Look at the windows,” she said. “All the windows. They’re not windows, they’re mirrors.”

It was like the eyes of the house had gone blind.

“Huh. I wonder what the mirrors are.”

Yeah. Good question. There was one in the little half bath out on the landing. She steeled herself for some horror-movie shocker and then poked her head in.

Curiouser and curiouser. The mirror was still there, and it was still a mirror, but inside the room in the mirror it was snowing—blowing snow, bordering on a real blizzard. It was starting to drift on the floor, the towel racks, the rim of the sink. It settled on her hair and her eyelashes. But only in the mirror: reflexively she touched her hair, but it was dry. The snow wasn’t real. Quentin appeared behind her.

“Eek,” he said.

Clearly this was affecting them in different ways.

They strolled through the house, lord and lady of their uncanny new domain. Everything was there, more or less, except when it wasn’t. The furniture, the drapes, the silverware, the glassware. The doors were ordinary doors. But there were no computers and no phones. The books were there, but the pages were blank. No toiletries in the bathroom, no clothes in the closets. Nobody lived here. Water came out of the taps, but cold only. They disagreed over whether one of the oriental rugs was left-right inverted—Quentin was sure it was—but Plum remembered it differently, and neither of them felt like going back and checking the original.