The tip of her cigarette glowed in the dimness. Quentin was reminded of the last time he’d smoked, during the brief but vigorously hedonistic period when he’d lived in New York, three years ago. Her cigarette was sweet and fragrant. He asked for one. She had to roll it for him, he’d forgotten how. Or had he ever known? No, Eliot had a clever silver device that rolled them for you.
“I hate to bring this up,” Quentin said. “But there’s a reason why I’m here.”
“I thought as much. Is it that magic key business?”
“What? Oh. No, it’s not the magic key.”
She leaned back and put her feet up on a chest she used for a table.
“What then?”
“It’s about the money. The taxes. You didn’t send any last year. I mean the island didn’t.”
She burst out laughing—a big, openmouthed laugh. She leaned back and clapped her hands together once.
“And they sent you? They sent the king?”
“They didn’t send me. I’m the king. I sent myself.”
“Right.” She dabbed at her eyes with the heels of her hands. “You’re a bit of a micromanager, aren’t you? Well, I suppose you’re wondering where the money is. We should have sent it. We could have, no one’s in any danger of starving on the Outer Island. Tomorrow I’ll take you out to see the gold beetles. They’re amazing: they eat dirt and poop out gold ore. Their nests are made of gold!” She kicked the chest their feet were resting on. “Take this. It’s full of gold. I’ll throw in the chest for free.”
“Great,” Quentin said. “Thanks. It’s a deal.”
Mission accomplished. He took a drag on the cigarette and stifled a cough. It had been a very brief phase, his smoking period. Maybe he’d had too much of whatever this was. Rum? It was sweet, and they were on a tropical island, so let’s call it rum.
“We hadn’t heard from you for years. There didn’t seem to be any point. I mean, what do you actually do with the stuff?”
Quentin could have answered that, but even he had to admit that the answer wouldn’t have been a very good one. Probably they used it to regild Eliot’s scepter. Taxation without representation. She could start a revolution. She was right. It was all so unreal.
“Anyway look what happened. They sent us a king. I think we might be forgiven for feeling a little pleased with ourselves. But why are you really here? Don’t tell me that’s the whole reason, it’s too, too disappointing. Are you on a quest?”
“I’m afraid I am going to disappoint you. I’m not on a quest.”
“I was sure you were looking for the magic key,” she said. “The one that winds up the world.”
It was hard to tell when she was joking.
“To be honest, Elaine, I don’t really know much about the key. I guess there’s a story about it? Do you get a lot of people looking for it?”
“No. But it’s just about our only claim to fame, aside from the beetles.”
A vast orange moon was rising, as orange as their cigarette tips. It was a crescent moon, hanging so low it looked like it could snag a horn in the
“It’s not here anyway,” she said.
“I figured that.” Quentin poured himself more rum from a decanter. Not that he needed it, but who cared. He wondered if they’d solved the mystery of Jollyby’s death yet.
“It’s on After. The next island farther out.”
“Sorry,” he said. “I’m not following. What’s where?”
“There’s an island farther out from here, called After. Two days’ sail, maybe three. I’ve never been there. But that’s where the key is.”
“The key. You must be joking.”
“Am I laughing?” Was she? She gave him a funny half smile.
“I’m thinking this is a metaphorical key. The key to life. It’s a piece of paper that says ‘haste makes waste’ or ‘early to bed early to rise.’”
“No, Quentin, it’s a real key. Made of gold. Teeth and everything. Very magical, or that’s what people say.”
Quentin stared at the bottom of his glass. He needed to be thinking now, but he’d taken steps to disable his thinking apparatus. Too late. Haste makes waste.
“Who makes a key out of gold?” he said. “It makes no sense. It would be too soft. It would get bent all the time.”
“You’d certainly have to be careful where you stuck it.”
Quentin’s face felt hot. Thank God the night was cooling off, finally, and a night wind was rising in the trees around the embassy.
“So there’s a magic golden key a couple of days’ sail away from here. Why haven’t you gone and gotten it yourself?”
“I don’t know, Quentin. Maybe I haven’t got any magic locks.”
“It never occurred to me that the key might be real.”
It was tempting. It was more than that: it was a big buzzing neon sign in the darkness that read ADVENTURELAND. He could feel the pull of it, from out over the horizon. The Outer Island was a bust, a red herring, but that just meant he hadn’t gone far enough.
Elaine sat forward on the couch, looking more sober and cogent than he felt. Probably she was used to this rum stuff. He wondered what it might be like to kiss her. He wondered what it might be like to get into bed with her. They were all alone on a sweaty tropical night. The moon was up. Though if he’d been serious about that he probably should have stopped drinking a little sooner. And now that he did think about it, he wasn’t entirely sure that he wanted to kiss those thin, smiling lips.
“Will you let me tell you something, Quentin?” she said. “I would think very hard about whether you want to look for the key. This island is a pretty safe place as islands go, but it’s the jumping-off point. This is the end of Fillory, Quentin.
“Out there”—she pointed out to sea, past the
When she said it, he saw what she meant. They were on the very rim of something, the lip. The edge of that meadow in the forest, where Jollyby died. The sill of his office window, when Eliot and the others had come to fetch him on Earth. Here he was powerful. There, he didn’t know what he was.
“Of course I’m not sure,” he said. “That’s why you go. To find out if it’s enough. You just have to be sure you want to find out.”
“Yes, you do, Your Highness,” Elaine said. “Yes, you do.”
Quentin was the last one to bed that night and the last one up in the morning. His sense of time had gotten pleasantly elastic in Fillory, since he wasn’t constantly being assaulted with blinking digital clocks here the way he was in the real world, but it was late enough that the sun was already scorching. Late enough for him to feel the shame that comes with hearing other people going about their business while he was still weakly tangled up in his sweaty sheets. His room was airy and equatorial, with cool white linen and flung-open windows, and it was still suffocatingly hot.
The rum, which had seemed so delightful the night before, so absolutely good and necessary, had now revealed its true nature as a hideous toxin, a drier of mouths and a ravager of brains. He cursed the earlier incarnation of himself that drank so much of it. Then he got up and went in search of water.
There was plenty of it around. Probably there was a beautiful songbird somewhere around here that puked gallons of sparkling springwater every morning, to go with the gold beetles. He ran himself a cool bath and sat in it
