down. Maybe this was one of those times when being a hero didn’t involve looking particularly brave. It was just doing what you should.
Well, bottom line, no time is the perfect time to visit the dead in the underworld. And if the sloth was telling the truth, he could be back before anyone knew he was gone.
“So I can do this in no time at all?” he said. “I mean, literally no time will pass here?”
“Perhaps I exaggerated. No time will pass while you are in the underworld. But you will have to make certain preparations before you go.”
“And I can come back.”
“You can come back.”
“Okay. All right.” Unless he changed he was going to be visiting the underworld in his pajamas. “Let’s get started. What do I need to do?”
“I neglected to mention, the ritual must be performed on land.”
“Oh. Right.” Thank God, he could go back to bed after all. Hell could wait. “I thought we were going right here and now. Well, so I’ll just pop down next time we get—”
There was a distant clatter of boots overhead, and a bell rang.
“We just sighted land, didn’t we,” Quentin said.
The sloth gravely closed her eyes and then opened them again: indeed, yes, we just sighted land. Quentin was going to ask her how she did that but stopped himself, because asking would mean that he’d have to sit through the answer, and he’d had about enough slothly wisdom for the time being.
Not more than an hour later Quentin was standing on a flat gray beach in the middle of the night. He’d wanted to slip off to the underworld and back quietly, unbeknownst to the rest of the gang. Then maybe he would bring it up later, just drop it into conversation that by the way, he’d been to hell and back, no big thing, why do you ask? Benedict says hi. He hadn’t planned on doing this in front of an audience.
But an audience had assembled: Eliot, Josh, Poppy, and even Julia, who had roused herself from her stupor to observe. Bingle and one of the sailors stood nearby with a long oar resting between them on their shoulders, and from the oar dangled the sloth. They had carried it out to the beach like that, like a side of beef. It had seemed the easiest way.
Of them all only Poppy didn’t seem convinced he should go.
“I don’t know, Quentin,” she said. “I’m just trying to picture it. It’s not like visiting somebody in the hospital. Get well soon, here’s a bunch of balloons to tie to the bedpost. Imagine if you were dead. Would you want the living to visit you, when you knew you couldn’t go back with them? I’m not a thousand percent sure I would. It seems a little like rubbing it in. Maybe you should let him rest in peace.”
But he wasn’t going to. What’s the worst that could happen? Benedict could send him away if he wanted. The others hugged themselves in robes and overcoats in the chilly air. The island wasn’t much more than an overgrown sandbar, flat and featureless. The tide was out, and the sea was not so much calm as limp. Every few minutes it worked up enough energy for a wave that rose up half a foot and then flopped onto the strand with a startling smack, as if to remind everyone that it was still there.
“I’m ready,” Quentin said. “Tell me what to do.”
The sloth had asked them to bring a ladder and a long, flat board from the ship. Now it instructed them to stand them up and lean the two together to form a triangle. The ladder and board didn’t want to stay like that, the triangle kept collapsing, so Josh and Eliot had to hold them up. As a former Physical Kid Quentin was used to making magic out of unpromising raw materials, but this was crude even by his standards. The crescent moon of Fillory looked down on them, flooding the scene with silver light. It rotated eerily swiftly, once every ten minutes or so, so that its horns were always pointing in a different direction.
“Now climb the ladder.”
Quentin did. Eliot grunted with the effort of keeping it upright. Quentin got to the top.
“Now slide down the slide.”
It was clear what the sloth meant. He was supposed to slide down the plank like a playground slide. Though this wasn’t a playground slide, and it was a bit of a circus act to get into position without any bars to hang on to. The slide wobbled and at one point almost collapsed, but Josh and Eliot managed to hold it together.
Quentin sat at the top of the triangle. He hadn’t imagined that his journey to the underworld would be quite this ridiculous. He’d rather hoped it would involve drawing unholy sigils in the sand in letters of fire ten feet high, and flinging open the portal to hell. You can’t win them all.
“Slide down the slide,” the sloth said again.
It was a raw pine board, so he had to scooch himself along for a few feet, but eventually he managed to slide the rest of the way to the bottom. He was ready at any moment for a splinter to stab him in the ass, but none did. His bare feet planted in the firm cold sand. He stopped.
“Now what?” he called.
“Be patient,” said the sloth.
Everyone waited. A wave flopped. A gust of wind ruffled the fabric of his pajamas.
“Should I—?”
“Try wiggling your toes a little.”
Quentin wiggled them deeper into the cold, damp beach. He was about to get up and call it a night when he felt his toes break through something into nothing, and the sand gave way, and he slid down through it.
The moment he passed beneath the sand the slide became a real slide, made of metal, with metal guardrails. A playground slide. He slid down it in total darkness, with nothing around him as far as he could tell. It wasn’t a perfect system—every time he got up a decent head of speed he would get stuck and have to scooch again, his butt squeaking loudly in the pitch-black.
A light appeared, far ahead and below him. He wasn’t moving very fast, so he had plenty of time to check it out on his way down. It was an ordinary unshaded electric light set in a brick wall. The brickwork was old and uneven and could have used some repointing. Below the light was a pair of metal double doors painted a gray- brown. They were absolutely ordinary, the kind that might have opened onto a school auditorium.
In front of it stood someone who looked too small to be standing in front of the entrance to hell. He might have been eight years old. He was a sharp-looking little boy, with short black hair and a narrow face. He wore a little-boy-sized gray suit with a white shirt, but no tie. He looked like he’d gotten fidgety in church and come outside for a minute to blow off steam.
He didn’t even have a stool to sit on, so he just stood in place as well as an eight-year-old boy can. He tried and failed to whistle. He kicked at nothing in particular.
Quentin thought it prudent to slow down and stop about twenty feet from the bottom of the slide. The boy watched him.
“Hi,” the boy said. His voice sounded loud in the silence.
“Hi,” Quentin said.
He slid down the rest of the way and then stood up, as gracefully as he could.
“You’re not dead,” the boy said.
“I’m alive,” Quentin said. “But is this the entrance to the underworld?”
“You know how I could tell you were alive?” The boy pointed behind Quentin. “The slide. It works much better if you’re dead.”
“Oh. Yes, I got stuck a few times.”
Quentin’s skin prickled just standing there. He wondered if the boy was alive. He didn’t look dead.
“Dead people are lighter,” the boy said. “And when you die they give you a robe. It’s better for sliding than regular pants.”
The bulb made a bubble of light in the darkness. Quentin had a sense of towering emptiness all around them. There was no sky or ceiling. The brick wall seemed to go up forever—did go up forever, as far as he could see. He was in the subbasement of the world.
Quentin pointed behind him at the double doors. “Is it all right if I go inside?”
“You can only go inside if you’re dead. That’s the rule.”
“Oh.”
This was a setback. You’d think Abigail the Sloth would have briefed him on that wrinkle. He didn’t relish the thought of trying to climb back up that long slide, if that was how you got back to the upper world. He seemed to
