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In the end, it was Julia who saved them.
The house at Murs was her home and she’d found her place there, a level of belonging that she hadn’t felt since before she fell down an elevator shaft and learned of the world beyond. These people - these friends - weren’t like Quentin and his Brakebills ilk (although to be fair, Quentin was just as fucked up as she was, only he got the golden ticket and what did she get? Nothing.)
Nothing until now, when she took what she wanted and made it her own. Magic. She knew it, she could wield it, and she was thrilled by the power. Free Trader Beowulf only provided the vehicle; she was the one who’d done the work. And these last few months in France had been everything coming together, finally, until this. The eve of the summoning.
And a message from a goddess that had her own face.
BEFORE
Dear Quentin,
I know it’s been a few months but I miss you. How are you, buddy? How is that fancy new school of yours? I can’t believe you got into college early. Didn’t think you had it in you! (I joke, you know that.)
Anyway, I just wanted to reach out and say hi. Things aren’t the same here without you around. Let me know how you’re doing?
Hugs,
Julia
Dear Quentin,
Not sure if you got my last message. Or the one before that. Do you even check this email address any more?
I miss you and want to talk to you.
Julia
Dear Quentin
Okay, so obviously you’re not going to reply. Maybe you’re not even reading these.
But I know, Quentin. I know about magic. And I’m starting to teach myself and I could really use a friend to help me. If our friendship ever meant anything to you, you need to help me. Because I’m starting to drown here.
AFTER
Julia became the de-facto leader. Gummidgy left in a huff - the others promised she’d be back once she’d cooled down, but with Julia ready to step into any high-priestess ritual requirements, it was unlikely.
The hardest person to convince was Pouncy. He was the one who desperately needed something and Julia was the only one who knew his secret, that he couldn’t live like this any more. She felt lucky that he had trusted her and sad that she had no particular interest in sleeping with him again, because for a brief moment, they had connected. And maybe that tiny crack was the key to reaching him.
She recruited Asmo and Failstaff to the cause. She didn’t tell them the whole truth, not at first, but she suggested that the reason they were unable to reach the goddess, the reason the spell had gone up in smoke, was because of how heavily medicated they all were. She wasn’t above using a little competition to inspire them, either. They all knew that magical schools existed, and for a myriad of reasons, they’d all been rejected from them.
“What if,” she proposed over a secret lunch in the meadows (seriously, it was so goddamn beautiful in the south of France that she never wanted to leave), “we can build something for people like us? A place to help people like us, who have so much talent and all they need is a place that understands them?”
Failstaff looked unconvinced. “You’re still new here, Julia. You don’t know how hard we worked to make this place special. Sacred. Only the truly worthy get here.”
“I nearly died along the way,” she replied darkly. “Is that what you want? Hundreds of lost magicians so that we can sit in this mansion, drinking wine and feeling fucking superior?”
Asmo, who apparently hadn’t suffered too much (being the child genius that she was), agreed with her. “And if we had more people then think of the energy we could harness! Enough to do something truly great!”
They daydreamed for a while, throwing around ideas of ending world hunger and making all nuclear weapons disappear, which then spiralled into a discussion of the morality of certain acts and who were they to decide, which then turned into hours of debating how to maintain control if you have access to unlimited energy, which then resulted in further thought experiments that they dragged the rest of the household into and life was good.
The seed had been planted.
BEFORE
Quentin,
Youdontknowhatyouaremissing. i found it, i found the spark and its so beautiful that it makes me want to cry and i know that you know, I KNOW that you know you fucker and why wont you help me? you were my best friend and you owe me. YOU OWE ME.
So I am asking you one last time.
pleasepleaseplease quentin, email me back so that i know i;m not crazy. help me.
AFTER
She found Quentin working in a no-name office in New York City. She’d used a tracking spell to find him; the spell itself wasn’t difficult but it turned out that Quentin was magically hidden from her. (Just her? Or the entire magical world? She couldn’t be sure.)
Julia showed up on his doorstep with no warning. She was dressed as a princess, a magician, a goddess, someone who was wholly comfortable with who she had become. Part of her wanted to show up with magic dripping from her fingertips (which, to be fair, it was, but that tended to attract attention in public spaces) so instead she cast a simple glamour.
She wasn’t entirely sure why she was here. A year or so ago, it would have been for revenge. Justice. Wanting to prove something, to show, “See, I got here anyway without your help!” Quentin may have helped motivate her but he certainly wasn’t the reason for her journey. Even if he had seen her at both her best and her worst.
“Julia!” He seemed shocked to see her. He looked like hell: skinnier than ever, pale, his hair lanky and unwashed, and his eyes were haunted. “Why are you… how are you here?”
Eyeing him cooly, Julia said, “Quentin. It’s been a while.” She closed the door behind her and pulled up a chair. She didn’t know if she wanted to hug him or punch him; strange how her childhood-best-friend who had then abandoned her could elicit so many conflicting feelings within.
“Wow, yeah, it has.” He ran a hand through his dishevelled hair. “I, I’m sorry I never replied to your emails.” It looked like it cost him to admit this. “I just didn’t know what to say, back then, and I didn’t know what to say when I got back, so I just...didn’t.” Another deep breath. “And then so much time had passed and I figured that you never wanted to speak to me again.”
There was a lot of truth in his statement. It would have been so much easier to just pretend that she didn’t know him. But there was part of her that wanted to know the truth, that wanted to understand his betrayal (how could he put his magic school above her ? After all they’d meant to each other as kids!), and this gave her an opening. “I’m here on a mission,” she revealed. Free Trader Beowulf had considered approaching Brakebills formally, but all past incursions had resulted in doors slamming in their faces on the two times they actually managed to get past the wards. Quentin was the only Brakebills alumni that any of them had a personal connection with, so it was up to her.
“Look, I know that you are oath-bound or whatever to never talk about magic.” The look on his face said it all. “And I can tell that some fucked up shit happened to you. It happened to me too, I get it. Magic can be dangerous.”
“You have no idea” he said hollowly, shaking his head. That was progress over the last time she’d seen him, getting him to admit that it actually existed.
“Well, actually I do.” She stared him down. The safe-houses and the magical underground - none of it had been pretty. And she still couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d dodged a major bullet somehow; one that might still be coming for her? There were nightmares that she firmly quashed. “But you know what, Quentin? I acknowledge that; I accept that, and I came here today because I wanted to talk to you, one magician to another, about how we can help those poor kids that get mixed up in magic, or don’t get taken by Brakebills, so that they don’t turn out like us.”
That got his attention. “You - you want to help people? You’re not here to get me to teach you magic?”
In response, she cast a simple but impressive spell that transported the two of them briefly to Murs, and then back again.
“I don’t need your school any more, Quentin.” She smiled at him wryly. “What you just saw is the haven that my friends and I have set up. For magicians like me, who need some stability, who need people to believe in them and let them learn. They won’t have to pass some outdated test where they have to blindly follow and not question. We encourage questioning. Our home is built on questioning.”
He rubbed his hands over his eyes, looking pained. “Julia, the truth is, I walked away from magic. I had to. So whatever you want from me… no. I can’t help.”
Looking around his spartan office, Julia felt a twinge. Quentin wasn’t happy here. He was a man hiding from life. But he understood magic. He understood pain.
“What if I asked for your help without magic?”
He stared at her. “What do you mean?”
“I mean...we have kids coming to us. Lost kids. Lost kids like us. If you could just see them, talk to them. I need help, Quentin. Help to make sure that I don’t get it wrong. I don’t want them to end up like we did.”
He was still shaking his head and she said, “I promise, you don’t have to do any magic. You don’t have to teach them. But if you can just come for a while, help me figure out where we could go wrong. I didn’t go to college but you did. And we just need some help with the...structure.” She was making this up on the fly, but if they were ever going to set up alliances with Brakebills, or other magical schools, or even be known as a valid alternative option, then they needed to gain some credentials in the magical world. Needed structure, a foundation, so that when the time came, they could be respected. And how better to do that than have former Brakebills alumni as advisors?
“I don’t have to do magic?” he repeated. She nodded. “And I’d be helping kids like us?” He didn’t say it, but he could see it in her eyes. Lost kids who struggled with the darkness, the black dog that threatened to drag them down into the pit.
“We’d be keeping them out of institutions,” Julia said, sensing she’d gotten through to him. “We’d be giving them a chance.”
He took a deep breath. “Well. Maybe I could come for a week or so. Just to see.”
She smiled warmly. “Thank you.”
BEFORE
Quentin,
I don’t know why I’m emailing you this because I know you’ll never read it. Or even if you are reading these (although does anyone even use AOL anymore?) I know you won’t reply. But writing to you, it’s kind of my thing now. It’s a way to help me get this all out.
I found a home here, Quentin. And it’s the most wonderful, perfect thing I’ve ever been part of. But I’m scared. My friends want to do something bigger, bigger than they’ve ever done, bigger than anything anyone has ever done, I think. And I wish there was someone I could ask about this. I wonder if you, at your fancy school, got taught how to handle the big stuff.
I just need to know if we’re doing the right thing, because I don’t want to lose what we have.
I’m sending a photo of the invocation. Please, if you were ever my friend, can you check this against your library? This email will delete itself after 24 hours so you don’t have much time. I don’t have much time.
I hope that it all goes well. I hope that we reach the goddess. And if we don’t then I hope that you remember me, remember us all, that we lived.
Love, Julia
That afternoon, there was a single email in her inbox. No sender, no identifying information. Just a few short words.
Dear Julia:
You can do this.
And an attachment, the spell, with one line changed.
AFTER
He came with her, to Murs. At first, he refused to touch anything that looked even remotely magical. He hated Pouncy on sight (Julia was sure he’d come round) but bonded fast with Asmo and had a tentative friendship with Failstaff. The real turning point came when Plum arrived; a student who’d been kicked out of Brakebills and came onto their magical radar by way of a particularly intriguing spell that Iris had developed. (“Call it my Wayward Children spell,” she said.)
Julia realised that, like her, Quentin was healing. Late one night, they sat in the summoning room together (the place still felt so heavy), with wine, and a fire, and he, haltingly, explained what had happened. “Fillory is real, Julia.”
She almost fell out of her chair. “The fuck?”
And so he told her, the whole story, how it turned out to be less of a dream and more of a nightmare, and how people - and the girl he loved - had died. And she listened, holding his hand, seeing in him the traces of the boy she’d grown up with who’d had all of his dreams dashed.
She shared with him in turn. And they recognised the darkness in each others’ stories. The pull to the pit that even medication couldn’t always fix. He looked at her with a kind of hope and wonder at how happy she was here, at Murs, because she had survived. She’d fought so hard until she got here and then she’d fought so hard again to keep it.
“I’m sorry, Julia,” he finally said. “I’m so sorry. For messing up our friendship. For turning my back on you. That’s not what friends do and I hope you can forgive me some day.”
She wanted to. The last few weeks that Quentin had been here, they’d been forging a new connection. Remembering the good. Sharing laughter over the things they’d done as kids. Wanting desperately to hold on to that connection because this - Quentin - was the bridge between her old life and her new life and if she could make that bridge stable, then maybe she could (one day!) go home again. See her parents. Her sister. Be happy.
“I hope so too.”
BEFORE
They gathered in the Library somberly, at the appointed hour. They wore white gowns; and all of the artefacts were in place. But only Julia knew that the invocation had been altered (spellwork of the highest calibre - it had taken her hours) and she hoped and prayed to Our Lady Underground that the change was truly a message from the Goddess and not one from Quentin or Brakebills designed to fuck with her.
A chill went down her spine as Gummidgy began the incantation.
The wind roared. The windows blew out. Julia felt darkness shrouding her, she was hidden from the magic, hidden from her friends, unable to touch anything.
And then. Through the walls stepped a goddess. She shone in gold, but was shaking her head. The word “No” reverberated through her mind; she couldn’t be sure if the goddess had spoken it or if she’d just breathed it into the world. All Julia knew was that she would do anything to obey; the goddess spoke truth. She reached out a hand and the ancient script burned. The artefacts vanished.
And then, She smiled down on all of them, and through the blinding radiance, the only thing Julia could make out was her own face.
AFTER
The day Quentin did magic again, they all celebrated. The day his best friends from Fillory came to visit, they all celebrated again.
“Nice job, Quentin,” said Eliot, looking at the gardens. “I never pictured you as a professor but I gotta say, it works. You do look particularly dashing in that suit.” He gave Quentin a wink, and Quentin blushed.
It was kind of adorable to see.
“It’s all Julia,” he quickly added, introducing them. “She’s my best friend. We, uh, lost touch while I was at Brakebills, but she found me again.” He gave her a brilliant smile, squeezed her hand, and for a moment she felt like her heart would burst, because it was finally true.
She smiled at the two new arrivals, a little uncertain. They reeked of magic and royalty but she could tell that they truly loved Quentin, in the way that Asmo and Pouncy and Failstaff loved her.
Julia and Quentin gave what they deemed the “royal tour” and told the students that Eliot and Janet were visiting royalty from another land, which made Quentin laugh out loud before he realised it was actually true. The students seemed suitably awed, especially by the Fillorian clothing and Janet’s two axes which she wielded in a frightening demonstration of defensive magic. (“Can you teach us that?” asked Plum, and Quentin got a panicked look on his face before Julia jumped in and said, “We’ll consider adding it to the syllabus but for now we want you to get your levels.” Knowing Plum, she’d figure it out later and Julia was happy to privately mentor her. The girl was bright.)
Magic sparked across the grounds and Julia pointed out the field across the way. “We’re hoping to purchase that soon, so that we can expand. And we need more staff, too, so if you ever get tired of Fillory…” She made the invitation, not knowing how it would be received, and time would tell if either of Quentin’s friends took her up on it.
Hours later, she was chatting with Janet while the boys were off drinking together and reminiscing. “We have time magic in Fillory,” Janet explained. “Time runs different between our two worlds and as much as I love my kingdom, I also wanted to be able to come back here and, you know, not be an old crone. So El and I; we figured it out.”
“You figured out time travel?”
Janet laughed. “Kind of. We can’t change things. But we can visit different points in time. Just wind back the clock for a while… or a lifetime. And then it turns out that it was always meant to happen that way.”
Oh.
And at that, things suddenly clicked into place. “Will you teach me?”
BEFORE AND AFTER
Julia typed out the email. Short, to the point.
Dear Julia. You can do this.
She wanted to add so much more. “Julia, things will be okay. Julia, trust yourself. Julia, you have everything you need right here. You know this. Just be strong, be brilliant, be everything you are. Be YOU.”
But she couldn’t. Janet had warned her to not try to change things, because that only lead to chaos and time loops and had almost unravelled Fillory.
And so, Julia wrote the email as she remembered it, and saved herself. Saved her future.
She was Julia, and she was whole.