Explorers in an Explored Land #BattleTheBeast

Grove of Poplars - A Magicians Story | #BattleTheBeast

"Should we tell him?" the grove asked itself.

"Tell me what?" Quentin asked.  His world was all around him, brimming with an unspecified association of the magic used to conjure it into existence.  The Magician's Land was Quentin's, the exiled King's, to explore.  A place of bridges and great spanning vistas of green grass and grey rock stood as a monument of his and Plum's unrivaled achievement. There was no fountain in the Neitherlands, nor could Penny blink in and out of its existence.  Around him was crisp and new and undiscovered; he explored a world he thought he created. 

Quentin Coldwater, the only man having held the power of a god, saved all of Fillory, but chose to reside amongst the strained poplars of that new place.  "Tell me what?" Quentin asked.

"No.  He doesn't fully understand where he even is.  Not ready," the grove of trees talked back to him.  Their unified voice was like a wisp of air jammed into a sewer grate and listened through an ear horn people on YouTube mistake for a time traveler's cell phone.  

"I've made this place," Quentin said, brushing away a lock of his crisp white hair.  Alice had learned to find the change dashing, but she refused to truly say it. 

The trees stirred in the breeze.  "Do you believe this place is something of your own design?  You are not a God, Quentin Coldwater.  Ember and Umber were Gods, willed into existence by the universe itself.  We, this grove of poplars, you converse with are not your creation. The Neitherlands has no fountain connecting here, but it borders on it.  Our roots dig through the earth in every world.  We are even near to Julia. We feel her even now so very far away.  She has her own roots now, touching ours," the poplars whirred. 

"But what shouldn't you tell me?"

"You're already along that Bridge, Quentin Coldwater.  This world trestles on the next.  A link in an infinite chain of infinite complexity.  Why should we tell you what you already know?"  It paused for a moment leaving only a gap where the white birds nesting in their branches could sing.  "Take off your shoes."  He argued with them over what he was to do with his mud covered sneakers, but in losing, he rolled his socks down into his shoes and his pants up mid shin.  He stood in the damp grass like Huckleberry Finn waiting for raft ride with Jim the Slave.  "Time means very little to us along the trestles of all the worlds, Quentin Coldwater.  What does time mean for you?  You with your obsession with the Chatwin girl and her silver pocket watch?"

The Watcherwoman. It brought him back.  She had rewound and forwarded time, damning all of those around her to reset and experience another infinite and painful cycle.  She was kinetic and alluring to him in the Fillory and Futher series, but he was beyond that twist of time, finally facing the Beast, her brother.  "I'm not heading back to Fillory. My place is here."

"Into the dirt." The poplars whispered.  His bare feet dug into the freshly displaced soil, and his wiggling toes felt the crawl of the worms and the jagged bits of freshly cleaved stone.  It was as if he took his first petrichor flavored breath.  Rushes of ambient alien noise reminded him of the white noise machine his mother bought for him one Christmas.  The truth was he received it to mask the noise of the married bickering his parents had.  The heel of his foot had grown and burrowed beneath him.  His toes pulled and separated into the grit rich soil and stretched out.  "Time has no place, not for the trees.  You'll understand shortly enough, but what happens occurs simultaneous to those who experience time for what it is.  Nothing.  Feel for Fillory Quentin Coldwater.  You are going back.  Back to Fillory where your childhood notions died.  The Beast waits for you again."

"Why are you sending me there or then?"

"There is no time, not in the way we see it.  It has happened and it will happen again. The Watcherwoman knew.  You are on that bridge you claim to have created.  We are showing that we created you."  Each of those unified voices blurred and hissed into a silent black where he felt himself dripping deep into the ground.  The flow of water rushed around him.  The gentle shifts in the earth moved for him as his roots burrowed deep into the Magician's Land.

He sprouted from the ground near the shed.  His arms moved back into place.  His white hair returned, and his wooden shoulder creaked growing back faster than his bones.  The air was still sweet in Fillory, and the taste of magic was there.  Basking in the breeze he swayed feeling the wind placed back into Fillory. 

All the clocks in all the trees in Fillory stopped.  "No such thing as time, eh?" Quentin asked the poplars a universe away.  Their hands ticked back and forth and died as he pulled his bare feet from the soil.  The glass of the timepieces shattered and fell to the ground.

In Fillory again, he knew what was to transpire, and he bolted down the steps toward the well.  "Martin!  I know you're there.  Leave them alone!" He shouted.  Stranger things had happened to him than yelling at his childhood hero that was about to eat a chunk from his shoulder.  The wood ached where Martin had sank his teeth.  All of the ideas of paradoxes and parallel worlds and every terrible episode of Star Trek ran through his mind.  They burst out of him like exhaust as his naked feet bounded each stair downward. 

"Another Quentin Coldwater. How delightful," Martin Chatwin said.  "In all the times my dear sister reset this silly loop, I've never experienced another one of you to kill.  Ah, it isn't any bother.  She is dead.  No more time for looping.  Isn't that right Quentins?"  He moved in his irregular walk through the field of moths.  Tiny brown wings obscured him, each with their own large black blinking eyes looking back at the two of them.  "Love what you've done with your hair. You'll fit in with the locals quite nicely."

Penny stepped forward building an arsenal of battle magic.  Like before, Martin raised his hand and lifted Penny off the ground dangling by his wrists.   With his free six digit hand he motioned to have them lopped off.  "Stop." Quentin said calmly, still feeling himself rustle in the wind amongst the poplars.  He arched his fingers back and clamped down to the moons below each finger, and Martin rammed into the bookshelf against the wall near the lit window buried deep beneath Fillory.  "Not again, Martin."

"Again?  We've done this thirty-nine other times.  Each more interesting than the last."

Quentin raised his hand, and the white blade flew to his raised palm.  "Always wanted to do that," Quentin said.

"Really.  You become a powerful magician to make Luke Skywalker impressions? Mmm, yes?" the other younger Quentin said.

"Shove it."  The flow power from Umber still echoed in him.  He had imbibed in their strength.  The grip of the blade, once burning, was cool to the touch.  Turning his attention to Martin, he pointed the blade against his throat.  "You did this to me.  You did this."  He pulled back his shirt exposing the centaur carved wood.  "But you lose, Martin.  I've already met you in the afterlife.  You're just as miserable dead as you ever were alive."

All of his favorite stories of Fillory and Further hinged on Martin Chatwin, the Beast.  All of his horrors of that same place hinged on him as well.  "I imagine you're going to try something new again?  This is the final time.  I've finally disposed of my pesky sister."

"Do it numb nuts," Penny shouted.  "God, just give the knife back to Alice."

"Damnit Penny.  Just let me have this.  Years go by and you're still a dick," Quentin said.  He took the blade and dragged it across the air and slashed against Martin's hands.  His extra fingers fell to the ground in a sputter on dull noise and crimson red.  "I've got this under control."

"Are you so sure Quentin?"  Martin said with a laugh.  He ripped the clock off the wall and embedded the gleaming box of gears into Quentin's shoulder with a Fillorian incantation. It sputtered and whirred.  Amber sparks spurred between him and clock till fused. Martin, dripping blood on to his white shirt spun the hands on the clock.  "Two can play at this game, Mr. Coldwater."

The world spun around him and he sank back up through the ground and across the trestle.  "Should we tell him?" the grove asked itself.  "No no.  Definitely not ready."