Fillory is No Place for Children

Brooklyn, NY

A woman sat on a wooden bench just across the path from a small playground in a small park in the not so small city of Brooklyn. That particular bench was rarely used as it was too far from the playground for the helicopter parents that buzzed after errant toddlers, yet it was too close for parents like Quentin's, who preferred the drop and run style of parenting.

Quentin crouched under the jungle gym with his best friend Julia. A piece of artificial mulch stuck uncomfortably in his backside. Julia had cleared the ground to the soft dirt and was frantically sketching out their next adventure in the moist soil with a stick. Quentin noticed that she wasn't sitting on the painful mulch, but he was too indolent to clear enough space to sit comfortably as well.

Besides, he was finding it difficult to concentrate. He kept staring at the strange woman on the bench.

Her cheeks were wind-slapped bright pink against her pale complexion. She tapped a perfect pink nail against her perfect pink lips as she read. The rest of her was lost in the layers of coat, scarf, one glove and unfortunate orange hat that clashed terribly with the strands of auburn hair that stuck out of it. Still, Quentin would, objectively, admit that she was pretty.

But that wasn't what grabbed his attention.

No, what grabbed his attention was the book she was reading. The bright, 1970s color pallet slashed across the cover jarred with the muted tones of the quaint winter park scene around them. The title scrawled in overly scripted font, but Quentin could read it quite clearly, and his heart stuttered in excitement.

Fillory and Further by Christopher Plover. Book Six.

"Are you even listening, Q?" Julia had phrased it as a question, but Quentin heard the reprimand nonetheless.

"Do you see that woman over there? The one in the green jacket?"

Julia had a peculiar way of tilting her eyebrows when a teacher at school asked her a question she felt beneath her. She had never used it on Quentin before, and it left him with the sudden urge to quote Hamlet or solve a very complicated math problem. Anything to prove he was not as ignorant as her eyes accused him of being.

"Of course. Why wouldn't I see her?" Julia asked.

"She's reading a Fillory book."

Julia sighed, her eyebrows realigning to a familiar look of exasperation. She turned back to her map and began sketching in the Copper Mountains, an angry line of triangles resembling the lower jaw of some magical monster desperate to devour the Chatwin children on their next adventure. "Lots of people read Fillory, Q."

But Quentin had never seen an adult reading one before. Even now, at the exceptionally mature age of nine, all of Quentin's friends had lost interest in the series. All but Julia, and Quentin often suspected she only feigned her fanaticism for the sake of their friendship. Quentin however was a true fanatic. He had read and reread all of Plover's novels. Even the incredibly long, overly dull the Wandering Dune, the fifth and final Fillory story.

There was no book six. Quentin was positive.

He crawled out from under the jungle gym, ignoring the sputtered outrage from Julia.

He walked over to the bench and stood before her, but she never stopped reading. Never stopped tapping her lip, her finger keeping perfect time with the soft ticking of the watch she wore as a locket around her neck. Tap. Tap.

The watch made him uncomfortable. It reminded him unpleasantly of the villainous Watcher Woman from the Fillory books. An ache formed in his gut, and he grew lightheaded.