What Happens in Salem (Extended)

Reverend Eliot Waugh

Quentin hits the dirt screaming, fists full of pine needles. Julia's notebook is gone and the silence says Eliot is too. He pushes himself to his knees and squints through the darkness for Alice, Penny, Margo, anybody at this point, really. Instead he finds himself on the edge of a forest path, immense trees behind him and a village of crude log and stone cabins stretching before him illuminated by a crimson dawn.

"We did it," he wheezes and the words and whip crack of wind nearly convince him he isn't dreaming.

A low moan cuts off his celebration and he stumbles to the side, catching sight of Alice, on her feet but leaning against the plank canvas of a welcome sign, head down. He scrambles to her side and she grabs onto his rough, unfamiliar sleeve for support. Slathered across the words "Entering Salem" is a damp scarlet smiley face. The rock face of Proctor's Ledge juts from the hill beyond it, pricked with gallows posts.

Blood like drips splatter across Quentin's boots. Alice bends to retrieve Julia's battered notes from the mud. He can't meet Alice's eyes. He recalls the giddy weightless rush--lifting them from Julia's nightstand the day before as he fumbled through receipts and ticket stubs--anything to help him find her.

Julia had read a Brakebill's thesis paper explaining that Salem, Massachusetts once sheltered a community of Master Magicians. Somehow their non-magic neighbors had found out and devised a way to neutralize and execute every Magician they could find. Julia's notes laid out a plan to steal that magic from 1692 and bring it back to the present flippantly titled #BattleTheBeast. She told no one.

Now the sight sends a shard of glass down his throat. Julia was supposed to be here.

Quentin wraps his shaking arm through Alice's steady one and they trudge across the path toward town. Gallow posts peek eagerly over the rooftops behind them like children on tiptoe.

The wet wind smells of fire and sends a chill through their bones. Quentin leans in and she yanks her arm away from him, propping open Julia's notebook. He catches a glimpse of the marker across the cover where Julia had teasingly scrawled "Fillory and Further: Volume 6."

"Guess we know who killed all the Magicians in Salem," Alice remarks, reading and walking.

"Julia," he answers hoarsely, quickening his pace. "The Beast follows her here, undoes some memory wipes, gives the crazy colonials a way to disarm and kill Magicians, takes out generations of potential enemies before they've even been born..."

"It all feels a little convenient, Q."

"Julia would never betray us."

But Alice saw his last argument with Julia after he slipped Dean Fogg truth serum. They could both still hear her crying, "Damn it, Q! If fighting the Beast has gotten us all killed a dozen times, could you just use that big brain of yours to deduce that maybe we're the problem? We will never be that powerful! Maybe we shouldn't be fighting him at all. We should be joining him while we still can."

"You don't mean that," he had choked back.

"All I know is if you didn't have this whacked time loop vendetta against the Beast, maybe our best friend James wouldn't be dead right now. But hey. Less competition for you."

She left in a rage, footsteps scorching with every step, and she hadn't returned.

Alice ignored him, rapidly flipping pages, muttering, "Assuming Eliot's not dead or on a bender in Fiji, he probably got here a week ago. Which means he should be on Brakebill's registry of Salem's Magicians. Unless this whole notebook is made up."