The Magician’s Land by Lev Grossman Page A

or that he hadn’t properly paid his dues yet, which was true. Maybe they figured he wouldn’t be here that long, so what was the point. The politics of the senior common room were byzantine and involved a lot of power struggles to which he, as low man on the totem pole, just wasn’t very relevant.
    Also it was possible that they just didn’t like him very much. It had been known to happen.
    Whatever the reason, he drew a lot of undesirable solo duties, like refereeing cold, wet welters matches and patching the dull but finicky network of spells that was supposed to bust students breaking curfew. (Now that he got a close look at it, he couldn’t believe how much they used to worry about getting caught. The spells were so rickety and put out so many false alarms that the faculty mostly ignored them.)
    The next day after P.A., Quentin walked over to Botany Bay. His expectations weren’t high. He’d never spoken to the department chair, Hamish Bax, and he didn’t know what to make of him. On the plus side he was youngish, at least by Brakebills standards, mid-thirties maybe. On the minus side he was unbelievably affected: he was black and from Cleveland but dressed in Scottish tweeds and smoked a fat Turk’s-head pipe. He was the first person Quentin had ever seen in real life wearing plus fours. The whole business made him hard to read. Though maybe that was the point.
    At least Quentin had an excuse to visit the greenhouse, which was a lovely bit of Victorian iron and glass tracery that looked too delicate to withstand an upstate winter. Inside it was a green bubble of warm, humid air full of tables of potted plants of all imaginable shapes and sizes. The cement floor was wet. Short and solidly built, Professor Bax greeted him with the same lack of interest as the rest of the faculty. He didn’t seem particularly pleased to be interrupted doing whatever he was doing with his arms up to the elbows in a giant ceramic pot full of black earth. But he brightened up when Quentin zipped open a velvet-lined portfolio and the page immediately shook itself and wriggled free, like a silvery fish escaping a net.
    “That’s a live one,” he said, teeth clenched around his pipe.
    He wiped his hands on a rag. Using a quick spell that completely eluded Quentin’s comprehension he trapped the page flat in the air in front of him, as if between two panes of glass. It was the kind of fluent, rather technical magic you didn’t expect from a botanist.
    “Mmmmm. You’re a long way from home.” Then he addressed Quentin. “Where’d you get this?”
    “I could tell you but you wouldn’t believe me. Do you recognize the plant?”
    “I don’t. Think it’s a real plant? Drawn from life?”
    “I have no idea,” Quentin admitted. “Do you?”
    Professor Bax studied the page for five minutes, first from so close his face almost touched the paper, then from a yard away, then—he had to shift a table crammed with seedlings in egg cartons—from across the room.
    He took his pipe out of his mouth.
    “I’m going to say a word you don’t know.”
    “OK,” Quentin said.
    “Phyllotaxis.”
    “Don’t know it.”
    “It’s the way leaves are arranged around a central stalk,” Professor Bax said. “It looks chaotic but it’s not, it follows a mathematical sequence. Usually Fibonacci, sometimes Lucas. But the leaves on this plant don’t follow either of those. Which suggests that its origin is exceptionally exotic.”
    “Or that it’s just a made-up drawing.”
    “Right. And Occam’s razor says it probably is. And yet.” Hamish frowned. “It’s got something. Plants have a certain integrity to them, you know? Hard to fake that. You’re sure you can’t tell me where it’s from?”
    “I shouldn’t.”
    “Don’t then.” He gestured at the text. “Can you read that shit?”
    “I’m working on it.”
    Professor Bax released the page from its trap. He plucked it out of the air before it could fall. It was limp and