The Numbers Tree

"Who's that?" Margo asked, looking at Numbers.

Julia looked at the girl crouched in the grass. "She calls herself Numbers."

Penny gestured at the clock in the tree and smirked at Quentin. "It's digital. That must ruin your nerd-boy fantasy." Quentin rolled his eyes. 

Margo had walked up to the tree and was running a hand over its trunk. "Numbers, what is this thing?"

Eliot looked at her curiously. "It's what we call it a 'tree,' darling. I didn't really think you'd actually take one of the little blue ones--"

Thunder boomed from the edge of the forest and a thick mass of clouds condensed over the trees bordering the meadow. Numbers leapt to her feet and looked up at the clock over her shoulder. The red numbers were jumping between 00:00 and 00:01. 

Something small and soft struck Quentin in the back of the head. He flinched and looked for what had hit him. It was a moth, the first of the cloud advancing across the meadow.

"We have to go," she said. "He's here. Put on your glasses."

"I don't wear--" he began, and looked in his hand to find he was holding a pair of square-framed reading glasses. "--wait, how--?"

"Follow me!" Numbers cried, and led them towards the tree. Quentin unfolded the glasses and put them on. Another plane of reality jumped into his vision. 

"Whoa!" he heard from behind him. Eliot had put on a pair of round, gold-rimmed glasses and was gazing at the door which had appeared under one of the tree's branches. 

Numbers opened it and beckoned them go inside. "Come on--through here--"

Julia looked back over her shoulder at the gathering clouds. "Julia! Come on!" Quentin called. 

"What are we doing?" she yelled. "We'll be trapped in there with him."

"He's coming--you really want to face him out here?" Julia looked back at the forest. "Come on!" Quentin cried. She hesitated a moment longer, then came in after him and Numbers closed the door behind them. 

The others had gathered in what looked like the foyer of an old English mansion and were looking around dazedly. Margo, however, was beaming behind her retro cat eye glasses.

"This place looks like Plover's," Penny said. Quentin suppressed a laugh. Penny's glasses were big, 80s Coke-bottle nerd glasses that made his eyes look enormous.

"Some pretty sexy hacking," Margo said admiringly, running a hand up the balustrade. Eliot goggled at her. Margo grinned at him, "I had a life before you, darling," she purred.

"What are we going to to about the Beast?" Julia asked. "He's going to be at the door any minute and we'll be stuck in here with him."

"Not quite," Numbers said, and gestured up the staircase. "The network's root access is up there. It'll connect you directly with a portal out into another part of Fillory."

Quentin turned to Penny. "We'll figure out that part. You have to go."

"And what--smash the servers with a big hammer? That's actually the plan?"

"Well--preferably give us a chance to get out first--then smash--but yeah," Quentin replied.

Penny rolled his eyes. "And if you don't get out?" 

"Smash anyway," Julia said firmly.

"We'll make it out," Quentin said. "We'll give a signal--a flare over the treetops."

"You have to go--now--" Julia urged.

Penny rolled his eyes and disappeared, the sound of the word "crazy" still hanging in the air.

Numbers listened at the shut door. "The Beast--he's finding a way in--tearing open a portal for himself--you have to go--"

Eliot and Margo started up the stairs, Julia behind them. Quentin paused. "What about you?" he asked Numbers.

She looked at them, then defiantly at the door. "It's my network. I'll defend it."

"You should come with us," he said.

"No--I built this. It's mine to protect."

"It really is beautiful," Margo said. Numbers looked up at her and nodded.

Julia urged them, "Ok, let's go." 

"Nerd," Eliot muttered to Margo as he followed her up the stairs.

They gathered in the large drawing room where stacks of hand-written programs and pieces of computers lay scattered all over the long table in the center of the room. Margo called everyone over to a tangle of roots which had grown up into an alcove set in the wall. 

"Here--" she said. "The root--" She chuckled to herself. "Wow, I just got that." 

"What?" Eliot asked.

"Nothing," she said, waving her hand. "Nerd joke."

She studied the tangled network of roots for a few seconds. Julia looked anxiously at the stairs. Margo mused, "The servers are what ground the virtual Fillory to the real Fillory. We can access them here--" She reached into the alcove to touch the place where the root seemed to be growing out of the wall. "Ow--damn!" she hissed, withdrawing her hand.

"What is it?" Julia asked.

"The network--it's warded against intruders."

"Numbers has to lift the warding," Quentin said. 

"Numbers!" Julia yelled down the stairs.

There was a loud bang as the front door was blown off its hinges. They heard the dreaded, familiar hum of the Beast's cloud of moths, and then a soft gasp and a crunch. There was a beat of silence, then the thud of a body falling to the floor.

Julia said quietly, "We have to get out. Now." 

They heard a footfall on the first step. Heart pounding, Quentin cast a spell to collapse the stairs. A low chuckle rose from the first floor and the footsteps started up the staircase which was no longer there.

"Margo! Do something!" Julia yelled.

Margo plunged her hand into the network and closed her hand over the base of the root. Her other hand cast and set the root aflame. 

The head of the Beast cleared the top of the stairs.

Quentin's vision dissolved into a field of white pixels.