Quentin wakes up in a monastery run by centaurs. He’s been brought here by Eliot and the others to help him recover. The centaurs tell Quentin that his friends had stayed as long as they could, but after a month or two, they stopped believing “that [Quentin] would ever wake up” (372), and decided to leave. That was around four months ago. Quentin has, in fact, “been asleep for six months and two days” (370), one of the centaurs tells him.

As Quentin fully awakens, he can’t help but think of Alice. The guilt and grief for her overwhelm him and they unfold:

new dimensions he hadn’t known were there. He felt like he’d only seen and loved her, really loved her, all of her, for those last few hours. Now she was gone, broken by the glass animal she’d made that first day they’d met, and the rest of his life lay in front of him like a barren, meaningless postscript (373- 34).

Quentin’s hair has turned white, and the centaurs have healed his collarbone, right shoulder, and knee using “a smooth, highly polished fruit wood” (374). They have done a nice job, Quentin thinks, even ensuring that he has a full range of flexibility in his shoulder and knee.