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Chapter Text

Eventually the girls turned back from the view of Cair Paravel and walked back to the Stone Table. Aslan still lay on it, looking so very small.

"What are we going to do?" Lucy wailed to Susan.

The air was chilled - with grief, Susan thought - and the air hung thick around the Stone Table.

"What can we do?" Susan said, her face dry. She had cried out all her tears and was nearing a state of despair. She reached out and touched the paw of Aslan. A fierce paw that would have slain enemies with ease. Now her brothers were likely fighting for their lives in vain.

"We shall find Peter and the others," said Susan, trying to sound confident. "The Witch can still be killed. We can still do what he would want us to do."

Lucy wiped her face and nodded, squaring up resolute. "We can do this for him," she said, and Susan twinged with jealousy, for Lucy sounded far more certain - and far more brave - than Susan.

They walked until the sun was high in the sky. They did not know where they were going, relying only on instinct and what they could remember of the conversation from before.

The birds, even in their sorrow, were guiding them towards the battle, tweeting at them of which way to go in between mournful chirps.

Neither girl had anything to say when they arrived and the battle stretched before them. The Witch had been using her wand, as statues littered the field. Peter and his army looked small and outnumbered. Peter himself was fighting the Witch, blade-on-blade.

"Susan, come on!" Lucy yelled and she ran as fast her short legs would take her, into the battle.

"No, we're not to be in battle!" Susan yelled, but it was too late. It happened so quickly once they had been realized. It took the ogre only two bounds to meet Lucy and one snap of his jaws with his terrible teeth to send her to the ground.

"Lucy!" Susan could think of nothing else, could hear nothing else but the blood pounding through her ears, as she ran towards her sister. The ogre had left immediately and a wide berth was forming around the fallen girl. Susan fell upon her, clawing at Lucy's face, desperate for her to wake up.

"Luce," Susan sobbed. "Luce, wake up." She remembered the little cordial that Lucy had been given by Father Christmas and carefully dribbled a few drops into her sister's mouth.

Susan did not know how long it would take for the vial to work but she half-dragged, half-carried Lucy behind the battle lines and propped her against a tree.

For good measure, she gave Lucy another two drops from the vial.

The battle still raged but news that a Daughter of Eve had fallen reverberated throughout.

"You cannot fulfil the prophecy!" the Witch yelled, her voice amplified by some magic. "You will bow to me. Aslan is dead, slain by my hand."

Many of those at the battle had not heard yet. There was despair from their side and whoops of great delight from the other.

"Never!" Peter yelled, raising his sword higher against the Witch. There was a small part of him that did not believe the news, for how could Lucy be dead? Aslan wouldn't let Edmund die, he wouldn't have sent Lucy to her death either. "We fight for a free Narnia!"

This emboldened the fighting and those on their side bravely battled on, though so many had been lost.

"You must come to Edmund, bring the vial," said a faun behind her. For a moment she thought it might have been Lucy's faun, but he had been taken to the castle, and who would have freed the castle? She hated to leave Lucy, but she would not lose both her younger siblings.

Edmund looked green and pale. "Oh, Ed," Susan said softly. As she had done for Lucy, she poured a few droplets into his mouth.

"There are more," said the faun, and though she hated to do it, once more Susan left a sibling and followed along the faun, dropping into the mouths of the wounded until the vial had run out.

And so the battle raged onward. It was a quite lengthy battle that raged, so I'll skip ahead to the end, when Susan had worked her way back towards Lucy, expecting the girl to be better than she had looked before, just like Edmund and the others.

But she was lying so very still, exactly how Susan had left her, and Susan screamed a long scream of true grief, grief that cannot be consoled or quenched. She was feeling what she had felt for Aslan a thousand times over and her heart felt as though it would burst from the sheer grief of it.

The battle stopped at this, of Susan's absolute confirmation that a Daughter of Eve had fallen. Soon, the only two left fighting were the Witch and Peter.

Peter held his sword against her knife for just a moment more before dropping the blade and running towards Susan's side. Lucy did not look like the peaceful dead the war pictures had shown him. She looked frozen in terror and so very small. The empty cordial was in Susan's hands and she was sobbing quietly.

"Why?" Peter moaned in despair. "Why has he abandoned us?"

"He thought he knew of magic from before the dawn of Time, of magic deeper than the Deep Magic," the Witch said from behind them. Susan jumped to her feet, but any resistance would have been for naught. They were outnumbered, and their army was scattering into the woods even now. "He was wrong," the Witch continued.

Edmund was crying deeply now for he had been to be executed by the Witch but Aslan had saved him but he'd rather be dead and Lucy saved, if it had to come to pass that one of them should be fated to die. He knew they all felt the same way.

"What will happen to us now?" he whispered urgently to Peter.

"I've no need of battle with you now," said the Witch, having overheard. "My wand has been broken, so servants you shall be. Bring the irons." The dwarf, having been right at his Queen's side this entire time, nodded and dashed off.

I shall spare the details of the process that followed, for they are terrible to write out and I'm sure your imaginations can fill in, and skip ahead instead to their arrival at the castle.

"Should we not lock them up," said the dwarf, roughly shoving Susan, who had found a new wave of tears and was crying piteously, to the ground. Peter tried to reach for her, but his own chains were too short.

The Witch laughed, "No, no. They will be paraded about, so all who dared to think of resisting me can see that their hopes are futile and the prophecy broken." She clapped her hands in delight. "Yes, let us prepare a cage."

And again I shall spare you the details of what occurred here except to say that while it was terrible, at least the remaining three were together. Take some small comfort in that, dear reader, for the White Witch could have done any number of things to our fallen heroes, but she chose to keep them together, and that would be her great undoing, though she would not realize it for a time to come, in another story.

So the Witch travelled Narnia, in her sleigh outfitted with large bells that sounded her arrival as far as the ear could hear. Dragging behind her, on a smaller sleigh, was the iron cage that contained the shackled children, who grew older, but no less despondent, within its walls.

The wolves and other horrible creatures would round up the residents of the woods as the sleighs approached and unless they all wanted a swift death everyone bowed to their Queen and sneered and threw stones at the iron cage.

The captives stared impassively back; they had long ago cried out their tears. They huddled together for warmth, still not used to the bitter cold and the furs they were given only just enough to keep the cold out, but not the wind.

Often they did not speak, and when they did, it was little except to coordinate bathroom necessities. There was nothing to speak about, much as there was nothing left to cry about.

The Witch never tired of them, their existence in her cage for them a constant delight. It had come to her ears that a white stag was running through her Narnia, and she knew she must catch it.

"What does she have left to wish for?" Susan said. Her hair reached nearly to her feet now, and was more black than grey, but there was quite a bit of grey.

Peter, with a grey beard to match Susan's hair, shook his head. "It matters not. Let us hope she does not catch it."

The sleighs raced on, passing by an out-of-place lamppost and picking up ground on the stag. Just as Susan covered her eyes, unable to bear the sight of the White Witch getting what she wanted, the sleighs took a corner, but the momentum snapped the chain holding their sleigh to hers and they crashed into the woods, spinning twice end over end and when they came to a stop, the door was bent ajar.

None of them spoke, but quickly exited the cage, stumbling on legs that had not been properly used in some decades. They clung to each other as one mass, pushing through the thicket of woods, away from the sound of the dwarf behind them.

Presently, it got easier to walk on their own legs and their hands and ankles felt lighter and it wasn't brush they were pushing through, but … coats?

And just like that, three children fell out of the wardrobe, finally free at last.

Chapter Text

It was here now that the Chronicles of Narnia came to an end for the Pevensies. It is here now that the Chronicles of Narnia should have come to an end for all, but the prophecy, calling to be fulfilled, found a way.

It is not hard to imagine what came next for the Professor, unable to explain how he had completely lost a child in his care, with the children telling fanciful tales of being lost in a secret world. It was determined the old man had inflicted a serious trauma on all four of the children, though the three of them protested desperately that was not the case. He was left in utter ruins but the servants, who had done no wrong and were not held to be in any fault for the disappearance of Lucy, still cared for the house, seeing to it that everything that wasn't to be destroyed was sold off properly to pay his restitution to the Pevensies.

The wardrobe, beautiful, but old, had been marked with a ticket stating it was to be burned, with several other wooden pieces the appraiser didn't think would fetch any money. Ivy, the youngest of the servants, had found the wardrobe beautiful and had it taken to her mother's place rather than seeing it destroyed.

So it came to pass that Ivy grew to be a grandmother of her own and entertained her grandchildren gayily. There were four of them, two older girls and their younger twin brothers. The brothers bounced around the house, hiding from their sisters and one day they sneaked to the attic and entered an old wardrobe, stuffed with old dresses and thick coats. They pushed their way to the back … and felt snow. (You remember, I did say the servants didn't come into the story much, and they don't. Ivy gave a reprieve to our stories instead of being the vehicle that ended them completely.)

What follows after the two boys felt snow is the story of the White Witch's undoing - a direct result of her keeping the surviving Pevensie's together, for it is unknown what would have happened had only one returned to our world - or worse, if she had killed all of them.

I had mentioned the story her undoing was a whole other story, and it is. Perhaps in some time we shall get to it.