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And all that remains is the faces and the names
Of the wives and the sons and the daughters…
-Gordon Lightfoot, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald
It was two weeks before Susan finally spoke his name.
The last of the visitors had gone home, the funerals over and the wills read, and the work of disposing of her family’s various possessions and properties loomed over her like an unassailable mountain. She had worked hard and steadily through it all, her hair done perfectly and make-up un-smudged, accepting condolences and platitudes with grace and just the right mix of sorrow and stiff-upper-lip.
As always, she had done what was expected of her.
Two weeks, and she had not cried since the first shock of finding out. She had done what needed to be done mechanically, numbly, emotions walled up behind her polite and tearless face. Friends from school had shown up with tea and sympathy, nosy neighbors had come with gossip and sharp looks, and officials from the railroad had presented clipped, business-like condolences amid explanations as to why, legally, they were not to blame.
Susan was exhausted.
She felt empty, almost as though she, too, had died, and no one had happened to notice. The ache in her chest refused to go away, throbbing under her sternum like a broken rib, and it hurt just to breathe, to keep on breathing, lungs pumping away because there was nothing else, really, to do. She held herself together and smiled brittle smiles and applied her lipstick with a shaking hand, wore her black dresses and sensible shoes and tried to pretend that any of it mattered.
And then, at long last, it was over. The visitors went home, the solicitors needed “time to consult”, and Susan was, finally, alone. There was no one else in the empty flat, only the awful, aching gap that should have been filled with parents and siblings. She curled up on the floor, arms around her knees, and tried to cry, or pray, or scream, or something, but nothing came.
Not tears, not God, not even the sound of her own voice, and in that moment of emptiness and despair, she whispered the name that she hadn’t spoken in so long; a name belonging far more to childhood fantasies than the adult life she’d so carefully carved for herself.
“Aslan.”
Her voice was hardly more than a whisper, and it trembled. She stared at the bare wall, and this time her voice was higher, almost a sob. “Aslan!”
And, impossibly, he was there.
He was just as she remembered him, huge, golden, terrible and wonderful, and the look in his great eyes was of deep sadness. He padded across the room toward her, his giant paws making no sound, and she sat up to look at him.
This could not be real.
“You called me, my daughter.” His voice was still rich and deep, and carried the same sorrow she’d seen in his face. “I am here.”
“Aslan,” she said again, and stared at him, unable to say anything more. This couldn’t be happening; it couldn’t.
But when she reached out a hand, tentatively, she touched soft fur; when he bent his head a little closer, tongue flicking out to brush her forehead, she smelled the rich, honey scent of his breath, strong and wild and real.
It was really him.
She felt as though she were choking; the weight on her lungs made it hard to breathe. She had forgotten; she had turned her back on Narnia, convinced herself that it was only a child’s game, made vivid by a child’s imagination. She had turned her back on him. Words found their way to her tongue, and in her consternation she let them out.
“Am I being punished?”
Aslan sat before her, curling his tufted tail neatly around his legs. “Punished, my daughter? For what?”
“For…” She swallowed, looked at the floor. “For not believing in you.”
“I do not punish people for their unbelief.”
Susan jerked her head back up, trying to read the leonine face. “Then why was I… why was I the only one—left—left behind?” Her voice broke. “They’re all gone. All of them. Why?”
He sighed, engulfing her in a warm wind. “Sometimes, my dear, there are no reasons.”
“How can you say that?” she demanded, the ice that had lodged in her chest the past two weeks giving way suddenly to anger, hot and sure. “When we were—the prophecy—none of that was just—just chance!”
“No,” he said slowly, “That was not. It is true; destiny has guided your footsteps for most of your life. Your brothers and sister were always going to return to Narnia, some day.”
“But not me.”
He met her eyes with his golden ones. “Would you wish to?”
“I…” The anger fled as suddenly as it had come, leaving her small and lost and unbearably empty again. She hugged her knees to her, trying to anchor herself. “I don’t know. I thought—I told myself—we’d… I didn’t know it was real. I—I forgot. Can I… could I go back? If I wanted to?”
“You could,” he said. “There are any number of worlds you may enter when the time comes, Susan Pevensie. I do not know which you will choose.”
Perhaps, at some other time, this would prove an interesting line of thought to go down. Now, though, it could only be a momentary distraction. “Why?” she said again. “If I’m not—if this isn’t a punishment—”
“Susan,” he said, and his voice was warm, and sympathetic, and terribly reassuring. “Dear child. Others—many others—died on that train. It was an accident.” He must have caught her skepticism because he continued, “My daughter, powerful I may be, but I do not control the chances of this world or any other. It is the Sons and Daughters of Adam and Eve who mark the fates of your world, not I.”
“But you… you brought the stone creatures back to life. You killed the White Witch!”
“But I could not prevent her coming, nor the winter and death she brought with her.”
Susan looked at him, and remembered how he had looked when he lay upon the Stone Table, shorn and bound and sad and noble, and thought that perhaps she understood. He had known the Deep Magic, but on that hilltop, surrounded by the Witch’s minions, he had still been uncertain and afraid. Meeting his eyes, she saw her own raging grief staring back at her.
“Oh, Aslan,” she said, and flung her arms around him, burying her face in his soft mane. The wild, warm scent of him filled her nostrils, and it was that, perhaps, which finally broke down the walls inside her, and released her tears.