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Lucy doesn't remember how many birthdays have passed since they left the other place, the place Mr. Tumnus calls Spare Oom. Only that they must be many, because she's outgrown her clothes and her pony. His name is Edgar, and she still goes to see him sometimes, and he tells her all the gossip and she scratches that spot on his back he can't reach with his teeth or a roll on the grass.
She thinks she used to remember more, about the time when it was always cold and there was war and Edmund almost died and Aslan *did* die. She knows he did, because she dreams about it, and wakes up with her throat raw from crying.
She remembers how awful and empty she felt, like she would never be as safe with anyone--not even Peter or Susan or Edmund--as she was with Aslan.
No one else will let her talk about those bad things, except Mr. Tumnus, who puts his arms around her and lets her hide her face while she remembers. He doesn't try to distract her or change the subject when she asks him what happened. He tells her about the wolves, and about the White Witch --
I thought of you, when she made me bleed. And I was glad you got away.
-- and Lucy tells him how she tried to convince her brothers and sister to help her find him, because she knew he was in trouble because of her, and she couldn't bear it.
I would have come back, Mr. Tumnus. I would have come back by myself, and found you.
Back from *where*? She doesn't know. But she remembers thinking that. She knows she did.
She asks him the same things over and over, and remembers for a short time, and that makes it feel real for a while. The memories cling and melt like snowflakes on her mittens, fleeting and fragile and gone before she even knows they're there. She doesn't understand why she wants them so badly, when they make her so sad.
What was it like, when you turned to stone?
It was nothing, until you were there, and I was alive again. It was waiting.
Mr. Tumnus doesn't live in the little cave house anymore, but they go there together when it's raining, and he makes tea and toast, and sometimes she falls asleep on the bed. She dreams that he touches her eyelashes, and his voice shakes, and he says, "Not yet, Lucy. Not yet." She wakes up with tears on her face.
Aslan comes back only once, and Mr. Tumnus is not there in the Great Hall, and he is not there later when it is just the few of them around the fireplace, Lucy's family, and the beavers, and the fox.
Aslan asks, "Is Tumnus well?" and, "Is he kind to you?" and Lucy smiles and says,"Oh, yes," and thinks of the two chairs in the little house.
One for me and one for a friend.
Mr. Tumnus gives her things, and she keeps them on the table next to her bed. A pretty stone, a jeweled button, a sea shell, a blue feather. The stone is smooth and pleasing, and sometimes when she wakes from a nightmare she holds it in her hand until she falls asleep again.
He lives in the castle now --
So you always know where to find me.
-- and never says no to a picnic or swimming or picking flowers. He lets her read his books, and they laugh over the ridiculously wrong parts of Is Man a Myth?
There's a drawing in it of a little boy standing next to a lamp-post. Mr. Tumnus doesn't like the picture, so she doesn't look at it as often as she'd like, but sometimes when he's drowsing in his chair with a belly full of sweet cakes, she takes the book down and stares at the picture, and wonders why it doesn't upset her, too.
Even when it's cold they go to the seaside, wrapped up together in one of Peter's many cloaks. They sit in the sand and watch the waves, and Mr. Tumnus plays his flute. His ears are soft, like her favorite velvet dress, only warm and alive, and irresistible. When she runs her fingertip along the silky edge, he closes his eyes and says, "Lucy ..."
He says it like she's hurting him.
He says, "Not yet, Lucy. Not yet."
She isn't quite sure what they're waiting for, only that the waiting is harder for him than for her.
He mustn't worry so, she thinks. They have all the time in world for toast and tea, and for hide and seek in the woods, and for his gentle lips on her temple when he leaves her.
All the time in the world.
She's had two birthdays since they tumbled back into the spare room, but it feels like an eternity, here in this dead world where the animals don't talk and magic is only make-believe.
She creeps into the wardrobe at night, desperate and sad. The coats are soft against her cheek and she thinks Mr. Tumnus, but her fingers find nothing at the back but cool wood, and she kneels in the dark and cries.
She was a queen and she had a lion for a friend and she had Mr. Tumnus, who dried her tears with his fluffy scarf when she fell off her pony, and let her eat all the sardines if she wanted them, and told her --
"Not yet, Lucy. Not yet."
-- that she was Narnia's queen, but she was *his* Lucy, and made her believe he could wait for her forever.
She can't bear the thought of never seeing him again, of him alone in the little house, wondering where she's gone, why she left him and didn't say goodbye.
It's colder here than any winter in Narnia, and just as bleak. A hundred years of hopelessness. Even Aslan can't help her now. The wet fur against her lips is cold and dead, and the smooth shape in her palm is only a mothball.
She understands now, why he was afraid of the lamp-post. She understands now, what waiting feels like, and how awful time can be. She has her whole life ahead of her --
All the time in the world.
-- and not a minute of it matters.
What was it like, when you turned to stone?
It was cold and dark and lonely, and I wished to see you one more time.
The End