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Lucy and Edmund stand on the railway platform, waiting; Eustace tears his gaze from the compartment window. The train slows, jerking to a halt, and Eustace stands, pulls his case down from the overhead rack, steps off the train, and looks about for his cousins.
“Eustace!” Lucy throws her arms around his neck and leans back to look up at his face. “You’ve grown taller than me.”
“So he has,” Edmund notes with a grin. “Sorry, Lu. Destined to be the shortest, I suppose. Well, except for Susan, but she’s always wearing heels.” Edmund frowns at Eustace’s face, and his tone changes. “What’s the matter, Eustace?”
“Caspian is dead,” Eustace says flatly. He nearly whispers it, really, because it hurts, the memory of Caspian so old, when he’d been so young just weeks before. Edmund recoils, Lucy’s arms drop from around Eustace, and she takes a step back, frowning.
“What?”
“I think we both heard him, Lu.”
“Edmund!” Lucy turned back to Eustace. “What are you talking about?”
“I went back,” he tells the railway platform. “Two weeks into autumn term.”
“That was months ago,” Lucy says quietly. “Why didn’t you tell us sooner?”
“I should have, I know. I’m sorry.” Eustace clamps his mouth shut for a moment, willing his voice to steady. “It just—it didn’t seem the sort of thing I could put in a letter and explain properly without beginning at the end, which I suppose I have…anyway. I’m sorry.”
“No,” Edmund says hollowly. “He can’t be. We were just there. I—we were just there. He can’t be.” Edmund looks as though he might hit someone. Eustace steps away without thinking, and Edmund shakes his head. “I’m sorry.”
“How long had it been, in Narnian time?” Lucy tilts her head in question. “I mean, it wasn’t in a battle, was it?”
“No—no, it was nothing like that. It must have been decades since this summer. When we got to Narnia, I didn’t know Caspian until after he had sailed to seek Aslan’s country again. Oh, bother it all. I ought to have started at the beginning.”
“Would you, still? I’d like to hear as much of your adventure as you’ll tell.” There’s a yearning in Lucy’s voice, and Eustace remembers how she still seemed to be half in Narnia the rest of that summer, even back in Cambridge.
They sit on a platform bench and Eustace begins with the beginning: Jill crying behind the gym, stumbling into Aslan’s country or being pulled by magic, how they arrived in Narnia only to just miss Caspian setting out for the end of the world, meeting Trumpkin, the parliament of owls and meeting Puddleglum, running around up north with the giant city and discovering the underground world, how they found Caspian’s son, Rilian, just time for Caspian to see him again before he died, and how, after the old king had died, he and Jill had found themselves in Aslan’s country again.
“After that it gets a bit blurry,” Eustace says. Lucy wipes her eyes surreptitiously; Edmund hands her a handkerchief. Seven months ago, Eustace would have mocked them for it, but it’s all he can do to keep his own voice steady.
“At any rate, Jill and I were back by the river in Aslan’s country, and Caspian was lying in the river. He looked as though he were sleeping.”
“Oh, Eustace,” Lucy says.
“Aslan made me drive a great nasty thorn into his paw and he let the blood fall on him, Caspian, I mean, and it sort of de-aged him until he was about the age he was on the Dawn Treader. After we talked a bit, Aslan let Caspian come with Jill and I back to the Experiment House, for about ten minutes, and we did Them, the bullies at school, I mean, rather a lot of good. The board ended up getting rid of our Head after the investigation into ‘costumed people with broadswords’ and ‘an escaped lion from the circus’.” Edmund snorts, and Lucy smiles a little.
“I’m sorry to have been the bearer of bad news,” Eustace says after a moment. “I wish I could have gotten to tell you that I had had some fantastical adventure in Narnia where everyone lived happily ever after.” Edmund snorts again.
“Caspian is living happily ever after, in Aslan’s country,” Lucy reminds them, smiling rather sadly. “Thank you for telling us that, Eustace.”
“Yes, thank you,” Edmund says. They sit on the bench, leaning on one another, until the last of the other passengers have left the platform.