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A year after she blundered back through the wardrobe, fifteen years/only days after she first entered it, Lucy is pulled back into a world she’s only mostly sure she didn’t imagine. After all, there are no dancing trees in England, no talking animals let alone lions, and Father Christmas hasn't been to visit since before the war began.
At first, she can't even be sure that it's the same place. The coastline is different; there were never ruins in Narnia; the woods are still and silent, terribly so. If Narnia had been all in her head, nothing would have changed. The animals would still be able to talk, Cair Paravel would not stand in ruins, the trees would still dance. If Narnia had been a fairy tale, a game she played with her siblings, they never would have left. (Hearts’ desires are funny things. The white stag waited for no argument, no thought-out wish. They tumbled out of the wardrobe in England moments after they left. Lucy was eight years old again.)
Even so, they were called back, called home, because Narnia again has need of them. She and Edmund and Susan and Peter will not be kings and queens in Cair Paravel, because things never happen the same way twice, and Cair Paravel is in ruins, anyway. They´re more myth than fact in their own kingdom, and the first person they meet doesn’t believe them at first. There's a prince in exile to put on the throne and an underground movement of ¨Old Narnians¨ to help them do it, the dwarf tells them, after his contests with Susan and Edmund, and maybe that horn worked after all. (The trees are still silent.)
Lucy doesn't realize how profoundly her kingdom has changed until Susan cannot shoot the bear, until Trumpkin does it and tells them that the bear must be dumb and witless now. Lucy is more than two-thirds Queen, more than two thirds ´the Valiant´ by then, and the bear's ancestors were her subjects, even if this bear is unrecognizable as their descendant. Things are different, horribly so, and there is no one to whom she can truly turn for comfort. Peter is weighed down with the responsibility of restoring a nation, a High King once more; Susan is trying to reconcile her memories to reality, because over a thousand years can’t have passed in just over one; Edmund is on edge in the now silent woods, which were never so silent but when she was nearby.
She follows Peter, who has an ancient, crumbling map in his head, because what else is there to do? Trumpkin isn't from this part of the woods, and some parts of Narnia have been nearly exactly as they remembered them. Finding the treasure room is proof enough of that. The map Peter carries proves fallible, however, and they meet a gorge. It’s logical to go downstream to meet the Great River, and so find the way to Aslan's How, but Lucy sees Aslan. Across the gorge, He is showing her the way they ought to go, but it is upstream. “Look,” she tells the others, but they cannot see Him.
Susan and Trumpkin want to go the opposite way, the logical way, the way that will more surely lead them to Caspian. Edmund sides with Lucy, but he doesn’t see Aslan either; the guilt of another trip to Narnia’s mistakes weigh too heavily on his shoulders to side against her, that’s all. Peter is forced to cast the tie-breaking vote, and he votes with Susan and Trumpkin, away from Aslan. Later, Lucy will rue being too afraid to follow Aslan on her own, but for now she follows the others downstream, straight into a Telmarine outpost.
Lucy does not say I told you so , once they are safely away from the enemy’s whizzing arrows. She doesn’t need to. She says, I suppose we’ll have to go right up the gorge again . She was right to want to follow Aslan, and they know it, and she knows it. A good dinner boosts their low moods, and overly optimistic as they may be, all entertain hopes of finding Caspian and defeating the Telmarines in very short order.
Late that night, Lucy hears a voice she associates deeply with safety and goodness. At first, she thinks it’s her father’s, then Peter’s; it is only after she sees him that she realises it is Aslan. Aslan is here, and the trees have woken. Finally. They’ve been so dreadfully silent this entire visit that, for all that the western woods were given to Edmund, Lucy feels as though she has lost a part of who she was as queen. There is still a second war to win in Narnia, the third Lucy will live through in her too-short life. (She’s younger than the oldest she’ll ever be, as queen; the rushing train is barely eight years away.) There is still work to be done: Caspian must be put on the throne, the Narnians must be freed, Peter and Susan will be told they are too old to return to Narnia. There is so much and worse to come, but for now, Lucy has found Aslan, and the trees are dancing.