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You're home and it's a wreck, a crumbling ruin. You're home and all that's left is as good as a tomb. The sea is empty water, the forest a graveyard. Sand scratches between your toes when you press your hands to the bark of an ancient apple tree. Your tears water her roots.
You remember her rough hands combing through your hair, the first apple of the season always given to her lover, the shells and seaglass that with nimble fingers you would help string up to hang from her branches so the light glinted off them. You remember watching the two of them dance - in Cair's Great Hall, along the beach, beneath sun and stars and candlelight - each forgetting everything but the other in their arms.
Shaking hands, you pull the familiar little bottle from its place on your belt, fumble with the stopper, carefully spill one drop onto those roots. When nothing happens, you dare to spare a second and a wordless scream coils in the base of your throat. You want to tip the whole bottle out, let the elixir pool in the soil and bring this whole place back to life, but you know it would only be a waste. The trees aren't wounded, only sleeping, and for once your gift cannot fix this - there is no hurt to heal.
The edges of the bottle dig into your palm. Bark scrapes your forehead. You heave a sob, missing years upon years of memories that this body hasn't lived.
"Lu!" Your sister calls. The boat is readied.
You press your hands to the bark. "I'll wake you," you promise. "I'll wake all of you. I'll find a way."
Susan stands waiting, watching, tries to school her features, to make things easier for you, when you look up at her. Her thumb moves restlessly over the cherry wood of her bow in her hand and the grief painted on her face runs too deep to mask, even for her. She holds out her other hand and you fit your own inside it.
That night in different woods you call out to the trees, to their spirits, can feel how desperately they yearn to answer. They almost begin to stir, before they fall still once more.
The next night Aslan calls to you, and all around where he waits the trees are alive once more, dancing slowly with eyes half closed.
Later, after you've woken the others, after you've followed him to the How, (and though the landscape has changed over the years the memory of this place sends a shudder through your bones, a chill down your spine until-) Aslan roars.
Aslan roars, and Narnia awakens.
In the days after, you stand atop the How and look back to the east, to where the ruins of Cair stand. You try to remember all they once were.
"What are you searching for?" Caspian asks, climbing up to stand beside you, trying to see what you're seeing, one thousand and three hundred years too late.
"Home."
"Ah."
You stand in silence for a while, and then: "The Doctor Cornelius taught me about Cair Paravel as a child. He said it was right on the river mouth, looking out onto the ocean." There's wonder in his eyes, as well as a longing and a hunger that you recognise all the better for knowing them in yourself.
"It's on an island now," you tell him.
"What was it like, back then?"
You close your eyes for a brief moment. "It was waking to sunlight on water, listening to the Mermaids and Nereids singing along to the music of the waves. It was tall towers and spiral stairs and the wind whistling through the trees. It was sitting in the Great Hall and having a place where our people could come to us to share their joys and their worries, come for help, for shelter. It was tournaments and feasts and celebrations and music and dancing. It was everything. It was home."
"And now..."
"And now..."
"I was hoping-" he starts, "if all four of you were in favour of the idea, of course, to make an effort at rebuilding Cair Paravel. I thought particularly that it might be a good show of faith to all the Old Narnians, given that I'm a Telmarine and all that. Unless you believe it should remain as it is? I know the importance of its history and I wouldn't want to tarnish its memory by getting anything wrong." He falls silent, scuffs a shoe against the grass.
The corner of your mouth quirks up, not unkindly. "Caspian, Narnia is yours to rebuild as you see best. You must have faith in yourself to guide her in whatever will come."
Looking down at his feet, he huffs a laugh before looking back up, squinting as the sun emerges blazing from behind a cloud and lights up the rest.
"It's that simple, then? Have faith in myself?"
You think back to those early days, to Peter's heavy shoulders, Susan's pinched face, Edmund's gnawed lip, to uncertain voices and trembling hands and whispered confessions of worry when they'd thought you asleep against a shoulder.
"It is," you tell him. "It's that simple, and it's one of the hardest things you'll ever do."
He hums thoughtfully. "And what of your search for home? Do you have faith you'll find it?"
Over the fields, past the woods, in the very distance, you can make out a glint of sea meeting bright blue sky. Cair is gone. It may be rebuilt one day, but it will never be your home again - after all, things can never be the same way twice. Narnia herself is home, of course, will always be home, yet this Narnia is as foreign now as the memory of Spare Oom once was after ruling fifteen years. For the moment, you think there may not be home, there may just be living for a while.
Then, you hear your brother's laugh, your sister's amused sigh, feet pounding up the hill and you're ready with arms raised when Peter picks you up from behind and whirls you around. You scream with all the joy your little body contains, surprised to find it's no less than you remember feeling in the old days when you were all grown up.
He sets you down, both breathing heavily. When you take a step back, the edge of the hill slants down beneath your heel. You bare your teeth in a grin, tongue moving instinctively to the gap where the tip of a canine is just starting to poke through your gums.
You take another slight step back, leaning into your heels. Peter snorts. Susan rolls her eyes and sighs again but there's a smile playing on her lips. Edmund's grin is a mirror of yours in all but the intact canine and missing molar.
Caspian, who has drifted off to the side a little, looks entirely bewildered. With a wink to him, you fall sideways onto the ground and let out a whoop as you tumble yourself down the hill, swiftly picking up speed. It's grass, cool and dewy, against your face, your arms stretched above your head, your legs where your skirt tangles up and bares your calves. It's flashes of bright blue and verdant green and darkness. Your heartbeat rushing in your ears reminds you of wind in the trees, the movement of swimming in rolling ocean waves.
Eventually you roll to a stop, flat on your back. A few moments later Edmund crashes into your legs, lays there with his head against your knee. Peter follows, shuffling over to lie beside the two of you while Susan stands - always elegant, even covered in grass-stains - and settles by your heads, begins to pick the grass and leaves from your hair.
For a moment Caspian hovers near before you reach up and grab his wrist, pulling him down to sit with you. Edmund picks wildflowers and weaves them into circlets and as the sun drips below the horizon the five of you are crowned and content.
The next day, Aslan makes a Door in the air.
"Have faith," you murmur as you squeeze Caspian tightly in a goodbye.
"The same to you," he replies, and you glance at your family.
"I don't need it," you smile. "I know where my home is."
Passing through the Doorway takes the span of a single breath, the blink of an eye. Passing through the Doorway takes years. Frozen fragments of the Old Narnians and Caspian and Aslan standing resplendent in the golden sun, mix up with a sandy cove with a different ocean, a grey railway station in London. They flash before your eyes like you're rolling down a hill surrounded by all three but you know there is only one destination possible.
You're out of breath when you find yourself back on the bench at the station, and the gloomy sky feels more appropriate than usual.
"Well, we're home," Edmund says, a bitter note colouring his voice.
You look at your older sister, your eldest brother and their faces are shattered with grief, with loss. There's something in Peter's eyes that makes you want to run, want to hide under his arm, because if something scares your brother, it's worth fearing.
He is not a tame Lion, you know. He is not nice, but Aslan has always been kind. This does not feel kind. It's in this moment with a terrible certainty that you know: this will happen to you one day too.
You stand, slip your small hands into theirs, give Edmund a stern look until he completes the little circle. "We're home," you say, in a tone that brooks no argument. His expression softens. Peter's shoulders drop down with an exhale. Susan's cheeks fill with colour again.
"What is it like?" You ask your sister later when it's just the two of you, as the British countryside speeds past your windows. Her face spasms briefly - instinctual anguish swiftly masked.
"Please, Lu. I don't want to talk about it," she says. "Not yet." Then, "look, we're here."
The train pulls to a stop. Outside the window an apple tree bears the last fruits of autumn.