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Susan kneels before three graves.
They are not the graves she had been made to arrange herself, the ones in a plain cemetery in Finchley. These are in a grove just a short walk away from Cair Paravel, a place once used by all four of them as a sanctuary when duties became overwhelming. It is a beautiful place, the greenest of grass speckled with wildflowers in a wild array of colours. Trees line the small clearing to form an almost perfect wall around this haven, and it had always seemed too wonderful to have formed naturally, Susan had thought.
There are three headstones, each made of smooth marble and covered in intricate, picturesque carvings, individual to each of the siblings: a dagger and a lion, a quill and a sword, the sun and a shield. At the base of each one lies precious, personal items. A diamond flask rests beside an ornamental dagger, a collection of golden chess pieces with a plain torch, and a mighty sword set atop a silver shield.
Flowers have been planted to mark the space where their coffins have been buried, and these too are personalised. Lucy’s gladioli of every colour grow tall, Edmund’s blue irises flourishing, and Peter’s calla lilies starting to creep beyond the boundaries of his grave.
Behind each grave is a magnificent statue, three figures in sweeping robes smiling down at Susan. Carved with care down to the tiniest of details, one could be fooled for a moment into thinking that the Kings and Queen had been turned to stone for the likeness. To top it off, on the head of each one of the statues is their crowns, glistening golden and silver where sunlight strikes them.
Susan wears no crown. She wears no grand robes, nor even a simple black gown and veil of mourning. Instead, she is clothed in one of her favourite fashionable blue dresses with white floral patterns, a black bow at her waist. On her feet are a pair of black pump shoes, and her hair is neatly curled and styled, as if she had been about to attend a party, or go on a date.
Instead, she is kneeling in the grass, staring at the inscriptions upon the graves—so different to the ones back in Finchley.
TO THE GLISTENING EASTERN SEA
QUEEN LUCY THE VALIANT
FOURTH OF OUR BELOVED FOUR
DAUGHTER OF EVE
Lucy Pevensie
1932–1949
Forever a ray of sunshine
TO THE GREAT WESTERN WOODS
KING EDMUND THE JUST
THIRD OF OUR BELOVED FOUR
SON OF ADAM
Edmund Pevensie
1930–1949
Sharp and bright as a diamond
TO THE CLEAR NORTHERN SKY
HIGH KING PETER THE MAGNIFICENT
FIRST OF OUR BELOVED FOUR
SON OF ADAM
Peter Pevensie
1927–1949
A heart of purest gold
Susan wishes she could have done more justice to them with her own choice of words. But it is difficult to be eloquent when you are little more than shattered glass, forced to pick up your family’s pieces alongside your own.
She is only made aware of how perfectly silent it had been when that silence is broken by the pad of heavy footsteps from behind her. A great shadow is cast upon the ground beside her, though the beast approaches no further.
She does not bother to turn around.
“Bring them back.” Her voice is subdued, quivering.
Perhaps He had not heard her, for there is no sound, not even the rustle of grass beneath heavy paws.
But shouldn’t He be able to hear all, to see all?
“Bring them back,” she repeats, trying for a command. The kind that would’ve sent armies charging forth onto a battlefield. But it’s still weak, out of practice, and she once again receives no reply other than a deep sigh.
She clenches her hands where they are clasped in her lap, trying to stop them from shaking.
“Bring them back!”
Her yell echoes around the grove, as if it were hollow. Another sigh.
“You know that I cannot do that, Susan.”
Some noise akin to a laugh escapes her, but it’s scratchy and ugly.
“Why not?”
“It is not the way.”
“You did it to yourself. You can do it for them.”
The thud of feet as He steps nearer. She still does not look.
“Oh, Susan, how have you so greatly lost your way?”
He sounds sad. Mournful.
He has no right to grieve.
Anger bubbles hot within Susan, so strong and sudden, a tide overtaking her.
“You killed them.” Her voice now shakes not with grief, but with rage. “You took them from me.”
“I took them to where they belonged. To where you belong. Yet you deny it.”
“Bring them back here,” She grits out. “They belong with me, bring them back.”
The statues smile down upon her, their expressions so blissful. Stone arms stretch out towards her, as though beckoning her forward.
Were they always like that?
“It is true you belong with them, Susan,” He says softly. “But you must find your way back to them.”
“But you can bring them back,” She insists. “You can. You can undo this. You—you made the trees dance, split worlds open. You brought yourself back.“
“You know the reason as to why I was brought back.”
“Because you did not deserve that fate, and neither do they!” Teardrops splash into her lap. “They have done nothing to deserve this!”
He growls; a sound that would once have inspired fear or awe in Susan, but is now so empty, so meaningless.
“You say that they have done nothing to deserve the world I have given them, the perfect eternity I have offered? Do you deny them my blessings?”
“Your blessings are death!” She cries, thumping her fists against the ground. The grove quakes with the force of it. “You killed them, you killed me! You took away the lives they were building, and leave me with three open wounds!”
“Those lives were not meant for them.”
“But you told us they were! You told us we had to live in our own world, and we did! We lived!”
“Did you truly?”
Susan screams. The branches of the trees sway violently.
“He was going to be a doctor!” She screeches, fisting her fingers in her grass. “He was studying for it, and he loved the work! And Edmund wanted to be a politician, to make change! Lucy—she fell in love, she found someone who made her feel alive again after she was ripped away from the one place she felt she truly belonged! And I only got to meet Emily at the funeral, where I had to hold her as she cried, where I was the only person who she could ever tell about how in love they were!”
Susan is made of tears, flooding down her front and drenching her clothing. The grass withers where the droplets fall onto it.
“They lived! They were living! That was a blessing! You didn’t need to trade it for another, where everything they worked for is abandoned, and I am left in ruins!”
“You could have followed them,” His voice booms. She digs her fingers in and tears out chunks of dead grass from the ground, and the earth groans beneath her as she does.
“I want to live! I want to be alive, and I want it with them! I don’t care about our childhood, I don’t—I don’t care if we made it up or if it actually happened, I don’t care! Bring them back, Aslan, bring them back!”
The second she speaks His name, the world blurs, spinning around her. The smiling stone faces of her siblings are the last thing she sees before it’s all a spiral of colour, the grove evaporating before her eyes.
When everything is still, she is not herself. Or, she is, but not as she is now; she is younger, her body feeling far too small and cramped. A grey cardigan covers a starchy white button-up, and a plaid skirt falls past her knees, accompanied by white stockings and brown shoes.
She stands in a large room, empty all but for an intricately carved wooden wardrobe at the opposite end of it. Muffled sounds seem to come from within, but she can’t quite make out what they are.
Hesitant, she takes slow steps towards the wardrobe. She feels tiny in comparison to it, even though it really shouldn’t be all that tall. It hadn’t been that tall, had it?
The sounds, though still muffled, become clearer as she approaches. There is laughter, and loud chattering that she cannot make out the words to. However, she can pick out three distinct voices, so much higher and more youthful than she remembers.
She presses her ear to the door, listening to her siblings giggling and yelling over each other. She can identify with such striking clarity the sound of snowballs making impact, bodies falling backwards into impossibly soft snow with shouts of surprise.
Her hand closes over the doorknob. She tugs. It does not budge.
She pulls again. And again. Harder and harder, until she’s using all of her strength—but it’s so little, because this body is so young and frail, and the wardrobe does not even shake for all of her efforts.
“Let them out,” She pleads to the empty room. “Please, let them out.”
There is no answer, of course, because the room is empty. So she keeps tugging at the doorknob until she’s trembling from the effort of it.
“Peter!” She wails, opting to bang her fists against the door. “Ed, Lucy! Come out, please, come out!”
The laughter stops. For a moment, everything is still. Then, her name, spoken from deep within the wardrobe, three voices calling to her all at once.
“Su?”
“Susan?”
“Susan!”
Frantic, Susan hammers harder and harder on the door, the voices calling to her as she does.
“Susan!”
“Lucy!” She cries back. “Lu, I’m here!”
“Su!”
“I’m here, Edmund!”
“Susan, where are you?”
“I’m here, Peter, I’m here, just come out!”
Her fists are aching, blood pooling down her knuckles, and so she instead starts to throw her body against the door, over and over and over.
Nothing moves, no matter how much force she puts into it. And no matter how much she screams, tries to tell her siblings that they just need to come out, to come back, they can’t seem to find her.
“Susan, come here! Follow my voice!”
“I can’t!” She sobs, every part of her aching. “I can’t, I can’t, you need to come to me! Please, come out! Please, let them out, let them out!”
Her head is growing fuzzy, exhaustion seeping into her bones. She tries to resist, tries so hard to keep barraging against the wardrobe door, but some unseen force is pulling her down.
The voices are growing fainter. She tries to scream louder, but her throat is closing up, her voice ragged and weak.
Susan collapses to the floor, shaking violently as she presses herself as close to the door as she can. She can barely hear them now.
“No, no,” she weeps. “No, please, come back. Come back. Let me in.”
The doorknob begins to rattle. Susan gasps, trying to reach up for it from where she’s laying, but somehow it’s just out of reach.
“Let me in,” she repeats, and the entire wardrobe jerks. A great rumbling sound echoes throughout the room.
“Let me in!” Susan screams in response to the roar, a renewed strength swelling within her. “Let me in, let me in, let me in!”
She staggers to her feet, stumbles as the ground shakes beneath her. And she’s taller, stretching up to her true height, in her floral dress and pump shoes and neatly curled hair, and she’s not a child anymore, but she reaches for the doorknob with the desperation of one.
Let me in.
Susan gathers all her might, squeezes the knob as hard as she can.
She tugs.
The door opens.
Everything is black.
-
Everything is dark.
Susan bolts upright in bed.
Her chest is heaving, each breath an effort. Sweat drips down her forehead and neck, collecting in her collarbone, and she can feel that some of her curlers have come loose. A shaking hand uncurls itself from her blanket and lifts to her cheek, her fingers coming away damp.
She closes her eyes.
Breathes in. Breathes out.
Opens them.
Her bedroom in her one-room apartment is dark and quiet. The moonlight that seeps in through the singular window’s thin, floral curtains is weak, creating a sort of haze where it falls.
In the corner of the room, boxes filled with her family’s various possessions are packed tightly together, all of them unopened, untouched.
On her nightstand, the framed photo of her and her siblings is turned over. She hadn’t wanted to look at it, but couldn’t bear to move it.
It is as silent as the grove.
Pulling her knees to her chest and wrapping her arms around herself like a child, she weeps and weeps, and thinks of voices calling to her from behind a wooden door.
Can I find my way back in?