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Lucy, much unlike herself, is silent after her first pronouncement.
She knows that should they continue on, their lives will change. She doesn’t know how, she knows only…
She knows it, the way she once knew a wardrobe was more than it seemed. She doesn’t remember it clearly anymore, more often than not she sees this moment only in her dreams. And this strange thing, this post and lantern, it has the same feel to it. She knows it.
Peter and Edmund will dare any chance, of course. Susan thinks they should turn back. And Lucy…
Lucy’s heart is with her brothers. She too will dare anything, never wishes to turn back. And yet she holds her tongue. She holds her tongue and she holds her breath, staring into the flame near-washed away under the sunlight.
And she makes her choice.
“I too would prefer to travel on, to see what fortune brings us beyond this flame of another world.” Flame of another world? She does not know why she says that, and from the looks her brothers and sister give her, they have no more idea than she does.
“But,” she continues, “I think that we cannot all go. We have sworn our oaths to Narnia, and what if this strange chance should sweep us away, with no provision for what happens to our realm without us?”
Peter laughs. “Why, Lucy! I never expected to hear such a thing from you! You, who always know that the Lion has us in his care, and will protect us! You see such darkness in this?”
“No, I see only a chance that we must not all take. For have we not always been cautious in that manner? One of us always left behind in Cair Paravel when the others go abroad for any length of time? Should we not treat this the same?” Lucy taps the pommel of her dagger, the familiar feel of it grounding. “I simply feel somehow certain that if we continue on, we shall not return.”
Peter shakes his head. “And if that happens, then let it happen! We have never dared turn back before now, and I say we shall not this time! Ladies, if you are so unwilling, then stay.”
“I am going to stay,” Susan says, arch and irritated with Peter in the way only she ever is. But the look she gives Lucy is grateful.
Lucy nods. “We will stay,” she declares, and she knows this for a choice that matters, one way or another.
Peter shakes his head again and turns on his heel, striding away from them. Edmund hesitates, something thoughtful and almost sad in his eyes — but then he follows Peter.
And they do not come back.
Later, Lucy will never fully remember the following days. The explanations, the arrangements. Her brothers are gone, and part of her longs to have gone with them, but part of her knows she made the only choice she could and still call herself a Queen of Narnia.
“I think they are well and safe, wherever they are,” Lucy says to Susan when they finally have a moment alone. TWhat they have told their people is that the Lion called the Kings to another duty, and left Narnia in the hands of her Queens. No one likes this news, but none dare argue with what they believe to be Aslan’s will.
Except that, deep down, Lucy knows this was not the Lion’s will. She does not know if Susan was meant to remain in Narnia alone — if that is why Susan was the one to mistrust the post and lantern from the off, or if she was meant to be convinced by her siblings’ eagerness. But Lucy knows, deep in her bones, that she was not meant to stay. She was meant to go with her brothers to whatever fate they now face.
Perhaps that is why she is so certain, where Susan is not, that it is not a bad fate that they went to.
“I think they went… Back,” Susan says. “But I remember there were dangers there beyond us as we were there. I do not know what that means for them.”
Lucy says nothing to that, but lays her head on her sister’s shoulder and takes her hand. Offering comfort and seeking it, all at the same time.
And when Lucy dreams, she hears the soft padding of a Lion’s paws even though she cannot see the familiar golden fur. She sees nothing but grey fog, and yet she knows the sound of Aslan’s tread. “I will go back,” she says. “So will Susan, I think. But please, we stayed for Narnia, to make sure that when we leave, we do not betray the charge You gave to us. Allow us to have the time for that.”
She receives no answer and expects none. But the dreams stop, and she and Susan remain in Narnia, so Lucy must take that for answer enough.
In Narnia, people begin to say that Kings are unreliable sorts. Oh, they will be grand and they will do wondrous deeds. But in the end, a King will vanish.
Queens, though. Queens stay. Queens can be trusted.
It is not long before they marry. Kings and princes have sought their hand for years, but especially now, neither Susan nor Lucy can take a husband who will want to carry them off to his own lands. Before, they had not wished to accept such a thing, and now they truly cannot. Susan weds a cousin of King Lune, while Lucy chooses a son of the Lone Islands. Kalen and Joreth are good men, and if Susan and Lucy do not love them, they like them very much and they trust them. Both men understand their role as consorts, and fortunately do not chafe at the limitations of that status.
Most important of all, they are good fathers.
Susan’s son is called Mathin, because she remembers a man called Matthew who she trusted above anyone in the world, and if she does not quite realize she is naming her son for her father, perhaps she does not need to.
Lucy calls her daughter Helena, and she says she is naming her daughter for the first Queen of Narnia, but deep down she thinks of a gentle hand stroking her hair, and she knows she is naming her daughter for her mother.
But Susan leaves too, which Lucy does not expect. She and her sister have gone to the Spring Festival at Dancing Lawn, and Susan takes the hands of Bacchus when he holds them out to her, and they whirl in a dance until they blur. They spin until they simply vanish, and Lucy knows without being told that it was not Bacchus but Aslan who set that in motion. She knows, somehow, that this is the price of turning back; to be snatched with no warning, no chance to make another choice.
And she knows, deep in her bones, that the same thing is coming for her.
She does not fear this. She is still Queen Lucy the Valiant, whatever her brothers thought of her the day that she turned back from a quest, and she will not quail. She makes again the choice she made that day, and chooses to ensure that when she is taken, Narnia will not be left stumbling and uncertain behind her. She will face the Lion and she will explain herself if she must, take His anger if she must. She did only what she thought was right, and what else can be asked of anyone?
Her husband and her brother-in-law are good men. She does not trust them fully but she trusts them enough to explain that she knows the fate which came for her siblings will come for her as well. They will be regents for the children, who will one day marry. This is the way of royalty, to marry cousins and secure the succession, and Lucy was too young to really remember that it was done in the same way in the shadowy realm from which she and her siblings came, but it is simply the practical thing. There is no High King anymore, and Susan and Lucy decided together not to replace Peter with a High Queen.
Mathin and Helena will be co-rulers, but the final decision, as it turns out, will belong to Helena. The Narnians trust a Queen over a King, which Lucy did not expect.
Joreth laughs at her, but affectionately. “They trust you, do they not? You have not left them.”
But, of course, Lucy does leave them. She leaves Narnia, and she leaves her family, for it is on a rare outing when the Lion’s paw reaches for her. Lucy sinks under the smooth clear waters of the lake, the laughter of the children — growing now, still children but lanky and awkward with their adolescence — in her ears until the water muffles it.
And when she comes up for air she is in a stream bright as glass, and the world around her is silent as only the very top of a mountain can be.
A Lion waits for her, laying beside the stream. Lucy scrambles out to the grass, and realizes as she does that she is a child again, in strange clothes. English clothes, hand-me-downs from Susan, but mended by her mother before they were sent away from the Blitz —
Oh.
“Child, you did not go home when your way was lit,” Aslan says, and Lucy cannot tell if he is chiding her. But she stands like the Queen she no longer is before him, straight and proud and ready to face whatever consequence this is.
“I couldn’t, Aslan. We promised You and we promised Mr. Tumnus and the Beavers and all the rest of the Narnians that we would be good rulers. It wouldn’t have been good if we just left.”
“Narnia would have continued on either way, my child. But you have changed the song I sang, for Susan would not have stayed either if you did not, and you stayed far longer than she. Now it will continue on differently than it might have.”
Lucy blinks, for the first time unsure but still holding to the fact that she did what she could. “Would it have been better? To just leave them? What would have happened? What will happen now?”
“Dear Lucy. No one is ever told any story but their own,” Aslan says, and before she can say another word, the Lion’s Breath hits her and she falls backwards —
Out of the wardrobe, caught by Peter.
“Well, Lu? How did it turn out without us?” he asks, because Peter the High King had been grand and noble, but Peter the boy is a far kinder person.
Lucy thinks of the children, of the husband and brother-in-law left behind, and she thinks of Narnia itself. Strong as she could have made it, and what else was there to do?
“Nothing,” Edmund agrees when her story is done, and he too is the best Narnia made of him, not the arrogance and silence of those last moments by the lamppost. Susan only takes Lucy’s hand and holds on tight, the way they once held onto each other at Cair Paravel.
Lucy doesn’t have regrets, when all is said and done. She did what she could, she kept her word and her duty. She chose to do that, and it cannot be taken away from her. She only hopes she did enough.
A Queen will leave, when there is no choice but to accept fate.
But a Queen will choose to ensure that there is something solid behind her once she is gone.
And that too is courage.
Helena and Mathin rule well, and they are fortunate enough to have a quieter reign than that which went before. Their eldest daughter inherits after them, her ascension secure for she carries the blood of both the Chosen Queens, and her daughter after her, and then her daughter after that.
So it is that when Caspian the First leads his Telmarines toward Narnia, he finds himself faced with an army led by a Queen. Lucienne has the dark hair that could come from Queen Susan or Prince Consort Joreth, none can say now which it is, but her clear blue eyes are Queen Lucy’s. And she looks at King Caspian with her foremother’s gaze, and she sees here a choice. War, or something else.
The Telmarines do not have ruling Queens. They do not understand the idea, nor do they particularly wish to. But Caspian the First is an adventurer, and he sees a spark in Queen Lucienne that he understands. In the stories of Queen Lucy, he sees someone he too could admire — because while he is an adventurer, he would not have led his people to a new land if he did not believe it was the best choice for them.
Queen Lucienne speaks of her people the same way he thinks of his own, speaks of leaving something strong to protect one’s realm in case something unexpected should happen, and Caspian the First understands her.
He will not accept consort status — and even if he would, his people would never tolerate it. Neither will she — and in fact the Narnians would not have stood for such.
But co-rulers, supported by a Council made up of both Narnians and Telmarines, humans and Animals and other Beings alike. That is an agreement both can live with. And a compromise on succession, that the eldest child should inherit, male or female. So they join their peoples, and they do not fight, and no blood is spilled on the ground of Narnia.
This is not what was expected to happen, and it is kinder, but is it better? Who can say?
The Narnians believe in the steadiness of Queens, but the Telmarines do not know what to think of a woman leading them. The Narnians distrust the fidelity of Kings, but the Telmarines feel safer under a strength they know. Both learn, in time, that a King might stay and do his best, and that a Queen might be the fiercest of defenders. Of course, because people are people, they learn that sometimes monarchs are terrible whether they are Queens or Kings.
And sometimes, a monarch is a good Queen and a terrible mother. Caspian the Ninth has a mother who is cruel to him at every turn, and he cannot even tell himself it is because she wanted a daughter as heir. Miraza is a bare year younger than he is, and Caspian is no fool — he knows that his sister wishes to be Queen. But Queen Sofonia is cruel to them both, these children sired by no one because the Queen will acknowledge no such man.
But in Narnia, the children of the Queen are her heirs, and they have no rules for when there is no marriage. They do not have enough rules, Caspian the Ninth thinks. Their mother was a wild thing because she liked the Animals so much, because she danced with the Naiads and the Dryads.
Because she forgot she was human.
So when they place the crown upon his head, he punishes those who his mother preferred. His eyes are not clear, they are fogged with the pain of a child that has become the hatred of a man with power in his hands, for his council fears him too much to stop him.
And what of Princess Miraza, who knows a little more of the cruelty that shaped her mother, who has the same pain turned to a woman’s rage? Well. In truth she does not disagree with her brother. She thinks her mother might have done better to keep to her own, to control her wildness rather than indulge it. But Caspian is as thoughtless as their mother, as sloppy in his anger at the world as their mother was in her lack of care for them.
It is foolish, foolish in the extreme, to so misuse the throne. It is the kind of thing that might topple them all.
Caspian does not want a daughter to follow him on the throne. He has come to believe women should not hold this power, that this fed his mother’s cruelties. But Cassia is his only child for so long. Still, her mother was of Calormen. Surely, now that his queen is dead — and they say it is of an illness, because the doctor knows what would befall his family if he were to say otherwise — he can choose a better bride and Narnia will welcome her sons as the true heirs. Surely.
Princess Miraza has all but raised her niece. Aravessa was rarely allowed to be alone with Cassia, and it is only because Miraza was willing to look the other way that Cassia knows anything of Calormen, knows her mother’s language and the songs she loves to sing. Cassia is her mother’s daughter and Queen Lucienne is her foremother, and she thinks that when she is Queen she will find a way to bring the countries together.
It is better to bond than to fight, and it is best of all to do as Queen Lucy did, and make sure something that can last is left behind when fate has its way with you.
But her home is not safe for her, when her father remarries a princess of Archenland. What he wants, he will find hard to do — the Telmarines might have found a ruling Queen baffling, and some still do, but it is tradition now. Telmarines believe in tradition, in holding to the way of things. Caspian’s cruelties, until now, have been covered, if only barely, by traditions and excuses that protect him from true discontent among the court. But to set aside his heir by all the laws of the realm, that would be a different matter.
Cassia is also Miraza’s child, in all the ways that count. From her aunt, Cassia learned history, learned respect even for those you may personally find distasteful, because it is the duty of a Queen to hold things together. From her, Cassia learned control, so that no one knows what goes on behind her calm demeanor. Which is important, because what Cassia longs to do is to go out in Narnia, to meet the Animals and Beings her father despises and her mother found unsettling, and even her aunt would prefer to keep only to courtesies with.
She longs for it, and perhaps she is like her grandmother in this, Miraza thinks, but then Cassia has a kindness in her heart that does not come from their blood at all. At least, not in recent generations.
There is a painting of Queen Lucy in the Hall of Family, and Cassia has her smile, these many generations later.
Miraza can only hope, as she bundles her niece onto a horse the night her nephew is born, that Cassia has the legendary Queen’s courage as well. She gives Cassia a horn and a dagger, heirlooms stolen from the royal vaults, and when her brother rages she smiles with a courtier’s polite falseness and a princess’ poise, and Caspian suspects nothing. The women of his family are nothing; Cassia has fled and she will come to nothing. He can make his son his heir, as he wanted all along.
But Cassia finds the Animals. She finds the Dryads and the Centaurs, and even in the face of angry or skeptical Dwarves she holds to her promise. She is here to build something strong, so that when her fate finds her, Narnia will hold behind her.
If they must fight for that, well. She would wish it otherwise. But Narnia has fought before, and though she has learned other ways are best to try first, when it comes to it, sometimes a war is the way one must begin. She is the heir of tradition, and that draws Telmarines to her, and she will be a Queen, so the Narnians are willing to consider she might be trustworthy. Cassia just needs to prove herself worthy of that, and she means to try.
She would not dare call herself Valiant, but she hopes she can be that, all the same.
Some things do not change. A clear-eyed young woman makes a choice, this time to sound a horn for help.
Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy are summoned from a train to school. They find themselves in the ruins of a castle, because sometimes castles still crumble, and Trumpkin the Dwarf leads them to a young would-be ruler at Aslan’s How. That she is a Princess and not a Prince, that she has an aunt in the castle who is an ally rather than an uncle who is an enemy, that it is her father who she prepares to fight, that the Queens and Kings she has summoned from legends carry blood that she shares in some small part…
These things are different. Will they be better or worse? Perhaps even the Lion no longer knows for sure, when choices can change so much.
Or perhaps Aslan always knew they would, in this story. If there are other stories, they are not to be told here. And this story goes on, one way or another.