The Lion's Mane: what happened to Susan

[Aslan's Child_1996]

Totally love it! Please please write more. But does Susan ever come into the story? Not that i'm trying to rush you or anything!

[Mozart the Meerkitten]

oh cool! Please post more soon!

[Glenburne]

Yeah, Susan comes into the story. She's one of the major reasons Wade has been...transported.

[Glenburne]

The centaur galloped off into the trees that surrounded the meadow, and Aidan called a farewell. Wade, still sitting where he had fallen into the grass, stared dumbly at the scene.

He wanted to call this meadow—the centaur—Aidan—all part of a mad dream. But they couldn’t be; he felt the grass swaying with the breeze and tickling his exposed forearms. A person didn’t feel in a dream. Not with his hands.

Where on the face of the earth was he?

Aidan turned around again, fastening a long knife at his belt. “Back to our little discussion—are you comin’?”

“Hold it,” Wade ordered. “Where on earth am I? How did we get out of the library?”

Aidan pulled a quiver of arrows over one shoulder, slung a leather traveling bag over the other, and pulled a staff from the grass. “Another world—but you know that already. The last bit,” he said, “I cain’t tell you. I know what happened. I don’t know how it happens.”

The boy seemed so calm, pulling a thick bowstring from his bag as if Wade and he had known one another from time immemorial. Wade lost patience again. “Well, then what happened?”

Aidan slid the string into a notch cut into the top of his staff. “A way was opened from our world into this’un—just for a moment. We walked through; it shut. So we’re here now.”

“Our world? You sure seem comfortable in this one.”

“Our world.” Aidan jerked the string through a notch on the bottom of the staff—his bow, Wade realized. A longbow by the looks of it. “Come on, sun’s settin’ already.”

The other boy’s calmness became infuriating. “I can find my own way.”

“Course you can,” Aidan said, setting the bow on his shoulder as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

And Wade lost his temper. “Why should I go with you anyway?” he shouted. “You won’t tell me where, you’re using the name of somebody that died a hundred years ago, and you talk to mirages!”

“I’m a friend of your grandmother’s,” Aidan told him frankly. The humor at hearing Thunderland called “a mirage” threatened to spill from his eyes, but he was rather obviously restraining himself.

The restraint annoyed Wade all over again. “But—”

Aidan lifted a hand. “Wade. Calm down. Can you think clear again?”

Wade eyed him, but nodded.

“Good.” Aidan straightened. “Now it’s like this. You can come with me, and I’ll answer whatever questions you have. Or you can leave.”

“Back to my aunt’s?” Wade asked hopefully, but Aidan was already shaking his head.

“It’s like I told you. The way opened for you to come here; now it’s shut. I led you through, but I didn’t open it myself. I can’t open it again. You’ll be here until it’s your time to go back.”

“How do I know when?” Wade demanded.

Aidan met his gaze. “You don’t. I don’t. But you can go wherever you want to—in this world.”

Wade’s mind was beginning to clear, and he suddenly understood what Aidan meant. He didn’t like it, but that was beside the point. As of this moment, he only knew one person in the new world—Aidan. Aidan knew this world; Wade didn’t. Until he understood the dangers—until he was certain he could continue by himself—staying with Aidan was the safest thing.

Besides, even if Aidan couldn’t take him home, Aidan at least seemed to know where to find the “way” from one world to another. One universe to another. Wade made his choice. “I’ll go with you.”

“Glad that’s settled.” Aidan looked toward the western sky. “Sun’s gonna be settin’ fast, and we got five miles to walk. Might as well be going.” He started walking in the direction of a darkening eastern sky.

Wade saw a star on the horizon. “Where are we going anyway?”

“A lodgin’ place for the night. Cair Paravel, castle of the four thrones. Orlinan is king there now.”

“King over what?” The sun slid into its resting place behind them, but Wade didn’t see.

“Narnia,” Aidan answered. “Cair Paravel’s its eastern bound. Ettinsmoor’s on the north—Archenland’s to the south—and the Wild meets the border on the west. The Lone Islands—in the sea out yonder—are a Narnian possession, the only one.”

They had reached the top of a hill now, and in front of them Wade could see the darkened eastern ocean glittering like a black diamond. “And this is really another world.”

“Really,” Aidan assured him. “Thunderland’s kind were never in our world. Only way we know about them is some Greek who accidentally stepped through a portal into a third world, saw one, and was so shocked he stepped back through the portal again. He’d been in that world for five seconds, but you’d think he’d been there a year the way he blabbed about it. Blathered so much they became part of Greek mythology.”

A third world. Wade sighed. “Just how many worlds are there?”

“I don’t know. Never been to any but ours and this one.” Aidan scrambled down the hill, and Wade followed him.

“You said you were going to tell me what happened to Aidan,” he called ahead. “You still haven’t told me.”

“I thought you’da figured out that bit by now,” Aidan called back. “I’m Aidan.”

Wade’s face flamed as he caught up with the other boy. “I know—I mean—you’re here. But what happened?”

Aidan laughed. “That,” he said, “is a story for a time when we’ve had our bellies filled. Four miles to Cair—I’ll tell you when we get there.”

“Four miles is plenty of time for you to explain—ain’t it?” Wade asked.

“No,” Aidan said. “You’ll see why in a minute.”

A great hill rose up ahead of them, its sides craggy and matted with clumps of long grass. “The hill’s not four miles high, you know.”

“Just climb,” Aidan said.

Wade climbed. It wasn’t an easy climb, but he had managed harder ones. He began wondering if Aidan wanted to hide something by the time he reached the top of the hill—and looked down. The hill dropped madly for several miles, at which point it evened out almost abruptly and met the sea. Cair Paravel stood gleaming on high ground above the water.

Aidan came up beside him. “See why I said I’ll tell you later? We’re gonna be hard pressed enough trying to keep our feet.”

Wade sent a praise heavenward that he wasn’t afraid of heights as they scuttled down the drop toward the palace.

[Mrs Gil-Galad Took]

You have a great way of writing Glenburne! I like this story. Keep it up!

[EveningStar]

Very wonderful in so many ways. I hope you can write an ending worthy of the beginning.

[Glenburne]

Cair Paravel was the grandest place Wade Randall had seen in his life. Hardly a surprise, he admitted to himself, standing in the castle courtyard and gazing up at the stone-hewn turrets above him. The last red fingers of sun touched the highest tower and slipped away. Not much like this in Alabam’, I guess. He could almost feel the black Alabamian earth on his hands again, and he forced himself to follow Aidan through the massive oaken door and stop thinking of home. He had been gone over two months already. It was August back in Alabama—he should be going home in a couple weeks—

In the blue twilight he saw that strange figures had been chiseled into the wood of the door—men with goat’s legs, mice and badgers several feet tall, muscled centaurs, unicorns whose manes streamed free. A willowy girl in a leafy cloak smiled from a panel on the left toward another panel, one in which a young man with mossy hair seemed to watch her admiringly. A golden lion’s head was set in the center of each door.

“Come on, Wade,” Aidan said, already standing in the hall.

Wade turned his eyes from the door and entered the great hall ahead of them, where iron lamps gleamed down from the walls, illuminating the tapestries that had been hung there. Again, Wade found his steps slowing as he paused to study them.

The one closest to the door, apparently the most recently completed, showed a creature with a snake’s head and a woman’s body threatening a young man in black. Face set, the young man had just plunged the sword into its neck. Snake’s head, woman’s body—I hope that doesn’t live around here. Centaurs I can take. But serpent-women…

And then he realized that Aidan was halfway down the hall. Wade hurried after him, footsteps echoing even though the stone floor had been covered with a roll of patterned carpet.

As they neared the end of the hall, Wade noticed a shadow moving as if someone was coming around the corner to meet them. A steward of some sort, he guessed. A very quiet steward.

Wade had taken only a few more steps when a leopard stepped in front of them. A real leopard. He stumbled backwards, preparing to run. But Aidan was greeting the leopard like an old friend. “Any chance you got a room my friend and I could stay in for the night?”

The leopard answered, his deep voice toned with a underlying purr. “Always for you, friend. I’m sorry that my lord is still away, or he’d entertain you at supper tonight. As is, the queen and Prince Erlian have already gone to bed.”

“Bringin’ the food to our room is fine enough,” Aidan said lightly, his dark eyes glinting in the lamplight. “And the both of us will thank you for it. I’m sorry Orlinan’s gone, though. Has there been any word come from the Lone Islands of late?”

The leopard shook his big head, leading them across another hall and up a wide staircase. “There’s been nothing. Whatever has stirred them up—the Calormenes, like as not—they’re not going to surrender anytime soon. We’ve got them outnumbered three to one, and they’re still fighting. For independence this time, they say. Down with Narnian tyranny!” He twitched his long tail in a gesture of disgust.

“Of course,” Aidan murmured dryly. “Just don’t ask them to start naming specific tyrannies, because they couldn’t think of any, and then they’d be embarrassed. Wouldn’t do to embarrass them.”

The leopard snorted. He led them onto a landing, down a third hall, and into a specious room with two beds and a fire roaring. “I’ll have the food brought up.”

Aidan expressed his thanks, and the leopard padded from the room.

Wade plopped down on one of the beds. “Okay,” he said. “Question time.”

Aidan laughed and stripped off his longbow, quiver, and pack. He sat on the opposite bed. “Fire away.”

“Why on the face of the earth aren’t you dead? If there’s wars here there’s death here. You should at least look old.”

Aidan smiled and shrugged. “Didn’t mean to disappoint you.”

Wade gave him an expectant look.

“Lemme start at the beginning,” Aidan said, crossing one leg atop the other. “Wherever you want that to be.”

“I know everything up till what happened on that scoutin’ expedition,” Wade said. “Start there.”

“Alrighty.” Aidan looked toward the cracking fire, the only light source in the darkened room. “They came up on us outta nowhere,” he said quietly. “Yanks, ten of ‘em at least. We had the information we’d been sent to get, so we figured the best thing to do was split and hope at least one of us would get it back to Watie. Jess Hogshooter lit out for the trees toward the east. Joseph Murray rode north ‘side of Adahy Diwall; I think they were aimin’ to separate after a ways and confuse the Yanks more. Marcus Atsady headed south straight for Watie. I went west, drivin’ that horse like I woulda been ashamed to do under most circumstances. But we were riding for our lives, and the Yanks were close on to us.”

A stick in the fire snapped and fell, rolling out of the fireplace and scattering sparks on the stone. Aidan stood and, grabbing a poker, pushed the stick back into the blaze. He set the poker in its place and returned to his seat. “They weren’t more than a couple hundred yards behind me, so I did the only thing I could think of: jumped off the horse and sent it flyin’ on, hoping they would follow it and not me. I scrambled into the bushes on my hands and knees, disappearing as fast as I could. But it wasn’t fast enough. They had enough trouble chasing me on horseback through the brush that I stayed ahead of them a while. Then they started closing in.”

“It’s an experience I pray God I never repeat, Wade,” he said, looking at the firelight flickering in Wade’s eyes. “Being hunted down. I was gasping for breath so loud they coulda followed me just by listening. My side felt like it had torn in two. I made a last stumble forward, not really seeing where I was going—and I tumbled over a high creek bank and landed in the water. And then I saw a log, a huge one, lying in the sand by the stream. There’s a place to hide, I thought, and I climbed in the old thing, all huge and wet and decaying.

“Better go in as far as I can, I figured, so they won’t see me so easy. So I crawled to the middle of the log and lay there, panting as quietly as I could, hearing them calling to each other on the creek bank above me. Soon their shouts seemed to be coming from behind me, and I heard splashes. They’d come down the bank too. This is it, I thought—and then I noticed somethin’ stranger than I’d seen in my life.”

“What?” Wade demanded, like a child. “What was it?”

“Cold,” Aidan answered simply. “Don’t get me wrong, it was March, and Indian Territory can freeze you that time of year, but the day had been pretty mild up till then. It’s because I’m wet that I feel it, I guessed, and lay still. The shouts were gradually nearing my log. And then I saw something else strange. Behind me I could barely see the creek bank, the sand, and the stream. But through the end of the log ahead of me—it was snowing. I looked, stared, looked again, and rubbed my eyes. But when I rubbed my eyes, my elbow hit against the side of the log. Loud. Somebody yelled, and then I felt a hand come down on the edge of the log. They knew where I was. But ahead of me, it was still snowing.

“I sucked in my breath, and, with one last glance behind at a blue-clad arm reaching into the my hiding place, scrambled through.”

[Glenburne]

A knock sounded at the door. Wade knew it was supper, knew that he sat on the bed closer to the door, but couldn’t bring himself to get up and open it. He was half afraid of what creature he would find on the other side.

Aidan was already striding over to it and inviting a goat-headed man into the room. For some reason Wade found the sight of the wild gray head atop a human’s body repulsive, but he rose to accept the food it was carrying with his thanks.

Aidan sat down with his own plate, and the goat-man slipped out.

The food was simple but well-prepared: fish (from the Bight of Calormen, Aidan said, because no Talking Beasts lived there), cheese, and a stew made of apples, raisins, and dark berries of a kind Wade had never seen before. According to Aidan, they were unique to the lands between Mount Pire and the north fork of the Archen River. Neither name meant anything to Wade.

Aidan ate slowly, seeming to savor each bite. Wade finished first by several minutes and went to stoke the fire up. Using the poker, he pushed the sticks farther up into the center of the blaze. He glanced back toward Aidan, who was still eating.

“What was that goat-thing?”

Aidan smiled and wiped berry juice from his face with a cloth napkin. “His name is Lonned.”

Wade’s ears began to redden.

Aidan didn’t appear irritated, however. “You’ll get used to Narnia, Wade. It just takes time, especially when you’re older. Lonned is one of what the Irish called the gobor-chenn—the goat-headed men.”

“The Irish knew about them?” Wade asked, suddenly bewildered. “I just thought they told stories about leprechauns and banshees.”

“And selkies, and a lot of other things,” Aidan answered. “The legends have it that the gobor-chenn were Formorians, folks that lived in Ireland a long time ago but got overrun by the Tuatha de Dannan. Lonned’s grandfather told me that some of his people had fled into the forest to hide from the invasion. They went down a path where two oaks leaned against each other overhead, almost like a door. The gobor-chenn went through and came out here—in Narnia. Nobody here thought they were strange, what with centaurs and all being here, so they stayed.”

“Huh,” Wade said.

Aidan laughed again. “I’m that bad?” His eyes danced merrily.

Wade felt the pink starting at the base of his neck this time. “It’s just a lot to digest. Ah—what were you saying before Lonned came in? Was it Narnia you’d come to?”

“Yeah.” Aidan put a last bite in his mouth and set his plate aside. “Soon as I was outta that log, the log disappeared, and it was even colder than I’d expected. If I stayed there, I knew I’d freeze, so I started walkin’ in hope of finding someplace warm. I’d walked maybe a mile and was startin’ to wish I’d let those soldiers get me when a sleigh came over a hill in front of me.”

Wade set the poker back, went back to bed, and pulled his tennis shoes off.

“There was a lady sittin’ on it,” Aidan said. “Beautiful lady, in her way, but she looked like she was carved of ice. Whitest skin I ever seen.”

“Well, I mean, you lived in Indian Territory,” Wade pointed out. “And a lot of Texas women would’ve been working in the sun too much to worry about their complexion.”

“Naw, I’d seen pale women before,” Aidan insisted. “Even in Indian Territory. But she—she was different. She wasn’t just pale, she was white, like God had run out of paint and colored her face with chalk instead. White, white. She had a white fur wrapped around her too, but hair blacker’n mine, even. She had a gold crown on her head and an ogre walking alongside, like it was her servant. She pulled that sleigh up in front of me and demanded to know what I was doin’ there.”

“Was she angry?”

Aidan nodded. “Furious. I told her I had come here through a log.”

Wade tried to hide his chuckle at first, but soon the urge became uncontrollable. He put his elbows across his knees and laughed openly. “I’ll bet she liked that.”

“Not exactly.” Aidan stood and looked toward the window. The new moon had come, and even the stars were faint. “She all of a sudden started accusing me of having ‘Aslan’s mark’ in my face. Course I didn’t have any idea what she was talking about, and I just stared at her. Then she shouted some syllable—I don’t even remember what it was, but the thought still sends chills down my spine. And then I was out cold. Next thing I knew, I was chained up in some ice-dungeon, with her standing over me and yelling questions.

“Thing was,” Aidan continued, “I couldn’t have answered any of her questions even if I’da wanted to help her. She was throwing out names like ‘Cair Paravel’ and ‘Shuddering Wood’ and ‘Lantern Waste’, and of course I couldn’t follow any of it. And she kept coming back to Aslan—Aslan’s mark in my face, Aslan sending me as a spy, Aslan being a good-for-nothing animal.”

Wade pulled his knees up to his chest. “Did she try forcing you to talk, eventually?”

“She tried,” Aidan said. “And failed. I was in there for over month, not able to tell her anything, until I finally lost my temper and said that if a scheming know-it-all like her hated Aslan so much, He must be a pretty decent person. She screamed at me, but I just laughed at her. I’d been in there too long—was too weak by then to even stand on my own. I’d gone past caring.”

Aidan fell silent for a moment, fingering his belt. “Then—that night—He came.”

“He? Aslan?”

“Broke through the wall of her ice-castle, the biggest creature I’d ever seen.” Aidan saw Wade’s questioning look. “He’s a lion—the Lion. Barged in there flashing gold and asked me if I wanted to come with Him. Somehow—I still cain’t figure how I managed—I struggled up onto His back. My chains had disappeared. He leaped back through the hole, and then we were flyin’ like the wind. He carried me across the pass into Archenland and set me down. And I could walk fine again. No trace of sickness—no trace of nothing.”

“Who is He?” Wade demanded, almost breathlessly.

“King of Narnia,” Aidan answered. “King over Orlinan and over all the kings before him. He looked at me, and I could just feel myself melting inside.

“I never had a father,” he added. “But if I’d had one—a real one, I mean—that was the way he’d have looked at me. Aslan asked me, straight off, if I’d follow Him. ‘What about my country?’ I said. ‘There’s a war on.’ But He just repeated the question. And then I recognized His eyes. I knew Him. And I couldn’t say anything but yes, though I was thinkin’ of Watie—and Noah—all the while.”

“But you’d never seen Him before,” Wade pointed out. “How could you recognize Him?”

“Blessed are they that have not seen,” Aidan said, a smile playing on his lips, “and yet believed.”

Wade took a moment to grasp what the other boy was saying. When he did, his jaw fell open.

“He told me,” Aidan murmured, “that because I’d been willin’ to lose my country for His sake, that I’d return to save it one day. At the end of this world. And then I walked with Him for a year and a day. I didn’t age at all during that time. On the very last day, he took me to a garden in the Western Wild. We went in through the front gate. ‘The fruit of this tree causes those who eat of it to never age,’ He said. ‘Taken, it brings death; given, it creates endurance. I give it to you, as the last to eat of it in this world.’ He pulled a fruit down and gave it to me, and I promise you, I’ve never tasted a fruit better. Then He breathed on the tree. It withered up and died. And He sent me here—back to Narnia.”

“Didn’t that woman go after you again?” Wade asked.

“The White Witch?” Aidan shook his head. “No. She couldn’t find me. I’d learned a couple things that last year. Thank God, she didn’t have her wand when she found me first off—she used it to turn live things to stone—and after eating that fruit, the wand didn’t work on me. It was in the first years of her reign, so she wasn’t as powerful as she would become.”

Wade peeled off his socks and flopped backwards on the bed. “So—just how long ago was that?”

“Ah—a thousand four hundred years? I forget now.”

Wade stared at him. “You’ve gotta be kiddin’ me.”

Aidan shrugged. “I don’t have any reason to.”

“You don’t look a day above fifteen! And you’re really a thousand four h-”

“I’m really fifteen,” Aidan corrected. “Age is caused by three things: attitude, experience, and arthritis. The only one I’ve got is experience.”

Wade just shook his head.

“It was really weird at first, I’ll admit it,” Aidan said. “The first year I kept thinking that it was time for me to start shavin’. And then I got frustrated because with me—bein’ this way—I couldn’t ever have a family. Boys my age may have married before, but me stayin’ fifteen while my wife got old would not be a good situation. I’d never thought about it till I got here, but I’d never had any kin besides Noah, and he was more like a friend than a father. I wanted to have people to come home to. But Aslan—became enough. I don’t think about things like that much now. It’s been a long time.”

“I’ll say,” Wade mumbled. “A long time.”

Aidan shoved off his own shoes and crawled into bed. “Don’t worry over it, Wade. The tree’s gone. Nobody’s gonna stuff any fruits down your throat.”

Aidan fell asleep almost immediately. But the fire had burned to coals before Wade’s aching eyes finally closed.

[inkspot]

Wow, very fascinating. Can't wait to hear about Susan though! And about how Aidan will go back to his country to save it ... You're going to tie that loose end up, aren't you?

[Zella]

I liked Aidan's definition of what causes age.