The Lion's Mane: what happened to Susan

[Glenburne]

Wade opened his eyes to a dark room, unsure what had awakened him. Then he heard the noise again: feet shuffling. Aidan was up already.

“We don’t need to go now, do we?” he mumbled, his voice thick with sleep.

Aidan’s steps moved closer to the bed, and Wade could faintly see his form outlined against the window. “’Fraid so. We got a long ways to travel before evening comes. And besides that, it’s not as early as you think. There’s maybe a half hour left till sunrise. Here, I’ll put on a light.”

Wade heard more shuffling and then scratching as Aidan struggled with a match. A candle flame appeared in his hand. In its wavering circle of light, Wade saw clothes laid out at the foot of his bed. “What are these?” He didn’t understand why he was still whispering.

“Clothes for you,” Aidan answered in a similarly quiet voice. The dark stillness in the room was affecting him in the same way. “Not that anything’s wrong with yours, but Narnians don’t dress that way. You’d get marked a foreigner.”

“I am one, though,” Wade said.

“Not as much as you think,” came Aidan’s voice. “Now come on—there’s a three shirts and a couple pairs of pants. Wear what you want—the shoes are by your bed on the floor—and stick the rest in the pack under them.”

Wade pushed the covers back and stood, his feet curling against the cold stone of the floor. The clothes, he noticed, were much like Aidan’s. He slipped a brown tunic over his head, found a pair of pants—their color was indistinguishable in the dim light—and shoved the shoes onto his feet. They, too, were made like Aidan’s, and they seemed to fit comfortably enough. He stuffed the rest of the things, along with his own clothes, into the bag and slung it over his shoulder.

Aidan put out the candle and led the way out of the room. The pitch darkness didn’t seem to bother him; he walked easily, as if his feet had grown eyes.

Wade followed down halls and staircases he felt sure the leopard hadn’t led them through the previous night. Only Aidan’s verbal cautions and steady pace prevented Wade’s becoming a mass of bruises on the way. After five minutes of walking, a gray light began to show somewhere in front of them. Wade heard a creaking sound, and he found that Aidan had opened the door to the palace kitchen. The place was only lit with lanterns hanging on chains from the ceiling, but Wade still found himself squinting, his eyes having grown accustomed to the former blackness.

The only person in the kitchen was the human cook, a thin red-haired woman who had apparently arrived only minutes before. Aidan seemed to know her well. “We’re headed up to Lantern Waste,” he said with no prologue. “Be a couple days walking, so would you mind—”

The cook didn’t mind. She seemed delighted, calling Aidan “seer” and being more than generous in the foods she sent with them. She wished Aidan would stay so she could fix the two boys a hot breakfast, but Aidan declined her offer courteously. “We've gotta be off by dawn,” he explained. “Night’ll be here before we know it.”

The cook understood. She patted Aidan on the back with a bony, but kind, hand. She patted Wade as well. And then he followed Aidan out another door and up another black staircase. Aidan opened the door at the top and stepped out. Wade came up and noticed a change in the room, even though he could see nothing. The flow of air felt different. “Is this room big?”

“Big enough.” Aidan took a few steps forward. “It’s the king’s banquet hall. Opens onto an wide room for dancing, and then a balcony. There’s windows, but we’re on the west side of the castle, so everything’s still completely dark. The front hall’s along this way…”

Wade followed him out of the banquet hall into another room and nearly leaped from his skin when he heard a voice come from the darkness. “Leaving already?” Then he breathed in relief. The leopard’s voice.

“I’d stay longer, Nur,” Aidan said. “But there’s trouble in Lantern Waste, and the king’s gone.”

“Aslan’s blessings on you, then,” Nur answered. It was a benediction.

“And on you.” Aidan moved forward again, and Wade came behind. They passed through several rooms until they came to the front hallway, where the lamps were still burning. Wade expected Aidan to hurry through, but he stopped near one of the tapestries. “Wade, come here.”

Wade obeyed.

“See that lady there?”

Wade looked, his eyes straining in the dim light. The tapestry showed several scenes woven into one another, all of the same slim, dark-haired woman. “A queen?”

“A queen, yes,” Aidan answered in a strange voice. “Called Susan the Gentle back in her day—the Golden Age of Narnia. Over a thousand years ago.”

Wade studied the tapestry. In one scene, the woman was aiming her arrow toward a distant target in a meadow where the grasses waved about her feet; in another, she stood blowing a carved horn toward heaven. She wore a crown in the central picture and smiled softly at them.

“Do you recognize her, Wade?”

“I—why should I?” Wade turned toward Aidan, questioning.

“Don’t you remember when I said I was a friend of your grandmother’s?”

“Kind of.” Wade looked back toward the woman. She did remind him of a picture he’d seen of his grandmother as a young woman—another picture hidden away in their attic. “She came here? She never told me.”

“It’s a long story,” Aidan said. “She’s a broken woman, Wade, no matter how sharp she acts now.”

“She was a queen?”

“One of Narnia’s greatest queens—she and her sister Lucy are the only queens, besides the first queen, Helen, to be shown here. The other queens—Swanwhite's the most famous—have tapestries in the king’s banquet hall. You’re hardly a foreigner here—at least, not to any true Narnian. To them, you’re a prince.”

Wade found himself making a face. “I’m no prince. If you’re an American citizen and want to be one you’ve got to get Congressional approval—and I’m from Alabama anyways. I still got grease under my nails from fooling with my aunt’s car. I got—”

Aidan silenced him with an upraised hand. “This is a different world, and what you are here has nothin’ to do with Congress. As for grease under your nails—in my opinion, every ruler’s hands should look the same. But you’re a prince by descent only. Orlinan has the crown; little Erlian's his heir. Nobody expects you to rule anything, except a regiment or two—”

Wade felt himself begin to sweat. Aidan laughed, seeing the expression on Wade’s face. “Calm down. I’m joking. What you become is Aslan’s business. But unless you prove yourself unworthy, people will respect you here.” He pointed toward the next tapestry. “That’s Peter, the High King of Narnia—on the other side of Susan is Edmund—” His voice seemed to grow thick with the name. “And there’s Lucy.”

Wade studied the portraits: Peter, tall and powerful; Lucy, young and laughing freely; Edmund, sober and intent. His aunt; his uncles. Then Aidan pulled him away. “We’ve took too long already.”

“Will I be able to come back sometime and look at these longer?” Wade asked.

“Aslan knows,” Aidan said. “We’ll see—all in His timing.” They left the front hall just as the first red gleam of sun glimmered across the eastern sea.

[Glenburne]

“Those soldiers weren’t all there last night, were they?” Wade asked. He could see at least several Narnian soldiers keeping watch in the highest tower, and armored creatures moved about the castle yard. “I didn’t notice them.”

“They weren’t movin’ around as much, but they were here.” Aidan passed through the gate without being challenged, and Wade followed. “We’re not going up the way we came in,” he added. “See that rowboat down by the shore? We’ll go a little farther up the coast in that, so we can bypass the cliffs.”

The skiff, beached high on the sand, looked sturdy enough. And Wade was no more eager than Aidan to attempt climbing back up the steep path from Cair Paravel.

As they neared the skiff, Aidan handed Wade his food sack and bent over to push it into the sea. The sand crunched as Aidan shoved the boat along and finally nudged it into the water. “There. You get in and I’ll move us a little farther out.”

Wade stepped in carefully, not wanting to upset the skiff and get their food wet. Aidan walked the boat out for seven feet and climbed inside. He pulled a free oar from the bottom, thrust it into the water, and shoved off. Soon they were moving north, parallel to the coast. The sun’s red glare on the water kept Wade looking west, toward the shoreline, which was between forty and fifty feet away. Sandy beach gradually rose into towering cliffs, streaked in brown and white. Wade admired them for a while, but finally he turned to Aidan. “Why are we goin’ to—it’s Lantern Waste, right?”

“Yeah.” Aidan had set the extra oar in the bottom of the boat and was now rowing with the attached set. He dipped the oars into the water again before looking toward Wade. “Word is, the outlaws are getting awful there—hiding in Lantern Waste and then coming out to attack people. From some of the stories—things are bad. People been killed. We have to put a stop to it.”

Wade thought for a moment. “Couldn’t the king send soldiers?”

Aidan shook his head. “They’re all occupied trying to fight the rebellion in the Lone Islands. The few left in Narnia have to guard the borders, and they’re stretched tight as is.”

“The Lone Islanders want independence?”

“That’s what they say,” Aidan nodded.

“Then why not let them go?” Wade asked. “You’d be able to bring the soldiers back to deal with things here. It’s not as if Narnia needs the Lone Islands.”

Aidan sighed. “Normally,” he said, “I’d agree with you. But the Lone Islanders, from what we can tell, didn’t come up with this on their own. The Calormenes probably encouraged it and gave them the money they needed to keep the war going. It’s the Calormenes who really want this war, so they can get the Lone Islands for themselves. Narnia after that, probably.”

He rowed another pace. “And it’s not all the Lone Islanders want independence anyway—they’re divided half and half, pretty much. It’s a mess, is what it is. It was the Lone Islanders themselves who wanted Narnian rulership, in the first place—like I said, a mess.”

A sea bird dove suddenly at the water about a dozen yards away from them, catching a fish in his beak and then carrying it off toward a tree along the shore. Wade watched it in fascination. He had only seen the ocean once in his own world, and then from a car. “Why’d they want another country to rule them? They’re insane.”

“The short of the story,” Aidan explained, “is that a Narnian king named Gale—before your family’s time—sailed to the Lone Islands and saved them from a dragon that had been terrorizing the islands. Devouring people and worse. He killed the thing himself. They liked that, of course, and they figured his protection would be a good thing. So they claimed him as their king. Now,” he added, “if I’da been them, I’d have rewarded Gale and been friendly to Narnia, but not given over sovereignty. But Lone Islanders aren’t like Narnians, or Texans either.”

“You think on yourself as a Texan?” Wade asked.

Aidan thought for a moment. “I guess. It’s where I was born—maybe Oklahoman’s a better word now. Since it’s not just the Five Tribes lives there anymore.”

They rowed on for an hour, with Wade taking a turn at the oars, and then Aidan saw the place he wanted to land. “Here,” he said, and Wade guided the ship toward the beach Aidan had pointed out. Twelve feet from land, Aidan jumped from the boat and pulled it in. “Take the stuff out, and we’ll put this boat away.”

“Away?” Wade asked, gathering up their possessions and stepping onto the shore.

“Don’t know when I’ll be back for her, and I don’t want anybody to think she’s been abandoned.” Aidan lugged the boat into a group of thick bushes and arranged their branches so it couldn’t be seen. “Come on, we got a couple days of walkin’.”

“Is Lantern Waste a dump?” Wade asked, handing Aidan his things.

Aidan pulled his quiver on and laughed. “Hardly. ‘Waste’ doesn’t mean ‘trash’, it means ‘wilderness’. Lantern Waste was the part of Narnia your aunt Lucy came to a thousand years ago. There’s a real lantern there, always burnin’, but nobody lives in it. It’s a forest, and a thick one now.”

Wade felt slightly foolish, but the fact didn’t matter as much to him as it would have once. And that, if nothing else, made him glad he had come to Narnia.

[Glenburne]

Wade’s feet kept insisting that Narnia had to be at least as large as Russia, but Aidan had repeatedly reminded him that Narnia was only about the size of Texas. “Only?” Wade had complained, good-naturedly.

Aidan would just laugh at his complaints; after all, Aidan had been walking all over this country for years. The cook had called him “seer,” and that was the term Aidan used to describe himself. “Well, what does that mean?” Wade had demanded. “You see things—hallucinate?” Aidan had nearly keeled over laughing. It meant he had been sent to guide the people, he explained, and to help them when they would allow him. If Aslan sent a message, Aidan would deliver it. If Aslan noticed a problem, Aidan would try to fix it. “Basically,” he concluded, “I’m Aslan’s hound dog.”

Wade had laughed—Aidan hardly reminded him of a dog—but he knew well that, whatever Aidan was, he couldn’t describe it any better. The Narnians probably called him “seer” because no other name fit.

They were nearing the Narnian hill country now. Creatures Wade had never dreamed could be real—fauns, tree-spirits and well-women, plus all manner of Talking Beasts—would pass them as they crossed the rolling fields, and many recognized Aidan and greeted him gladly. “Where are you going?” they would ask, and Aidan would simply reply that he hadn’t been in the north for over a year, and Mountainstone the centaur would like for him to visit again. That seemed to be enough answer for the Narnians. Apparently they were used to Aidan’s wanderings.

“That’s where the Witch was killed,” Aidan said suddenly, pointing at a wide field toward their right.

Wade followed his gaze. The field stretched wide and flat for about a mile, and then it rose, amid a barrier of boulders, to join the Narnian hill country. “The White Witch? The one that threw you in that dungeon?”

“The same,” Aidan replied. “See that tree in the middle of the field? The old withered one?”

The tree was alive, but its branches knotted and twisted as if in mortal agony. Though summer still ruled the Narnian trees, the leaves of this one appeared brown and hard, even from a distance. It was a cruel-looking thing.

“It was your grandmother and her sister and brothers that helped end the Witch’s reign. Peter and Ed fought with her here till Aslan came to the field and killed her himself, right where that tree stands today.” Aidan slowed his pace as Wade eyed the spot. “Not all her creatures died in the battle, though, and a couple hags planted that tree as a memorial to her years later, when Caspian the Second ruled.”

Wade wasn’t sure that he really wanted to know, but he asked anyway. “Hags?”

“Looked like women come up from the grave, almost,” Aidan said. “Hard to describe—they’re gone, now. Fled past Ettinsmoor in the north when Caspian the Seafarer became king.”

“And my grandmother—and the others—they ruled after her? In the Golden Age?”

Aidan nodded.

Wade took a last glance at the thorn tree that marked the Witch’s death-place. “Why haven’t you all chopped it down?”

“The hags,” Aidan answered, striding forward, “were right about one thing. It’s good to remember—for us, good to remember that evil’s as greedy as it ever was.” He looked at the tree again. “As she ever was.”

Aidan didn’t speak again for several hours, but Wade felt comfortable with the silence. For one thing, it freed his mind to study the lands they passed through. And Aidan—he wore the quiet like a mantle around him, and it quieted Wade’s worries. Worries about what they would be getting themselves into once the reached Lantern Waste.

Aidan had talked about stopping the bandits as if it were just another day’s work, and that thought was beginning to make Wade uncomfortable. He knew Aidan was nobody’s fool—Aidan knew there was danger. But Aidan had been around danger long enough to waste little concern over it. Wade couldn’t say the same thing.

They camped that night on a mountain ridge overlooking the ancient battlefield where the Witch had died. Aidan heated four red-skinned potatoes in the ashes of their fire and gave Wade directions to a plum tree—“Plums should be ripe this time of year,” he said—before fetching more wood for the fire.

Wade found the plum tree beside the narrow stream that edged down the mountain. Aidan had been right—the plums were blue-red and soft to the touch. He plucked four and traced his way back to the fire.

He heard Aidan’s singing before he saw the flames glowing through the black branches of the mountain bushes. The song cut through the night, preventing him from getting lost. Aidan had a good tenor--thankfully, his voice had done some limited changing despite his lack of a beard--but the fact didn't really surprised Wade. He listened to the song as he felt his way through the darkening wood.

“All night around the thorn-tree the little people play,
And men and women passing will turn their heads away.
From break of dawn till moonrise alone it stands on high,
With twisted sprigs for branches across the winter sky.”

Wade broke from the brush, clutching the plums in his arms. “Here, Aidan,” he said, kneeling to desposit them beside the seer. He looked down the mountain as he straightened up, and his eyes fell on the battlefield. You can see the Witch’s tree all the way from here, even at night, he realized. No wonder Aidan’s thinking on it.

Aidan didn’t seem disturbed, though, just thoughtful. “Learned that song from Ed,” he said off-handedly, digging a potato from the ashes. “Your great-uncle, I mean.”

Wade cut the potato open with his pocketknife. “Edmund’s good enough. Grandmother never mentions him—I learned about him, and the other two, in his journal. Their first names is what he calls them and how I know them.”

“She was always so independent.” Aidan opened a potato for himself and dug out a white chunk. “Never wanted to need anybody.” He looked over at Wade. “I’ve got the same inclination, on occasion, since I’ve seen men and beasts fail a thousand times. But with her—she took it too far. Couldn’t give over completely to Aslan once she had left Narnia. And then she went to America and met Garrett Randall in Baltimore.”

“My grandfather,” Wade said.

“Yeah.” Aidan chewed on the hunk of potato and swallowed. “He was a bit of an up-and-comer, himself. His family owned a farm in Alabama, but Garrett said he was cuttin’ off from that and movin’ into the modern world. ‘No future in Alabama’, is what he told her. ‘Just black dirt, and too much of it’. He’d learned style, forced any trace of an accent from his words, acted like he knew the world. She liked that, and he liked her. She mighta been sixteen, and him twenty, but neither one really cared. And Garrett Randall wasn’t the kind to believe her, or a Harvard math professor, even, about Narnia.”

“Well, I wouldn’ta believed if I hadn’t seen it,” Wade pointed out.

“Even if you didn’t believe,” Aidan said, “you’d have enjoyed a story about it. But Garrett was too self-possessed to admit likin' stories. He did, but he hid it real well. Susan eloped with him when she turned twenty, against her parents’ wishes, and she thought she would have a modern, sophisticated life. She did, for a few months. But then her family died in the train wreck, and his father and older brother died in a farm accident. His roots were too deep, even if he’d spent his life denying them.”

“He went back to the run the farm,” Wade said. “I know that part.”

Aidan looked down toward the battlefield again. Toward the Witch’s tree. “She’d denied Narnia and hurt her family to please Garrett, and he wasn’t turnin’ out to be what she’d thought. A few years and he was startin’ to act like an Alabamian again. She’d grown up in Europe, and now was stuck on a farm in Alabama. She hated it, but she couldn’t run back to England—she had no family left. Her life there was over. Her big plans had failed, and it was her own fault.”

“So she doesn’t like Alabama?” Wade asked. The idea had never occurred to him before.

“Not from what Aslan told me. She won’t let herself like much of anything anymore. Doesn’t thinks she deserves joy.”

“We don’t, none of us,” Wade said. “It’s a thing given.”

“By God,” Aidan murmured. “Thank God He gives it.”

They made good time the next few days, and on the morning of the fourth Aidan told him that Lantern Waste began only about twenty miles away.

“So we’ll get there by sundown?” Wade asked.

“We’ll stop about three this afternoon,” Aidan answered, shaking his head. “We’re not gonna sleep in Lantern Waste. Not tonight.”

They continued onward, moving faster now that the end of their journey was in sight. Wade walked a bit ahead of Aidan in his eagerness for a real bed. Aidan didn’t seem rushed, but he was used to sleeping on the ground.

The sun had begun to feint toward the western horizon when Wade, still hurrying ahead, was stopped by Aidan’s sharp yell. “Wade! Come here! Now!”
_________________________________________________


If you all want me to post more, let me know.

[ladyofnarnia]

I like it and I'm looking forward to reading more.

[Zella]

Ah! Cliffhanger!

I do hope that you'll post more. I just couldn't think of anything to say other than "I like it," and I feel rather silly posting that too often. So, more please?