A/N: Mr Tumnus' arrival in the White Witch's castle after his defiant rescuing of Lucy. Everything concerning Narnia belongs to the brilliant C.S. Lewis.

AS SNOW WE FALL

When Maugrim finally released his arm, it took the faun a moment to realize the wolf was pacing away from him without his body in tow. His arm had gone completely numb by then. Dazed, he tilted his head back to watch the large canine step away and then closed his eyes, his back pressed against the scratchy ice that formed the one place in all of Narnia he did not want to be. He had vague recollection of trying to stuff a few belongings into a rucksack, to escape into the Woods and vanish to where the Witch would never find him; then his door bursting open, and a swarm of the Witch's wolves roiling into his house, and then… chaos. Pain; a blow to his head that dropped him off his hooves. And miles of slipping to and from consciousness as he was alternatively dragged and forced to walk towards the north, ever the north.

He hated the north.

"I thought I told you to bring him to me alive." She spoke in tones of acerbic impatience and he shuddered where he lay to hear it. She was very close, so dangerously close, to anger and that was something she could never control.

Maugrim's voice was not apologetic. "He breathes, Your Majesty."

There was the faint whisper of cloth trailing against the frigid floor and clicking footsteps. He didn't dare open his eyes as a shadow fell over him. "Well, then. Stand up Faun."

For the briefest of moments, Tumnus wondered what she would do if he were to refuse, but the next instant he chastised himself. Of course I know what she will do, and I would rather not be a statue prostrate on the ground. With an effort, he gathered his wobbling legs beneath him and straightened his bruised frame the best he could, half-hunched and dripping sweat in his fear despite the chill of his current dismal environment. His neck creaked and his back spasmed as he looked up and up, into the gaze of the worst of queens.

Her face was terribly awing, a poisoned beauty. It was always a surreal experience standing in Jadis' presence, as she seemed to be made from the deepest elements of the night and as such, she shouldn't have been real: cold midnight for her hair; unending black for her eyes; the eerie white of nothingness for her skin. She was a hopeless, twisted view into the heavens, one that dwelt on the emptiness of space rather than the light of the stars.

The tip of her wand rested beneath his chin, prying his head back further until he was gritting his teeth with the strain of it. "How do you betray me, Faun?" she asked, almost purely curious in her words. As she might have the right to be, so used to being blindly, completely obeyed as she was. So used to having the sheer atrociousness of her reputation bind the will of any whom she sought something from to listen, to do as she said.

His throat was horridly parched and it took a few swallows before his voice croaked out, "I had to."

That made her lift an eyebrow, just one delicate movement to betray her surprise. "Oh? You had to? How do you mean?"

"Yes, I did," Tumnus answered. "Because you must be stopped."

Unexpectedly, she didn't respond right away, didn't move to strike him with either hand or wand. Nor did she turn him to stone. Yet. Rather, she peered down at him, as unmoving as the statues she had decorated her castle with, for what seemed to be the longest stretch of time Tumnus had ever known.

He had just started to shiver with the cold that met his sweat-slicked skin when she began to laugh. He winced as it rang through the hall, sharp and blanched of any proper feelings belonging to laughter. It seemed that the very idea of anyone challenging her was too pathetic to be entertained in any seriousness. To his surprise, rage surged through him in reply and he stopped quaking under the flow of words that rose up with it.

"You must be stopped," he repeated, his voice growing louder as Maugrim and his wolves began to growl. "You, the most depraved force for evil known to Narnia, will be stopped—and by mere children at that." Her laughter halted abruptly and her gaze honed down on him in a sharpened expression of building hatred but he kept speaking regardless. "You are afraid of them. You are very afraid, otherwise you wouldn't have so many keeping an eye out for the children of Adam and Eve, for so many and many a year. And why shouldn't you be afraid? They are blessed by the One whose Magic is greater than yours."

Her wand glinted as she raised it, her teeth bared as she hissed, "Say it. Say His name and I will strike you down."

"I speak of Aslan!" Tumnus shouted, throwing wide his arms, his voice ringing through her dead ice castle. "I speak the truth! Aslan will triumph! Aslan—" His voice was momentarily lost the next second as a blinding burst of blue magic struck his hooves. Tumnus reeled and would have fallen had his legs not begun to turn to stone. Bit by bit, as the magic climbed, he lost sensation in his body. His chin was grasped as the Witch seized him, her nails biting into his jaw, drawing blood.

"Aslan is not here," she snarled, wild-eyed in fury.

Now the spell had reached his stomach. With one final moment before it would overtake the rest of his body, dooming him to an eternity in place, Tumnus gave a smile.

"Aslan is with all those who believe in Him," the Faun said. Coldness seeped across his jaw, locking his head in position, and the spell moved to sweep across his eyes. His last image before entering his tomb of stone was of the White Witch's shattered expression of rising fear, pure fear.

"Your winter will give way to His spring."

The stone encased him, his gaze was frozen upward, but there was still a smile on the faun's face even as snow began to gather on the Witch's newest statue.