The serpent comes to her on the night after her coronation, but the dreams have already begun by then, cluttered and clear and real as she has never dreamed before. In the pavilion, before she wakes to restless, sleepless, dreamless Lucy, Susan dreams of torchlight on scattered golden fur, of stone sharp, broken, of a terrible triumphant roar. She dreams, inexplicably even after all else comes to pass, of a younger version of her mother, weeping in a train station.
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The ivy-twisting crown is not heavy, but it pinches and snags in her hair, and it is a relief to lay it beside her bed that first night.
It is a sweeter relief when the snake twists up her arm and curls around her neck. It licks her ears and bites, gently — no more pain than the pinch she gives herself to make sure she is awake — into her lower lip. Listen, it tells her, and she falls asleep to a gentle hissing.
Susan dreams: the hissing becomes the splash and slap of waves against a swan-prowed ship. The waves become sun-drenched dunes and she is walking away from a gleaming city but she keeps slipping. The sand melts into stone, and the stone cracks beneath her feet.
The next morning the dryad who comes to her room cries out immediately for the guards, the doctors, the other new monarchs; they find her locked in trembling eye contact with a sleep-bleary Susan, who has awoken with a lapful of snake, tidy green-brown coils draped across her chest and arms. Before anything rash or brave may be done it yawns, unfolds itself, and slips off the bed.
"Don't!" Susan cries as they all start toward it, but it is too late — Rootwinder the centaur holds up the serpent's limp body with distaste, and a certain reverence.
"We will augur this for you, my Queen," he promises. "Are you harmed?"
She reassures them, hugs Lucy, lets her ladies strip her to a nakedness that is already becoming comfortable so the doctors can examine her.
"Not even a bruise, see," she says, smiling, forcing herself into daytime charm.
But all that day she runs her tongue along the matching punctures inside her bottom lip. There is no blood, but she tastes a strange rancid sweetness like fruit past its time, and that night she dreams of a wild grove heavy with apples, and a stairwell scattered with golden horseman.
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Susan dreams: she is waiting at a train station, with and without her siblings. She is 12 and she is 20. In one hand she carries a single suitcase tagged with her name, age, and destination; in the other a sleek, professional handbag. She wears pigtails and lipstick, a schoolgirl's uniform and sheer stockings.
Sometimes the dream ends with her mother kissing her goodbye. Sometimes a train flashes by and through its windows glare sea and sand. More and more often, she waits, and no train comes, no one meets her, she stands alone.
She wakes and the serpent tells her, now you know the end of the story. But there are no trains in Narnia (there never will be while she is Queen), and she remembers, faintly, the faintness of memory instead of dream, a train to the countryside. She tells no one of this dream. There is no point, nothing to forestall here. No need to scare them any more, not when she might need them to listen elsewhere.
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Susan dreams: she is following Aslan through the night, Lucy clinging to her hand, Peter and Edmund falling in with them. The darkness resolves into trees, the Lion into a Stag of pure white. The Stag meets her eyes and in the snake's voice promises - anything you desire, Gentle Queen.
In her dream, for the first time, she speaks, stepping forward, dropping Lucy's hand as her siblings fade away. I want not to dream, she lisps, tongue clumsy against the sudden swelling of her lower lip. Please, stop the dreams.
The Stag shakes his head, antlers blurring for a moment into a golden mane, and says, you want to go home.
She wakes, crying, the shadows of trees stippling across her bedsheets. She pushes the serpent's voice away and tells herself, I am home. This is home. This is where I want to be.
Tumnus brings news that the White Stag has been sighted in the west, and Susan bites her tongue to stop herself crying out. They will not believe me, she tells the serpent, who hisses delicate laughter and reminds her of trees turning to skinned fur, of a door slamming shut behind her.
She tries, calmer and more logical than she has ever been before. Reminds them that the Stag is a myth, has not been caught in recorded or oral memory, that wish-magic is temperamental and vengeful. She prods with all the responsibilities they ought to attend to instead, cites the dangers in the west of late, the time and cost such a trip would waste.
"Oh, but Susan, if we caught him!" Lucy's eyes are bright with adventure, and Peter and Edmund have answers for all of her excuses.
"Susan, we would have you join us, but if you would feel safer here…" Edmund's suggestion is couched in the subtle glances and hesitant touches they have all employed around her since Tashbaan. She will not break down again. Tears have won her nothing, and she will not be made hysterical, will not be left behind. Forewarned is forearmed, even if the arms are borne by one unsuited to it - she will not leave them alone to face her dreams.
Surrounded by the Western trees, faced with the lamppost, a dream within a dream, her brothers and sister confess to foreboding, and Susan's heart leaps with opportunity. Thank you, Aslan. Let them listen.
But they have never listened to her counsel, not when it matters, and the snake flicks his tongue smugly in her ear as they gently, so gently remind her that her dreams mean nothing. She will not let them go on without her. They have not caught the Stag, she has not wished to leave Narnia. The dreams do not always come to pass as she thinks.
"Let us take the adventure that shall fall to us," she says, and follows them into the trees, and goes home.
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Susan dreams: Narnia burns in slow, ice cold flames, and she stands atop the highest tower of Cair Paravel and is untouched. Further up and further in, call all the voices she has ever known, but there is no path that she can see. She stays.
The dreams grow less frequent, tend toward memory rather than foresight. That much relief she is granted. But Lucy cries and Peter fights and Edmund struggles to fit back into his old skin. They never blame her, and seem to have forgotten that she ever claimed to dream the future, but she knows she could have prevented this. She should have fought harder, wrung more salt out of her tears, screamed her voice away; the loss of her dignity would have been worth Narnia, worth themselves. But she wanted them to respect her, wanted them to trust her, wanted Narnia to need her, too, with or without her dreams.
I didn't know, she says, and can't say if it's to herself, to Aslan, to the snake. I didn't know how to use the dreams, and I didn't know how to get rid of them. I did not choose this.
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Susan dreams: she stands upon a giant chessboard, stretching out as far as she can see. She hears Peter somewhere behind her - or maybe Edmund, or even Lucy - directing pieces, but when she tries to move where they tell her, she cannot. A growl echoes all around her, and out of the horizon slides an enormous golden knight, ruby eyes challenging her, pinning her, and her siblings are yelling at her to do something, and the growling grows louder, but she cannot move.
She wakes, and it is time to leave for the train to school.
+
They think she is sad because a thousand years have passed, because they are strangers in their own land, because her friends and her loves are gone. She thinks, I could have stopped this.
That night beside their campfire, under the apple trees, she feels the serpent stir from its long nap. It has always spoken first, but the Gentle Queen is back in her country and ready to do battle.
What was the point, she asks, and her voice is always so shaky when she tries to tell others about the visions, but not here. In her mind she is clear, calm, strong. What is the point of knowing the future if I can't do anything about it?
It doesn't laugh, at least.
You don't appreciate the knowledge enough for its own sake, it says. You have been given a great gift, twice-queen. There must be something to balance it, to balance you.
I would rather no gift at all, she says, if this is the price. I did not ask for this, I did not choose this. If it could never have made a difference, what was the point?
Must there be a point? The hiss is something of a growl, she thinks. She's forgotten what Aslan's actually sounded like. It chose you. The magic needs somewhere to settle, someone to pay attention to it. You could have learned much from it if you weren't always so scared.
She stiffens, and hears Lucy sigh in her sleep next to her, and realizes she is awake.
I'm not scared, she tells herself, and under Narnian constellations once more, she almost believes it.
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Susan dreams: the trees wake and tell her in Aslan's voice that she must leave, that she does not belong here. They bend themselves into a door that becomes a wardrobe, and the door shuts in her face, and she is left in the dark.
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The dreams fade again, and then fade more, and with every undisturbed night her heart grows lighter. She sheds memories like dry, too-small skin and picks new trappings for herself. Clothes and friends and experiences she chooses, and each new day is a surprise, and she rarely knows what will happen next.
"Why won't you listen?" Lucy begs whenever Susan waves aside talk of Narnia, and they are her own words, and they are a slap in the face. If she were better, perhaps, she would know how to help her sister. But no one ever believed her, no one ever listened to her, and she will not remember any longer.
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Susan does not dream. But she stands in the train station, her family at her feet, and she has known the end of this story.