"Maria!" a young girl called from the glistening waters of Lake Kibo. "Won't you join us?"

Maria looked up from her scrolls, smiling at the group of children waving at her, a little way off from her seat near the edge of the water. "You know I don't like swimming," she said.

This was, of course, a lie. During the blazing heat of the summer, to swim in the lake was all anyone would have wanted. But Maria hadn't touched the waters in five years. In truth, she was afraid, not of the water, but that once she was immersed, she would never want to come out.

"You're no fun anymore, not since you started reading all those stories." One of the little boys gazed at her with wide, sad eyes. "Would you rather be in there than here with us?"

Maria rolled up the scroll she had been reading and set it down beside her. "Don't say things like that; of course I like being here with all of you." She stood and walked to the water's edge, careful not to get so close as to let the lethargic waves touch her toes.

"Come on, Maria. Please!" The children began yelling demands for her to go further. She shook her head and was about to turn back to her scrolls when the tide surged a little further onto the pebbled bay, washing over her heels. Maria felt a tingle of delight flow from her feet to her head. How she'd missed the lake's waters. It wouldn't hurt to bathe her feet for a little while longer, would it?

Maria turned back to the children, who were still calling for her to join them, and stepped further into Lake Kibo. The water covered both of her feet fully, providing long-awaited relief from the blistering heat of the midday sun. All previous thoughts of heartbreak and loss seemed to be washed clean out of her mind and up onto the shore. She took another step, then another. The light silks she was dressed in soon became heavy with water, but she didn't stop, not even when the gold ring around her neck that held up the front of her dress began to pressure the top of her spine. The smiles of the children came closer and closer, and Maria couldn't stand up anymore. She lifted herself to the surface of the lake and floated on her back to where the children tread the water, waiting for her.

"Am I still boring?" she asked the little boy with the wide eyes.

"No," he smiled. "Not anymore."

"You look like an angel!" squealed one of the girls. She reached under the water, pulling at the end of Maria's braid, untying the end and letting her hair flow free, spreading like a halo around her head. Maria smiled; perhaps she had been spending too much time in her imagination, instead of appreciating the beauty that was all around her.

"What kind of story were you reading?" asked another one of the girls.

"It was a love story."

"I'd much rather hear one of your stories than read about that sort of stuff," the girl grimaced.

"Yeah, tell us one of your stories, Maria."

"But you've heard them all so many times; you could probably tell them better than I can."

"Please, Maria," the children wined. "Tell us about the magical land. Tell us about Narnia."

Maria's smile began to fade. She suddenly wanted to get out of the water. It seemed to be getting colder, the sunlight seemed dimmer. She tried to bring herself upright, her now loose hair clinging to her neck as her head came out of the water, seeming to strangle her. She had pushed the land of magic so deep into the back of her mind that she wasn't even sure if her stories were accurate anymore. She was even beginning to doubt that Narnia had ever existed in the first place, that it was just a fantasy she used to help lessen her sorrow. Sometimes she pondered whether she'd prefer if it hadn't existed at all.

She tried to move away from the group, towards the shore, but something was anchoring her. The children's protests became muffled and impossible to understand. There was a tugging at her dress, pulling her downwards. Maria plunged her head beneath the water's surface. In the clear blue water, she could see that nothing was pulling at her, yet she seemed to sink deeper and deeper into the lake. Soon she couldn't even reach up and out of the water. She fought hard against the grip of the nothing, desperate for breath.

Her energy began to wane. The water became darker and colder with every second. The pressure made her head ache furiously. It seemed there was nothing else to do but close her eyes and wait for her flailing body to lose all feeling. In the blackness of her mind, she felt regret; being near the lake was a mistake and she had pushed aside her better judgement to satisfy her own desires. Where she should have felt relief, she was surrounded by sadness; she knew exactly what was coming.

Her body should have frozen, coming up to a surface of thin ice. Maria opened her eyes to see an off-white sky hanging thick over the vast expanse of water she found herself in. Looking over her shoulder, she saw a cliff in the distance, mounted with a grand, snow-covered castle. She grappled at the ice, trying to steady herself against the choppy waves, only to have it break under her hands. Maria knew she had to move quickly if she was to survive the freezing waters.

Kicking her legs wildly, she started in the direction of the cliff. The ice became thicker the closer she got to the shore. Once it was solid enough to take her weight, she used what remained of her strength to pull herself out of the water and into the winter air. A bracing wind swept over her bare shoulders and she tried to wrap any excess material of her soaked dress over the exposed skin.

Maria lay still. She wasn't sure for how long; it could have been minutes, it could have been hours. She was back, when she had long since accepted that this part of her life was over, when she thought she had learnt enough to take care of herself. Yet the land she was seeing from her icy bed was not the Narnia that she knew. It was pale and grim; even from this distance, the country looked sick. Maria didn't want to believe that it was Narnia, the land she had loved for so long. She had never seen such a castle, not on those cliffs by the great sea, looking majestically out to where the sky met the horizon.

Her fingers twitched, numb from the cold. But it was still movement and it spurred her on. Pushing her bare toes into the ice, Maria shifted her body forwards. It was going to be a long journey, but she knew that if she could just keep going, forcing her eyes to stay open, she could get herself to shore.

It wasn't long before most of her body had gone numb. Parts of her dress had frozen stiff, ice laced through the threads. Gazing up to see how much further she had to crawl until she reached the cliffs, she spotted two figures on the beach. Maria didn't care if there were friends or foes; she lifted her head and reached out an arm to them. They were already getting closer and closer. Pushing herself onto her back, she lay in wait.

"Stay with us now," a deep, male voice said as both figures, dressed head to toe in dark red, crouched over her. "It's okay, we've got you." Maria's eyelids began to droop. "No, stay with us." A hand found its way around the back of her neck. The speaker lifted her up, cradling her by the shoulders and knees.

"Do you recognize this?" The second figure was also male, but Maria could only see his beady eyes. He was holding something in front of her face. It was an emblem, hanging from a necklace string, depicting a firebird within a circle. Maria managed to nod her head. "Can you tell us you name?" She could see that he was smiling.

"Nimueh…Firesong," she croaked. Nimueh; the name that had been given to her the first time she had come to Narnia. She had since always preferred that to Maria.

"Elijah was right," one said to the other as they began move towards the shore. "She came back." Maria wanted to ask who Elijah was, but knew that she would have save her strength. With Narnia in the sick state that it was, and since she had been dragged back, Maria was determined to find a cure.