Hello, everyone.
So, this is gonna be a bit crazy, but here're several things about this story:
It's basically finished, I'm just missing the epilogue, but everything is written already. That's why I'll upload it everything at once.
The story is divided in 3 parts(you'll eventually see why)
Yes, it has several Oc pairings with actual characters but do not worry, you'll understand how that works after your read.
English is not my first language, so have a little tolerance with it.
I hope you love it, enjoyyyyy it, 'cause this is literally going to be crazy. Please, i'd love to read what you think about it.
Michigan, 1942
1.
"So, you are leaving me alone again." It wasn't a question anymore.
"You are not alone. Granny will be here" Mama grabbed both of her cheeks and kissed her forehead in a hurry. "Be a good girl, don't..."
"Don't stay awake until late, eat all your veggies, don't talk to strangers, and don't get in trouble with grandma." With each word the little girl said, the expression in her mother's thin and long face relaxed, seeing her daughter giving up and behaving as the lady that she wanted her to become. You've said it a hundred times, a voice inside the child really wanted to say, and maybe she would've said that any other day. But she didn't want to make mother sad or angry, especially when the girl herself felt those exact emotions at that moment. "I will mother. Go in peace."
Lady Woods stopped for a second, admiring at her beautiful daughter. She took in her long, thick, brown curls, in need of a brush specially at the tips. Her sweet yellow dress that Lady's father had bought for the girl, now yelling for some ironing.
Ennie (like her mother preferred to call her) felt a hand in her shoulder and then and only then she remembered that both, mother and daughter, where not alone.
"She'll be okay" A cracking voice behind the girl said.
Ennie wanted to turn and look at her intimidating grandmother but she didn't want to lose a second without looking at her mother before she left.
"I know, mother" The tension in the room was so strong that Enola couldn't move a muscle, thinking that if she did a bomb would explode in their faces.
Lady took her suitcase and with a last glance at her daughter she left.
In her mind, Enola ran after her mother. She ran after the automobile in which her mother was going away through the main road of the mansion, tripping with her expensive shoes through the gray rocks on the dirt, ran past the fence with the cold wind whipping at her face like a hundred slaps, eventually falling to the floor, crying, hoping that her mother would have a bit of compassion and pity for her, stop the vehicle and regret her decision.
But when the girl came back to reality, her mother was long gone. She was still in the same spot, with her white-haired grandmother's hand still on her shoulder.
"May I retire to my bedroom, grandmother?" She asked in a monotone voice.
"You may"
That night, once alone, after being tucked into the great and cold bed by her grandmother, the girl cried her eyes out, muffling her sobs with the pinkish silk pillows. That night she promised herself that she wouldn't spend her days waiting for her mother's return looking and mourning like a ghost, no. She would be the happiest girl in the world, as she had been her entire short life; at least until her father had left, shortly followed by her mother.
The promised days spent on her grandmother's house became weeks, and the weeks became months. Still, Ennie's energy seemed too inexhaustible that the full mansion looked alive. If she wasn't with one of her governesses (wishes of her mother who thought that Ennie couldn't stop preparing to become a lady even with the circumstances), she would be playing pranks to her grandmother. The old lady, who had been stiff and giving the cold shoulder to the girl the first weeks had eventually warmed up to the girl, even if she'd tried to hide it. Every time the girl attempted to make the old woman laugh, the grandmother would hide behind her hand-held fan and repeat "That is not proper of a lady" or "Your mother would not be satisfied".
So, of course, the day it happened the girl wasn't afraid as she woke up and, through her window, saw the white sky melting in the horizon with the white tops of the trees and pines.
She sighted.
When she had arrived at the mansion, last winter's snow had just finished melting. The snow was back, but her mother was not.
She shook her head and put a smile on her face. She changed her clothes, took a big coat, her raining boots and took off running down the stairs, out of the mansion and into the woods.
She jumped off a large sized rock, not large enough for her to harm herself if she jumped off, but large enough for her to feel like her French governess would say: très jolie. She felt the rush as she ran through the woods jumping from fallen three to boulder, to puddle. Her mother would be horrorized to see her daughter jumping like a monkey here and there. God, her grandmother would be horrorized if she discovered that Ennie had ran out of the house and into the woods too early in the morning and alone. But she was so excited to see the first snow after everything that had happened to her, she couldn't resist.
She came to a stop when her lungs started to scream because of the cold air they were inhaling. She wasn't far from the mansion; being an 8-year-old, she didn't have enough stamina to go through long distances. She walked backwards until she leaned in a big wooden log behind her. But as soon as she touched it she jumped and turned around, facing it. Still, trying to catch her breath, she glanced at the log. It was big, but just a few meters large.
And it was cold. Really, really cold. Like touching ice.
The girl looked at the sky. Yes, it was snowing but it seemed like the snow had just started falling, there was no way the fallen trunk could get that temperature so quickly... but, what did she know? She was just a kid.
She grinned as a memory of her father appeared inside her head. They had been playing hide and seek, two years before (she remembered perfectly because it was before things started to get bad).
While remembering her father's face peeking through the opposite opening of the trunk from the one she had entered it, Ennie noticed that the freezing log had openings at both ends of it. The girl giggled and made her way into it, just like she had done 2 years earlier.
The "freezer" as she had decided to call it, was bigger than she had expected. Years ago, she had to be lying flat on the ground, now she was crawling like a baby. Once she reached the middle of it she let herself rest all of her body on the wood, still trying to catch her breath (a terrible decision considering the freezing temperature of the wood beneath her).
She closed her eyes, hoping to hear her father's voice saying "I'm coming!"
When she opened her eyes, she realized that she had fallen asleep. The girl could predict that it had been only for a few minutes, but she dismissed those thoughts as she looked in front of her.
"Holy Jesus!" She whispered as she saw that there wasn't an exit in front of her. There was not an opening in the log, but she could have sworn that, just before she had laid down and closed her eyes, she had seen the opposite opening. It frightened her, making her turn her head around hoping that there was still the opening from where she had entered the log.
Turning around inside a dead tree's body resulted to be the most physically challenging thing she had ever done; Ennie hit her head and limbs several times, noticing that not only the trunk was not opened from both sides but that it was also smaller than she remembered, and squeaked before moving to the light.
The Pevensies were about to follow the youngest of their members towards the house of a faun and Susan Pevensie couldn't be more delighted.
Actually, she wasn't delighted at all. Every step she took in that winter wonderland...how had Lucy called it? Oh, yes, Narnia. Every step she took in Narnia it was like a slap at her face using each of the books of science she had read.
She couldn't lie. She kind of liked the aesthetic of the whole place, after playing a bit with her siblings in the snow good memories of the good old days had resurfaced in her head, and Lucy seemed so enthusiastic after the hard time they had all pulled on her, thinking she was a liar.
That was the worst part, that not only Narnia's existence challenged her logic, but Susan also liked Narnia. Up until then, she had really liked it.
In front of her Lucy stopped.
"Did you hear that?" Lucy's voice was barely a whisper.
Susan noticed that they were in an area where a lamp-post, just like there were back at England, was in the middle of it.
Edmund pointed at something way beyond the lamp-post.
A wooden log. A moving wooden log. It wasn't really moving, like "walking around", no. It was just resting there on the snow but it was shaking as if there was something inside of it.
Knock.
"Did you hear it now?" Lucy asked again trying not to be loud.
Peter, always the protective one, Susan noticed, extended his arms slightly pushing his siblings behind him. He raised a finger to his lips, clearly telling them all to remain silent. He took a step forward and...
"Jesus!" A tiny voice exclaimed as its owner came out of the log's left opening.
"It's just a girl!" Susan exclaimed moving towards the log.
All the Pevensies walked to the girl as she straightened herself up.
It was a girl, Susan saw, just a small girl. Clearly younger than Lucy. How a young thing like her had ended up inside a log?
"Hello there!" Susan was the first one to speak up.
The girl had been looking at her surroundings with confusion blurring her facial features. Only then the girl looked at them.
"Hi!" The girl smiled and Susan could have sworn that she bounced a little. The little thing seemed to have a lot of energy in her.
"I don't mean to intrude, but..." Susan started.
"What where you doing inside that thing?" Edmund interrupted with a grimace.
"Oh..." The girl took a moment to pass her eyes through the four Pevensies and then sent a quick glance at the log, before returning to Edmund who had asked her a question. "You see, I wanted to see the first snow, I came to the woods and, weird me, thought it would be funny to get into that thing." The girl raised a hand to her mouth as if to tell a secret and said "It's not funny…at all." She shrugged "Anyways, I thought that grandma was the only one who lived around here" She finished and her eyes went back to their surroundings as if she was disoriented.
"Are you a Narnian?!" Lucy exclaimed
The girl looked at the youngest Pevensie and made a funny face.
"A what?"
Susan turned to Peter, her brother was already looking at her. Susan raised an eyebrow at him. First snow? Looking as lost as Susan herself in that place? Didn't seem to know what a Narnian was?
"Lucy," Susan never took her eyes out of the new girl with grey eyes who once again was looking around her as if she had lost something important. "Didn't you mention that this place has been covered in snow for years?"
"Years?" The girl asked before Lucy could answer Susan. "It just started this morning."
"Look," Peter said more to his family than to the girl "I think this girl is not from..."
"Who are you?" Edmund asked her once again with that annoying face that he had been carrying around. Susan made a mental note to talk to him later about his attitude, that had been ruining their happiness.
The girl, who seemed to have forgotten what they had just been talking about before, smiled at Susan's younger brother showing him all of her white, and some of them baby, teeth.
"I'm Enola"
"Jesus" Susan whispered to herself rapidly catching up with the girl's name meaning. Who would call her daughter like that?!
"What kind of name is that?"
"Edmund!" Lucy reprimanded him.
"Don't worry." Enola stuck her tongue out for a second "It was the name of my father's mother, and my great grandmother's name." The girl shrugged and crossed her arms. "But you can call me..." the girl stopped for a few seconds, the Pevensies waiting for her to finish it. But she ended up sneezing.
"En?" Edmund finished.
"I was going to say Ennie, but I like En better. Jesus, it's so cold in here!" The girl rubbed her hands on her crossed arms. "It's never been this cold in America!"
The Pevensies looked at each other in understanding. Somehow a wardrobe was not the only magic door to this land. Somewhere in America there was another way to get into Narnia.
Peter took off his coat, well, the coat he had borrowed from the professor's wardrobe and gave it to Enola.
"Come with us" Peter said to her.
"We have to..." Susan helped the girl to get into the enormous coat. Enola had to grab it as if she was in a princess gown since it was too big for her, of course she didn't look like a princess. She looked like a fur ball, Edmund thought. "explain some things to you."
Susan saw his older brother cross his arms to make heat. Susan sent him a look. Of course, Peter was going to give a... what? 10-year-old? girl his coat, while he got frozen. Always the gentleman.
"And where we are going, there will be a good fire!" Lucy explained taking a place beside the youngest girl in the group. Susan, who had put an arm around Peter hoping to help him to gain a bit of warm, remembered their previous plan.
"The faun, of course" Susan thought.
The Pevensies waited for the girl's answer.
"Okay!" The girl exclaimed.
Susan thought that if she had been Enola she wouldn't have just followed a group of kids who knew where. Yet the girl seemed that she would've probably been excited about everything they would've proposed to her.
They had all started to walk again. Lucy and En in the front, Peter and Susan in the middle and Edmund a little behind them.
"How old are you?" Susan heard Lucy asking.
"I'm 8"
Susan sighted.
Fool faun, fool Peter, fool beaver, fool annoying little girl.
Literally, like his mother would say, birds of a feather flock together. The young Enola seemed to be the younger, American, and more annoying version of Lucy.
In their way to the faun's house, Edmund's youngest sister had explained everything about Narnia to the little stranger and, said stranger, looked fascinated by the idea of being in a land with mythical creatures.
Even Peter and Susan looked fascinated by everything Lucy had said.
Then when they arrived at the faun's wrecked house, Lucy had started to talk about Narnia's queen with such disrespect Edmund couldn't tolerate it.
"A witch?" Edmund had thought "I guess it is all based in perspectives." He remembered the last conversation he had had with Narnia's queen.
Edmund, the king of Narnia.
He really liked the sound of that. And to have Peter and Susan as his servants it would be the divine justice they had always deserved. But they wouldn't listen to him. His older siblings listened to everybody except him, even a beaver!
When they got into the beavers' house, they had all gotten warm and started to talk about prophecies... And the witch was the queen? They were the ones talking about magic and the future! For all he had seen, the Queen only used his magic to make delicious Turkish delight.
How he craved for some Turkish delight.
He heard his siblings arguing with the beavers and the creatures talking about Aslan and a table and he couldn't take it anymore. He walked out of the tiny house and decided to go alone to the castle. The road wasn't easy, especially because of the snow but eventually he reached the point at which he wouldn't have to escalate anymore, just keep walking ahead.
"Hey!" He heard someone calling him. "Hey!" God, how much he was hating that voice "Boy! Wait!"
He stopped and looked around. There she was, Lucy's American clone running up to him.
"Where do you think you're going?" She yelled.
"Go back!" He yelled back and turned around.
"Nope" she reached him. "I don't remember how to get back" she giggled.
God, he didn't have what was needed to babysit. At least not at that moment.
"Where are we going?"
"I'm going to the queen's castle, you are going back" he explained.
"Wait... wasn't she the bad one?" The girl asked tugging at his sleeve since he didn't even look at her when he answered. She was starting to feel ignored and there was nothing she hated more than to be ignored. "Yes, I think I just hear the beavers talking about it "two sons of Adam and two daughters of eve...bla bla bla""
Edmund couldn't help to smile at this but he hid it very well.
" "Peace in Narnia, bla bla, before the third daughter of eve, bla bla..." oh, I guess I have forgotten." The girl's voice lowered as they approached the castle, it was really intimidating for her.
But inside of Edmund's head a plan was being formulated. The queen had asked him to take his sisters and brother to her castle. Maybe he could take this little girl to her instead. Yes, he would be killing two birds with one stone, he would get rid of the annoying stranger that had followed him by making her his servant and he would make the queen happy so he could get some more Turkish delight and a crown.
It had been so easy.