Edmund wondered where on earth Lucy could have gotten to. They were on an island - it wasn't as though she could have wandered very far. He had tried to conduct his search quietly thus far, but now he tossed dignity to the winds and began asking everyone he saw if they knew where she was.
Eustace, of course, merely said sourly, "Wherever she is, I bet she isn't looking for the British Consul."
Caspian was busy with Drinian, planning the next stage of their journey; neither of them would have noticed anything less than a fleet of Calormene warships beating down on them. Reepicheep instantly offered his services to "hunt down the scurrilous knave who has stolen the queen!" and could only be calmed down by Edmund's repeated assurances that Lucy would never let herself be stolen without a fight, and they would have heard or seen something were that the case.
Lord Bern recalled seeing the "little lass - beg pardon, the queen" a while ago, but then lost sight of her.
Just as Edmund was starting to give serious credence to Reep's notion of a kidnapping, he met Rhince heading down to the shore and asked him the same question he had put to everyone else:
"I say, Rhince, have you seen my sister?"
The sailor touched his gnarled hand to his forehead in lieu of a cap. "I'm on my way to fetch her now, Your Majesty, sire."
"Fetch her?" Edmund said quizzically. "Fetch her from where?"
"Felimath, Your Majesty." When Edmund continued to look blank, Rhince added worriedly, "Should I not have taken her, Your Majesty? When she came and asked me, kindly as anything, just as though she weren't the queen at all - 'Oh Rhince,' says she, 'If it wouldn't be too much trouble, would you be willing to row me over to Felimath, and then come and bring me back in about an hour or so? I do so hate to bother you, but I'm afraid the oars are too much for me.' - well, how could I say no? I wouldn't have done it if I'd thought it would be a problem, but since King Caspian re-conquered the Islands, well, I was sure it would be safe, and she asked so prettily -"
Edmund held up a hand to stem the flow. "You did perfectly well, Rhince. My sister is quite capable of handling herself. If you don't mind, though, I'll go over myself and get her."
"As you like, King Edmund, sir," said the garrulous sailor. "Thank you, sire, Your Majesty."
Shaking his head just a little, Edmund set off with long strides to where the ship's boat was waiting on the shore. With easy, smooth strokes (noting with pleasure how much stronger he was now from when they had first arrived back in Narnia), he set off across the channel to Felimath's calm harbour.
"Your Majesty!" said an old shepherd, coming out of the inn, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, just as Edmund leaped out of the boat and pulled it up on the shore. "Welcome to Felimath, Sire. What may we do for you? Care for a pint, Sire?"
Edmund shook his head smilingly. "I thank you for your generous offer, but in fact, I am here for the Queen Lucy. I don't suppose you have seen her?"
The shepherd pointed off to the island's interior. "She came here about an hour or so ago, said hello to us all just as nicely as you can imagine, declined our offers of a tour, and said she would be just fine." His clear blue eyes asked the question Rhince would have verbalised: Is everything all right?
"Thank you," Edmund said, choosing to ignore the query until he had seen Lucy. It wasn't like her to slip away from everyone like that; his little sister was usually happiest when surrounded by friends old and new, and friends not yet made. Susan, now, he wouldn't have thought twice about Susan wandering off for some time to herself.
Although these days, Susan seemed to revel in attention - the more, the better. Quite unlike the Gentle Queen who had always shunned notice, preferring to work behind the scenes, now Su only seemed to want people's praise. Edmund shook his head, telling himself for the hundredth time that it wasn't his place to interfere in his elder sister's life.
Nodding courteously at the old shepherd, the young king walked away from the tiny village, thinking how much more of a pleasant journey this was when one wasn't captured and bound by slavers. The birds were singing sweetly overhead; the grass his boots crushed released a soft, pleasant odour; Felimath overall was small enough that no matter how far inland he walked, he could still hear the waves in the background lapping gently against the shore.
There! Sitting underneath a tree - surely - Edmund squinted - why, it was the same tree under which Pug and his companions had been sitting back when they were first captured. Whyever had Lucy chosen to return here?
"Ho, Lucy!" he called, breaking into a loping run.
His sister raised her head, and as he neared Edmund could see traces of tears still sparkling on her cheeks. His alarm grew. Why was Lucy crying? Who had made her cry? By the Lion, if Eustace had done something …
"Oh, Edmund." Lucy came to her feet, wiping her face with her hands and trying to smile. "Where's Rhince? Is it dreadfully late?"
"Everything's fine, I just told Rhince I'd come bring you back." Edmund stood in front of his sister and examined her face until she flushed and looked down. "What's up, Lu?"
She shrugged her shoulders. "I'm all right," she said obliquely.
Edmund very deliberately sat down and leaned his back against the red maple. "Come on, Lucy. I know you too well for that. Is it Eustace?"
Lucy managed a real, if faint, laugh at that. "No, Eustace hasn't done anything to annoy me - not deliberately, anyway."
"Nothing beyond existing, then. Well then, what is it?" She'd tell Peter in a heartbeat, but Edmund, though he had to work harder at it, still knew how to break through her defences.
Finally, she sat back down, resting her chin in her hands pensively.
"It's just silly, I suppose. I just - it's hard, coming back here, to the Lone Islands, and having it all be so different from how it was in our day. Even the fact that there was a Governor, instead of a Duke! Although Caspian changed that back."
"He certainly did," Edmund agreed somewhat grimly. He forced his attention back to Lucy. "You didn't expect it all to be the same, did you? It's been over a thousand years, after all. Narnia changed, too."
"Yes, I know that," Lucy said somewhat testily. "But everything was so different back in Narnia - and here there's just enough similarities to make it more poignant. And it's not the changes so much as what it reminds me of. Don't you ever wonder, Edmund, what happened after we left? What they thought - did they think we'd abandoned them? Who took over our rule? Did Aslan come and explain to them? What happened in those years between when we left and Caspian's ancestors came? I can't help but think about these things, especially here, where we had such marvellous friends, and now Caspian had to re-conquer the Islands and people have forgotten all about the many trips Queen Lucy and King Peter and King Edmund and Queen Susan used to make, and how beloved they were to us."
Edmund wasn't sure what to say, so he just nodded.
"I even asked Aslan," Lucy continued, now in full spate. "Back before, when we overthrew Miraz. After Caspian's coronation, I asked him what happened to - oh, everybody! Did Cor and Aravis ever marry, what happened to Corin and the rest of the Archenlanders, and what about dear Mr. Tumnus and the Beavers, and Chervy the Stag, and Peridan, and … everybody!"
Yes, Edmund thought, that was the hardest for Lucy - losing so many friends when they left Narnia. He recalled that first night in Cair Paravel's ruins, when Susan had found the chessman, and the flood of memories it had released for her. Susan had missed the life in Narnia the most - Lucy missed the people.
"What did he say?"
"He told me that was their story, not mine," Lucy said with a little sigh.
Edmund couldn't keep a rueful smile from playing around his lips. "Well, that's not terribly surprising."
"So, I thought I'd come here, where it was quiet, and at least a little like it used to be a thousand years ago, and try to find some peace about it all."
"And have you?"
"A little," Lucy said. She hesitated. "It is still hard, though - every time we come, we make new friends, and then we have to leave them behind, every time, and never know what happened to them.
"And to see the way Caspian handled the slavery situation - well, it was very flashy and effective, but it wasn't the way we would have done it, was it? And I know this is no longer Our time, and it is not Our place to criticise how he does things, but it's merely more evidence of the way everything has changed so much."
Edmund looked down guiltily. He had been fuming silently over Caspian's high-handed dealings with the slavers, followed by his blithe insistence that they continue their journey, leaving poor Lord Bern to handle all the repercussions. Lucy was right: it wasn't their place to criticise; but oh, it was getting difficult to keep biting his tongue. He kept thinking, "If I was still king regnant …" which did no one any good, least of all himself.
Aslan, teach me grace.
Thinking of that Highest King, Edmund leaned forward and put his arm around Lucy. "There's one thing - or rather one person - who hasn't changed, Lu, not from the very beginning of Narnia." When she looked at him blankly, he elaborated. "Aslan, of course. He's still here, and he is still the True Lord of Narnia; whatever mistakes Caspian makes, so long as he keeps his eyes on Aslan, things will work out." That last was to himself as much as to his sister.
Light dawned on Lucy's face and she nearly blinded Edmund with her smile. "Oh Edmund, of course! It's not Narnia that's the heart: it's Aslan! You say that Caspian needs to remain within his paws, but really we need to remember that too, don't we? If we get too focused on Narnia, and all the people we loved and lost, and how much everything has changed, well, that simply will make us bitter and angry. But Aslan - he's the same, and he always will be, no matter what else happens."
As usual, Lucy had gone straight to the crux of the matter. It wasn't about Narnia; it was about Aslan. Accepting that, they could even accept Caspian's mistakes and lapses in judgment (providing they weren't too egregious); they could even endure Eustace's whinging.
They could accept that they might never know what had happened after they returned to England the first time, that everything had changed around them while they were gone.
Because in the end, it all came back to Aslan. So long as he remained in Narnia, it would always be home.
Peter might have said all this. Susan would have hugged her sister and smoothed her mussed hair. Edmund, being Edmund, simply stood up and said,
"Well, should we be getting back, then?"
And Lucy, being Lucy, understood her brother felt too deeply for words, and so rose to join him, resting her hand on his forearm as they had done at formal court functions for so many years, and smiling understandingly at him.
"Yes, brother, I believe we should."
Author's Note: Recently, I embarked on a delightfully fun journey with a few others to writing a "Lucy and Edmund in the Lone Islands as Ramses and Amelia Peabody Emerson in Egypt" comment fic on LJ. That bit of silliness led me to thinking more seriously about the Lone Islands, and what it would have been like for Lucy and Edmund to return there after a thousand years ... and here I am.
I have long thought it interesting that Lewis implies at the end of Dawn Treader that Lucy and Edmund have now learned what they needed from Narnia, and are now ready to complete their lives in England, yet we never actually see them learning said lessons. This is one of those "missing scenes," then, that I think paints a more complete picture.
Many thanks to rthstewart, metonomia, intrikate, and lady_songsmith over at LiveJournal, for being instigators, and an especially big thank you to Andi Horton who read this for me and assured me it was worth publishing, even if it was written with a (literal) fevered brain.