If you were to ask anyone, Grace Mariner Pevensie was the most beautiful and normal person you would ever meet. How Peter Pevensie landed a girl like that was a mystery in and of itself. Peter was good-enough looking, and they definitely made a handsome couple, but as for normal? Peter didn't exactly fit that particular criterium.
Even so, in March of 1955, Grace Marie Mariner took the name Pevensie and two years later, their daughter Helen Lucy Pevensie was born. Charles Edmund was born soon after and it seemed to the outside world for a long while that, perhaps, one of the Pevensies had turned out rather normal after all.
That is, until one Saturday afternoon when Grace returned from a luncheon to find her beautiful and perfectly normal children entranced by a story Peter was telling them.
Now, Arthur Mariner, Grace's own father, was a lawyer and, as such, tended to dislike anything having to do with fairytales and and other imaginative nonsense. "If it doesn't belong in a courtroom," he used to say, "it certainly doesn't belong in my house." So, while other girls were entranced by the stories of Agatha Christie or Jane Austen, giggling over boys and dresses, Grace normally had her nose stuck in a volume of Darwin or Gallileo.
Imagine her surprise, then, to hear her husband telling her small, perfectly-normal, and impressionable children a story filled with talking beavers and dancing trees with such conviction, it was almost as if he believed the story himself. Grace knew the story of the Pevensies' "trips to Narnia"—everyone did. But she had forbid him when Helen was born to ever tell their children about these stories he swore to be true.
"Peter," Grace asked quietly. Grace always spoke quietly, you see. "May I have a word?"
The children protested, wanting to hear something about a river rushing and a stone table, but with a sharp look from Grace, they were silenced and quickly ran out into the garden. Once they were out of earshot, Grace turned that same sharp look to Peter. "What exactly were you doing?"
Peter smiled a strange sort of smile at his perfectly normal wife. "I was telling Lucy and Ed about Narnia."
"Charles and Helen do not need to know about made-up worlds from your childhood. Just because you and your siblings were deprived of a decent education and had to spend your time on useless imaginings does not mean I will let my children's heads be filled with nonsense!" Grace snapped.
Peter had never seen her this angry, with her cheeks flushed and eyes wide. His smile vanished. "They're children, Grace. They need to play and imagine—."
"No, they need to read Newton and learn maths and science. I will not let my children become a drain on society simply because you've let them believe in fairy dance and magic."
"Don't you think they're—."
"Impressionable? Yes, in fact, I do," Grace said, walking right up to Peter. "So, if you don't mind I would appreciate it if you kept your childhood magic worlds to yourself." She turned on her heel and walked away into the kitchen.
Peter sighed. Eight years before, when they'd married, Peter had gotten the crazy idea that he somehow might be able to make this beautiful girl who'd grown up thinking there was nothing to learn from her imagination see a world beyond. Even Susan, his ever-logical sister, had seen and believed in more than herself and her books after their trips to Narnia. He looked out the window into the garden. His children really did remind him of his younger siblings—so full of light, and hope. He hoped that someday they, too, would have a chance to know his Narnia.
Nine years passed.