Disclaimer: Edmund and Peter Pevensie and all the characters and situations in the Chronicles of Narnia belong to C. S. Lewis and not to me.
ALL THINGS HAVE THEIR TIME
He doesn't talk. He never says anything any more except with his eyes. As usual, I beg him. As usual, he only looks a little sad and turns away.
Our sisters spent hours concocting delicacies to tempt him. I sent for anything I thought might interest him. To Ettinsmoor. To Calormen. Even to murky Telmar. At first, he would sit up, eyes eager at a new smell and enticing sight. He would take a ravenous bite and then more and more as if food had been deliberately withheld from him until that moment. Then, too soon, he would invariably turn his face away, push the dish away, push us away.
Before long, the mere sight of anything, no matter how delicate or rare, turned his stomach. Even the purest cold spring water.
"Just a taste," I beg. "Why not?"
But he never speaks. He just turns those eyes on me, a silent plea for patience and forgiveness, and then rolls over in his bed, hiding his face in my lap and laying one arm over my knees in a weary embrace.
The cordial is useless. This is no injury. This is . . . no one knows. Illness? Poison? Dark magic?
Nothing helps. He is slipping away. Slipping into silence. Slipping into death.
It can't be. It mustn't be.
It is.
I pray. I beg and plead and weep, and Aslan is there. He sorrows with me, but He tells me firmly that all things have their time. He tells me He holds those times in His paws and that I need not understand. I need only trust.
I know it won't be long now. It can't be long. I know he is too weak and wasted to continue. It is a moonless night, and only the lonely flicker of a candle keeps us from utter darkness. An hour or two ago, I'm not quite sure when, I convinced our sisters to go to their own beds, to take the rest they so desperately need. I will send for you, I promised, if it seems like . . .
His face is ghost pale in that faint light, as if he is gone already, but his eyes–
His eyes still speak.
Forgive me. Love me. Remember me.
I breathe his name, and somehow, in a parched whisper, he says mine.
Startled by sudden hope, my breath hitches and my smile is painful for being these days so rare, and then I see those eyes are empty.
He is gone.
I pull him close, still warm, and my tears are slow and silent as they dampen his hair.
All things have their time, and this, I see, is his.
Aslan forgive me, I wish it was mine.
For Elliot.