Summary:

After Jadis sets off from the sacred garden, having eaten of its apples, she comes to come awesome conclusions and gets a terrible shock.

Notes:

I have always been intrigued about Jadis' relationship with the Tree of Protection and what she had to do to get within striking distance of its influence 900 years later. I intend to write about this some day in a later chapter. But in the meantime I need to lay the foundation and that means writing about what happened immediately after Fledge flew away with Polly and Digory.

...

The Aftermath

...

A starring role could be reckoned

When forces of the world have beckoned

Her future cuts a lovely figure

With endless life and youthful vigour

...

But Dad and Son are in collusion

To tempt her steps for her exclusion

From places they have especially blessed

To a lonely cold she's never guessed.

...

As Jadis strode away down the northward side of the sacred hill without looking back, she heard the sweeping wings of Fledge and the piping voices of the two children rapidly recede. They were soon an insignificant speck and she did not waste time on regretting their leaving.

Whilst her oh so short sojourn in the dirty city on that other world had seemed full of promise at the time, Jadis was certain now that had she stayed, her battle to gain power would have been thwarted at every turn and the lack of magic would have become tiresome. Let them fly back to the Lion, she didn't need their rings! This new world was just waiting for her plucking, like the apples in that garden.

Now she had gained immortality and unflagging vitality, she had only to bide her time and learn about this world's fundamentals. There was magic here in abundance and it was only just beginning! She knew she was on the verge of a new life that was about more than finding a new world, a new universe and now a longer life. She could tell that by eating the fruit from that walled garden, indeed from that tree in particular, that she had taken on a new destiny that was tied to this world.

Fleetingly, Jadis wondered at herself, for almost blindly grasping at the best this young vibrant and verdant land had on offer, but as a woman of power and influence from the royal family of Charn, she also knew she had an unerring instinct for advantage. This instinct had never failed her yet and she trusted it now. The power of the apples had surged into her, creating cellular change. Her sense of destiny, direction and distant points of power had also sharpened. Behind her she could feel the Lion in his distant valley surrounded by his menagerie of strange beasts and singing trees. She could also feel the oddly neutral aura of the children's rings gradually receding in the same direction. The pulse of the garden was now harmonised with her own heartbeat, and her energy was sermingly boundless.

But it was to the north that Jadis was unerringly drawn. At even several hundred miles away, she could detect the grind of the earth's deep engines speaking to the sky, the voices of distant stars echoing off the desperate cold of the far north, the spirits of the rocks, ice and wind howling for recognition. This world drew her now, and there was no turning back, of that she was certain. She drew another of the incredible glowing apples from a fold in her clothing and bit into it, crunching the crisp piquant flesh, feeling the vital juices enliven her taste buds and tantalise her senses and nerves further as she swallowed, the energies surging once more through to the depths of her being. She could tell her pupils were fully dilated to the point of strain, her nerves and mind in a rewiring overdrive and her organs awash with renewal. She took several deep shuddering breaths, stretched her toes out, gripped the earth, and extended her arms in self benediction as waves of ecstasy overtook her and she roared a long wordless ululation to the sky, the earth, the grass, the sun and the mountains.

…

Later, Jadis found herself running further up the valleys, vaulting over boulders and crevasses and before she knew it she was sprinting northward into her own shadow across a huge glacier, the warm sun against her back, even the deadly cold of the ice on her feet, a foil to her soaring vitality. As Jadis ran, she considered recent events. From her deathless, lifeless sleep of ten thousand years in a world dead at her own word, she had been rescued by a mere child of common blood from another world. Sent by his futile and grovelling Uncle, a peddler of cheap tricks, this should never have been possible. But the ways of the cosmos were unguessable. One thing was certain, she had been handpicked by the fates for a vast role in this world. Having been plucked from Charn in the nick of time, shorn of her powers and given a glimpse of ordinary life in one world and then unceremoniously but fortuitously dropped into this place of miracles, none of it could be an accident.

The Lion was clearly the chosen one of some higher power. Jadis had witnessed him singing the very stars and the trees and the animals into existence! She had felt his alien, irritating and overweening powers of love, compassion and forbearance. So like some of the abominable religio-political sects that her family had had to repress for generations. She rightfully feared and despised him for these qualities. She had also felt his more familiar powers of authority, command and judgement and whilst she respected these, she did not like or trust them in others.

For the Lion was strong. Far stronger than she had ever dared imagine a corporeal being to be! And he was acting as a creator, what was more. But whilst she knew and felt all these things, even more keenly since eating those apples, she just as clearly felt sure in her renewed bones and flesh, that she had been summoned to be witness to this new beginning by the same higher power. She knew she was being drawn to the sites of great magic in this world and that this would enable her to be the Lion's opposite and equal. The one to bring chaos to the Lion's order. The one to bring uncertainty and threat to his nurture. The one to bring limits and control to his bounty, freedom and disorder. The one to tame this untame world's singer, to untame his tame creations, to stir the cup in new directions, to seek out his weaknesses and exploit them!

To be the Adversary….

It was hardly on the same scale as being Empress of an Empire. Here she was being offered the task of Goddess of a whole world!

She laughed with the audacity of it all. But she knew she was up for the game. It was whilst she glowed with these thoughts climbing a tall mountain in the dark of the evening, many hours later, that Jadis sensed ahead of her by several days a site of utmost power.

Its vibration stirred her mind with a thrumming roar and she realised she was approaching one of the key places. A place of deep mystery and awe which she and she alone would be able to study at the dawn of time. Her thought bent on it, ravenous for more. She began to sprint up to the summit to see where to go next.

It was just after moonrise that she reached the top. It was far above the cloud line and all visions were now changed. She saw the distant glow of deep fires on the far north western horizon.

But it was here that something happened to disturb her ecstatic reveries. There was no real sound, more a change in the tone of the world. And it came from the South, from the valley of the song of creation far behind.

She turned and gave it her mind's full attention and detected the tone deepening and multiplying. It became sweeter, louder, more disturbing... and repellent. It was as a tinnitic ringing in her ears, like the sweet bell she had set in Charn. The same boy had struck this chord and it became more and more relentlessly penetrating in its rhythmic vibration, blotting out all else. It increased in tempo and intensity and began to echo on the far horizons. She perceived its backwash was about to hit her with great force. She braced herself and she felt nausea rise, her eyes bulging as images of glowing fragrant apples of love and compassion tumbling and throbbing, overtook her. Jadis fell to the ground on all fours retching, gasping, the juices of the garden now sour and bitter on her lips.

It was some interminable time before she realised her fatal mistake in allowing liberty for the boy and his dutiful apple after failing in her ploy to tempt him. As her body retched again, she also recognised that it wasn't going to stop and that she might stay there retching indefinitely with her ears ringing if she let herself.

She swallowed convulsively and scrabbled for some snow to eat steady herself. Damn them! They had planted a Tree of Protection using that apple to keep her at bay and attempt to make her endless life a misery! The boy was gone and so were his rings, she could feel that now. But something of him remained behind; his trusting faith in the Lion, his sense of duty and his desperate love for his Mother... and the forgiveness of that girl! It was unmistakable! It was also magic that she knew could never work for her. The Lion had used these four; faith, duty, love and forgiveness with the magic of the apple of life as the living shield to protect that land and much of the wider world… from her. She could have kicked herself. But she realised she had no choice now but to pick herself up and run for her sanity northwards. To get as far as from that hated valley of creation as she possibly could.

She had taken on a high and lonely destiny and she was going to fulfil it! There were yet more powers and secret knowledge in the north to tap, she knew. She vowed in her extremity, that she would use these resources to gain the upper hand, even if it took her a thousand years.

She took off grimly, running headlong into her unknown future.