This is what redemption looks like:
Everybody lives.
Just this once, everybody lives.
This is what redemption looks like:
A phone call.
"Hello?"
"Hello, Pevensie residence."
"Grand Central Station. There's been a train crash. We need to notify the next-of-kin of the following people: Helen Pevensie. Robert Pevensie. Peter Pevensie. Lucy Pevensie."
"That's me. Me, I'm Susan Pevensie," and then with terror and hope rushing to her head and she thinks she's going to faint, "Are they - Edmund, what about Edmund? Is Edmund all right? Is Edmund-"
The tone is precise, impersonal, although the words are sympathetic. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Pevensie. There are some men who were not carrying identification at the time of the crash. It's possible your son was among them."
She should be crying, should be scared, but all she can feel is anger, does that mean there's something wrong with her? "It's 'miss,'" she corrects, "and he's my brother, my little brother," she's always sounded older than her age, couldn't quite drop the Narnian accent and inflection the way Edmund and Lucy could, most language learning takes place before the age of twelve, why does she know that? - her thoughts won't stop racing . . .
"Miss Pevensie," the voice prompts, "can you come to Grand Central Station? Do you need directions?"
"No, thank you," she says abruptly, hangs up, then sinks to the floor, head between her knees, trying to breathe.
She waits for what feels like a very long time, expecting to faint, but then she gives up hope of that and instead drives to Grand Central Station. It's thick with reporters. She isn't crying, and is therefore uninteresting to them.
This is what redemption looks like:
Standing among the rows of bodies, and a neatly dressed woman (coroner? doctor? in Narnia she would have been a sexton, and her mind's in coping mode which means Narnian mode, and she can't make the usual English associations) taps her politely on the elbow and says, "Can I help you, ma'am?"
Rage wells up inside her, rage at the woman for being suave and neatly dressed and thinking anything can help her ever again, but Susan is a Queen so she reminds herself that this woman is a commoner and unarmed which means there would be no satisfaction in killing her with her bare hands. "I received a call. Helen, Robert, Peter, and Lucy Pevensie - and probably Edmund too, but he forgot his identification, I couldn't find it which means Lucy probably remembered it so can we check her handbag?" and to her surprise she's crying, not just tears but wracking sobs that double her over and make people look her way, and she can't stop.
The woman checks a list on her clipboard, then checks it again, eyes running up and down lists of names, which is unbearably slow but redundancy in information retrieval means fewer errors, so Susan waits and remembers to breathe.
"I don't have records of any Pevensies, ma'am. Is it possible they were taken to the hospital?"
"P - E - V - E -" Susan spells automatically, and then her processing catches up to the second sentence, and she finishes "- N - S - I - E" before she can stop herself and say the words she wants so much more to say that her tongue is tripping over them, "The hospital? Can - can you give me directions?"
This is what redemption looks like:
Bodies, under white sheets, like the ones that have flashed before her eyes sleeping and waking ten thousand times (has she really had premonitions, or is it only that her whole life had led up to this moment, that this moment is her whole life?) -
- except that these bodies are breathing.
"Lucy," she says, pointing (she doesn't know if they need the identification, but she needs it, needs to make it real with words that are her domain as light is Lucy's, deeds are Peter's, thoughts are Edmund's), "Peter, Edmund," and then she's choking up and she says "Mother, Father," which can't be any use at all so she tries to say their Christian names, and then tries again, but she just finds herself repeating "Mother, Father," over and over again until a nurse with strong gentle hands lowers her into a chair and presses water into her hands.
The nurse talks for a while, so she closes her eyes and feels the adrenaline pulse through her and his words wash over her, stores them in her near-perfect memory to be reviewed carefully, later, when her judgement can be careful and unimpeded. For now, only single words and simple concepts surface. Fracture. Concussion. Unconscious. Transfusions. Allergies? Painkillers. Prognosis.
Positive.
Everybody lives.
And this is what redemption looks like:
Sitting by the cots, watching them wake up, one by one. Careful hugs, silent nurses letting them have their reunion. Back together, all of them, Peter and Susan and Edmund and Lucy. The Kings and Queens of Narnia.
And later, when they can be alone together, they exchange stories, the same way they always do, bittersweet as always. Tales of a world which is now closed up forever, not only to them but to everyone. Last glimpses of old friends, and then the voyage home through space and time.
She doesn't know why it happened this way. Maybe it was an error in some colossal bookkeeping system, maybe it's all part of an inscrutable plan. Or maybe, just this once, the Lion realized that he'd asked too much, of her, of all of them.
It doesn't matter. She has them. All of them. She'll never let them go.
It turns out, that's only the beginning of the story.