Forever Queen
Summary: Elizabeth can see her everywhere. There´s no place she is and Leslie isn´t. OneShot.
Warning: Third attempt to finally get the sequel to "Just older" done… It´s your fault I tried and tried, because you´ve all have given me such an amazing response to "Just older" and I just had to write this^^ Thank you so much!
But – this definitely is the last part.
Set: ten years after the movie, a few weeks after "Just older"
Disclaimer: I don´t own "Bridge to Terabithia". I own Elizabeth Mahn, though.
Since that meeting with the weird man in the forest, Elizabeth can see her everywhere.
In the kitchen, probably the only room she already has fixed and cleaned up entirely.
In the living-room, with all its cardboard boxes and cobwebs and dust clouds.
On the porch, between rusty garden chairs and broken flower pots.
In the garden. In the woods. Even on the bus.
Nobody ever had said that life was fair. Elizabeth Mahn has long ago learned that there were few things humans had actually control over in their lives. Being the one majorly developed species on a fragile, helpless planet in the middle of the black, quiet void of space doesn´t mean all faults of mankind have been eradicated.
Life is painful, even if the sun comes out again after the rain, and there´s nothing one can do to avoid being hurt. Liza just wishes she could have found out the harsh truth in a different way. She has cut the last strings that tied her to her former life, has moved a few hundred kilometers and has bought a huge mansion in the middle of nowhere. She has run, trying to forget, trying to start anew. At first, life has been simple here, only her and her dog and a house full of work. But there´s only so much time until reality catches up with you.
It does so in form of the ghost of a girl.
Leslie.
Liza is pretty sure this is Leslie, the girl the weird man in the forest was talking about. The girl he was calling for when he first saw her.
Why does it have to be her, again?
Leslie is there, wherever she goes. Wherever she is, the girl is near.
She doesn´t talk to her, she doesn´t even acknowledge her. She´s just there.
Liza can see her clearly, in her blue, torn and cut jeans and her worn T-Shirt, her unkempt, blond hair held back by a simple bow. But it´s the aura of the girl – the happiness with which she seems to brim, the thoughtfulness that sometimes shows on her face, the dreamy expression that comes when she sits on the window sill of the first-floor bedroom, gazing into the pouring rain, and the loneliness and longing, when she watches the sun go down beyond the trees. It´s the mix of all these things that makes Liza accept her presence.
She´s crazy. She sees a ghost.
But at least, she´s alone in this great house, and nobody sees her watching a girl that has died years ago.
The air smells clean and fresh.
It´s one of the short breaks in the endless autumn´s rains that Liza grabs the chance and goes for a walk. Leslie stays behind while P.T. follows her, barking loudly, happy to be able to run free once again. Sniffing and shuffling, he makes his way along the small path that leads along the unkempt hedge at the back of the wild garden. She´ll find the time to make this the paradise it once was, Liza has promised herself. This place will be everything she dreamed of before she lost her dreams. She´s starting again, and this time, nobody will take this from her.
She hasn´t realized she already has walked that far, because at some point, the small path has changed into a graveled, winding, tiny road that still leads along the hedge. But here, it seems to have been forcibly tamed by mankind. A green gate and a mail box mark the territory of others.
"May Belle!"
A male voice makes her jump, and instinctively, she steps back into the shadow of a huge pear tree.
She knows this voice.
Behind the hedge, someone answers.
"I´m outside!"
It´s a soft, female voice, and footsteps approach. Liza listens to the conversation that seems to take place on another planet.
"I´ll be back in the evening. Are you sure everything we need is on the list?"
"Yes, I am. Just don´t forget the flower seeds, do you hear me?"
"Yeah, yeah. Where´s my wallet?"
"Where you left it. On the table."
"It´s not – okay, it is on the table. See you later!"
"Be back safely."
The small gate opens and a man steps outside, and Liza feels her heart beat painfully loud in her chest. This is the man she has met in the forest two weeks ago, the weird one who talked about flying dwarves and giants and dragons. And whose fault it is she can see the girl everywhere.
She doesn´t want to meet him. There´s something in him – in his way, the way he moves, the way he talks, the way he looked at her – that makes her feel uneasy.
She wants to meet him. There´s something in him – in his way, the way he moves, the way he talks, even the way he looked at her – that is incredibly familiar. Painfully, wonderfully familiar.
He doesn´t see her, though.
Jess doesn´t see her.
He steps outside, his mind already busy with his shopping. He´ll have to cut down on the flower seeds May Belle wants in order to buy some new tools… He would have to find something else for her instead.
The yellow bus slides down the dusty road and he falls into a light jog.
Liza continues down the small road and has almost passed the gate when she sees the woman who has been kneeling on the ground, obviously working, and who is looking at her directly. Caught by surprise, she nods quickly.
The woman watches her.
What does she expect? Should she say something? One year ago, Liza would have had no problem with striking up a conversation from the blue. Now, her heartbeat speeds up even more and her throat feels dry. Her step falters.
"Hi", the woman says with her musical voice. Dirty hands brush away some locks of brown and blonde hair and leave streaks in her face that make her seem even more beautiful. Liza feels like a duckling next to a swan with her simple, brown, straight hair and her small and pointed face.
"Hi."
She still hasn´t moved, and the woman seems to take it as an invitation. She stands up and comes closer to the gate. Her grey and blue eyes muster her closely.
"You moved into the old manor house, didn´t you? We heard it has been sold again. Welcome at our end of the world."
She smiles brightly, a nice smile, a welcoming and honest smile. Liza has seen many kinds of smiles lately – false smiles and faked smiles and smiles of pity. She likes this one better.
"Thank you."
"Jess told me you already have met."
Her head tilts a bit and suddenly, Liza wants to run. Memories come floating back – the vast river valley, the cloudless sky with its two moons even visible in broad daylight, the sleeping figures and the soft sound of sweet bells. Yes, she has seen this weird thing in the forest, she has seen the animals and the little flying figures and the sleeping giants. She has met a weird man, and he must have smoked something there or such before she came, because the soft scent that floated in the air made her see things and hear sounds and almost drove her crazy for two days. She has never seen him before, and yet, he seems familiar, and she has caught herself thinking of him again and again.
"He didn´t introduce himself."
She forces out the words, desperately trying to push back the memories. Not enough she has to deal with her past, now, she even sees things. Ghosts. Imaginary worlds.
The woman looks amused.
"That´s Jess, alright", she says and leans against the gate. The wood creaks softly, sounding as if it welcomes her touch. The entire garden seems to want to reach out to the woman.
Liza feels… envy.
This is a person that knows exactly where her place in the world is.
She doesn´t.
"You must have seen him. He left a few minutes ago."
Liza nods dumbly. Silence stretches out as far as she can see, feel or hear. It´s not uneasy, not the cold silence she and Sara shared the last time they met. It´s friendly and familiar. Grey and blue eyes watch her from under long bangs, curious, but not hostile, friendly, but not pitiful.
This is a woman who cares for others without asking for anything back.
Liza doesn´t like such people. They give and give and take nothing, they help without expecting thanks. They smile even though they feel sad. People reach for them and take advantage of them, and they don´t even notice. She feels sorry for them. They are being used.
She wants to break down and weep; wants to be held by the woman that now has a look in her eyes that makes her seem older than she is. She is still smiling.
"Why don´t we go for a walk."
She takes her to the bridge.
Liza should have known, but she finds she doesn´t want to object. She doesn´t mind. They sit on one of the fallen tree´s stumps and stones near the dried bed and watch the other side.
"You´ve been there", the woman opens the conversation. What does she expect now? Liza has been there; she has crossed the bridge and seen the forest on the other side. But the woman doesn´t mean the other side, she means Liza has been there.
"Jess told me you could enter. I haven´t crossed the bridge for eight years. But I still remember the scents and the color of the leaves and the sound of the bells ringing."
Liza is quiet.
"It was a dreamland, you know, a place where he could hide, he and Leslie. She invented it for the two of them, and then, suddenly, it became real. I know it sounds crazy, but… You´ve seen it."
She chuckles.
It does sound crazy. And Liza has seen it. It seemed more real than everything she has seen the last year. That´s what scares her. She has spent her life in an unreal world, in a mere image of what would be and what could be. She had to be caught in a strained relationship and a car accident first to be able to break and run. But only a few minutes in this illusion, and she finds herself longing for it again and again. She wants to go there, see the colorful birds and the dragons that no doubt have to be there, the little, winged warriors and the giant trolls. She wants to listen to the sound of the bells ringing, wants to smell the soft scent on the wind, wants to see the strange man she has met there… The longing has grown into a constant pain deep within her.
She senses the same longing in the woman´s voice now.
"I never was allowed to join them. I always watched them from far, and Jess seemed so happy then. And when Leslie died…"
It shouldn´t be a surprise, but it is. Liza has been watching the ghost in her house for a few weeks and was pretty sure it was Leslie, but seeing doesn´t necessarily imply believing. Not in her world, anyway. So Leslie grew up with Jess, and then she died… And he´s still waiting for her to return.
Instead, Liza came.
She doesn´t want to be another Leslie for him.
The thought comes from nowhere, penetrating her armor and making her entire body tense. She doesn´t know why she has thought it. The pain and the loss that drown her are familiar.
She hasn´t even known his name until an hour ago.
Or has she?
"When Leslie died, he took me there. He built this bridge for me. I felt… I felt like the princess I was supposed to be. Honestly. You know, Terabithia is different. It´s not just imagination, but it can´t survive without imagination, either. You´ve seen it, it´s sleeping. It has been sleeping for eight years now, since I left. I couldn´t go there without Jess, and he left for college, so… He goes there now and then, and he always tells me what he has seen, and what he has done, but it´s still a sleeping world. Nothing changes. Still, Jess hasn´t given up waiting."
The words leave her mouth before she can check herself. She hasn´t intended to be drawn into the discussion.
"Why don´t you go there anymore?"
The woman leans back and watches the sky.
"It never really was my kingdom, you know?", she says, but there´s no sadness in her voice. "Jess made me a princess when he first took me there, and I was happy there. I spend some of the best times of my life there. But it´s not a princess Terabithia wants."
She shouldn´t ask.
"What does Terabithia want?"
The name sounds foreign, feels foreign on her tongue. Strange, but soft and melodious. Familiar.
"Terabithia wants a queen."
It´s such a strange situation Liza can´t help herself: she starts laughing. She came here to flee her own reality and she finds another one, but one so strange it just can´t be real. She sees the ghost of a dead girl everywhere, and this dead girl and a weird man have dreamed up a kingdom. And since the dead girl is dead, Liza is supposed to rule a kingdom that doesn´t exist.
When she calms down finally, the woman by her side hasn´t said a word. She just smiles, a bit tiredly, but kindly. It makes Liza want to cry, again.
"And you say I´m the Queen of your silly little fantasy kingdom?", she finally gasps.
The woman doesn´t stir at the hostility in her voice.
"Terabithia chooses her Queen", she just says and her eyes travel through the forest, focus on something far away only she can see. "If you chose to believe, she will live. If you don´t, she will fall asleep again, sleeping and waiting and dreaming. Of you."
She falls quiet.
"I can see her, too", she finally says, so silently Liza almost doesn´t hear her. "I can see Leslie everywhere. You can, too. Jess can´t."
Jess still waits.
He´s been waiting for years, now, after he has met the woman in the forest, he suddenly realizes it. Along with him, his kingdom waits: Terabithia has nothing to give to her king any more. It´s just a silent, quiet country without life. Even the colors – the bright blue of the river, the gold of the sunshine, the silver of the two moons – are washed out and grey.
From his point of view, Jess can see the sleeping dragons. They resemble mountains, their huge wings pressed against their spine tightly. Once, these dragons carried him and Leslie into battle, once the grey mass of rubble and debris he can make up at the horizon was a white and beautiful castle. The sadness he feels every time he looks at his sleeping kingdom pulls at his heart again.
Sometimes, May Belle said, sometimes she can see Leslie.
In the garden.
In his old room, now used as an atelier whenever he feels the urge to paint.
At the bridge.
Jess has never seen her.
Maybe Leslie is still angry with him, angry and hurt because he hasn´t asked her to join her on his visit to the museum. Maybe she just doesn´t want him to see her.
Either way, he feels lost, and left out, and lonely.
She´s not even in Terabithia.
He pounds his knuckles against the rough bark of the next tree until blood starts seeping from underneath split skin. The ache is nothing compared to what he feels in his heart.
Ten years. Ten years. Why can´t he forget?
He knows why.
It´s because Terabithia doesn´t allow to forget. Terabithia is still waiting, still hoping, not giving up until the last moment. And then, both of them have met the woman with Leslie´s face: Elizabeth. Maybe life is spitting on him, because since she has intruded on his own little world – literally – he has been able to watch Terabithia come back to life step by step. Slowly. Carefully. She has been waiting, just like him. As long as they didn´t see Elizabeth, they were content with sleeping and slowly dying. Now they have seen a light. And they refuse to accept the possibility that Elizabeth simply doesn´t want to be their Queen.
It´s not a matter of want, he tells himself. But he knows it is. It is her choice. Only she can decide upon their fate. Long ago, someone else sealed his fate with the simple aid of a sketch book and imagination. Leslie has created this world, and for that reason, he can´t let go. He won´t, ever. They have built this kingdom – have colored the sky, have created the Terabithian warriors, have called the tree trolls into life. They have given birth to the dragons and commanded the waters of the river and the waterfall. They were children, at the verge of becoming teenagers, but that doesn´t mean they couldn´t create, too. Jess has been alone for a long time of his life, and he knows how loneliness feels. The person most close to him always was May Belle, and then Leslie, but May Belle is his sister and though he loves her she´s only the princess, not his queen.
His queen is dead.
He knows it is irrational to still be waiting. If he´s honest, he knows he´s not waiting for Leslie to return. The dead can´t be brought back to life, not even in Terabithia. It´s the one thing he has learned years ago. But his entire being senses there is more to his watch. There is something waiting for him, calling out softly, and whether it is a person or not, he will have to find out. He doesn´t know what impact Elizabeth will have on him and his kingdom, either. Maybe she is the one they have been waiting for such a long time. Maybe she will bring the end. Either way, the King won´t abandon his country. His place is here.
There is another life outside his life in Terabithia, the life in which he works at a small company in the next town and spends his free-time helping May Belle with her gardening. His parents have moved to town a few years ago, and his other sisters have left for the next city. May Belle and he both stayed. The house is huge, and dilapidated, and their meager income barely is enough for them to live. But it is a peaceful life. It´s what both he and May Belle have dreamed about when they were children: He would go to work and earn money; she would keep the house and grow flowers and vegetables. Surprisingly, it works, and sometimes he wonders why people never pursue childhood dreams. Why is it so wrong to do exactly what one wished for as a child? May Belle has had another idea lately, and Jess is already thinking how it could be realized. She wants to open the house for children, homeless children and foster children. She wants to give them a home, and he doesn´t object, because why not? They´re both young enough to be able to take the work, and the children can help in the garden and the kitchen. And the little extra money they could make could be used to renovate the house, make it nicer, more modern…
Jess lives two lives.
He never had a problem distinguishing between them. When he´s home, he´s Jess, the scientist, the artist, the one who fixes the broken tools and burns the rice and sits at the kitchen table, trying to find a name for the color the sky is showing. When he´s in the woods, he´s Jess, the king. Having May Belle helps a lot, he knows, because he can talk to her if there is something that bothers him, and she always will listen. But he seldom needs to talk his head free of his thoughts. Maybe it is ability. Maybe he´s just plainly insane, but he has two lives and both go along well with each other. He wouldn´t give up his life as Jess The Ordinary Man, and he wouldn´t give up his life as Jess The King, either. The people don´t care about what they don´t know. May Belle loves him the way he is. And Terabithia thanks him in her own way: she waits for him, whenever he returns, and greets him in her own, quiet, familiar way.
And again, they wait.
Why is it, Liza wonders, that it feels like she has always lived here?
The house finally is finished, it smells clean and the rooms are habitable again. The thick layers of dust have disappeared, as have the cobwebs. May Belle has helped a lot, has visited her and organized things and spent time with her unpacking her few belongings. She´s grown to like the woman, even though the jealousy bubbles up now and then.
But she still hasn´t met Jess since that day in the forest.
Today, she watches Leslie wander through the living-room, gazing at the books in the big bookshelf, humming softly to herself. The ghost of the dead girl never once has taken notice of her, yet alone spoken to her. Liza feels oddly comforted by the ghost´s presence. She has grown used to it over the lonely days full of work and rain.
Leslie runs her hand along the backs of the books and smiles. Maybe she´s remembering something. When she´s like that – when her face is relaxed and her head is slightly bowed – she actually does look a little bit like Liza, herself. No wonder Jess thought she was Leslie, Liza thinks and berates herself for it. She doesn´t care about a man whom she hasn´t even met twice. A knocking on the door brings her back to reality.
May Belle.
"I need your help", the woman says without preamble. "You have to go to Terabithia and get Jess."
Liza stares at her, frozen. Slowly, the words make their way into her brain.
"I have to do what?"
"You have to cross the bridge and fetch Jess. He´s been gone for two days now."
"Why don´t you go and get him?"
"I can´t", May Belle tells her, exasperated. "Terabithia doesn´t accept me anymore. It accepts you, though."
"Call the police or so, if you´re afraid for your brother", Liza answers and is determined to let the topic drop. "Besides, he might as well be back soon."
As soon as the words have left her mouth, she wants to take them back. She´s worried about him, suddenly, inexplicably. The knowledge of where he is – where he has to be – is there, as sudden as a lightning bolt, and she knows what has happened. Why he hasn´t returned. The same strange longing that has filled her since she first saw him comes flooding back, crashing over her and threatening to drown her.
She doesn´t want to lose him.
She lifts her head and sees the ghost of the dead girl stare at her directly from the other corner of the room. Her eyes are pleading.
That is it.
Sanity, her last stronghold, her last straw that bound her to reality for such a long time, snaps. She´s not sure whether it has been starting to become brittle and weak over the time she has lived here, or if it happened earlier. She doesn´t care, either. Not any more, the times when it was important to listen to whatever the people said are over. Liza won´t ever do it again.
So now she´s supposed to look for a man who most likely is crazy, and just because the ghost of his dead girlfriend and his sister ask her. She´s supposed to walk into a forest in which, as they claim, a secret, imaginary kingdom exists, waiting for her to be her Queen.
And she doesn´t care if people think she is crazy. She sees the ghost of a girl, for heaven´s sake. She saw Terabithia. It is real.
The moment she accepts the thoughts, she feels something settle inside her.
She hasn't felt that whole since… She can´t even remember.
Jess wakes up slowly and realizes he must have fallen asleep in the woods. In Terabithia. The soft moss underneath him acts as the best mattress, and he´s covered with leaves. How long has he slept? Fear surges and he realizes, once again, how deeply he is connected to his kingdom. It´s dangerous to stay there for long, especially when it still is like this. However much he loves this place, as long as it´s still asleep, he won´t be safe.
Terabithia stirs.
Almost undetectable, but since he has spent so much time here he is attuned to the changes in her emotions. He raises himself up, shaking off the leaves and the last remnants of the dark, still sleep. He knows as well as his kingdom does:
She is coming.
Liza can feel the ground come to life underneath her feet.
Her steps almost falter, then she strengthens her resolve. She has made up her mind to be responsible for something this time. She will be there; she will accept this insanity – this illusion – in her life, since life has made no special claim on her since it dumped her. She can feel Leslie´s ghost by her side, guiding her, encouraging her. We´re in this together. As soon as the thought forms in her mind, she can feel the truth in the statement. They´re two sides of one part, maybe more, maybe less. It doesn´t really matter. They´re here.
The bridge welcomes them into their kingdom.
Jess watches her coming. Returning, maybe.
The woman is walking slowly, marveling at the vivid colors that seemed to have amplified within the minutes she has spent in Terabithia. The soft scent the wind always carried suddenly is back again. An old, melodious bell starts ringing. Each step takes her nearer to where the man stands, watching her with awe, each step is accompanied with the echoing sound of the bells. Slowly, but persistently, she walks towards him, wondering whether she should feel embarrassed – she is supposed to spend her life with him and only has seen him twice – angry – he still sees Leslie in her, and she doesn´t want him to do so, she is Liza, Elizabeth, not Leslie – or happy. Because after wandering the earth for so long, she has finally found her place.
She doesn´t see him for the first time, but now she takes in his picture deliberately. He´s tall and lean, and muscular, and his brown hair has golden streak in it. Just like May Belle´s. His piercing blue eyes watch her with a mixture of suspicion and happiness. He´s not sure what she´s doing here – if she has come to leave or to stay. She comes to a halt immediately in front of him.
Liza looks down to where the ghost of the dead girl is watching him with something unreadable in her eyes. The man looks down, too, and again, jealousy washes over her – irrationally, she has only met him once before, how can she think he´s a part of her life already? – but then she realizes he can´t see the girl standing next to her. Her jealousy turns into pity. I´ll look at him, in your place.
Piercingly blue eyes don´t leave her face.
"Welcome?" His simple greeting carries an entire universe of questions with it.
"Thank you", she answers, still staring at him. Neither moves.
Around them, Terabithia wakes.
Carefully, carefully, Jess extends a hand and touches Elizabeth´s face. She doesn´t shrink back, and as the contact is made, time stands still. The universe comes to a halt.
Liza´s eyes fall close.
He´s a stranger, her rational mind tells her. I know him, another part of her screams. I missed him. I missed him so much.
Jess sees her eyes flutter shut and fights the urge to grab her and hold her, to never let go. They´re still strangers, as much as they seem familiar to each other, and there´s still some things that have to be said and done before they reach the level of intimacy necessary for ruling Terabithia again.
Why again?
Next to them, the ghost of the dead little girl smiles and disappears.
Reality doesn´t matter here.
Nothing matters
Jess is Jess. He has waited for her. Liza is Liza. And Leslie. And Leslie is Liza. And both will be Terabithia´s Queen forever.
As Jess forever will be her King, and Terabithia forever will be theirs.
The sleeping kingdom answers to the silent calls of their rulers. The bells´chime announces the beginning of a new era.