With your feet I walk
I walk with your limbs
I carry forth your body
For me your mind thinks
Your voice speaks for me
Beauty is before me
And beauty is behind me
Above and below me hovers the beautiful
I am surrounded by it
I am immersed in it
In my youth I am aware of it
And in old age I shall walk quietly
The beautiful trail.
-Navajo Prayer
There's something about driving through the country that makes her sad, something about the hard concrete and hard sunlight twisting through the miles of green grass, past the small towns and lonely houses. There's something about the road she's driven so many times, between there and everywhere else, that reminds her things will never be right again.
***
She didn't think she'd die so young, but there comes a time when there's not much left living for anymore. She doesn't want to say she's alone; she refuses to say she's lonely. She was married once, for a few years, but nothing lasts if you keep secrets and she keeps secrets from herself these days.
***
It took them a long time (too long) to find the cancer and sometimes she still doesn't believe it's there. But then the pain comes back and she has to bite her lip to keep from screaming out. She's never felt anything like it, not when she fell off the garden fence when she was eight or when her boyfriend drove his car into a brick wall when she was eighteen and in the passenger seat. It's the kind of pain that starts as a twinge, in her left hip, and pulses outward, encompasses her whole body until all she can feel is her entire body beating in time with her heart.
***
Her son comes to visit sometimes, but they're not close anymore. They haven't been close since the divorce, when he chose his father over her. She wouldn't blame him; she shouldn't blame him; she does blame him. She thinks, maybe, he could make her remember what it was like to be young, but there's something about growing up that causes her so much pain she can't bear to think about being any younger than she is.
***
She misses her mother sometimes. She misses the cool hands that used to sooth her fevered skin when she was sick and the comforting voice that would sing her to sleep. She misses her father, coming in late to kiss her forehead when she's already asleep. It's been too long since she's seen them.
***
She falls asleep and dreams of a world she used to remember. She wakes up in the hospital.
***
The nurses walk by her doorway and glance at her sadly. She hears them whispering outside her room. "She's all alone," they say, "it's so sad."
They're gentle when they take care of her, come in and smooth her sheets and adjust her pillows. They gossip to her about the other patients. They like her because she doesn't cause trouble.
***
She sees a door, carved of dark wood, with a shimmering door handle. She walks closer, but it just seems to get bigger, until she has to stand on her tiptoes to reach the handle. Her fingers slips against the cool metal and she just manages to grasp it when she wakes up.
She dreams again and again.
***
The doctor stands at the end of her bed. He's wearing a white coat with dirt around the hem, like he's been running through the mud. "She doesn't have much longer," he says, looking at the nurse standing near her head.
The nurse looks sympathetic and says something she can't decipher. She reaches out, but doesn't touch. She'd love to be touched again.
***
She's spent the last twenty years learning not to miss Peter, Edmund, and Lucy. But everything she's worked so hard to build up is coming apart. She always knew it was hollow.
***
She starts crying early one morning, before the sun comes up. The tears run down her face and over her lips and onto her neck. They leave cold tracks across her cheeks.
***
The bed underneath her is hard and thin and the sheets are rough. She remembers the bundles of her blankets on her bed at home and she dreams about sleeping under the stars.
***
She never thought she'd die alone.
***
There's some kind of light ahead and there's some kind of commotion behind her, but she doesn't care because there's no pain anymore and she's not tired anymore and she's been miserable for months. (For years, decades if she'll admit it.)
She moves forward and she doesn't remember taking off her shoes, but there's snow under her feet. It's not cold, but it's smooth against her skin. She reaches the light and it's a lamppost, dark metal and hung with icicles, shining through the heavy air in front of her.
She thinks about being young, summer grass between her toes, and heavy fur against her bare arms. She thinks about Lucy's laugh and Edmund's scowl, Peter's hand strong on her wrist.
***
She walks through forests next, through trees that seem to lean around her and whisper behind her. She walks through open valleys and over hills, she wades across rivers and skirts around ponds.
She hears the whistle of arrows in her ears; she feels strong, supple wood beneath her fingers. She thinks about Peter's voice, hoarse with shouting orders over clanging swords and screams of pain. She thinks about the determination on Edmund's face, the way he swings into the saddle, the way he wipes his palms on his sides before seizing his sword. She thinks about Lucy, fingers streaked with blood and hair tangled around her face.
***
She walks down a beach, perfect white sand slipping under her feet, cool waves slapping at her ankles. She walks past rocks, past cliffs, past what used to be castles.
She sees the glint of gold out of the corner of her eye, catches the strain of music just out of hearing range. She remembers soft, heavy skirts falling about her feet and the weight of a crown pressing against her hair. She thinks about Peter, biting his lip when he's nervous, twisting his fingers when he's excited. She thinks about Edmund, his laugh ringing against the stone walls of an empty corridor. She thinks about Lucy, her soft hands and strong voice, her steps echoing across a crowded room.
***
She walks through darkness and comes to light and comes to the door from her dreams. It's as huge as she imagined, but when she reaches for the handle, it turns easily beneath her fingers. She pushes it open, just a crack, just enough that she can see a brilliant light spilling out and making the light of this world seem dim.
My dear, says a voice inside her head, racing around her brain, filling her ears, I've waited for you.
She steps through the door.
***
She wonders if she always knew or if she just imagined she did, but Aslan's waiting for her in magnificence. She wants to cry, but she can't.
"Susan," he says and it's like all the animals, all the people, everything in the universe speaking in once voice. "I knew you would come one day."
Why did it take so long? She wants to ask. Why did I have to wait? But Aslan steps forward, shining and strong and perfect beside her, and she reaches out a hand to touch him.
"You have not had an easy time," he tells her, as if she didn't know.
"I have been weak," she says and her voice sounds so small in all the emptiness.
"You have forgotten me," he states, staring at her with eyes that see everything.
"Yes," she replies. It's true.
"But you have never forgotten what I taught you." And for a minute she can see the little boy who lived next door to the first house she owned, who used to come over because she would make him dinner when his parents were fighting. She sees the old man who used to sit on the bench by the post office who she said hello to every day. She sees the dog she found half-starved in an alley behind the restaurant where her friend worked, the dog she brought home and fed and bathed and gave to her son. She sees the woman in the pharmacy she would smile at and the baby she would watch for the widow who lived down the street. She sees the children she would give sweets to on her way home from the store and the woman she gave her old jacket to, huddled in its worn warmth against the biting cold wind.
She looks and him and wishes she wouldn't. She wants to know what happens next.
"I have wondered," Aslan says, pacing a circle around her, "what I will do with you." He creates a wind that wraps around her and leaves her younger. "I did not know if you were worthy."
If she was given a choice, she would say she was not worthy. Not worthy because she drove her husband away, not worthy because her son grew up too fast. Not worthy because it was hard to cry at her family's funerals.
"But you have, in your own time, done me good service." He's quiet for a while now and she knows what he's waiting for.
"Forgive me." She chokes on the words. Forgive me for denying you, for forgetting here, for spending hours in front of the mirror and nights out late having what I thought was fun. Forgive me for driving them away, for letting them die, for forcing myself to forget them.
"You were forgiven a long time ago," he says and now there is joy in his voice and in his body, rushing into her. "Now you must come with me."
***
They travel on and it's all the same, but it's higher and deeper and stronger somehow. They travel on and she hears laughter in the shadows and footsteps all around them. They travel on through lands she's never seen and places she can't imagine. They travel until she recognizes everything.
"Narnia," she breathes, and the air is the same as it was so many years ago.
"Yes," Aslan chuckles, "and more."
They move through the forests and the plains and the mountains and the rivers, the things she tried so hard to forget, but never managed to. They come to a castle, one she remembers, one she dreamt about, and Aslan roars a greeting that shakes the trees and the mountains.
Her body feels heavy and light at the same time, tingling and ticklish and wonderful. She knows they're coming.
***
They come, running and laughing and more joyous than she even remembered, all of them: Peter and Edmund and Lucy to embrace her and kiss her cheeks and tell her how much they missed her; Eustace and Jill and Mr. Tumnus and the beavers and Caspian and Reepicheep and Glenstorm and everyone she remembers to circle around them and sing and laugh. Everything to remind her that she never really abandoned them at all.