Chapter 1: No Name

No Name's POV

"Wait a minute! Wait!" I cried out as the guard locked up the cell he had just thrown me in. I reached through the bars to catch his arm or at least the metal sleeve of his armor, but my small hands had just barely missed. "Please! Why am I here? What did I do?" He didn't stop, didn't even look at me. I saw him hang the keys on a hook all the way across the dungeon before walking up the steps. His footsteps echoed as he went and the last thing I heard was the door shut behind him before I noticed how dark and silent everything was.

I sat on the cold, stone floor, resting my forehead against one of the bars of my new sleeping quarters as I tried to ponder what had just happened. I thought everything had been going well.

It had been only a few weeks since I showed up at the castle gates. I had woken in a field of grass not too far from there, but had no clue where I was or how I got there. With fear in my heart and a hungry belly, I ran to the guards who stood at the gate. My dress was covered in grass stains and I still had bits of grass and flowers in my tangled, brown hair. What had happened to me, they asked. I couldn't give them a definite answer. I didn't know.

So, they marched me straight to the king.

He sat in his throne in a large, circle room. The place wasn't lit up all that much and the lightning that flashed through the window caused me to shrink even further. I held the blanket a guard had given me around my shoulders and I tightened it as we came to a stop in front of the man with dark, cold eyes and a matching "smile". He sat next to another who looked much younger, maybe just a few years older than I. However old I was…

"Who's this?" The man asked, eyeing me up and down.

"A young girl we found outside the gates, your highness," the guard on my right had responded. "There's just… One problem…"

"Well, what is it?"

Caspian's POV

She shivered against the soaked dress she wore and held on tightly to the blanket wrapped around her with small, white-knuckled hands. Her hair was in tangles as if she hadn't been capable of brushing it in weeks and her hallowed cheeks had me thinking maybe she hasn't been indoors in weeks either. Her large brown eyes contrasted everything about her, though; they were wide and alert, and almost bright as if they burned with something I couldn't quite understand. She only glanced up at my uncle and I once before she seemed to have decided that staring down at her feet was much more suitable for her.

As the guard stepped forward to have a quiet word with us, my curiosity peeked even more as the man whispered, "She can't remember who she is."

Well, that certainly has never happened before. I glanced back down at the young girl again as the guard whispers, "What should we do with her, sire?"

"Dungeon," he quietly grumbled.

"Dungeon?!" I repeated almost too loudly. The girl peered up at us but I assumed she hadn't heard us, for there was no alarm in her expression, just curiosity. Unless the dungeons didn't seem all too bad to her. But that'd be insane. "Uncle, I think the dungeons is a tad extreme, don't you?"

He looked at me as though if what I was saying was absurd, "Well, what do you suppose we do with this stranger?"

"Let's help her." I told him. He didn't seem too interested in this idea, so I added, "She could be the daughter of some King in another kingdom. If they found that he sent her to our dungeons just because she came walking to our front doors, it would surely start an unnecessary war. What good would that do for our people, Uncle?"

The silence he gave me afterwards was agonizing as he ponder through this. Offer the stranger a home or risk causing a war… What harm could one girl do?

I finally released a breath I hadn't realized I was holding once he yelled, "Elizabeth!" One of our trusty maids appeared as he ordered, "Take this young girl in; give her something dry to wear and be sure to feed her, she looks like she hasn't ate in weeks…"

The maid nodded her head and gently took the girl's arm. She looked tiny enough to snap in half, she was so thin and weak.

"Thank you, Elizabeth." I said.

Elizabeth nodded her head again and gestured the girl to follow her. However, the girl turned and looked directly at me with her bright, brown eyes.

"Thank you," she whispered.

And then she headed down the hall with Elizabeth.

There was something about her that I couldn't quite place my finger on. She was graceful and radiant, and yet she looked so lost. However, when she left, the further she got from the throne room, the darker the throne room seemed to get. It was like she walked with her own light around her head.

No Name's POV

And I stayed with the prince and his aunt and uncle for several weeks. Caspian and the professor taught me many, many things about Narnia, the land we stood on; the trees, the flowers, even the stars. I loved learning about the stars the most. There was something bright and warm about the way they stood up high in the sky.

My least favorite thing to learn was the weapons. It was Caspian's idea to teach me a little on his bow and arrows. We stood outside once on a hot summer morning, standing opposite of the foam targets in front of us. I had to squint my eyes to look up at Caspian, considering he was a good head or two taller than me and the sun seemed to shine just above his head.

"Now, you want to hold it like this," he instructed as he raised his bow up in the air and aimed at the target several hundred feet away from him. "And you have to keep a tight grip on it before you release it, you got that?"

"Got it."

After handing the bow over to me, we were both surprised to see that I wasn't so bad at handling one. I had hit the target dead center almost every time.

"You sure you've never done this before?" He asked, placing his hand over his eyes to shield them from the sunlight and his long, dark bangs.

"Just beginners luck," I told him, although that's not really how it felt. If I were to be honest, it felt like I had already learned how to shoot an arrow before. I just couldn't remember when or who taught me.

"Let's go take a break," he suggested then after I set down the weapon and stared at the target. There was something about the way the arrow sank deep into the red circle that I didn't like. The way it sounded made me want to cringe.

Our break area is almost always the study room. Caspian enjoyed learning new things just as much as I did and his professor had always been helpful in teaching us. That day, as I immersed myself in a book about all sorts of flower types, I couldn't help but overhear the professor and Caspian talking about the history of Narnia.

"Is this them?" Caspian quietly asked, holding a sheet of paper delicately in his hands.

Curiosity got the best of me and I stood up and walked over to stand beside him and peer down at the paper. It was a drawing of four people; one with a gold cloak, one with a blue, one dressed in silver, and the other in red. They wore crowns of silver and gold on their head and they each stood in front of a stone throne.

"The Kings and Queens of Old," the professor nodded, keeping his voice low whether it was for dramatic effect or not, I couldn't tell.

"Who's that?" I asked, pointing to a figure on the next paper. She stood next to the boy dressed in silver, although she seemed a bit faded out on the page. Her brown hair was long and her dress was a creamy white color that wouldn't have shown up on the paper if the paper hadn't been a tiny bit yellowed from old age.

"The angel," The professor replied. "King Edmund the Just, spoke highly of a young girl who saved his life during the battle with The White Witch." He shook his head, "Nobody knew of her, though. And he claimed only him and his siblings could see her."

"Sounds like he went a little conkers there after the war," Caspian chuckled.

The professor shrugged, "Perhaps, but the other king and then queens didn't deny knowing about her and there's no other story on how he might have survived when The White Witch attacked him."

We were silent then as we examined the picture. There was something strange about her, almost like she was going to jump out of the page and greet us right then and there.

None of us noticed how Miraz was leaning against the large wooden door and taking in every word we spoke.

And that night, I dreamt of the Kings and Queens of Old. In times where the summer heat wasn't scorching, it was a simple warm breeze that brushed against your cheek. When spring wasn't a time full of rainy days and major flooding, but bushes and trees of flowers in every size and color. When winter was a time for hot chocolate and singing, and all these other things that I somehow manage to remember.

"And presents!"

I sat up quickly in the dark of my guest bedroom. The voice was that of a young girl who seemed to have read my mind and reminded me that winter was in fact a time where people would enjoy swapping presents in front of a nice warm, cackling fireplace.

And the voice was so familiar and yet… So distant.

"Hello?" I called out and my voice echoed along the empty room. There was only me and the dim light of the moon creeping through the curtains.

So, with a quiet sigh, I rested against my pillows once more and it wasn't long before sleep found me. And not much longer after that, I was rudely awaken by a hand that pushed against my mouth to keep me from screaming.

The two guards dragged me out of my sleeping chambers and down the hall.

During the adrenaline rush I had from being kidnapped from my own bed, I was reminded of a time when Caspian was teaching me some basic combat. He told me screaming for help was never a cowardly move.

"But what if they put a hand over my mouth?" I had asked.

"Don't be afraid to bite it."

Caspian would've been proud to know I had at least tried. But it wasn't until I bit into the metal glove that I realized his hand was protected and I was helpless against they're pulling and pushing. One of them waited outside the dungeon door as the other dragged me down the steps and tossed me on the floor of the dungeon. I rolled over to the cage door as he locked it with the key.

"Please, there must be some mistake," I cried feeling the large, hot tears roll down my cheeks as the fear consumed me. "I didn't do anything!" He locked me in with a click of the keys. "Wait a minute! Wait!"

But he left without a word and I sat on that stone floor with no idea what was going on, no idea why they locked me up, and no name.

Still no name.