SUSAN'S QUEST

On a cold, bleak, wet winter's afternoon Susan Pevensie drearily made her way home, alone, from yet another meeting with the family solicitor. Now that her parents, her two brothers and her sister, her Aunt Polly and Uncle Digory, along with her cousin Eustace and his friend Jill, had all been buried (all those funerals!) she had elected to live, at least for the time being, in the comfortable and familiar surroundings of the family home, which she now owned, rather than go to live with Eustace's rather dreadful parents, Uncle Harold and Aunt Alberta and, as she was now twenty-one years old, she was legally able to do as she pleased, and she had ample means at her disposal. The solicitor had informed her that, as she was the sole surviving heiress of her parents, her Aunt Polly and Uncle Digory, she was now a most affluent young lady. "But," she reflected bitterly, "As Mr Rochester in 'Jane Eyre' said about himself, I am 'poor to hideous indigence.' Whatever shall I do?"

Arriving home, she took off her hat and coat, added fuel to the sitting-room fire and sat down in front of it, gazing miserably into the glowing coals and thinking of what might have been. "If only I hadn't been such a silly fool," she soliloquised. "I might perhaps have been able to go back to Narnia someday – I might even have been there at this very moment, but I tried to put all that behind me. I fooled myself that it wasn't real, that it was just a game we used to play when we were children. Well, now Aslan will never want to be bothered with me again, and the others are all gone." Tears trickled down her cheeks as she thought of how alone she now was.

"Oh, Aslan, Aslan!" she mourned. "You told us that you are in our world, too – where are you, Aslan?"

In the glow of the fire, she suddenly seemed to see the face of Aslan. "I must be falling asleep," she thought, but almost at once the room was filled with the wonderful, unmistakeable scent of the Great Lion, and a well-remembered and beloved voice came out of the fire, speaking kindly and cheerfully.

"You need not be so sad, dearest one. All your loved ones are safe with me, and waiting for you to join them. I turn my back on nobody, and I have an important mission for you, Queen Susan. Bring the box to me," Aslan instructed her.

"What box does he mean?" she wondered; then she remembered the little sealed one which the solicitor had handed to her that very afternoon. He had told her that it had been found amongst the personal effects of her brother, Peter, after the railway accident; that it had been put away for safe-keeping, but then had been forgotten about until now. She opened her handbag and took out the box.

"Yes, that is the one. Now," purred the voice of Aslan, "throw it into the fire." Susan hesitated for a moment, as she suddenly suspected (quite correctly) that the box contained the magic rings which Digory's Uncle Andrew had made, long ago, and which Peter and Edmund had gone to London to recover. The idea had been that Eustace and Jill should, if possible, use them to go back to Narnia in order to help King Tirian, after he had appealed to the Seven Friends of Narnia for assistance.

She had overheard the others (including Aunt Polly and Uncle Digory) talking very seriously about it, and had begun to realise that she had been wrong. Her self-delusions about Narnia being a childhood game had begun to crumble, but then the matter had all been pushed to the back of her mind by the terrible tragedy at the railway station and its dreary, grief-ridden aftermath. Maybe, she now thought, if the rings actually were inside the box, she could use them herself and return to Narnia, but a low growl from Aslan decided her and, with a sigh of regret, she obediently flung the box into the flames, where it blazed with a little 'pop', rather than the explosion which Susan had half-expected.

"Well done, Your Majesty!" approved Aslan. "Your mission has begun. And now..."

The next moment, Susan found herself in the midst of the biggest and most dense crowd that she had ever encountered. People, animals, dwarfs, giants and all kinds of weird and wonderful creatures who live only in the Narnian world, were rushing uphill towards she knew not what or where but, hemmed in on all sides, she had no choice but to go with the flow. Then breathless, dishevelled, muddy and totally bewildered, she saw that she was coming to a little building, probably a stable she correctly guessed, situated close to Caldron Pool, on the western boundary of Narnia. And there in the doorway of the building stood Aslan himself, huge, golden, and shining. Susan thought that he looked even more real, somehow, than ever before, although she could not tell how. She felt that she would faint with joy as she was swept along towards him. She had no chance to speak, though, as the multitude around her crowded in through the doorway. "However will we all fit in?" she wondered, then, gasping for breath, she found herself inside, but of course, as Tirian, Jill and Eustace had found, the 'inside' was actually outdoors, sunlit and peaceful with space enough and to spare for everybody.

Catching her breath, Susan moved away from the doorway and quickly took shelter beside an amiable-looking giant, who doffed his hat and nodded most graciously to her. She had seen Peter and the others, and, although she was overwhelmed afresh with happiness to see them again, in view of her recent attitude towards Narnia she felt a little shy of being seen by them, let alone approaching them. Besides, she thought, they were all dressed in royal robes and crowns, while she was in a parlous state of mud and great untidiness (Susan was always very particular about her appearance). But, as she reached down towards her skirts, intending to try to brush away some of the mud she had collected during her wild uphill scramble she caught sight of her hand, spotlessly clean, impeccably manicured, and wearing her coronation ring. The dress that she had on, she now realised, was not the mourning-black serge one which she had been wearing when she had been pulled out of England, and then raced towards the doorway in the wild stampede, but a most sumptuous creation of silk, velvet and gold lace. Putting a hand to her head she found that, like Peter and the others, she was also wearing a crown (Narnian crowns, although priceless in value and exceptionally beautiful, are light-weight and easy to wear).

"'Once a King or Queen in Narnia, always a King or Queen in Narnia,' so Aslan said when we were crowned," she reflected. "And Aslan called me 'Queen Susan', and 'Your Majesty', and he said that he has a mission for me, so he must have forgiven my silliness and stupidity. But I wonder if the others will?"

Susan watched from a distance as Aslan made an end of Narnia, and Peter locked the door. Then, as Aslan bounded away, and everyone began to walk "further up and further in" as he instructed them to do, she stayed at the tail-end of the huge procession, and almost immediately came upon a strange sight.

Eleven miserable-looking little dwarfs were sitting together in a huddle, apparently taking no notice of anyone else. They were, of course, Griffle and his companions who had refused to be "taken in", and had refused to listen to Tirian, Lucy and even Aslan. Susan, having only just arrived, did not know this, but she could see that they obviously wanted no part in what was happening. She knew very well from her own recent experience how people can sometimes shut their eyes to what they do not want to see – and to their own detriment! "I wonder if they are part of the 'mission' Aslan mentioned?" she wondered, and immediately she heard Aslan's voice, clear but distant, sounding as though it came to her across many miles.

"Bring them along, Queen Susan, all must come further up and further in!"

"Right then, that settles it. There's a job here for me to do," thought Susan decidedly, as she approached the dwarfs, resolving to be as tactful as possible.

"Hello, there," she began, sitting down beside them. "Don't you want to go along with Aslan and the others, then?"

"Oh, here's another one of them at it!" declared Griffle irritably. "We don't want any of your tricks, girlie, we've had more than enough of them, thank you – from now on we want no kings, no queens, no Calormenes and no more Aslan either – like we told King Tirian, blast him, the dwarfs are for the dwarfs! How can we 'go along' anywhere, for goodness sake? I suppose that next minute you'll be telling us we're not shut up in this poky little pitch-dark stable, like the others tried to bamboozle us!"

"Well," began Susan, picking her words carefully, "we were, certainly, when I first came through the door, but it seems to have been made away with now and we're in the open air, and in full daylight. I was very surprised by that, and I'd only just arrived. If you've been here for a long while, and you were shut up in the stable in the dark for all that time, then I daresay your eyes have got so used to the dark that you can't readjust yet."

"Re just! Whatever is she talking about?" demanded another dwarf.

"Oh, it's only a word people use where I've been living lately," replied Susan. "It means, well, getting back to normal, getting back to being as you were before things changed – at least, that's what I meant by it."

"She has a nice voice, you know, Griffle," put in a third dwarf. "She smells nice, too – she must be a lady."

"It's very kind of you to say so," replied Susan. "But look, there's an apple-tree just over there, let me bring you some and we can talk some more."

She walked towards the fruit-trees and came back with an armful of apples. "I wonder if these are anything like the apple my Great-Uncle, Digory Kirke, once brought back from Narnia?" she mused out loud.

"What – him who we were used to call the Lord Digory?" demanded Griffle sharply.

"Yes, that's right," replied Susan pleasantly, handing round the apples. She sat down companionably between Griffle and the third dwarf, and continued. "On the very same day that Narnia was created, Uncle Digory, who was only a very young boy at the time, was sent by Aslan to bring an apple from the Garden, beyond the Western Wilds. He brought it back to Aslan who told him to plant it by the river-bank, and the Tree of Protection grew from it."

"The tree which kept the White Witch out of Narnia for hundreds of years?" asked the third dwarf.

"That was the one," replied Susan. "Then Aslan gave Uncle Digory an apple from that tree to take home to his mother (my great-grandmother), who was very ill at the time; the doctors were sure that she would die. The apple healed her, she was completely well within a few days, and she lived to be a very old lady. Uncle Digory planted the apple-core in his own garden. The tree which grew from that bore beautiful apples; of course in our world they were not magical ones, but they were very healthy eating, or so they say anyway; it was long before my time, you see. But when the tree blew down in a terrible storm many years later, Uncle Digory didn't want it to be chopped up for firewood, so he had the wood made into a wardrobe, and it was through that wardrobe that my sister Lucy first came into Narnia. Then she brought the rest of us along and..."

"Queen Susan!" exclaimed the third dwarf. He rubbed his eyes and shook his head. "Oh, my!" He stood up, removed his hood, and bowed low. "My humble duty to Your Majesty!" he declared. He looked around, seeing for the first time the grass, trees and blue sky; then he took a bite from his apple. "She's right, Griffle, tuck in, this is delicious, and there are more trees over there – all kinds of fruit there are!"

"Over where, you stupid fool?" demanded Griffle irritably, but, unable to resist the delicious scent of his apple, he took a bite from it, then another and another. "Well, this isn't bad, I must say," he declared.

"Here, have another," laughed Susan, handing him a second apple. "There are plenty for all."

Diggle (the dwarf who earlier had been so rude to Lucy), took the pipe from his mouth and took a bite of his apple. "Hmm – not bad," he muttered. "I think this lady is right, Griffle." Suddenly his face took on an expression of great consternation "Oh dear! Oh, deary, deary me!" he exclaimed, shaking his head in dismay.

"What's the matter?" enquired Susan solicitously.

"That lady who was here before – with King Tirian," replied Diggle. "She tried to talk to us – she spoke very nicely, too, but we wouldn't listen. The King told us that she was Queen Lucy and we didn't believe him, but she must have been! Oh, and to think I actually tried to thump her!"

"Why did you do that?" asked Susan. Diggle turned very red in the face, and looked down at his feet, blinking in the sudden light.

"I thought she tried to shove some rubbish, probably stable-litter I thought, in my face – but I don't see it around, maybe it wasn't..." he began.

"Is this it?" asked Susan, picking up the discarded bunch of violets which Diggle had been unable to see when Lucy had offered it to him.

"It must be! Yes, because she told me to smell it – oh dear, or dear!" fretted the distraught Diggle. He took the little bunch from Susan's outstretched hand and tucked it carefully into his belt. "I'll give these back to Her Majesty if we meet again – that is, if she'll even look at me a second time!" he resolved.

"Oh, I'm sure she's forgiven you," Susan assured him. "Very strange things have happened to all of us today – if it still is today," she chuckled.

All the dwarfs suddenly rose to their feet, removed their hoods and bowed. They looked around at the grass, the trees and the sky.

"Well, Your Majesty, you can say that again!" replied Griffle. "I don't know where we are; certainly this isn't Stable Hill, but it somehow doesn't seem to matter much at the moment. Still, we can't sit around here forever, you know, lads. If Your Majesty will permit," he continued, bowing again, "some of us will form a scouting party; we'll take a look around and see if we can get our bearings."

"Why don't we all go along together?" suggested Susan, and all eleven dwarfs chorused agreement to this.

They walked away in a group, and, as the others had done before them, soon found themselves running at great speed. Coming to the top of a hill, Griffle called out and pointed in great excitement.

"Look, over there. It's Cair Paravel!"

"So it is!" replied Susan. "I lived there once, long ago – oh dear!" she sighed. "I wonder if the others will be there, and what they will say to me..." Quickly she explained how she had fallen away from Narnia as she grew up in England, and that she was afraid that the others would no longer want anything to do with her.

"Nay, Your Majesty!" replied Diggle. "If, as you said, Queen Lucy will forgive a miserable chap like me for aiming a blow at her, she'll surely welcome her own sister, she'll be very glad to see you here again, and so will King Edmund, and the High King Peter!"

"I daresay," smiled Susan, somewhat reassured. "This is a day of strange happenings, after all!" She began to walk towards Cair Paravel, picking up speed as they all descended the hill together. As they crossed the little bridge which led to the castle, the big gate swung open. A young man emerged and walked towards them. Susan thought there was something familiar about him, but she could not quite place him.

"Susan!" he exclaimed joyfully, holding out both hands in welcome and smiling delightedly. "Eh, lass, it's grand to see thee again!"

"Rabadash!" replied Susan incredulously as she came face-to-face with him.

"Aye, lass, that's me, as ever was! You're a sight for sore eyes. Eh, but I never thought to see thee again after the way I..."

"Oh, never mind about that! It's been water under the bridge for many a year!" laughed Susan happily. "But how do you come to be here, and how long have you been here?" she enquired.

"Well – but look, come on inside all of you, and we'll have a bit of dinner while we talk." Rabadash led the way through the courtyard and into the Great Hall, where two ladies, one wearing white and the other wearing green, were sitting at a table. On seeing the newcomers, the one wearing green immediately waved a hand, and a most sumptuous banquet appeared on the High Table. Rabadash handed Susan into the High Seat then sat down beside her and the rest took their places on either side of them, the two ladies sitting at opposite ends.

Over dinner, Rabadash explained to Susan that, when his long life as the Tisroc of Calormen had eventually come to its end, he had found himself in the castle, with only the lady wearing white for company. Other people had come and gone, none remaining for very long. Much later, Rabadash told her, they had been joined by the other lady. Susan, a little uneasily, now recognised them as Jadis, the long-ago White Witch of Narnia and the other one (from what she remembered of Eustace and Jill's description) as the Lady of the Green Kirtle, the witch who had subjected Prince Rilian to his long imprisonment in the Underworld.

Rabadash went on to explain that they had all three eventually got what, in life, they had always wanted – to live, and rule, in Cair Paravel; but they had found it a very empty and lonely existence, except for when they were able to offer hospitality to people who passed by. "They'll do thee no harm, lass," he assured her. "They've learned their lesson, same as I have – at least I hope I have! They have some magic still, but nothing to harm anyone – just to do the cooking and the housework mostly," he laughed "and anyroad, being as we're in some other world nowadays, what harm can they do?"

"When did you learn to talk as you do now?" enquired Susan, remembering the extremely formal and pompous way in which Prince Rabadash had been used to express himself when he was a Prince of Calormen in the old days.

"Ah, it came by degrees," he replied. "I picked it up from folk who passed through here; some were very rough and ready, but they were good, honest folk in the main. They all went on, I suppose to Aslan's country, going by what they said anyroad."

"Why did you not go along with any of them?" Susan asked.

"We couldn't! The three of us have never been able to walk across that bridge – we've been stuck here for I dunno how long now," he told her regretfully. "But you should be able to go back across it and then go on to Aslan's country, I should think, and maybe we'll be able to go along with you; we'll try it and see what happens when everybody's had enough to eat. We had a Black Dwarf here for awhile; he was stuck here the same as we were. His name was Nikabrik. Then later on, a Red Dwarf who'd once been a friend of his arrived here, and when he went on to Aslan's country, he took Nikabrik along with him."

"Was the Red Dwarf called Trumpkin?" enquired Susan.

"Aye, that was him! He didn't half scold Nikabrik, went on at him something chronic he did, but he took him away to Aslan's country just the same; they'd been friends in their time, of course, before Nikabrik got too big for his boots."

The two erstwhile witches now approached, dropping curtseys to Susan, who noted with some surprise that Jadis had quite lost the bleached, dead-white complexion which Susan well remembered and looked sun-tanned, bright-eyed and rosy-cheeked – what Susan's mother would have called "a bonny lass".

"Yes," said Jadis, as if she had read Susan's mind. "We have had a long time to consider our wickedness, and to repent of it, believe me! We wouldn't hurt any of you, even if we could, which we couldn't anyway. And so, as we have improved inwardly we have improved outwardly. But whether we will be able to come along with you, we do not yet know – of course that is if you will allow us to travel in your company."

"Most certainly," replied Susan. By now, everyone had finished eating. Jadis waved a hand, and the empty dishes and goblets all disappeared. Everyone then walked in a sort of procession, headed by Susan and Rabadash, out of the castle, through the grounds and towards the bridge, which everyone crossed with no hindrance.

"Now which way should we be going?" wondered Rabadash aloud. "Somewhere to the West, I should think; that's the direction everybody else took after they crossed the bridge, and nobody ever came back."

"By your leave," suggested Jadis, "I believe we should make for the Garden."

"Do you mean the one where Uncle Digory and Aunt Polly once went?" enquired Susan.

"Yes, and I have been there – more fool that I was, so I know where to find it," replied Jadis, her eyes twinkling merrily. "We should make our way towards the Great Waterfall which marks the Western Boundary of Narnia."

"Ah, at the end of Lantern Waste," said Susan.

"Let's be off, then," laughed Rabadash, and the whole party soon found themselves running at speed towards the Western boundary of Narnia. Although they had many miles to travel, they covered the ground swiftly and easily, and were soon approaching Lantern Waste. Here, another surprise awaited them.

As they reached the lamp-post (the twin of the one accidentally planted by Jadis on the day that Narnia was first created), a young man suddenly approached them.

"Hello!" exclaimed Rabadash. "Were you waiting for us, friend?"

"Waiting for somebody, certainly," replied the stranger, with a delighted smile. "I know that I must stay here until whoever it is arrives, but for how many years I've waited I don't know! It may be one of you, perhaps - so many people have gone by but nobody has ever spoken to me before; actually I doubt if they even saw me, and I never saw anyone I actually knew, until just lately. Digory and Polly passed by not long ago, but they never noticed me either – they're grown up now, of course, but..."

"Oh!" cried Jadis. "Are you Andrew Ketterley?"

"Well, I was, long ago!" he replied. "So you remember me, madam - oh, bless my soul, it's Queen Jadis!"

"Not a Queen any longer," she laughed. "Not that I ever had any right to call myself a Queen in Narnia – or in Charn either, for that matter. The only Queen here is Queen Susan – she was crowned Queen of Narnia by Aslan himself!"

"Delighted to make Your Majesty's acquaintance," replied Andrew, with a courtly bow to Susan.

"Oh, my!" gasped Susan. "You must be my Great-Uncle Digory's uncle!"

"Yes, indeed," he replied.

"So how did you come to be here?" asked Susan.

"Well, Your Majesty..."

"Oh, don't call me that! You are family, after all," she laughed. "But, you were saying?"

"Yes, well, after my earthly life ended (before you were born, of course), here I came! I lived to be very old, as you likely know, but here I found myself young again, and have stayed that way. I did once think that it could be the Land of Youth," he added musingly. "What a miserable sinner I was when I came here the first time, only thinking of myself. I should have witnessed miracles of creation that day, but I closed my eyes and ears to everything that happened – and I had called myself a magician! What did I know? While I have been here, so many people have passed by, all on their way to Aslan's country, from what I heard them saying, but I could never follow any of them; I suppose I must be completely unworthy to do so."

Jadis stepped towards him and took him by the hand.

"We both did wrong in our mortal lives – I far more than you," she declared. "Let us see if you can now come along with us!"

Hand-in-hand, Jadis and Andrew fell into line behind Susan and Rabadash. The party continued until they came to Caldron Pool and the Great Waterfall, tumbling down the immensely high cliffs which appeared to be an insuperable obstacle to further progress.

"Now what do we do?" Rabadash enquired of nobody in particular.

"The Western Wilds lie beyond here, and the Garden is at the end of them. When I was last here, I used magic to climb those cliffs," mused Jadis. "I wonder if..."

"Oh, look, look!" the Lady of the Green Kirtle suddenly called out, pointing to the top of the cliff above the Pool. Looking upwards, the party saw people (the tail-end of the multitude from the Stable) swimming directly up the Waterfall and scrambling over the banks at the top of it.

"There is magic here far stronger than I ever had," replied Jadis thoughtfully. "It seems that we are all in the hands of Aslan."

"Here goes, then!" replied Rabadash boisterously, plunging into the water with a splash, and soon all sixteen of them were swimming across the Pool and up the Waterfall. Only Andrew (who had never learned to swim on Earth), made heavy weather of it, but as he neared the top, Rabadash and Griffle seized his arms and hoisted him onto dry land.

"Talk about being thrown in at the deep end," laughed Andrew.

"Well, as long as none of us goes off the deep end!" quipped Susan.

"Ah," commented Rabadash, taking Susan by the hand as they set off running again, "that was my besetting sin! What a terrible temper I had, and I used to frighten folk half to death – and thought I was so big and clever! I was so full of my own importance and I always had to have all my own road in everything – or else! I used to make a regular ass of myself – until Aslan made an even bigger one of me!"

"I heard about that from Edmund and Lucy," replied Susan, trying to repress a smile. Rabadash grinned widely.

"Ah, go on, laugh – you know you want to! Best thing that could have happened to me, lass, although I didn't think so at the time, of course," he laughed. "I got cut down to size good and proper, and that never does anybody any harm!"

It was Prince Rilian who cut me down to size – with his sword!" put in the Lady of the Green Kirtle humourously. Then her face became thoughtful and sad. "What a dirty trick I played on him, and on his poor mother – and all those unfortunate gnomes from Bism, I've often wondered what became of them all."

"Oh, Eustace and Jill told us all about them – the gnomes all found their way back home, and Rilian and Puddleglum returned to Narnia," Susan informed her.

"Ah, so the two children came back to your world?"

"Oh, yes, Lady," replied Susan. The Lady breathed a deep sigh of relief and a tear trickled down her cheek. Then her expression brightened.

"By the bye," she smiled, "My name is Ailieana – when I was a girl, before I started meddling with sorcery and wicked enchantments, they called me 'Anna', I should like everyone to do so now."

"Aslan flattened me – literally," laughed Jadis. "He absolutely 'knocked the stuffing out of me,' as Rabadash would say. Then I found myself in the castle which I had always coveted in life. When I usurped the throne of Narnia, I used to call myself 'Chatelaine of Cair Paravel' but all my magic couldn't help me to gain possession of it – I should have taken warning from that, of course, but I was so headstrong – far worse than ever Rabadash was. Well, after my death I lived there alone for I don't know how long, until Rabadash arrived, and then Anna. There's a saying in your world, is there not, Queen Susan, that you should be careful what you wish for – you might get it!"

"That's so, and it's very true," replied Susan.

"Oh aye – we all found that out!" laughed Rabadash.

"I certainly got a sight more than I ever bargained for – messing about with things that I didn't understand," commented Andrew dryly. "I should have remembered what I was taught when I was a boy – that if you play with fire, you'll get burned!"

"That's something we all learned - the hard way!" replied Anna with a chuckle.

"Now then!" announced Jadis, "Look straight ahead, I believe that is the Garden!"

The party ran effortlessly up the steep, smooth grassy hill on top of which stood the Garden, and came to a halt outside the great golden gates. They all looked at each other, a little uncertain about what they should do next.

"I think we must wait," counselled Jadis. "We must not enter this place uninvited..." but at that moment the huge gates swung silently open and Aslan himself stood facing them.

"Enter, Queen Susan of Narnia! Your mission is now complete; you have performed it most faithfully and you are forever welcome here! Come further up and further in – and bring all your friends along with you!" he cried joyfully. "Ah, Rabadash, my son, you are welcome here, enter! Come along, all you Sons of Earth, now that your eyes are open, enter in and see what you will see!" he addressed the dwarfs. "Enter, Jadis and Anna – true penitents, you have come home at last! As for you, Andrew my son," he continued, laying a velvety paw lightly on Andrew's shoulder, "I have waited long for you to be able to hear my voice – enter and welcome!"

As they all progressed through the gate, they each received a Lion's kiss on their forehead. Following the summons of King Frank's horn, Susan, still hand-in-hand with Rabadash, led her party as they followed the others up the brightly-coloured cliffs, and, meeting Aslan there a second time, they once again received the assurance that they were home forever, as they realised who He truly was.

There then followed such a series of grand family reunions as can only ever be experienced in the Great Hereafter.