Eustace hadn't been paying any attention to the other side of the schoolyard until he heard the commotion. He looked up from his book just in time to see Pole push herself up off the ground, face streaked with dirt and flushed with either anger or embarrassment, he couldn't tell which, and storm off, disappearing around the corner.
"Pole?" Several of her girls chums called after her, looking confused, but Pole didn't reappear.
Eustace sighed. He really, really hated getting involved. It would be much easier just to pretend he hadn't noticed anything, and return to his book (even though he was getting irritated at all the errors the detective was making. How could Edmund like this stuff?).
A knight never abandoned his friends, though, so Eustace put a marker in his book and heaved himself up off the ground. He suspected exactly where Pole had gone, and set forward accordingly, still grumbling inwardly about emotional girls and idiot fictional policemen. He hoped, rather viciously, that Edmund was struggling through the book on English flora and fauna that Eustace had lent him as much as Eustace was struggling through the murder mystery.
He was not at all surprised to see Pole sitting on the ground with her back to the door, knees drawn up and head buried in her arms. He approached cautiously.
"Er … hanky?" he offered tentatively, offering a clean white one as a flag of truce.
Pole raised her head, and he was relieved to see no sign of tears. Pole wasn't much of a one for crying, unless of course she was wet, cold, tired, and suddenly confronted by giants. Still, one never quite knew with girls.
"It's locked," she said.
Eustace slid to a sitting position next to her. "Well, if it wasn't, I wouldn't have expected to find you still here. You'd be through the door into Aslan's country, wouldn't you?"
She looked up and down the wall, sighing. "Do you think we'll ever go back?"
"To Aslan's country? Of course."
"No … to Narnia."
He wasn't so sure about that one. "Well, Aslan told each of the Pevensies when they were done, and he didn't say anything to us, so it is possible."
She nodded and rested her head back on her arms. Eustace fidgeted for a few moments. Finally, he couldn't contain himself any longer.
"Look, are you going to tell me what's wrong, or should I just go back to that blithering idiot Edmund thinks is a detective?"
Pole sighed. "We were running."
Eustace wasn't sure what was so bad about that, but at least she was talking. He nodded wisely. "Ah. Yes. Very troublesome, running can be. Makes you short of breath, and causes your legs to ache."
"Oh, give it a rest, will you? Let me finish."
Eustace grinned to himself. That sounded more like the cranky Pole he knew so well.
"I couldn't keep up. I kept falling further and further back in the race, and finally I tripped and fell." She held up her arm so he could see the tear in her sleeve and the bruise forming on her elbow.
"Ouch."
"It wasn't the pain so much, or even the humiliation of coming in last in a race. I just remembered running in Narnia … in the Ruined City, over all that rubble. Even then, as much pain as I was in, even with my dress tripping me up and my feet getting bruised by the stones through those ridiculous slippers, I still was faster than I was today. And it's just so frustrating, knowing that I could do something so well there, and here I can't do it at all."
Eustace shifted to get more comfortable. "The first time I went to Narnia, I couldn't swim at all. I nearly drowned both myself and Lucy when we arrived. But she and Edmund taught me to swim on the journey." He paused for a moment, remembering the quiet cove of that one deserted island, after he had been un-dragoned, with Ed supporting him and Lu demonstrating how simple it was, and Reep shouting perfectly useless advice from the shore, such as "When battling a foe in the water, use your dagger instead of your sword, as a sword is too cumbersome and will only weigh you down."
He shook his head, and the white sand and turquoise water faded back to the simple green and grey of an English countryside in spring. "So after we got back, when I got back to school, I jumped right in the water, thinking I could swim with no problem. I nearly drowned, again." He had been so shocked he hadn't even thought to panic - it wasn't until Frye Major had pulled him out that he had fully realised how close he'd come to dying.
Pole giggled.
Eustace glared at her. "It's not funny!" But his mouth twitched at the corners, giving him away, and eventually he laughed, too.
As the laughter faded on the wind, Pole sat up and shook her hair back from her face, clearly feeling a bit better. "Can you swim now? Have you remembered, from Narnia?"
"I'll never be as strong as I was in Narnia, not here," Eustace admitted, looking sadly at his puny arm muscles. "But I have been practicing, and the longer I work at it, the more easily it comes. The same with fighting, and shooting. Ever since we got back, I've been practicing with some of the school's bows and arrows, and I'm starting to get decent. Not like I was when we were out with Puddleglum, mind, but better."
"I should start practicing, too," Pole decided. "If Aslan does call us back to Narnia, I want to be better prepared." She paused. "You know what's almost worse than my body forgetting what it learned in Narnia?"
"What?"
"Sometimes it fades. The memories … they're almost like a beautiful dream, or a story that I read and loved. Sometimes it doesn't even seem like it happened to me. And oh, I don't want to forget any of it, not even the bad parts, not even climbing through those horrid tunnels and thinking we were going to be buried underground forever."
Eustace nodded. "I asked the others about that, after my first time. They hemmed and hawed a bit, and finally told me to talk to the professor."
"What did he say?"
"He said that while we were in Narnia, our memories of England faded into the background, so we wouldn't be distracted from our job there. Here, it's the reverse. If we kept remembering perfectly everything about Narnia, and how much we loved it, and all that, well, we'd be miserable. So Aslan fades the memories, just a bit, just enough to make living here bearable. That's how the Pevensies can be kids again, after being grown-up kings and queens in Narnia. They're not just adults trapped in children's bodies: Professor Kirke says they really are children again. He also says that as we get older, the memories sharpen a bit, and we sort of … grow into our Narnian selves."
Pole frowned. "That sounds a bit odd."
Eustace shrugged. "The professor's a bit odd. But it makes sense … scientifically, you know. As much as anything magical, at least."
"I suppose … it would be hard to live here, if you were always thinking about and remembering life in Narnia. Especially for your cousins, since they were there so long. So both our bodies and our minds forget a little, but we grow into the memories later?"
"As long as we keep practicing our physical skills, and living like True Narnians," Eustace clarified, smiling fondly at the quote from good old Puddleglum.
Pole stood up. "Well, I suppose a True Narnian wouldn't run off and sulk because she can't run as well as she'd like. I ought to get back and congratulate the winners, and maybe ask them for some tips."
As Eustace rose, too, and brushed the dirt off his backside, she suddenly added,
"Scrubb?"
"Mm?
"When the professor said that, about forgetting England in Narnia so we could focus on the task at hand, and the reverse being true here … does that mean that we are in England for a purpose, too?"
"I don't know," Eustace said, startled. "I never thought of it like that before. I'll have to ask the professor."
"What was it Aslan said to your cousins, at the World's End, again?"
"That he wouldn't tell them my story?"
"No … the bit about why he brought them to Narnia."
"To know him a little there, so they could know him better here," Eustace said slowly. Odd, how he'd never thought about that before.
"Maybe that's part of our purpose here, to find him and know him."
"Maybe …" Eustace trailed after Pole as she went back toward the yard. She'd certainly given him something to think about.
Something more interesting than Edmund's idiot detective story, anyway.
The End
Author's Note: Everyone who reads about Narnia seems to have a different idea of how the children might have reacted, returning to England and their old selves after spending time in Narnia. Especially the Pevensies, as they were there for so long. I can't imagine that Aslan would be so cruel as to send them home and then force them to know and remember everything, physical and emotional, while trapped inside a child's body. Susan, who had thought to wed, then coming back to being a little girl and still remembering what it was like to love (or think you love) at such a young age? It just didn't make sense to me. So, I formed this theory, that their memories and emotions as well as their bodies revert back to childhood, and only as they grow up do they truly know and remember.
I thought about telling this from the Pevensies' point of view, since they, again, are the ones most affected, but I have a hard time getting inside their heads, and I like Eustace, so this ended up being his story.
And for the record, I am adamantly opposed to any hint of Jill-Eustace romance, so in any of my stories featuring them, they are strictly friends, and will always be strictly friends.