Edmund did not really know what had woken him. The still darkness inside the pavillion had been a comfort when he'd gone to sleep, but now it felt cold and disturbing, and although the pile of cushions he'd curled himself up on was more comfortable than the softest feather mattress, he felt queer and uneasy. His sisters' steady breathing, even Peter's quiet snores (which had always made him cross in the past, when it kept him awake) would have been welcome, but with a sense of some alarm Edmund realised he could not hear the others at all. He felt suddenly very alone.
Then a hand groped at his face from out of the darkness and he nearly yelled in shock; the Witch had changed her mind and come back for him after all! Or maybe Aslan's promise to her had been that he would let her take Edmund in the night, when the others were asleep and couldn't make a fuss. She was going to take him to the Stone Table and kill him. Edmund was about to start shouting (he was not about to go quietly to his death) when the hand found his shoulder and a voice followed it from the dark.
"Ed?" the voice whispered. "Are you awake?" It was Peter. Edmund felt sick with relief, and then embarrassed and annoyed at being made afraid of his brother.
"Well, I am now," he hissed back, frowning but hoping Peter would not let go of his shoulder. His heart was still pounding and his brother's hand was reassuring now that he did not fear it belonged to the Witch.
"Sorry," said Peter. "I thought...it's silly, never mind."
"What is it?"
For a moment, Peter was silent. And then he said "I don't know exactly," in a way that made Edmund feel desperately uneasy. "Something isn't right. Don't you feel it?"
Edmund did feel it - it was what had woken him up in the first place - but he didn't understand it, so he said nothing. If you have ever woken up in the middle of the night feeling that something is amiss without knowing why, then you will understand what Edmund and Peter felt as they lay next to each other in the dark, holding their breath and listening for any sound in the night outside; tense and helpless and confused. Of course, you and I know what was happening on the hill that very moment, as Aslan went to put himself at the mercy of the White Witch for Edmund's sake, but Edmund and Peter did not find that out until later (and even then they did not hear the full story). All they knew now was that something was not right.
"I can't hear anything," Edmund said after a minute, and that in itself was strange, because shouldn't Susan and Lucy have been asleep and breathing quietly on the other side of the pavillion? But he didn't say anything about the girls because he didn't want to sound like he was worried, and Peter didn't say anything about the girls because he didn't want to worry Edmund if Edmund hadn't noticed they were missing.
"Maybe it was just a bad dream," Peter said instead. They were all going to war soon, perhaps even tomorrow. "Probably all soldiers are..." Peter didn't say 'afraid' or 'nervous', because there was no need to go pointing accusatory fingers at anyone, they were Men now, but...well, perhaps "tense" was a better word. Edmund did not feel like a Man. He felt very small. They shuffled closer together trying to pretend they were not, that they were not anxious or glad of the company, and yes, Edmund thought, tonight was dreadfully tense.
"I thought you were a goner," Peter told him after a long silence. His voice had gone soft and disturbingly wobbly.
"So did I," said Edmund. He hoped Peter wasn't going to cry or something. His own eyes felt uncomfortably hot, and he didn't want to start blubbing like a girl in front of his brother, not even in the dark.
"Why'd you do it, you blockhead?"
Edmund was going to cry out that Aslan had said not to speak to him about what he'd done, but Peter didn't sound angry, not really, and he couldn't see his brother's face, so he was honest instead. Or as honest as a twelve-year-old boy could be about something as complicated as betraying his family.
"She...the Qu--Witch. She said she liked me, and she'd make me King of Narnia one day. I..." and here he faltered, because it was going to sound stupid to Peter, and his brother couldn't possibly understand; not Peter, who was always best at everything, who was always confident that he was brilliant and knew it all. "I wanted to be special."
Peter made a strangled, exasperated sound and hugged him hard.
"You are special, idiot."
Not long ago, Edmund might have fixed on the fact that his brother had called him an idiot, and been cross. But now he thought that maybe that wasn't the most important thing Peter had said. He tried to fight the stinging behind his eyes a little longer, but a few tears managed to spill out.
"Do you think we're going to die?"
"I'm not afraid," said Peter fiercely instead of answering the question, and Edmund didn't quite understand that Peter was saying it as much to convince himself as anything, so he stubbornly replied "me neither," even though he was terrified. But Peter held on to him, and Edmund didn't tell him to let go.
The air still hummed with the pressure of something terrible happening, or about to happen, like the dull weight of a storm preparing to break, but the boys found their way back to sleep, somehow.