The Second Step

by lurkisblurkis

"What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step."
— C. S. Lewis

They first noticed it when Peter came home for holidays one day, and he smiled at things a lot more.

Edmund had asked cautiously what it was that was different about him, and Peter hadn't given him much of an answer. But he'd assured his younger siblings that, really, it was no mystery—not that they took that very well—and if there was a little magic involved, well, then they'd just have to wait and see, wouldn't they?

Lucy whispered to Edmund as they were leaving the room that Peter looked "just as if he's back in Narnia again, breathing the very air and everything!"

At first the girls were pleasantly surprised by the subtle changes in Peter's behavior. He was acting, Lucy thought, just as she remembered him when he was on the throne of Cair Paravel, with that same exuberance and the constant urge to be joyful. But it was when Peter's face actually began to carry the expression of the High King, with its nobility and magnificence shining through his features, that Lucy found Susan in the girls' room one day, crying on the bed.

"He's just like we all used to be!" sobbed Susan when the younger girl had put her arms around her and asked what was wrong. "Why does he get to be a king again? Why can't we?"

"Aslan said, once a king or queen in Narnia, always a king or queen," Lucy said, trying to be comforting.

She didn't add that the Lion hadn't said "always a king or queen in Narnia," because she didn't know that what Susan was missing wasn't really queenship, but rather queenship along with all of the thrills and excitements and adventures of the land where she had reigned. England was a dull, dull world, Lucy knew—but Susan simply kept repeating, "I want what he has, I want what he has…"

Whether Susan had truly despaired of the title of Queen, no one knew for sure, but she came home from a friend's house one evening with a strange peace in her face and said quietly to Lucy, "Aslan was right—there is something to be said for our world, too."

That summer, the children went their separate ways, and Lucy and Edmund were unfortunately directed to the house of their cousin for a stay of several weeks. When they returned and the siblings were all together again, the two youngest were strangely animated and kept wanting to talk about Narnia. Susan didn't want to. "Narnia is the past; I've almost completely forgotten about it," she would say. "I need to concentrate on following Aslan in this world, in our own land." From then on Lucy and Edmund talked about it with Peter.

Edmund came to the breakfast table one morning with tear trails all over his cheeks. "I've just discovered something incredible," he told them. Lucy begged him to tell her what it was, but he just grinned at her and kept silent. For a moment or two both Lucy and Peter stared at him at a loss—then their older brother exclaimed, "Ed!" and threw his arms around Edmund. It startled Edmund so that he nearly choked on his egg and had to cough it back up, but he was smiling in the end.

"But I don't think I shall let myself forget about Narnia," he said out of nowhere one afternoon while the children were finishing a game of croquet. "Aslan told Lucy and me that we shan't go back there, ever—but if I forgot it I might forget Him—and that would be, well, dangerous."

There was no unusual change in Edmund's face for a long time after that summer, but over the following years Lucy noticed that, every once in a while, she could catch a queer spark of excitement in her brother's eyes, especially if they were in a place that was very beautiful.

It was not until Lucy was nearly fourteen that she began to realize that her siblings were holding onto something that she seemed to have let go of by mistake. What was it? They hardly ever seemed to talk about Narnia together as they'd used to—at least, it was always in a reverent, subdued tone now, and Susan never participated in the discussions. Susan, it seemed, had forgotten Narnia! or she no longer cared, perhaps. Her sister only appeared to remember it if she was reminded by someone. She was focusing on Aslan now, she said—but how, Lucy wondered, could you possibly focus on Aslan without Narnia itself?

And so she clung to her memories of Narnia like a falling child to a tree branch, unwilling to let any of it go. Surely this must be what her brothers held onto. Surely, if she could just tighten her grip a bit more, go through the endless cycle of bringing every image, every sound, into excruciating detail, remember what it felt like, what it felt like, what it felt like…

But Aslan, she realized one day when she hadn't even been thinking of Narnia moments before, wasn't in any of those. Aslan wasn't a picture or a sound, or even the soft breath of Narnian air that her two brothers so easily seemed to breathe every day—and Susan as well, though reluctantly. Lucy screwed up her face. What, then, was Aslan?

As she lay in bed that night, she seemed to hear a lovely voice say her name. "Lucy." She was unfamiliar with it at first—it didn't seem to have a tone to it, as other voices do—but then she recognized the greatness behind it and knew at once that it must be the Great Lion.

"Aslan!" she cried out softly. "I've been looking for you! Oh, we all have!" She hardly dared to speak, but something in the room made her. "You told Edmund and me that you were in our world too—why couldn't I find you?"

"Because, dear heart," replied the gentle voice: "You have bound yourself too tightly to the place where you first found Me. There are many good things there…but how can I lead you if you will not take the second step? There are greater things ahead."

"Then I must—" Lucy swallowed. "I must forget Narnia?"

"A little bit, dear heart. You must leave it behind."

Tears welled up in Lucy's eyes, and she heard her sister move in sleep in her bed across the room. "Susan's forgotten it completely," she murmured.

There was a tiny, almost imperceptible growl beneath the voice—or perhaps Lucy only imagined it, thinking of Aslan's lion voice in the darkness. "Susan has stopped clinging to one world and started clinging to the next. She has decided that I must be in something, when she has not understood that everything is in Me."

"Will she forget You, too, Aslan?" asked Lucy, continuing to gaze at her sleeping sister. Susan's eyes were closed in peace, and her dark hair was strewn gently across her pillow, but one hand was clenched tightly within the bedsheets.

"That is up to Susan," Lucy heard. "If she bars herself from all the joy and feeling of Narnia, then she will forget what she ever wanted to know Me for."

Susan stirred and abruptly rolled over onto her other side. A tear slipped out and down Lucy's cheek, and she looked away.

"But you," said the voice—Aslan's voice, in all its Lion strength—"you will know that the joy and feeling are great things, only parts of Me, and that there is much more to be seen than Narnia alone can hold."

Lucy looked again at Susan's back. "I will, Aslan," she promised.

When she came into the dining room for breakfast the next morning, her hair was mussed from sleeping, and she had forgotten to wash her face. But Peter stood up as she approached the table and gave her one of his biggest smiles.

"You look like a queen, Lu," said Edmund.

-fin-