Disclaimer: Edmund and Peter Pevensie and all the characters and situations in the Chronicles of Narnia belong to C. S. Lewis and not to me.
THE WOOD
Edmund found himself swimming through– no, that wasn't the right word– he found himself rushing through something like water, but when he came up into the air, into a warm, green place he'd never before seen, he wasn't at all wet. Yet he saw that he had come out of a little pool of water perhaps ten feet across. For a moment he thought that ought to be strange, as it ought to be strange that there were other identical pools everywhere he looked, but soon the feeling was gone. This place of lush grass and tall trees and leaf-filtered sunlight simply was, and within it he, too, simply was.
He stood a long time, merely breathing in the rich air, looking calmly at the trees, thinking nothing, until, feeling rather too warm, he shrugged out of his overcoat, stripped off his gloves and let them fall behind him into the grass. A little while afterwards, he noticed there was something draped across one of the heavy, almost-horizontal branches of a tree a few yards ahead. It was a man, he saw as he moved closer, a rather young man no more than three or four years older than Edmund himself. He was lying on his stomach with one long leg stretched out behind him along the branch and the other dangling beside it. His arms were crossed under his chin and his tousled blond hair had fallen over his forehead. His eyes were closed, and there was a sort of unfocused half-smile on his clean-cut face. Like Edmund, he wore drab, scratchy-looking clothing that seemed far too commonplace for this reverently silent forest. Like Edmund, he had shed his gloves and overcoat and left them on the ground.
For a while, Edmund only stood looking at him, as he had looked at the trees, not really thinking anything except that this was a good wood for sleeping and he should very much like to sleep, too. Then he realized the young man had opened his eyes and was looking back at him with the same vague disinterest.
There was something very familiar about the blue of those eyes, something he'd known since before he'd truly known anything, but he couldn't quite place it just now. He merely breathed a contented sigh and sat down on the ground. It couldn't possibly matter.
"You weren't here before."
The young man's voice, like his eyes, seemed like it ought to be familiar, but Edmund found he had no interest in figuring out such mysteries just now. He only looked up into the tree again.
"Before when?"
The young man thought for a moment. "Before . . . "
He finished with a shrug that Edmund copied.
"Always been here."
"I suppose," the young man murmured, closing his eyes again. As he drifted back into sleep, one arm slipped off the branch, dangling like his leg for a moment and then unbalancing him enough to make him tumble off into the grass not far from where Edmund sat.
"Ooof."
Never thinking he ought not to, Edmund laughed, and that somehow made his thinking a little less muddied. The young man laughed, too. It seemed that this was something the two of them had done very often and over a good many years sometime before. Somewhere before.
"I know," the young man said, adding drowsy realization to the laughter still on his face. "You play rugby."
Edmund rubbed his sore knee, and everything seemed to come clear.
"Peter."
Peter blinked, drawing his brows together. "Peter?"
"C'mon, Pete." Edmund shook him by the shoulders, remembering what the Professor had told them about his own experiences in this place and the warnings he had given about it. "Get up. We can't sleep here all day." Or forever.
Peter shook his head a little, and the dreamy look left his face, replaced by one of eager wonder.
"It's–" He leapt to his feet, his fingers twisted unconsciously into the shoulder of Edmund's shirt as he pulled him up beside him. "It's just as he described it. I can't believe we're actually here. It's–"
"It's not where we're supposed to be. Now come on before we do something to pitch a spanner into the whole works and ruin everything."
Again Peter shook his head, as if more was coming back to him. "I didn't mean to do it, Ed. I wasn't really going to use the ring, but I just didn't think–"
"Typical."
"You know you wanted to as badly as I did."
Edmund couldn't deny that, not and be honest, so he only scowled. "We've got to get back. Jill and Eustace and the others will be expecting us to meet them at the train with the rings any minute now. Get your coat and–"
"How?"
Peter glanced around the clearing, taking in all the identical little pools of water. Pools and trees. Pools and trees. Everywhere pools and trees. Everywhere alike.
"How do we get back, Ed? The Professor said each pool leads to a world. How do we know which leads to ours?"
"It's just–" Edmund felt the color drop out of his face. "Which one did I come out of? Do you remember?"
Peter shook his head, and his face, too, was pale. "I didn't see."
"And you don't remember where you came up?'
"No. You know how it is. Everything's a bit of a blur at first."
The two of them stood merely staring at one another, and then Peter walked over to the tree to pick up his overcoat.
"I don't– Wait a minute, what about your coat, Ed? Do you remember when you took it off?"
Edmund's coat was laying in the grass where he had dropped it, almost equidistant between two of the pools, and he went over to it, struggling to remember.
"I don't know for sure. I think I just stood there for a while when I first came up and then I saw you . . . no, wait, I saw you after I took off my coat. It's one of these two, don't you think?"
Peter narrowed his eyes. "I suppose that has to be right. It's as much as we have to go on at this point."
"But which one?"
Again they stood staring at each other until finally Peter frowned.
"It's all my fault. If I hadn't been so stupid–"
"I was the one who used one of the rings deliberately. That makes my being here nobody's fault but my own."
"You came because of me, Ed. Don't think I don't know." Peter's eyes flashed. "I ought to kill you for doing that. But I probably already have now."
"Don't be an ass, Peter. We'll try one of the pools. If it's wrong, we'll come back and try the other."
"And suppose we land in the middle of ice or fire or some sort of poison gas or even a pack of Fell Beasts? The Professor said one might meet anything in these other worlds. You'd better let me go first, just to be sure."
"No fear!"
"Look here, Edmund, no sense both of us–"
"We go together, Peter. Together or, so help me, the minute you go, I'll dive into one of those pools beyond those trees over there and then good luck you figuring out which one."
Edmund glared fiercely at him until Peter finally laughed.
"You'd just do it, too, wouldn't you?"
Edmund shrugged. "I might."
"Together then."
They both looked into the water.
"Which one, you reckon?" Peter asked, his expression grim again.
"I don't know, but we'd better make some kind of sign so we'll know what we've tried and where we ought to try next."
As the Professor had done all those years ago, Edmund knelt down and cut a strip out of the grass with his penknife. Then he cut one beside the other pool, crosswise to the first.
"How do you suppose Jill and Eustace are supposed to know which pool to use?"
Peter shook his head. "I guess Aslan would show them. Perhaps we haven't got all this as carefully planned as we thought."
Edmund merely dusted off his hands and said nothing.
"All right then." Peter put on his overcoat. "Better get yours on, too. If we land in the middle of another hundred year winter, you might want it."
"Don't remind me," Edmund said with a shudder, but he, too, put on his coat.
Peter took his arm. "Best stick together now. You have both of your rings?"
Edmund rolled his eyes. "Yes, Mum."
"Quiet, you. Now, green rings on."
Once they were ready, Peter eyed the pools again. "The right, you think?
"Good as any."
"All right, ready? Now."
They jumped feet first into the water. Again there was that rushing feeling, but this time there was something suffocating about it, oppressive and increasingly dark and definitely downward.
For an instant Edmund got a glimpse of a wasted land, of burnt desolation and blasted emptiness, and he squeezed his eyes shut against the barren ugliness of it. Then he felt solid ground under him and stumbled to one knee, his bad one.
"Ugh."
Peter still had him by the arm and didn't let him fall all the way down.
"I can't believe it." Peter's voice shook with emotion. "It's just– just–"
"I know," Edmund breathed, not wanting to see more of the terrible place. "Horrible."
"– beautiful."
Edmund's eyes snapped open. Surrounding him was a spring meadow, lush with grass and flowers, bordered by burgeoning forest on two sides, a crystal river on a third, and on the fourth, the rocky foothills of what grew into purple mountains off in the distance. Above, the sky was clear and blue, with only a few wispy clouds drifting across it.
He struggled to his feet and blinked hard, hardly able to bear the sweet intensity of the colors and the fresh, pure fragrance of the grass, half expecting this paradise to disappear. But it held steady. He hadn't seen anything so glorious since–
He glanced at his brother. Peter still had a tight grip on his arm, though Edmund could see he was no longer aware of it. Peter was only standing with his face to the gentle sun, gulping down the clear air in the trembling gasps of a newly rescued drowning man. Then, with a soft cry, he fell to his knees, twining his fingers into the grass and then burying his face in it, his tears watering the rich black earth.
"We're back. We're back."
Edmund looked around. It couldn't be. It mustn't be.
"Peter, no. We can't–"
"It's Narnia, Ed. Narnia at last."
