AN: Just a little warning that this story is rated T for a reason; there are some sort of scary themes in this chapter. I must remind you that this is based off the orignal old fairytales, NOT the lame re-written kiddie ones. thus, it's not going to be all sunshine and skiping and la-la-las with blue-birds singing all the way through.
We live in fear, my brothers, my sister, and I.
Things keep on happening, scary things.
Staircases randomly crumble 'accidentally' under our feet,
A branch from a tree in our apple orchard breaks off suddenly as Peter and I are walking under it.
Lucy finds a poisonous snake in her toy-box, ready to bite her.
The only one who doesn't fall victim to a near-death experience at least once, is Edmund (With the exception of the staircase-all of us were on it at the time)
This is because he is the only one of us who doesn't hate her passionately and she knows it.
He is the only one of us she has a chance of manipulating if she plays her cards right; she knows that, too.
Oh, she pretends that she knows nothing of the horrors we-at least three of us-have started to face daily, hourly, and at times even by the minute.
Her voice is smooth but it is also hard and there are always those icy-stares she can't mask-she cannot completely hide from us what she is.
"You are a witch!" I want to scream so badly. I want to point my finger at her and scream it. "You ought to be burned at the stake, not living as queen in our castle, pretending we are your own children."
but I am too scared.
Not just for me, but for all of us. All four of us, even Edmund.
Our stepmother, Jadis-whom I in my thoughts call, "The white witch"- doesn't slap you or call names, she barely even bothers to get mad at all; rather, she just gets even.
She gets even when you least expect it.
The servant who cried out to warn us just before the stairs seemingly dissolved under our feet 'falls' from a tower two days later.
The gardener who threw himself at me and Peter before the branch hit us, 'slips' while pruning the bushes two days later.
We bury him in the very garden he has always loved so much.
Right next to the reddish-gold lilies.
They were his favorite flowers.
The chambermaid who pulled Lucy out of harm's way and trampled that horrid snake to death...
well, no one knows for sure how her end came about...
she just sort of disappeared.
Sort of like we might one day if things don't change soon.
The bathing antechamber was one of the most comfortable rooms in Cair Paravel. It had a lofty dome-shaped celing with the image of a compass-rose painted on it, supported by four large pinkish-white marble columns with gold-ring bases, forming four good-sized archways.
In each arch, was a nook with a golden chest full of pretty playthings and other valuables, as well as a shelf of books pertaining to each of the children's interests. Peter's shelf had books mostly about history and science while Edmund's shelf was full of books about sword-fighting and horses. Susan's shelf contained several books on dresses and fashion as well as two large dictionaries so she could increase her vocabulary-she did love the rush of saying smart-sounding words to people who didn't expect her to know them. Lucy, being neither so serious or studious as her brothers and sister were, had lots of books of myths and fairy stories that were fairly teaming with pictures and long conversations packed like sardines into her shelf.
To the left of each chest and shelf, was a silver door with the first letter of each of the children's names on them. Behind those doors each child had his or her own room to bathe in; each one containing a large silver-tub so spacious that Lucy could have done laps in it had she been just a very little bit younger and a large red-brick fireplace to warm up the jugs of water they poured over their heads on the colder winter nights.
In the antechamber itself, was a soft satin-covered sofa, four engraved rocking chairs, many soft cushions stuffed with swan-feathers, and plenty of little tables for them to play board-games and do puzzles on.
Peter and Edmund had already had their baths and were relaxing in their night-clothes, trying to put together a small cardboard puzzle which they assumed was going to be a lion when it was finished.
"Put the piece with the blue on the edge over on that side, Ed." Peter suggested as they sorted through the box the puzzle had been stored in; it was a brand-new one so they weren't completely sure where every bit of it went. "It must be the sky behind the main part of the picture."
Susan yawned and walked over to her silver door. "I'm going to have my bath now." She looked over at Lucy who was braiding the pieces of silk threads that had come loose from an old shawl. "You ought to have one, too, Lucy."
"But I want to stay out here with Peter and Edmund." Lucy protested, for some reason or other-perhaps something Jadis had caused to happen on that day had frightened her to this point-more attached to her brothers than usual.
"You can't keep skipping." Susan told her almost crossly. Lucy wasn't the only one who was scared but her increasing desire to be constantly underfoot was getting in the way of her bathing schedule and as neither Peter nor Edmund were going to do anything about it, Susan knew it was up to her. "You're starting to smell."
Lucy shrugged her shoulders, not sure what the big deal was. "So what? Edmund smells bad all the time and we get along just fine."
"Hey now!" Edmund exclaimed, feeling rather insulted, his dark eyebrows sinking deeply into his forehead.
"Pooh to baths." Lucy muttered, turning her attention back to braiding the shawl-threads.
"Lucy, I mean it." Susan said firmly, planting her hands on her hips. "Take a bath this very instant."
"Yes, Mum." Edmund teased in a sing-songy voice, making Lucy giggle wildly and Susan scowl furiously.
Peter reached over and slapped his brother upside the head.
"Ouch!" Edmund pouted, a scowl similar to the one Susan wore forming on his own face as he reached up to rub the back of his head.
"Alright, Su." Lucy sighed heavily, brushing the shawl-threads off her lap as she stood up and headed over to the silver door with the L on it. "You win."
"It's for your own good, sweetie." Susan said tenderly to remind her little sister that she was not angry with her before opening her own silver door, stepping in, and shutting it behind her.
Not bothering to glance at the water, Susan undressed herself and reached for her hair brush to comb out any knots that might had formed in her long dark hair so that it didn't get worse when it was wet or else snag on the ends of the tub. Then she kicked off her soft white reindeer-hide slippers (not made from a talking reindeer of course) and walked on the cool marble floor with her eyes closed until her big toe struck lightly against the side of the tub. Sighing contentedly, she lifted her leg. Sometimes she thought warm baths were the only things she could enjoy without constantly whipping her head this way and that waiting for the ax to fall.
As soon as the tips of her toes touched the water, she pulled it away with a sharp yelp. The tub was full of lukewarm water that was a horrible dark green colour. Little bubbles that looked like they were boiling but were really as cold as ice were bursting at it's horrid foaming surface. Her poor toes felt like they were on being bitten repeatedly by red ants.
She fumbled around for her towel but it felt like sand-paper against her burning feet so she tossed it aside letting a terrified shriek die on her lips just as three large red frogs hopped out of the deathly water, croaking at her. Their eyes gleamed bright scarlet like that of wild mongooses and Susan was even more frightened now.
Dizzy with fear, her head spinning wildly out of control, she threw her silk dressing gown over herself and raced out the door, back to the safety of the bathing antechamber. She slammed the door behind her and pressed her back against it, tears streaming down her face as her back slid along the smooth-though engraved-surface until her bottom touched the embroidered rug on the floor below.
Peter was instantly at her side. "Susan?" He helped her to her feet and felt her quivering violently in his arms. This wasn't like her; something was very wrong. "What happened?"
Susan felt her throat close and for a moment no sound could come out of her mouth. "Water...frogs...burns..." she stammered like a mad-woman, blinking away the tears that blinded her and turned her brother's concerned face into a sandy-coloured blur before her eyes.
"You're scared because a frog was in your bath?" Edmund, who hadn't bothered to get up from his seat in spite of his sister's crying and screaming, said incredulously. He shook his head and let out a condescending whistle. "Girls!"
Without another word, Susan lifted her foot onto Peter's slightly bent knee so he could see her toes. "Burns..." She repeated weakly.
His jaw dropped open and his eyes widened in pure horror when he saw the toes for himself. They felt cold-as-ice to the touch (in fact he wouldn't have been the least bit surprised if his own leg turned black-and-blue because of making contact with them) but the skin on them bubbled up into hideous, unsightly bumps as though she had dropped a pot of boiling water on them, resulting in a scalding.
"By the Lion!" He cried out, grabbing onto Susan's wrist and pulling her into a corner so he could help her take care of the burns.
He put cool water from a basin in his own washing room on them and found the smoothest towels possible to try and wipe off whatever had caused the injury in the first place with but still she wept and babbled on from the pain because it would not lessen. No matter how gentle he was, no matter what he tried, the burns still hurt like knifes of ice cutting into her flesh over and over.
"Wait..." He said suddenly, remembering now that his other little sister had also gone to take a bath and fearing that something just as horrifying might have happened to her, too. "Lucy...is she all right?"
Feeling awful for not having thought about her sooner, Susan bit her trembling lower lip and whispered, "I don't know."
A second later, Lucy's silver door open and she came out as clean and fresh as newly fallen snow, dressed in a strange-but lovely-gown the colour of sunshine itself that they had never seen before, carrying two red-as-blood poppies tucked under the folds of one arm.
"What's happened to Susan?" She gasped when she saw her sister's tear-stained face and her hurt toes.
"Didn't you hear her screaming?" Edmund asked casually, still not quite realizing how nerve-racking the whole situation truly was; perhaps because he, like his siblings, had always had everything he wanted, had been exposed to very few real threats in his life, and didn't, unlike his siblings, truly believe their stepmother, Jadis, was as evil as everyone said she was. "There was a frog in her bath."
Lucy's eyes widened and she took a step closer to her sister now. "Oh, Su, there were frogs in mine, too!"
"But your feet..." Peter looked down at Lucy's feet and found nothing but smooth, well-washed, unruined skin.
"The first frog jumped on my head and the other one on my chest," Lucy explained sort of timidly, showing them the poppies on her arms. "but they turned into poppies. And there was one more frog, he was uglier than all the rest of them. He jumped onto my dressing gown and he turned into a flower, too, but only for a moment before the robe turned into this pretty dress and he was gone..."
As she leaned over her sister's feet, one of the poppies fell from her arms and landed on the burns, healing them instantly.
Now free of the searing pain, Susan could think clearly again. "But Lucy, the water...surely there was something amiss with the water?"
"I didn't notice." Lucy admitted, feeling a little embarrassed that she hadn't been paying closer attention. "It felt fine. It seemed very clean when I got in it."
"Peter, look! It's not a Lion after all." Edmund said, having finished the puzzle by himself and discovering what the picture was.
It was of a sharp, rigid-looking snowflake in a crude, bitterly malicious parody of what a real snowflake under a microscope might look like. And although it was not a real creature, the longer your looked at it, the more thought for sure that it was leering at you. It could leer even without a mouth or eyes or any human characteristics, with an inhuman coldness that made chills run up and down the spine.
Lucy reached the puzzle before Peter did, and the second poppy fell off her arm and landed on it. Instantly, the snowflake's edges softened and became pretty before melting away and turning into a handsome lion cub with a sweet, loving expression on his face.
"I thought you said it wasn't a lion, Ed." Peter blinked at the finished puzzle before him in deep confusion.
"That's right." Edmund nodded, looking at Lucy, then at Peter, and then back at the puzzle again. "It wasn't."
Later that night, Peter heard someone knocking on his bedchamber door. He knew that it was one of his sisters because they were the only persons who ever visited in the middle of the night; Edmund rarely did and the servants and father never had. So he opened it and let her in, it was Susan.
She sat at the foot of his bed and looked up at him with one of the saddest expressions he had ever seen. "I'm really scared, Peter."
"I know." He sat down next to her and took her hand to in his for comfort. "But you're safe now and we're terribly lucky that nothing bad happened to Lucy, aren't we?"
"Lucky!" Susan snorted, looking at her eldest brother indignantly. "Us? Peter, do you know how close to dying we've come in the past week alone? Remember the staircase? And Lucy's toy box? And the branch? It's her, I just know it!"
In his heart, Peter knew it, too but he was afraid to admit it for so many reasons. Admitting they were all truly in danger meant-in his mind, at least-admitting that he could not protect them, and he loved them too much to think of that. And maybe, though he hated to admit this as well, he had a little too much pride to allow room for the notion that someone more powerful than their whole royal family put together was trying to do them in.
"We'll think of something, Su." He said consolingly, giving her hand a reassuring squeeze. "Everything will be fine in the end, you'll see." He gave her a friendly half-smile but it did not comfort her in the least.
"What I don't understand," Susan said shortly, shaking her head in dismay. "Is why that witch would put frogs that turn into poppies and clear water in Lucy's bath when I know how much she hates her."
"Oh," Peter shrugged his shoulders, having sort of figured it out. "I don't think she did. I think Jadis forgot to take into account how innocent and piteous Lucy's nature is and how powerful such things can be against evil. She's much younger than you, Su, and she's buried her face in Aslan's mane more than any of us. It's made her stronger somehow, I think."
Susan crinkled her forehead. "Poppies aren't exactly innocent-like flowers."
"I think if Jadis was less evil, Lucy could have turned them to roses instead." Peter told her with another shrug of his shoulders. "And maybe if they had been roses and not poppies, the snowflake puzzle might have turned into Aslan's likeness instead of a regular lion cub."
The door to his bedchamber opened again and Lucy walked in, looking at her older siblings with a tired, weary expression on her young harmless face. "I couldn't sleep."
"You can both sleep in here with me tonight, if you want." Peter offered as his poor, anxious sisters snuggled up close to him and he reached over to blow out the tall candle in the golden-holder on his cherry-wood nightstand.
"Please don't blow it out." Lucy begged him. She didn't want to be in the dark all night, thinking about what had happened to her sister earlier and about the snake in her toy-box.
Susan breathed a sigh of relief as Peter sucked his breath back in and left the candle burning. She would have never admitted it for fear of being teased because she was 'afraid of the dark' but she hadn't wanted him to blow it out anymore than Lucy had.
In another part of Cair Paravel, Edmund couldn't sleep either. Unlike his sisters, he would have never gone into his brother's room to seek comfort and security; he thought it rather babyish of Susan to do so and only to be expected of a little sheepish thing like Lucy. So he strolled the hallways and corridors and vestibules by himself, hoping that sleepiness would over-take him sooner or later.
After he and been walking a while in a part of the castle he didn't often travel he entered a room where a fire as blue-gray as an early winter's sky had been lit and saw, standing there, looking at him with a beckoning half-smile, was Jadis, his stepmother.
"Um...I..." Edmund stammered bewilderedly, unsure of what to say as they had never said more than two words to each other and had most certainly never been left alone in the same room. "Er, Hullo, you um...highness? I mean majesty...I mean...um..."
"Come here, son of Adam." She said sweetly, taking a step towards him.
"Our father's name is Frank." Edmund blurted out, feeling a little surprised that she didn't even know her own husband's name.
"I know, dear." She said taking another step towards him, getting closer and closer.
For a fleeting moment, Edmund was filled with dread and horror, for deep down, the heart of Edmund was good-like that of his father and brother and sisters-and he knew somewhere in the back of his mind that Jadis was, if not evil, at least, very bad. But Jadis put her beautiful strong white hand on his shoulder and he forgot his fears, his wit, and his knowledge all at once.
"Who do I remind you of?" She asked gently.
Remind me of? Edmund thought-feeling very confused, you don't remind me of anyone at all, we've only just met so recently and I've never known anyone like you before.
Then Jadis, having no natural affection for the poor torn minds of helpless children, did something very strange without even seeming to move a muscle. Her face changed just a little and Edmund, blinking and rubbing his right eye repeatedly with the back of his free hand realized she did remind him of someone after all. Someone from a distant memory. Someone who's face he had almost forgotten and had never expected to see again.
"Mother." Edmund said weakly, peering up into the witch's false face.
Of course it wasn't exactly like Queen Helen-for she would have never worn such a horrible expression of nasty triumph on her face. Still, she had died when Edmund was very small and it was close enough to convince him that Jadis was a rather motherly person after all and that maybe father had made a good decision in bringing her home to them. After all, no one could prove that it was her fault that any of the scary things had been happening. They were only accidents, it could just be a misunderstanding. All of those people who whispered nasty rumors about her were her enemies and she was being so kind to him just now, wasn't she? What had happened to Susan earlier must not have been her fault either, not really. How could a harmless woman who's face sometimes looked so much like his dear dead mother's do something so cruel? The answer was that she simply couldn't.
Back in Peter's chamber, the candle suddenly spluttered and flickered out into a little ring of smoke of its own accord, leaving them in complete darkness.
She's doing something worse to us now, Susan thought-throwing her arms around her little sister and pulling herself closer to her eldest brother, I don't know what, but I can feel it.
AN: Please review!