Chapter 2

Lucien never left my side after that. He followed me everywhere, wrapped up in Dada's cloak to try and retain some warmth. If I got up from the breakfast table, he rose too. If I went out for a walk, he was at my side. I didn't mind. How could I mind? Lucien was my little brother. I was scared of boys when I first came to Narnia, but I loved him from the moment I saw him, such a strong spirit in such a weak body. What was troubling about his grief was that now he had the inverse. His body was getting stronger. He could take falls that would break even Dash's bones or stand in the snow for hours and not catch cold, but his spirit was fading. He wasn't talking anymore, and he would sit in the library with a book open and not really read. He was always pale, with feathery blond curls and light grey eyes and skin as white as candle wax, but there had been a flush of excitement to his cheeks that echoed his mother. There was always a wicked spark in his eyes that made him look exactly like Dada, even when all of Dada's features were dark. Now this flush and this spark were getting washed away, like the tide creeping up on the beach. I thought of Lucien getting swallowed up, and I wanted to keep him by my side all the time to save him, if I could.

He still barely spoke to anyone. When he was in the company of his family, normally Lucien wouldn't stop talking. Dash was the silent one, turning things over in his head, lost in some daydream. Lucien always had something to say, and only he could really keep up with Papa and Dada's quick wit. Now his silence troubled me. I tried to coax it out of him with books and with walks, but nothing worked.

In the music room I continued to work on Dada's song. Lucien would sit in the window seat and watch me with serious eyes as I went over it again and again. I don't know what mania possessed me to work so hard on it, but something in me sensed that this was more than just a ditty that Dada would have sung to us or had me sing. This was something bigger, and I was determined to finish it for him.

Some days the work came easier. Those were the days when my memory was sharp, when I could hear Dada laughing and remember the sound of his voice and the things he would say. Days when I could close my eyes and feel him pat my shoulder or kiss the top of my head. Then the notes came from the pen as if Dada was humming them to me. Lucien would watch me, bent over the work. Once when I raised my head to stretch my neck he asked quietly "You can hear him, can't you. Uncle. You can hear him."

I nodded. We had had this conversation several times before, but this time Lucien added something. "I can't hear him. Or Mama. They're gone, Juliette, and I can't remember anymore."

I got up and went over to him, stroking his hair. "Shh. Yes you can. They're not going to leave you."

He shook his head bleakly, and I wrapped my arms around his head and held him to my breast, rocking him as if he were my baby, trying to remember the caresses I had seen Aunty Lucy bestow on him. He shuddered, and sighed. After a long while, he murmured, "My song. Sing me my song."

"What song, darling?" I asked softly, using Aunty Lucy's most affectionate name for him.

"About the rainbow. Somewhere over the rainbow."

I strained to remember, but I could only recall vague strains of the melody. "I'm sorry, Lucien," I whispered. "I can't remember it."

He tried to hum a little bit, but he broke down again and lapsed into silence. I held him tight and wracked my brain for a way to give him any sort of comfort that I could. Finally I coaxed him up and into his room, where I sat him on his bed and wound up the music box Uncle Corin sent to him which Aunty Lucy used to wind up for him when he went to bed. There was another music box in the treasury which Aunty Lucy had also used to soothe Lucien, but none of us had yet dared to break the seal on the vault. When the tinkling music filled the room, I brought the box over to Lucien.

He stared at it as it lay in the palm of my hand, finally reaching out a fingertip to touch it. "When I couldn't sleep, Mama would play this for me. And she would sit by me until I did fall asleep." He looked up at me, and his eyes were startlingly dry. I looked into them, those wide, inscrutable grey eyes, and I saw that he wanted to cry, but he couldn't. He was drowning.

"Oh, Lucien," I whispered.

"Now I can't remember her song. I can't remember it. I can't remember what Uncle looks like—I have to go down to the gallery." He inhaled a sharp breath, the sort he would suck in when he used to have attacks.

"It's alright, darling. Don't panic." I stroked his arm.

"What if I forget them, Juliette! What if I forget Mama and Uncle? Who will understand me? They were the only ones that did. Uncle knew. He knew." Lucien was shaking violently now, and I folded him up in my arms. "I can't even remember my song. I can't remember it."

"Cry, Lucien," I begged him. "You have to let go."

"I can't let go!"

I stroked his back and his blond curls, and he trembled in my arms and shed not one tear. I had not called on Aslan since the night they disappeared. I stayed up all night then, chanting all the prayers that I knew, pleading with my whole being that He might let Mama and Dada and Uncle Peter and Aunty Lucy come back to us. When Dash came back two days later with only Uncle Peter's crown, I thought that Aslan's will was different from mine and he wouldn't listen to my prayers. So I stopped praying. But with Lucien slipping away so fast, I did the only thing I could. I cried for him, squeezing my eyes shut as the tears trickled from my eyes and onto his hair.

"Please Aslan," I begged silently. "Please don't let us lose Lucien too. Please." I kissed his hair fervently and rocked him not only because he needed it, but because he was so precious to me. I thought about all the times he had been sick, all the attacks, and none of them scared me as much as this. He was holding onto his pain as if that was all that was left of them, and I didn't know how to make him let go.

After a long time, Uncle Corin opened the door. I looked up and saw the tears in his eyes. Uncle Corin's tears flowed freely; he was unashamed to break down in the middle of a meal or lean on Uncle Erech's shoulder. I looked at him and the sadness he was molting like a skin, and something leapt in my chest. Had Aslan answered my prayer?

Uncle Corin came over and knelt by the bedside, laying a hand on Lucien's narrow back. He swallowed, checking his tears for a moment. He looked to me. "What's happened?"

I didn't need to explain, for as soon as Lucien felt his father's touch, he turned to him and wrapped his arms around his father. "Daddy, I can't remember. I can't remember my song."

Uncle Corin held his son in a crushingly tight hug, squeezing his eyes shut. The tears were already running down his cheeks. "It's alright, son. I remember."

Lucien drew away to stare at his father, his eyebrows raised to register his surprise. "You do?"

"I remember everything about Mama," Uncle Corin's voice broke, but I thought that it was like the tremolo of a mandolin, sure behind its poignancy. "Most of all I remember how much she loved you. Remember? We're her boys."

Lucien nodded, and lay down under the covers of his bed, still fully dressed. His fingers fretted with the hem of the sheet as they used to when he was a little boy. He looked so small and so frail I had to clap my hand over my mouth to hold in a sob. He didn't notice me, though. His eyes were fixed on his father. "Sing it for me," he whispered.

Obligingly, Uncle Corin took up the tune. His voice was its own symphony, breaking with sorrow, warm with memory, soft with tenderness for the son he never expected but loved so dearly. Normally Uncle Corin wasn't much of a singer and Dada made wicked fun of his voice, but that night it was one of the most beautiful sounds I had ever heard in my life. I didn't even think to get up and leave; I let the soothing spell of the simple words and his lovely voice wrap themselves around me.

Somewhere over the rainbow
Way up high
There's a land that I heard of
Once in a lullaby

When troubles melted like lemon drops, Lucien inhaled a shaky breath, and exhaled on a jagged sob. His lashes fluttered shut and the tears started to seep out from under his lids. I had the crazy idea to collect the tears in a little vial, they were so miraculous. As his chest expanded under his sobs, Uncle Corin reached out and massaged it as we used to have to do to soothe Lucien's chest when he was having an attack. Uncle Corin did this to pull his sobs out of him. Lucien curled up in a ball, but Uncle Corin did not cease his broken song or his sure caresses.

Watching them gave me a sudden pull of longing for my own Papa, who had not shed his tears yet either. I wanted to see if we could comfort each other and somehow collect the scraps of Dada together into whole memories so that it would be as though he sat before the fire with us. I got up and slipped silently from the room, but once I was in the hallway I ran to Papa's rooms as fast as I could. Already the tears were welling up in me, pressing on my chest, but I couldn't shed them until I was with Papa.

I burst into his rooms without even knocking, but he was not sitting by the fire. In fact, he was already asleep in bed, with Dash bending over him and tucking the covers around him. I glanced at the hearthside and saw the bottles of Archenlandish wine there, twice what he and Dada would drink together in an evening. I froze.

"I tried to stop him, but he was already so far gone when I got here. It was all I could do to sit with him," Dash said quietly, coming to stand before me.

I nodded, my brow tensing. "Thank you," I whispered, and I meant it. I felt a surge of gratitude that he had been there at all, that someone else was there to take care of Papa. I took his hand. That was the first time we had touched in months.

There was so much more to say. I wanted to pour out my fear to him, my terror of this grief with a hold fiercer than the bite of a werewolf. I wanted to thank him. I wanted to grieve for our mother together and comfort him as he comforted me. I wanted to tell him I loved him still, but I couldn't raise my eyes to look into his face. The boy and the girl who had lain with each other all through the heady heat of summer were gone. We were left in their place, a man and a woman lost in a cold world we didn't understand. He gave my hand the briefest squeeze, and then he left.

Papa was sound asleep, but I laid down next to him and hugged him for comfort. I sat up a little and stroked his hair back. It was greasy and lanky, as if he had not washed it in many days. Papa was like Peridan—Dada and Mama were the people who understood him best in the world. Dada was his love and Mama his best friend. I saw the adoration in his eyes every time he looked at either of them, and I saw how they loved him. Papa needed their love, the teasing words that were Dada's caresses, the more conventional kisses on the cheek that Mama gave him.

I leaned over and pressed a kiss to Papa's forehead. "I love you, Papa," I told him. "I do." His forehead twitched, and maybe through his stupor he heard me. I got up and went to lay down on the couch, resting my head on a pillow and staring into the fire. I rubbed my cheek on it and found that the surface of the pillow was rough. I pulled it from under my head and saw that it was a pillow Mama had embroidered for Papa, a design she had devised which was a combination of Papa's crest and Dada's. I wondered if this then was my crest, since I came from both of them. Only Mama would be so considerate. Only Mama.

I brushed my fingertips over the embroidery, biting on my lip. How I longed to go to Mama and lay my head in her lap and have her stroke my hair and soothe me. Mama could brush away all my worries. Mama…

I sat up in bed, and the pain ripped through me. I wasn't on the couch in Papa's room, I was in Uncle Peter's room. Only it was different: instead of being hung in crimson and gold with dark furniture, there was white wallpaper with gold outlined diamonds and blue hangings. The spacious room looked even airier. I was seeing all this through a haze of pain. I gripped my belly—it was huge. Aunt Amelia was standing at the foot of the bed and frowning in concentration. I understood. I was having my baby.

I arched my back as another spasm of pain washed over me. I tried to count the diamonds in the paper, but it hurt too much. I called out for Mama, and again, but she wasn't coming. Then I remembered. Mama was gone, and I had to do this alone.

I woke up curled into a tight little ball on the couch. I went into the bathroom and found that I had started my cycle. I sighed. Our bodies go on living despite us sometimes.