Seasons, like people, change without warning. You know it will happen…everybody does. But secretly you push it to the back of your mind, hoping this last beautiful spring will never bend to the iron will of the winter snows. But it always does.
I tried my hardest to fight it. I dug my fingers in far deeper than Peter ever did and never quite let go. I hated Aslan with all my heart. I hated Narnia and, eventually, my siblings, for never letting go of their childish desires. It was time they grew up and moved on with life.
And in the end, the great and powerful land of Narnia, the magnificent and wondrous Aslan who always came to save them, abandoned them to fate. They died.
I was alone. I was bitter, I was angry. It was easy to withdraw, to escape the bitter world and live in my own mind, where I could control the dangers within, where Aslan and Narnia couldn't find me, couldn't make me remember. No one understood me, no one was patient enough to bring me out of the cocoon of anguish and pain that I had willingly locked myself in.
Then I met Moira.
Susan's shoulders shuddered as she waited at the train station, the cold radiating from inside her body outwards, chilling the soft light that filtered through flaming branches. Her face was blank, her body on autopilot, moving along the boards without thinking. Only the echoing battle cry of the approaching train could break her resolve, and break it did, smashing through the hollow dam that had kept her eyes dry for so long. There, alone, waiting for a phantom train, Susan snapped. It was a pitiful sight, the glorious Queen of Narnia reduced to sobs on a decaying country platform, devoid of all hope and broken of spirit.
She had promised herself since the news had come that she wouldn't cry. She was grown-up, now, and grown-ups didn't burst into tears on train platforms, even if they were relatively alone. Sniffling, she dabbed the tears from her eyes, the soft white kerchief wafting as a banned of surrender in the playful wind. Suddenly it was snatched away and floated far from Susan's grasping hands. She ran after the kerchief as a child chases a butterfly or a kite, knowing she would never grasp it but still trying, trying.
But the train! While she chased the little kerchief, it had slunk silently into the platform, and now it let loose with the feline roar of the hunt, its belly full and ready to resume the chase. With renewed urgency Susan ran toward the platform, snatching up her luggage and leaping aboard the beast with un-grown-up-like speed just as it began to leave. She found her own compartment, alone, and proceeded to lay the musty suitcase underneath the seat cushion. Glancing back at the receding platform as if to ensure she had truly left, Susan released a mute sigh and relaxed.
A sudden flicker near the upper-right hand corner of the window caught her eye and she watched with mixed awe and fear as her lost handkerchief appeared, dancing lazily in the breeze. It did not move on, nor did it fall behind, but seemed to float on its own wind, untouched by the outer world. Susan reached, entranced, toward the window, and placed her hand against the sun-kissed glass, trying to grasp it.
For a moment she believed she might just catch it. She silently willed herself to touch the kerchief, to welcome the magic that kept it aloft. Her mind turned to the stories. Come on, Sue! You can't catch me! She heard Lucy's voice, tinkling with the laughter of a thousand silver bells...Come on! I've got someone you've all got to meet! Come on Peter, Ed! Suddenly her brothers were there, too. Are you sure we're welcome, Lu? Who cares, Peter? Let's get out of the cold! Dear, dear Peter, poor, frozen Edmund. How he'd wanted to get out of the snow. Snow? Yes…Come on, Susan! You've got to meet him! You've got to meet Mr. Tumnus!
It shattered. The name burst inside her head like a massive icicle, freezing cold and sharper than a rapier. One by on the voices disappeared, pierced by pain and anger. Her palm balled into a fist, slammed the glass. "What am I doing?" It was gone, all gone, just like her siblings, into that imaginary world they cared so much about, leaving her here, with an angry train and an impossible floating handkerchief. Silently she cursed that place, cursed the foolish dreams that had enslaved her siblings, cursed magic of all kind. Then she slowly burst into tears again as the little white flag lingered just a moment more before floating away on the wind.
