Chapter I.
ONE LAST LOOK
"It's terribly unfair that everyone else is so happy now," wailed Robin.
"They're happy because the War is over," Anna murmured in reply.
"We're glad for that too," said Ben, clearly not meaning his words.
"Are we really?" Kitt inquired.
Rain fell hard, making everything in the suburb look and feel miserable.
Almost as if to spite the torrent, cheery posters of returning veterans and lovely patriotic women lined the streets. Hurray for the U.S.A.! They shouted in giant letters. Hurray for the Allies! Hurray for our fine American boys! We did it! We won! Victory! Victory!
"Victory?" Kitt scoffed. "What about us? What about all the other kids like us? For us this is torture."
"Not for the country it isn't," Anna scolded sadly. "Even we must rejoice for that."
"Why?" asked Robin, who was on the verge of tears for the hundredth time that day. His voice shook. With all the raindrops on his face, his siblings might have supposed he was already crying. They couldn't blame him.
The four of them continued to shuffle down the street in their rain slickers. Water soaked through their snow boots. All the rubber rain boots in town had been melted down for the army long ago.
"Because," Anna said, "if not for the sacrifices our troops have made, no one in the world would be free. You know this. We've had this conversation many times, Robert Kilburn Junior."
"What do we care?" grumbled Kitt.
Anna raised her voice. "Which would you rather have, sis? Your freedom? Or would you rather live under Hitler, but—" she broke off, unable to say the dreadful words.
"—or would you rather have our parents back?" Kitt finished.
A short silence followed that felt like a century.
"I know which I'd choose," stated Ben at last, eyes on the stormclouds above.
"So do I," said Kitt, watching chalk sketches bleed off the sidewalk.
"So do I," Robin whimpered. He looked at his sisters and brother. They seemed so solid, even in the downpour, like tall old trees or pillars of stone.
So do I, Anna thought. Her eyes were closed.
…..
The Kilburn house was empty. All the personal belongings of the four siblings or their deceased parents had been sold, given away, lost or packed for the move. (All but one).
"When does the train leave again?" asked Ben miserably.
"Four o'clock," said Kitt. A giant tear splattered on the surface of her wristwatch.
"We've got half an hour, then," Anna sighed. With her eyes' memory she took in the dingy wallpaper, the old teal sofa, the round table in the dining room which had radiated so much joy before the illness took Mom and the war took Dad.
Robin snuck away from the others. Through the kitchen he went, out the back door, and up the outdoor staircase that was the spinal cord of the house. At the top of these steps were another deck and a door leading inside. Robin turned the doorknob.
On the creaky old wooden floor of the attic he stood, water sliding off his raincoat to make a moat around his feet.
He sniffled, but suppressed the urge to cry. They'd hear him sobbing from downstairs and would run up to comfort him. He knew what kind of discussion would ensue once they saw where he was and what he was looking at.
He stared with wet, salty eyes at that wardrobe.
Cautiously he ran his hands across the carvings on its door: humans, animals, and mythical combinations thereof serenely gazing up into the boughs of a majestic tree which softened the sun's rays instead of blocking them. One figure was Robin's particular favorite—the great Lion, whose presence overpowered even that of the tree.
O Aslan, he thought, I can survive anything—even losing my parents and moving across the ocean—if I've got you on my side. Please, please just give me a sign. Let me know that you were real. I doubt I'll ever see you again. I can't take this wardrobe with me.
...
Robin had been five years old when his mother died. She was a small woman, with freckles and red hair, like him. His sole memory of her was of her pushing him on the swing that hung from a tree in the park across the street. She'd succumbed to pneumonia.
But he remembered the rainy March day not unlike this November one, when his father's war-mangled corpse was flown home, with painful clarity.
Dr. Robert Kilburn Sr. had been gunned down while giving a painkiller to a dying man somewhere in France.
The funeral had been a small, simple event in the little Church of St. John the Baptist. Robin's dad was laid to rest among his relatives, all of whom predeceased him, and the town's other Irish Catholics who had passed on.
If Robin closed his eyes he could see the wind whipping through the grey sky, scattering last autumn's leaves around the tombstones and into the six-foot-deep hole dug for his father's coffin.
He wished he'd known about the wardrobe then. Talking to the Narnians—or better still, to the Lion—might have eased his pain.
Robin knew his siblings worried about him, that Anna especially got horribly nervous if he ever mentioned his "attic adventure" even in passing.
They knew he wasn't a liar or tale-teller, but maybe they thought he was losing his marbles from the grief of losing Dad and the fear of moving in with his Great-Aunt Mary all the way in England.
Please don't let me be crazy, Aslan, Robin silently prayed.
Absently he wondered why no one had bought the wardrobe when the rest of the furniture was sold, and what might've happened if somebody had.
One more look, he told himself. Just to make sure.
He opened the door and stepped inside, leaving the door open just a crack behind him; for Robin understood, like all sensible people do, that it is very stupid to shut yourself in a wardrobe, whether or not it's a magic one.