Ch 2: Alone Or Not At All
Edmund took a different route home than his brother, cutting across a park. He'd made some excuse about ducking in to the soda fountain for a Coke float. Peter wasn't fooled. His siblings tolerated his distraction with every tree in their London suburb at first. They all knew the leaf Ed carried came from that--other place--even if it wasn't strictly Narnian.
After a while, though, their hopeful attachment to the leaf that meant Narnia became impatience and frustration. They, too, wanted that substantial connection to Aslan, but after months of waiting and nothing coming of it, each of them had resigned themselves to life in England for as long as the Lion willed it. Even Lucy.
It had gotten dark, he realized as he passed a lamppost whose light flickered on. And it looked like rain. Ed shrugged deeper into his jacket and pulled his cap down over his brow.
He heard laughter and footsteps behind him, and moved aside so that whoever it was could pass.
But they didn't. Ed paused and looked back over his shoulder. The knot of five older kids had paused too, tossing what looked like a shoe back and forth between them. One of them swung a cricket bat and knocked the shoe across the park. They were still laughing when one of them spotted him. "Hey," the older boy called.
Ed knew bullies when he saw them. Some poor child was even now wandering Finchley, crying, in search of that lost shoe. He turned and kept walking.
Faster footsteps. "Hey," the bully called again. He swept Ed's cap off his head.
Ed didn't even break stride. He jammed his fists into his pockets and kept walking. Not fair, they're just kids. Mind your temper.
"Whatcha got, kid? Any money in those short pants?" The bully snatched Ed's wrist, trying to pull it from his pocket.
Ed spun around and smashed the boy's elbow on the backside, forcing it the wrong way. The boy shouted in surprised pain and staggered back, but his four companions surrounded Ed with jeers and laughter.
The biggest of them took a boxer's stance and beckoned to Edmund. "Think you can take me? Come on, shortstuff, give it a go."
One of me, and five of them, and I'm eleven bloody years old. They've got to be seventeen, Ed thought, sizing up their posture and probable strength. This is going to get ugly, and Mum's probably going to kill me.
When he didn't move, all of them rushed him at once and knocked him on his back. A fist landed in his belly and he grunted. "That's for my arm, pipsqueak." Another fist. "And that's for whatever else you get in while we pound you."
They tore at his pockets, chuckling about money and maybe stripping his clothes off and making him walk home naked.
Rain started pattering down, getting into Ed's eyes. He brought his knee up and connected with the biggest bully, who moaned and rolled away.
The first boy got his fist in Ed's left pocket and came out with it. "What's this?" he taunted, holding up Ed's birch leaf in the light of the lamppost. "Is this silver? That's worth a pawn."
The boy with the cricket bat swung it and bashed Ed in the hip. Ed bit off a shout of pain and snatched the end of the bat, rolling onto it until it slapped the ground underneath him. He came up swinging it like a sword, aiming for knees and soft bellies because even now he remembered it wasn't a fair fight. He didn't want to do any permanent damage.
He knocked the smallest boy down first with a sidelong whack at his shins. The next one fell to a well-aimed punch in the nose. Ed dispatched the third quickly, and the biggest bully and the first boy--the puncher--began to look like they were reconsidering tangling with him. But the big one got hold of his sword arm--bat arm--and twisted behind him to trap both of Ed's arms. Ed dropped the bat. The other boy started in punching Ed's belly again with the fist with Ed's leaf in it.
With his arms stuck in the big one's grip, Ed drove the top of his head into the puncher's breastbone. The puncher stumbled backward and fell. Ignoring the pain, Ed rocked back and slammed the back of his head into the big one's face.
The boy let go at once with muffled swearing. Ed scrambled forward and stomped on the puncher's wrist. When the boy opened his hand with a scream, Ed snatched the leaf out of his hand and ran.
By now the others had gotten back up, and he heard them running after him. Ed held his bruised and aching belly. He didn't think he could stand another hand-to-hand fight with all of them at once, not when comparing their size and weight to his. He raced through an alley behind a general store, up a tilting stack of wooden pallets, and over a fence.
But the boys were following him. Somehow they'd found a way to cut off his escape, and Ed heard some of them in front of him. He ducked under a construction barrier and into a half-built bookshop whose door and windows were still missing.
Panting, he hurried to the back of the skeletal building, where he found a supply closet with a new door. The handle was U-shaped, he saw. Some luck at last. He found a crowbar, intending to barricade himself in the closet until the bullies got bored and stopped looking for him.
But when he opened the door, filtered sunlight spilled into the half-finished storeroom.
Ed froze, looking at the waving trees and the sunlight glittering through their leaves. His heartbeat, pounding before, began hammering so hard he thought it would surge out of his chest.
Did he dare? Without Peter and his sisters?
He stroked the leaf still in his hand. Did he dare not to?
Angry voices came from the front of the bookshop. They'd found him.
Ed leaped through the doorway and slammed the door behind him.