This is a good time to consider what Beth went through after hearing the news of the railway accident. Even though she still had parents and sisters, she felt all alone in the world without Edmund. She cried herself to sleep that night. She wished it wasn't true. She wished that he would ring the bell in the morning and tell her it was all a nightmare.

The funeral was a terrible ordeal with six coffins lined up in the Pevensie graveyard, and poor Susan a total wreck as she wept for her entire family. Beth didn't known what to say. Here was someone even more alone than she felt. After all, Susan had lost both parents, both brothers, and her only sister in the same day. Susan said only three words when she arrived.

"Are you Beth?"

When Beth nodded, Susan threw her arms around the younger girl and cried harder. Beth cried too, but in light of Susan's loss, her pain was nearly bearable. When the service was over, and all the condolences were made, Susan invited Beth to her flat for coffee, "I never put in the effort to meet you when—when Ed was alive." She said in a shaky voice. New tears rolled down her freckled face. "He was angry with me," she sniffed and braved on to get it all off her chest. "He was angry with me for—for so many reasons . . . I thought he was too immature to get married—I told him . . . I-I said, 'Stop being so childish!' and he hung up the phone and-and-and that was the last thing I ever said to him!"

"Oh, Susan, it's all right!" Beth said faintly. She was having a hard time breathing, but tried to comfort Susan in her distress. "Brothers and sisters fight all of the time."

"We didn't used to! Well, at least not so seriously, so constantly! I just wanted to grow up and forget our silliness, but they wouldn't have it! They insisted on going on about the old days like we could go back, but we couldn't! And now—" She broke off, sobbing into her handkerchief.

*

Susan's flat was very modern and clean. Beth sat at the kitchen table with a hot mug of tea. Susan sat across from her sipping coffee. Neither girl was crying now. They were dried up for the moment. Beth kept expecting Edmund to walk into the room at any moment with a big smile on his face. He had wanted Susan to meet Beth so badly. She thought she could hear exactly what he would say to having missed it.

She smiled sadly and felt the tears returning. It felt wrong that he wasn't there. He wouldn't walk back into a room ever again. She wouldn't hear his voice or see his face again like he had promised. She looked at her ring. He would never kiss it again—when was the last time he had kissed it?

"I'll see you Saturday," He had said at her door.

"What about tomorrow?" She had asked, disappointed. He had looked like he might say something again. He had been acting strange all evening, starting sentences he never finished. Now the elusive subject was closer to the surface than it had ever been before. He had been practically bouncing on the balls of his feet in excitement. He had kissed her then and said, "Peter and I are going out of town on an errand. We should be back before you know it."

"What are you doing?"

Again, he had looked slightly torn. "I want to tell you. If only . . . I would take you with me if I could!"

"Then take me." She prompted. He only smiled and shook his head. "I will tell you everything one day, I promise, but not tonight. Tonight, I say sweet dreams to you my love!" he had been talking like that all evening, adding to the mystery of what he was keeping from her. "I'll see you Saturday."

"Good night, Ed—wait!"

"What is it?" he asked, one foot in the gutter. Beth had lifted her hand. "May I have my diamond for Friday?"

He smiled. "Of course . . . Perhaps I will bring one back with me . . ."

Beth twisted the golden band on her finger. It was Saturday now and he was not there. A crushing weight pressed down on her chest. Her breaths came short and painful.

"Beth?" Susan asked with concern; the girl was as pale as a ghost. Beth shook her head. "I . . . I . . . I can't breathe . . . I . . ."

Now it was Susan's turn to take care of Beth. She jumped up and found a paper lunch sack. Beth breathed into it until the room straightened out. "I just wish I could leave this all behind me and go to someplace brand new!" She exploded through hot tears. "I want to go to a place where magical things can happen and no one has to die!"

Susan's strange expression embarrassed Beth for making such a silly wish. She looked down at the table and sniffed. "Ed always reminded me of a place like that." (Here Susan double-looked her and Beth laughed.) "I used to tell him he must have a knight in another life. You must know what I'm talking about—Peter and Lucy too . . . Sometimes they were so full of magic, of light . . . I thought you would be the same, but you aren't. You're very plain and normal."

Susan winced. Then she nodded. "They were . . . so happy and free. I used to be like them. Then . . . I guess I thought it was easier to be normal." She trailed off as, for the first time in years, she remembered what Narnia had been like. And like Beth, she wanted to escape to it.

Just as Susan thought this, her living room changed entirely. If you have ever been in one room as all of the walls in the next are vanished, then you are familiar with the strange rattle and roar it makes. Susan had a good idea what she would find on the other side of the door. Beth was confounded as she followed Susan into a meadow that hadn't been there before.

Susan explained to her new friend as best she could about Narnia and the Pevensies' lives there. They walked through the country as she spoke. Beth was adjusting to the news quite well. She told Susan she believed her because it just made sense and felt like the very kind of thing that Edmund had been dancing around telling her.

"He said he was going back!" Beth said suddenly, remembering the last time she had seen him.

"Yes," Susan said warily. She knew what was in Beth's head. "We weren't supposed to come back, but they somehow got it in their heads that they could."

"So they could be here!"

"I don't think—" Susan began gently, but Beth gasped. "There he is!"

Susan looked to where Beth was staring and froze. He was standing at the edge of the wood, his back turned, a compass in hand. Susan couldn't believe her eyes. "Edmund?"

Beth took off running first. Susan followed with a shake of her head. "Is it possible?"

"EDMUND!" Beth cried when she was nearly to him. He turned.

It wasn't the youngest Pevensie brother after all. Beth skidded to a stop, embarrassed and heartbroken. Susan came to her side with a sympathetic look; she had known better than to hope.

The mysterious someone turned out to be the steward of this land called Ainra. Susan was surprised to learn they weren't in Narnia after all, but then thought it made sense. Aslan had said they would never go back.

The steward was suspicious of the two strangers from a mysterious place called "England" until Susan mused aloud that Aslan must have sent them there to learn something.

"Aslan sent you?" he asked, eyes wide.

"Yes," Susan said. "But we'll have a job finding out why."

"He's answered my pleas! Oh, praise Aslan for his mercy!" and the man who looked so much like Edmund from he back dropped to his knees before the girls. "I have prayed for help ever since the King and Queen became trapped inside the enchanted castle years ago! I don't feel smart or brave enough to watch over the kingdom alone, and I can't trust anyone, for I don't know who cast the spell in the first place. I have taken it upon myself to, first find a magician that can free our majesties, and then find the evil sorcerer who ensnared them in order to deliver justice on him! Aslan has sent you here to help me on my quest!"

"We shall try our very best." Susan said, for she had already made up her mind to stop being the horrible person she had become. In no time at all, she was Susan the Gentle again. Only she thought that wasn't good enough, so she modeled herself after her sister who no one hated, Lucy. And I have to say, the transformation bewitched them all and the steward became quite taken with her, but the change wasn't so pleasant a charm on Beth.

The girl was naturally opened minded and adapted well to the life of adventure like those of her favorite books. Susan taught her how to draw a bow properly, and she learned horseback, but on the inside, her heart was breaking again and again. Everything reminded her of Edmund so much it hurt by the end of the day and she cried herself to sleep. She became angry with the world, but would have no thoughts of leaving it, because here she felt closer to him.

She never forgot the feeling that had come over her when she had thought she saw Edmund, nor could she get over the feeling she had when it turned out not to be him. Despite Susan's reminders that her brothers and sister were buried in England and "It just didn't work that way," Beth couldn't help but hope to find them here, alive.

It caused a rift between the girls, and that lasted until they discovered a magician strong enough to break the spell and free the King and Queen. Then the King, who was wise in his old age, sat Beth down for a talk. He made her see how silly it was to wish someone would come back when they just couldn't. "Better to find something to do with your time, until you get to wherever they went, wouldn't you say?"

The problem with doing that was Beth couldn't be sure where he had went to, but the old king succeeded in opening her eyes to the beauty she was missing in her misery. So she beat back that fear by taking the world head on. She made up with Susan, and they became close friends as they continued their quest to find the culprit behind the majesties' imprisonment. It was a fast paced, dangerous adventure, and now that Beth was allowing herself to feel and have fun, she got completely swept up in it all, and all but forgot about England.

AN: I apologize for the vagueness of Beth's adventure in this second place. I just don't have that creative bug like Lewis when it comes to grand adventures...sadly :(