He was glad, he decided, that the faun and the forest were all just a rather peculiar dream. He does not ever want to be that cold again. All the same, as he gazed out of the window of the library, a dictionary open in his lap only for the look of things, he can't help but feel that at least being in the wood had not been dull. The Professor's house was big and his garden was even bigger but even if the weather outside had been nice it wouldn't have done much for Edmund for the Professor's house is also far removed from anywhere and there are no other children he can play with – Mrs Macready's is childless and old anyway and the maids are all too young to have children and unmarried anyway. School had taught Edmund that other children were quite unpleasant and often bullies but growing up an only child meant that Edmund knew better than most how impossibly dull it was to create games on your own.

He turned a page in the dictionary and wondered why anybody would ever need to use a word like gastro-vascular when there surely must be a simpler way of saying it. He supposed it might be a good way to confuse people and, with that in mind, he finally had an idea that might keep him from dying of boredom for a few hours. (He hopes he won't die of boredom because then being evacuated will have been a complete waste of time.)

It took him two and a half hours of crossing out all of the words in the dictionary which confuse him to get to the letter J by which point he realised that he had lost all interest in the exercise and even the notion of it essentially being mindless vandalism of something which annoys him fails to restore him.

He suspected that he would have gone mad by the end of the week.

He went back to his room and looks out of the window there, and then he goes back to the library window and compares the views. Once he's done with that he goes to the window in the hallway and sees if he can spot anything else from there. He spotted a radio in his room when he finally goes back to it after eating lunch all alone and it was quite possibly the best thing he has seen all day because the house is far to quiet and even though he knows it will probably just be news and other boring things it cannot be any worse than the quiet which is making it far too tempting to break Mrs Macready's rules and just scream to make sure that it isn't his ears being broken which makes it seem so silent.

When night falls and he can slip between the scratchy sheets and shut his eyes it is almost a relief. He still finds it hard to fall asleep. He is a young boy and he's used to moving about and doing things with his time and sitting in this house trying to be quiet and out of the way doesn't use up enough of his energy to make him tired at bedtime.

He put his slippers on before he went to bed and his dressing gown to even if he knows sleeping in them is more than a little silly. He knows that the forest was just a dream and it is over but the memory of the chill still rests in the forefront of his mind and it can't hurt him to be careful.

He is decidedly glad of this silly bit of caution when he wakes up in the middle of the faun's living room and his dressing gown and slippers are still on.

"Bother!"

The faun spun around and stared at him in disbelief.

Edmund shot the faun an apologetic look. "I'm sorry to intrude?"

"How in Aslan's name…?"

Edmund had a feeling he knew what the faun was talking about. "I don't know how I got here. It's just like last night. I fell asleep just the same as I've been doing all my life and then I woke up here. I thought I was dreaming when I woke up after last time…"

The faun looked thoughtful for a few moments. "I had wondered…"

Edmund shrugged. "Perhaps I'm just dreaming. I mean snowy forests and fauns and a place called… what did you call this place again?"

The faun frowned. "The Lantern Waste of Narnia. And don't be silly. I'm most certainly not a dream."

"Maybe you are, maybe you aren't. It's not like there's a lot I can do about it. I hope I get a more normal dream tomorrow though. I'm not normally this aware of my dreams and this is all a bit strange anyway – especially two nights in a row."

In all honestly Edmund was no where near as calm or knowledgeable as he was trying to act. He didn't know where he was or what he was doing there and it wasn't at all like his regular dreams and that made him think that maybe it wasn't at dream at all. He could never remember having a dream when he was as baffled as to what was going on as he was now. It didn't seem very likely that he would be dreaming of a rather unhelpful faun.

"Perhaps you could try waking yourself up?" the faun suggested.

Edmund frowned. "I don't think I know. I usually get woken up by somebody else or wake up when I'm not tired anymore." He doesn't mention nightmares – they don't count.

It's very hard not to feel silly, talking to a faun in a cave about waking up from a dream you're having, and Edmund didn't like feeling silly so he scowled as the faun seemed to contemplate the situation.

After several moments of thought the faun offered him a cup of tea. Edmund declined and rolled his eyes the moment the faun's back was turned. He was in a cave in strange forest in a strange country with a mythical creature.

When he thought of it that way his situation sounded quite good.

"I think I'll just let things happen," he announced to the faun, "And if I dream this again tomorrow night then I shall believe you that it is real but for now I think I should just make the best of it."

It didn't sound anywhere near as clever or adventurous outside of his head as it had done in it and he was quite disappointed by that. He really wanted his dream-adventure to be something spectacular but he was so confused by it all he just ended up feeling ridiculous.

He stood up from the armchair and looked around. As much as he wanted to insist that it couldn't possibly be real he also couldn't help notice that the faun's living room seemed far clearer and more detailed than was normal for a dream and while he thought that the idea of him being mysteriously transported to another land in the night only to be transported back when he awoke was utterly illogical he didn't want to dismiss it.

He wasn't going to encourage the faun either. After all, the whole situation was rather daft.

"So this place… Narnia? Are fauns normal here?"

"Well of course," said the faun, "Why wouldn't they be?"

"Well where I come from fauns are just something you read about in story books – not something real," Edmund explained, "I don't suppose there is anything else unusual that I ought to know about?"

The faun looked thoughtful for several moments, "Well I've heard that in some lands the idea that Narnia's beasts are not all dumb is considered surprising but really there is nothing unusual about the idea of talking beasts."

"Talking beasts? As in Animals? Speaking English?"

"Of course… they," the faun began but Edmund cut him off with a shake of his head.

"We definitely don't have those in England."

The faun looked as surprised of the notion of not having talking animals as Edmund was by the idea of having them. Still as he was partially sure that he was dreaming (and had read plenty of stories where animals could talk) Edmund was not as surprised by this revelation as he would have been under normal circumstances.

"Tell me more," Edmund implored, unable to keep the excitement from building in his stomach, "Tell me everything you know about that might be suprising or interesting to somebody who isn't from here. Do plants talk too?"