As he stared blankly at the old professor, watching the poor man shudder and mourn in a very inward fashion, not explaining himself right away, Peter tried to fathom what on earth it was about the Coulters that had incurred that reaction from Lord Digory. He played the sound, taste, and feel of that surname over and over in his mind, but it had no effect, he himself knew nothing at all of these dreaded Coulters.
"Peter, we tried, we tried our best." Lord Digory said gravely, smoothing out a crease in the jacket of his suit as he stood up straighter, bracing himself and the boy in front of him for the worst. "But it has happened anyway, the girl will be a part of what is to come, and it is sooner-far sooner-than I had imagined."
Crinkling his forehead, Peter took a step back from Lord Digory because the look on the man's face was starting to scare him as it grew more and more intense. "What are you talking about, Sir?"
"You remember the night the baby Lucy and her dæmon, Reepicheep, were first brought to your home, do you not?" Lord Digory's voice was a sigh-like tone, resigned and sad.
"Of course!" said Peter, not getting what that had to do with the Coulters.
"Do you know why that girl-infant at the time-was brought to your parents?" asked Lord Digory, sitting back down at the table with a weary groan.
"To protect her." Peter said simply. After all, that was what his parents had always told him whenever he'd gotten a chance to ask for a more detailed explanation (during the very rare moments when Lucy was actually sitting more than two feet away from the ever-watchful and concerned couple).
"Yes, Peter, to protect her..." In spite of the fact that he had just sat down, Lord Digory stood up again, grabbed his pipe, took his seat once more, filled the pipe with tobacco from a near-by silver holder, and inhaled deeply.
"There's more?" Peter sensed something in the undercurrent of the Lord Professor's tone.
"I cannot explain it, not right now," Lord Digory told him, tightening his lips around the pipe in-between words. "it's much too complicated."
"What is too complicated?" Peter felt he needed to know, placing his hand on the table and resting most of his weight on it.
"The 'betrayal'; we wanted to prevent it, but it seems..." Lord Digory's words grew steadier as his voice trailed off and colour returned to his face, though something-hope?-that had been there before did not return with it. "..all the same, she may be victorious in the end."
"Wait..." Peter lifted up his palm (the one not pressed up against the table-top); his face felt strangely flushed. "...you're talking about Lucy? And what 'betrayal'? Who exactly do you think she is going to betray? Lucy wouldn't hurt a fly."
The robin chirped dejectedly. "Oh, no one! She isn't going to betray anyone..."
"Peter, my boy," Lord Digory looked at the young man in front of him with more warmth and sympathy than he had yet to grace upon him since his arrival. "it will be a Coulter who betrays her; it was a story long-told before my time, a tale destined to become fact-to become history."
"I don't understand..."
"You don't have to, poor lad, it doesn't concern you." said Lord Digory, the faint trace of a tear or two floating about in the deepest folds and corners of his eyes. "You see, it will not become history in this world, but in the one it seems Lucy has just discovered."
Peter had had quite enough of this; the professor was apparently babbling absolute nonsense! Whatever he was talking about from that other world, was in that other world, and Lucy was here with them. So even if by some chance, the professor wasn't batty, and there really was going to be an act of betrayal towards Lucy preformed by someone with the surname Coulter, it wasn't as though they could come charging through the other side wardrobe door and grab her. Was it?
"The Coulters-whom ever they are-can't get into this world, can they?" Peter asked the professor. The words sounded strange, like they were being said by someone else with a similar voice to his own.
Lord Digory looked almost annoyed for a moment, a deepening frown forming, ingraining itself into his expression, before the words fully registered. "Eh what's that? The Coulters come here?" his eyebrows shot up so high on the man's forehead that Peter thought it would be a very short trip for them to reach the Lord Professor's hairline. "I don't think so, even if they could, there's no evidence that they would want to."
Taking another puff on his pipe, he added, "No, no, the betrayal will happen only when she goes back into that world; back into the world she was born in."
Though he was thirsting for knowledge, for Lord Digory to tell him all that he knew about this other world (his notions of it being nonsense had very nearly melted away by this point), and Lucy's supposed place in it, and the traitorous Coulters he was so anxious about, all Peter said aloud was, "But...she doesn't have to go back...we can keep her here...she'll always be safe here with me, I promised."
"She will go back." Lord Digory said rather loudly in a tone so final that there was no arguing with it. "I've known that since the first day we carried her to your household," his tight face softened and he looked wistful now, relaxing a formerly clenched fist. "I was just hoping she would be older, and not such a little child still."
Meanwhile, Lucy sat on the edge of her bed with Reepicheep in his beaver form, up on his hind legs, beside her. With angry, trembling fingers, she reached for the small leather pouch that had once been Reep's hiding place and was now a sort of case for the silver pocket watch Digory had given her. Stroking it with the side of her wrist as the glittering object rested on her lap, she tried to decide what to do next.
"I don't think Peter meant to be cruel, Lucy." Reepicheep said finally, after they had been sitting in silence for what felt like a very, very long time.
"I know," Lucy sighed, gripping the pocket watch so tightly that her knuckles went moonlight-white. "but that almost makes it worse."
Reepicheep shifted into a brown weasel and nuzzled against his human comfortingly. Usually, such a gesture on his part made Lucy smile, and she would scoop him up and cuddle him for as long as she dared, but she was too disappointed and hurt for that now. How could Peter not have believed her? Was that really all he saw her as? A baby that needed protecting? The only friend she had in this world other than her dæmon didn't even see her as a half-equal? Just because she was little and he'd had to look after her a lot growing up? Didn't he realize that, in spite of the fact that she was only eight, she was getting older, and that one day he would actually have to take her seriously? Not now, though.
Fighting back a few extra sniffles, Lucy flipped the pocket watch open to puzzle over the letters, knowing well that a new idea will stop a flow of tears when nothing else will. For the first time, she noticed that the two hands of this 'clock' were not a short one and a long one, but two gold-coloured pointers, both of the same length. And while one of them stayed put and did nothing at all as she gazed down at it, the other, kept pointing to the O with a slash through it.
"What do you suppose that means?" Reepicheep leaned over the side of her arm to get a better look at what the hand was doing.
"Well, I don't know, except..." Lucy's eyes rolled over to the door of the wardrobe where the matching slashed O was carved into the tree.
"Lucy, look!" exclaimed Reepicheep as he shifted into a mouse with a golden band and red feather.
Lucy's eyes widened along with those of her dæmon because they saw the most amazing thing, the O with a slash had gone silvery all over although the tree and the rest of the wardrobe remained brown; it looked as bright as a star and a sort of ringing hum seemed to come from it.
On the pocket watch, the hand whirled around seven times and kept landing on that slashed O over and over again. Because of this, a new thought occurred to Lucy: "Reep! Suppose it's not really a 'watch' after all, but a sort of compass?"
"Compass?" Reepicheep looked confused. "Don't compasses usually have clear markings of directions like North, South, East, West, and what not?"
The mouse was quite right in thinking this, but Lucy was fairly certain she was still onto something all the same. "I don't think it's that sort of compass, but it might be closer to that than to something that tells time."
"What do you think we should do?" Reepicheep asked her, watching as his human stood up-still clutching the silver pocket watch, gazing back and forth from it to the wardrobe with goggling eyes.
Part of Lucy wanted to show it to Peter and get his advice, even after how deeply he had disappointed her, but Lord Digory had told her not to let anyone know she had it, so that was ruled out. She might wait a while and then ask the Lord Professor himself to see if he had any suggestions about what she ought to do-she wasn't so sure he would be as quick to disbelieve her as Peter had been. But then there was the chance that he might think the world behind the wardrobe was unsafe and attempt to keep her from it. Though she couldn't fully understand it, Lucy did feel a strange sort of connection to that other world, short as the time she had spent in it had been.
"I think we should try to go back," said Lucy, walking towards the door. "just to figure some things out. After all, if it was still the same hour and minute as we left when we came back the first time, no one will worry about us too much if we go again."
Reepicheep, not to be out-done by his own human, gave her a somber little half-nod and took a step forward.
Ever so carefully, Lucy placed the silver pocket watch back into the leather pouch; tightening the strap around her waist so that she wouldn't be in danger of losing it.
Shifting into the form of a small, very furry, fox-like pup of some sort, Reepicheep asked if she was ready.
"It'll be cold..." she realized, suddenly remembering how much snow that other world-or at least the part of it she had been in-was covered with. "...I'd best take my coat..."
Sniffing at the door, pawing at its corner, Reepicheep suggested another alterative. "What if you take one of the smaller fur coats from the wardrobe itself?"
Lucy's face went a little green, not because it was a bad idea, but because she wasn't sure whether or not it would be considering stealing. On the one hand, the wardrobe was in her room for her to access whenever she needed-or wanted-to. On the other, no one had actually said that she was allowed to take the coats-they might just have been put there for storage or something.
"I think it's all right," said Reepicheep, apparently knowing what his human was pondering over. "in a manner of speaking, we aren't even taking the coat out of the wardrobe."
"Well, I don't know..." Lucy hesitated a moment longer.
Foot steps boomed from the hallway outside her room, and she felt herself jump; shuddering out of nervousness. Of course, common sense told her that it wasn't likely to be anyone besides Peter or Lord Digory or else maybe a servant, but she felt startled anyway. She didn't want to talk to anyone right now and perhaps lose her chance of getting back to that other place; it seemed to be all but calling out to her now, like she simply needed to be there.
"Quick, Reep!" Lucy swung the wardrobe door open and hopped inside, Reepicheep right behind her as she closed the door part-way and made a dash for the back where the gauzy curtain was.
"Don't forget to take a coat!" Reepicheep warned her, panting as he stood still to catch his breath while Lucy fumbled to reach behind her to snatch up one of the coats. Her fingers already felt sort of numb from the little smacks of cold air wafting up from under the black curtain. She couldn't get a proper grip on it and dropped it twice before finally managing to fling it over her shoulders and pull her arms through.
The coat was far too big on her and looked more like an over-sized brown ceremonial robe than anything else; but the delightful warmth and the fact that all the thick fur assisted in hiding the leather pouch made up for any inconveniencies the garment may have had. Besides, draping herself with the heavy pounds of fur was very much like playing dress-up, a game Lucy rather enjoyed-just like any other little eight year old girl would-and she couldn't have been more pleased with it.
Once she was back in that other world, Lucy shivered violently and shoved her face into the warm sleeve of the fur coat. A horrible wind was slapping at her and she could hear Reepicheep's shrieks and whimpers as clear as day, though she couldn't see him by her side, blinded by what looked like a swarm of a million white bees pushing along in front of her eyes. It came to her suddenly that she had come back, by some dreadful mistake, right in the middle of a snow-storm.
Of course, her first instinct was to run back to Lord Digory's college where she would have been safe, but she couldn't see the back of the wardrobe clearly anymore. It was a blur; hidden again and again by the swarms. Spinning around more times than she could count, lost and dizzy now besides, Lucy found that she must have gone in a very different direction than last time without seeing it because there was no sign of the lamppost and its yellow light. The wind howled again and Reepicheep bleated, crying out for her, clinging to her leg as they tumbled down something that felt like a small hill.
This time, Lucy screamed along with him as she felt herself falling so quickly without much sense of what was happening other than the dim knowledge that she had gotten herself caught in a storm. When she came to a stop, at what was presumably the bottom of the hill, she found that the fur coat she was wearing was covered in icy sleet and frost-making her feel very cold. This lasted only for a moment, however, because she had also unknowingly hit her head a few times and was slowly drifting into complete darkness. Her only comfort was that she was not alone even there, even in the nothingness of the mind, Reepicheep drifted with her.
Back at the college, it had been Peter at Lucy's door. After his conversation with the Lord Digory, he had suddenly found himself running; running as quickly as he could towards his little sister's room. He wasn't sure why, only that he thought somewhere in his subconscious that it might protect her somehow. What Lord Digory was saying seemed more real with every passing moment, and Peter could not sit back and let what the professor called, 'the betrayal' happen to Lucy-even if he didn't know what it was. He'd get a padlock on that blasted wardrobe if he had to-anything to keep her safe. Even if he had nail that door shut, he would. Nothing would stop him from keeping his baby sister out of danger. Or so he thought...until he reached her room...finding it unoccupied.
"Lucy?" Peter called, praying that she was only playing hide and seek under the bed. "Lu?"
No answer.
Desperate, he added, "I've come to apologize, Lu, please come out."
That would have triggered a response in her if she had actually still been there. Since she wasn't, however, dead-silence continued.
His heart beating like a drum now, Peter fast-walked over to the bed and threw the cover up to look under it-Lucy wasn't there. His little sister wasn't hiding, she was simply not in the room.
"She's probably just gone to the washroom or something." Peter said very unconvincingly under his breath as if to reassure himself, though he was doing a very pitiful job of it.
The unlatched wardrobe door creaked open the rest of the way, and at once, Peter knew, if he hadn't already known, exactly where Lucy was.
Lucy was in that other world. What did he care if it was the world she was born into? That didn't mean she had to belong there-in a place where she would be betrayed. No, he decided, he had to go after her and drag her all the way back here to Lord Digory's college if need be.
All but throwing himself into the wardrobe, Peter groped about until he came to the gauzy black curtain-accidentally ripping part of it and falling through the rather large hole he had created, right into a snowy wood. There was no storm when he got there, only a calm, dim purple-gray twilight hour sky littered with a few scattered pinkish, dirty-white clouds.
In that other world, time was different. The last time Lucy had gone, Peter hadn't known at all because no time in their own world had passed. This time, it was different: a few minutes-perhaps five minutes-had passed in their world (just enough time for Peter to figure out what he needed to do) while any amount of time might had sped by in this one. At any rate, the storm was over. It may have been hours after Lucy fell, or else it may have been only twenty minutes. Though Peter, knowing nothing about the storm, saw only one thing: That he was in a strange new place, and his Lucy was no where to be found.
AN: Dang, I'm turning into the queen of cliff hangers, aren't I? Good Lord. LOL. Anyway, please review.