AN: For those of you not reading my other stories or profile, it's been a super crappy six months for me, hence the lack in updates. Fortunately, my stepdad and sister-in-law are both doing well on chemo so far, and my mom's preliminary biopsy came back negative. Anyway, I'm trying to get back to writing a lot now, but I'm also having to look for a second job because my student loans mean I now owe $400 in bills a month MORE than I make. Stupid, indeed. So we'll see! Anyway, this chapter is half the length of a normal chapter, but that's just what was needed. Chapters going forward will be back to their normal length. :)

Chapter Fourteen

The thing in the flames was difficult to describe. He - for he seemed like a he - didn't seem to hold any solid shape, but the very edges of his body seemed to dance and flicker with the flames that engulfed him. His mouth was wide and flat, his eyes spaced far apart and a dark, glowing red. He reminded Charlotte simultaneously of a large lizard and a giant man, but how he could be both was beyond her. Her eyes couldn't follow his form long enough to decide, or even to judge where he ended and the fire began.

"Who are you? What are you?" she finally asked. It was difficult to judge emotion from a pair of eyes and wide mouth, but he seemed to be contemplating her just as closely.

"I think," he returned, "the better question is: who are you, and why are you causing such a disruption in Narnia?"

"A disruption! I haven't seen anyone to disrupt," she defended, her cheeks reddening at the accusation. "Why, I've done nothing but wander around in absolute isolation for who knows how long now. I only have seen a few birds and fish, and only in the last day, and they've all ignored or fled-"

The mouth interrupted, a wide flat tongue waving as he insisted, "Exactly. The Narnians have been fleeing from you like birds before the storm. They fear you in a way not many are feared."

"But why? I'm not that scary at all. I'm certainly not here to hurt anyone! Why would anyone fear me?"

"Why indeed?" the creature asked, seeming to lean out of the flames and peer out at her. "It's undoubtedly the mark, only it's not obvious just by looking at you how you've come by it?"

"What mark?"

"Why that mark, there on your forehead," the creature answered, his hand reaching from the flames to point. His fingers were short and stubby, his palm thick.

Charlotte only glanced at his hand, though, as her own shot to her forehead, feeling for any disturbance on her skin. There was nothing; just her creased brow, probably reddened from the sun and a bit sticky with sweat.

"I haven't a mark," she insisted. "What sort of mark? You mean that I'm sunburned?"

The creature laughed, a biting laugh that made Charlotte feel very small as he snorted, "A sunburn! You think Narnians would flee a sunburned little daughter of Eve? You must be rather stupid for your kind. No, it is a mark of another sort."

"What sort?"

"You are boring me," he sighed, melting back into the flames. "You obviously don't know anything and are not worth my time. Why, it's the mark."

"The mark?" Charlotte repeated, feeling none the wiser.

"Yes. Well, perhaps, have you murdered someone? Maybe a family member-"

"What! Of course I haven't murdered anyone," Charlotte retorted, rather offended even at just the question. This gave her a bit more confidence, so she added, "And anyway, who are you, you never told me? Why aren't you fleeing me if I've got some evil mark on my forehead?"

"I, Lady Charlotte, am not afraid of the mark. I am not like these wilting-flower Narnians. I pity you, in fact. You have been alone for a long time, haven't you?"

It was at that point that Charlotte promptly burst into tears. Collapsing to the ground, she folded into her lap and covered her face with her hands to sob. This momentarily stunned the man in the fire into silence and Charlotte was let to cry without interruption for several minutes.

Finally the creature prodded, "How long, how long have you been alone, Lady Charlotte?"

"It feels like weeks-"

"No, how long have you been alone," he reiterated, his entire upper body leaning from the flames. Through Charlotte's tear-blurred vision, he looked so much like a lizard that she blinked quickly several times to clear her eyes and reassure herself he wasn't, but he was back in the fire, repeating his question, "How long have you felt alone?"

"I . . . almost forever," she admitted softly. "Almost all the time since I left my family in California. Sometimes I feel less alone . . ."

"But then . . ." he encouraged, his smile widening.

"But then I go back to feeling alone," she finished.

"Yes," he whispered, settling down in the flame so that they were on eye-level with each other again. "Yes, you have borne that mark a long time, it seems. You must be so tired, sad little daughter of eve, sad little girl. It is not fair to make a little girl bear so much."

"How do I get rid of it, this mark?" Charlotte asked after a beat of silence had dried her tears and left her feeling only small and exhausted. "How did I even get it? Why? What does it . . . look like? How come I can't see it?"

The man grinned, "So many questions, dear one. You cannot see it because you bear it and we can never see our own faults, can we? You cannot get rid of it, not ever, and that is because he gave it to you."

"Who?" The man just gave her a steady look. "Not Aslan! He's only good-"

"Not him," the man interrupted. "But his father."

A rumbling in the forest that Charlotte had not even been aware of suddenly died out, and the silence made her glance around anxiously. Silence was always so much more noticeable than noise; it felt like the entire woods had recoiled from her and this creature.

"Why?" she pressed, sitting up a little straighter. "Why would Aslan's father mark me? I'm just a-"

The creature laughed, "Oh. Oh, we are never just anything, not just girls or just boys or just creatures. And he has marked you, my dear, to be alone."

"But-"

"No use arguing with it. His decision is made and cannot be reversed. You have no choice but to be forever alone . . . or . . ." He disappeared until only his eyes showed, then suddenly leaned forward out of the fire once it was clear he had her undivided attention. "Or, you could join Us who are also alone."

"You are marked?"

"Oh, no, I quite choose to be alone. Some of us do, some of us don't. If you would like, you may join us. You are not so boring as I first thought, and anyway, you are quite pretty." He hesitated for a moment as though rethinking his works, but then with a great shake of his vague head, extended the same stubby hand out from the flames. Though he held it steadily, confidently, the edges of his fingers wavered like the fire and Charlotte didn't know that she could touch them without getting burned. Seeing her deliberation, his grinned widened to its largest yet as he assured her, "You will be all right. You won't be burned. And it is better than being alone, isn't it?"

Charlotte glanced around. The forest remained silent and cold to her. So she made her decision and tentatively reached her hand out to the creatures. Just as it got near, he snatched her wrist. She cried out in pain at the burning sensation in her arm as he yanked her forward and into the fire where her eyes closed and she fell.

For how long she fell was impossible to determine. Opening or closing her eyes didn't change a thing, and though she grappled with one hand and her legs for anything to stop the downward plummet, still her other wrist was held and burned and pulled.

At long last, after what felt like days or years, Charlotte landed on her stomach with a thud, the wind rushing from her lungs. She curled up and gasped on the floor, clutching her burnt wrist to her body. There was light here, though, coming from the long tracks of fire that ran here and there all around the stone cavern. The fire frequently crossed the footpaths, as though alive itself. Her eyes rolled to take in as much as she could until her body finally calmed.

Turning to the creature who had brought her here, who had remained silently watching her, she yelled, "You lied!" Her throat was raw and the words came out scratchy and soft, but they were enough to make the creatures flame flicker backwards a little, as though she had attempted to blow out a candle. When he didn't answer, she looked around again and asked with no small amount of fear, "Is this . . . is this hell?"

"Hell?" he repeated, his fire oozing closer. "This is not hell. This is the lair of the salamanders." The word instantly brought to mind the amphibious creatures Charlotte and her brothers used to pull from the creeks and keep in jars until one of the older girls found them (inevitably in their bed . . .) and made them throw them out. This was clearly a different sort of salamander, however, and Charlotte couldn't help but long for the former, even if it meant being back in Oklahoma.

Charlotte didn't know where to begin with her questions. She felt a deep sense of regret about this whole business, but remained passively quiet as the creature beckoned for her to follow. Still in tears over her wrist, which stung and was beginning to bubble, Charlotte glanced miserably from side to side, hardly noticing the dozens of red and black eyes that stared at her, that filled in behind her so that she walked before a wall of crackling fire.

Without even understanding how it happened, Charlotte found herself suddenly enclosed in a cage constructed of fire bars. Whether by magic or her own wandering mind, she startled to attention only a moment before stepping face first into one of the glowing walls. Quickly spinning, she was faced with another fire wall, boxed in on all sides with just enough room to curl up on the floor in a ball as she did.

"What is this?" a new creature asked, one that Charlotte didn't even have the heart to look up at. She moaned for her own stupidity and pressed her face against the warm stone of the floor as silent tears snaked across her cheeks and off her nose.

The salamander that had brought her, his voice slightly higher than the others, insisted, "She came on her own free will! She will have to tell you that's the truth. I did not force her!"

"Very well," the first voice replied. "Very, very well. Now raise the cage so that we might all see our prize. Oh, how low the sons of men have fallen that we may keep one as our pet!" With a splitting of rock and hissing of fire, the ground beneath the cage raised until Charlotte was in the air a good forty feet, no longer caged but just as trapped. She lay on her back, staring at the black void of the ceiling, wondering how far beneath the bowels of the earth she was, wondering how long she could possibly survive in such an environment, wondering if this was really what she deserved.