Here, finally, is another chapter.

Please review! And I'll try to update soon, despite my hectic life :P

Chapter Twenty-One

~Eustace~

To my shock and amazement, I landed in the middle of a brightly colored crowd of who I assumed to be Narnians, at a harbor. I saw a castle for the first time up on a high cliff to my left, its towers and turrets and walls and windows gleaming majestically in the late evening light.

I stood and watched from a distance the old man boarding the ship, the crowd mourning. I hardly even noticed Jill land nearby, and ignored her presence until after the ship had departed.

Then she grabbed my arm, much to my annoyance, and said, "Scrubb! Scrubb, quick! Do you see anyone you know?"

I jerked my arm free of her grasp and snapped, "So you've turned up again, have you? Well keep quiet, I want to listen." I went back to watching the crowd.

Jill huffed. "Don't be a fool. There isn't a moment to lose! Don't you see some old friend here? Because you've got to speak to him at once!"

With a frustrated sigh, I gave in and turned to face her. "What are you talking about?"

With a pleading look on her face, she told me, "It's Aslan—the Lion—says you've got to. I've seen Him!"

I raised an eyebrow. "Oh you have, have you?" I mocked her, forgetting for a moment that I'd never mentioned Aslan was a Lion. "What did He say?"

"He said the first person you'd see in Narnia would be an old friend of yours, and you'd have to speak to him at once!"

I turned away again, crossing my arms. "Well, there's nobody here I've ever seen in my life before; and anyway, I don't know whether this is Narnia."

Jill looked outraged. "I thought you said you'd been here before!"

"Well, you thought wrong then." The truth was, I was completely unsure of what to do. I had never actually set foot in or laid eyes on Narnia itself. I had only been aboard the Dawn Treader and only knew the few people who had also been on the voyage.

"Well, I like that!" Jill scoffed. "You told me—"

"For Heaven's sake, dry up already!" I cried, annoyed by her accusatory and whining tone, and also afraid to admit to her I didn't know what to do.

I took a deep breath and said, "Now—"

I was interrupted at that moment by a huge white owl gliding out of nowhere to land at our feet. Jill and I both took a step back, incredulous at its size. It was nearly as tall as my waist, and its great round eyes gleamed with a human intelligence.

It hooted, and then asked in a voice similar to those sounds, "Who are you two?"

Jill could only stare, still too shocked by the fact it was talking, but I had met Talking Animals before.

"My name's Eustace Scrubb, and this here is Jill Pole. Would you mind telling us where we are?"

The Owl answered in the same soft, hooting voice, "In the land of Narnia, at the King's castle of Cair Paravel."

Relief washed over me. So we were in Narnia, and I had heard of Cair Paravel too.

"Is that the King who's just set sail on the ship?" I asked.

The Owl nodded his round, feathered head, his yellow eyes sad. "Too true, too true. But who are you? There's something magic about you two. I saw you arrive—you flew. Everyone else was busy seeing the King off that nobody knew. Except me. I happened to notice you, you flew."

I leant in a little and said in a low voice, so we wouldn't be over heard, "Aslan sent us here."

The Owl gave a little hop and ruffled his feathers, hooting. "This is almost too much for me, so early in the evening. I'm not quite myself till the sun's gone down."

Jill broke into the conversation suddenly, as if she'd been worried about being left out. "And we've been sent to find the lost prince!" she said a little too loudly.

I looked at her sharply. "This is the first I've heard of it. What prince?"

With a little more hooting, the Owl suggested we speak to the Lord Regent, who was the plump, elderly Dwarf in the donkey-drawn cart.

"What is the King's name?" I asked suddenly, curious.

"Caspian the Tenth," hooted the Owl.

I felt the blood drain from my face, and my heart gave an unpleasant thump. Disbelief took hold of me as I remembered the Caspian I knew and the old man I'd seen boarding the ship. He had been so white and wrinkled and old. It couldn't possibly be him; Caspian the Tenth should only be a little older, still young and strong and handsome.

I noticed Jill giving me a strange look, and I realized some of my shock must be showing on my face. But before she could ask, we reached the Lord Regent, Trumpkin the Dwarf, whom I had also heard about from Lucy.

During the long and drawn out conversation that followed between us and the nearly deaf Dwarf, we managed to introduce ourselves and explain that we were sent by Aslan. We learned the Owl's name was Glimfeather, and Trumpkin instructed him to see that we had bedchambers and suitable clothes.

They led us through an orchard and through the Northern Gate of the Cair and into a grassy courtyard. I looked up and could see the tall, stained-glass windows of the Great Hall, glowing within, on our right.

Glimfeather led us ahead to another part of the castle, where we met servants who took us to our rooms. Jill was led away to her room in a turret by a wood-nymph, and I was taken to mine in another part of the castle.

After I had bathed and dressed in some of the clothes they had given me, I set out to find Jill. It took me ages—the castle was huge, with winding halls and stairs, hundreds of chambers and studies, and sprawling kitchens. But at last I found her, clean and also wearing new clothes, with a dreamy expression on her face.

I was cross again that she would be enjoying herself so much when I was not. I flung myself into an overstuffed armchair, saying, "Well here you are at last. I've been trying to find you for ages!"

"Well now you have," she said happily. She then sprawled out across her four-poster bed, sighing. "I say, Scrubb, isn't it all too wonderful and exciting for words?"

"Oh, is that what you think, is it?" I asked sarcastically. But it only lasted a second, and I began brooding again. "I wish to goodness we'd never come."

Jill sat up, surprise etched on her face. "Why on earth?"

I sunk lower in my chair at the mere thought of it. "I can't bear it. Seeing the King—Caspian—a doddering old man like that. It's—it's frightful!"

Jill tilted her head a bit, looking like a confused dog. "Why, what harm does it do you?"

I gave a sigh that was more like a huff, and said, "Oh you don't understand. You couldn't. I didn't tell you this world has a different time than ours."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, the time you spend here doesn't take up any of our time. Do you see? I mean, however long we spend here, we'll still get back to school at the moment we left it—"

"That won't be much fun—" Jill started.

Infuriated that she wasn't grasping the seriousness of what I was trying say, I shouted, "Oh, shut up, would you? Quit interrupting!"

Her mouth snapped shut, and I continued.

"And when you're back in England, in our world, you can't tell how much time is passing here. It might be any number of years in Narnia while we're having one year at home. The Pevensies explained it all to me, but, like a fool, I forgot it. And now apparently it's been about seventy years since I was here last. And I come back and find Caspian and old, old man."

I leaned back in my chair, drained again by the thought of it.

Jill had sat bolt upright, her face going pale. "Then the King was an old friend of yours!"

"I should jolly well think so. About as good a friend as one could have. And last time I saw him he was only a few years older than me. And to see that old man with a white beard, and to remember Caspian as he was the morning we captured the Lone Islands, or in the fight with the Sea Serpent—oh, it's dreadful! Almost worse than coming back and finding him dead!" I lamented.

"Oh, shut up, it's far worse than you think!" Jill snapped. "We've gone and messed up the first Sign."

"What about Signs?" I asked.

She finally decided to fill me in on what Aslan had told her after she'd knocked me off the cliff, and then we argued about whose fault it was that we'd missed the first Sign. But we were interrupted by the ringing of a bell, signaling supper was about to be served.

During the meal, my mind roamed back to those adventures we'd had upon the Dawn Treader. As I stumbled sleepily up the stairs and into my room, I briefly thought of other people who'd been on the ship with me. Reepicheep, Drinian, Rynelf, Rose... Rose, I thought, just before falling asleep. Where has gone? But then I was no longer concerned, because I'd fallen into a solid sleep.