Once Upon Another Time
That year was the worst year of his life for Edmund.
It was bad enough that he was now stuck back in his young body, the body of a boy only just growing up, with all the memories of his rule in Narnia.
Bad enough that he was separated from the country he loved, the one place he could truly be himself, and the family he would die for, and the woman he adored.
Bad enough that he would be going back to school.
No, what were worse were the dreams. Nightly, he would dream of Elednor, of her proud, beautiful face awash with tears, but only in private, in public cold and unreadable. Her hand on her ever growing stomach, on the golden curls of their son as she comforted him.
Her screams as she gave birth to their daughter. He had awoken with his daughter's name on his lips.
Laramine…
A daughter he would never know.
She had looked like him, dark hair and dark eyes, and Elednor had smiled as she looked down at her newborn daughter, Elyan leaning over the bed beside her.
In the end, he forced himself to stop thinking about her, about them. It was just too painful.
Eventually, they returned to Finchley after the bombings stopped, and he prepared to return to school with Peter. Everyone had commented on the change in his personality, his demeanour, but inside, his heart was torn asunder.
All he could think of was the wife, the son and the daughter he had left behind. He looked at his mother and father, when he came home from the war on leave, and thought of the grandchildren they would never know.
They gathered together to talk about Narnia often, he and his brother and sisters. All were sad to have left, and confused, but only Lucy really seemed to notice her brother's turmoil. She would hug him, just hold him in her arms, and offer no judgement upon him, and for that, he loved her more than ever. She was certain they would return to Narnia one day.
Susan was annoyingly pragmatic, determined to make the best of things, but he could not. He was forever tortured by memories, much the same as Lucy and Peter.
Peter had withdrawn into himself over the past year, moody and brooding, as he contemplated the loss of his adulthood, back to being treated like a kid. Edmund gathered quite the collection of bruises that year, every time he jumped in to defend his brother in a fight Peter had usually started.
And so it proved to be again, as he waited on the platform of the Underground, to go back to school, that he heard the commotion, and the shouts of 'Fight, Fight!'
He rushed in, pushing past Susan and Lucy, ignoring Lucy's scream of his name, and launched himself at the burly sixteen year old pounding his brother mercilessly.
He relished the fight as much as Peter did, although for other reasons. Every punch, every kick, every thump reminded him of the battles he had fought, ensured he could not forget, and soon he had pinned one of his brother's assailants to the ground, the others wrestling with him to get him off, when the whistles sounded, and two old soldiers rushed forward, tearing them apart.
"Act your age!" one growled, shaking his head. Edmund shook his dark head, sardonic thoughts whirling around.
If only they knew…
Later, he stowed his suitcases beside Peter, joining his sullen sibling on the bench.
"You're welcome," he grunted mulishly, as yet once again Peter brushed him off, pushing him away.
"I had it sorted," Peter muttered dismissively, standing as Susan sighed.
"What was it this time?" she asked wearily.
"He bumped me," Peter muttered shortly.
"So you hit him?" Lucy added incredulously. Lucy, at least, still comported herself as a Queen of Narnia, and the disapproval was there in her voice. Pity Peter did not do the same.
"No. After he bumped me, they tried to make me apologise," Peter turned around defiantly, restrained anger and frustration emanating from every pore. "That's when I hit him."
"Really?" Susan asked. "Is it so hard to just walk away?"
"I shouldn't have to!" Peter replied heatedly. "I mean, don't you ever get tired of being treated like a kid?"
"We are kids!" Edmund pointed out. They may not have been a year ago, but they were now. They were just going to have to put up with it.
"Well, I wasn't always," Peter returned, before he sighed and came to sit back down. "It's been a year. How long does he expect us to wait?"
All three younger siblings exchanged a glance. Susan had resigned herself to living in England, Lucy remained ever hopeful, but even the mention of Narnia was both bittersweet and painful for Edmund. It reminded him of all he had lost.
He wished he had never gone on that damned hunt!
"I think it's time to accept that we live here," Susan started reasonably. "There's no use pretending any different."
Lucy rubbed Peter's arm comfortingly, as Edmund scowled. "Easy for you to say, Su," he growled. "You didn't leave anyone behind."
Susan looked away uncomfortably, so no one saw her blanch and sigh, "Oh no."
She turned to her sister. "Pretend you're talking to me!" she urged in a whisper, making Edmund roll his eyes.
"We are talking to you," he pointed out caustically, making Susan glare at him. Suddenly Lucy leapt up with a cry.
"OW!"
"Quiet, Lu," Susan hissed, looking at the bespectacled boy walking along the platform pensively.
"Something pinched me!" Lucy pointed at her seat, as Peter leapt up.
"Hey, stop pulling!" he rounded on Edmund, who sullenly shot back.
"Not touching you!"
"Look, would all of you just…what is that?" Susan began then stopped, standing up abruptly. Brows drawing together, Edmund stood as well, then he felt it.
A tug.
Something was pulling him. But pulling him where?
He was dimly aware of Lucy excitedly exclaiming, "It feels like magic!" before Peter grabbed his hand.
"Everyone hold hands," he cried, but Edmund, still partly a teenage boy, struggled.
"I'm not holding your hand!" he snapped at his brother. Peter held on tighter.
"Just…" he began, then they noticed the tunnel wall. The bricks were coming away as the train rushed through, revealing a golden beach bordering the sparkling sapphire sea, a forget-me-not blue sky above it.
The ground turned to rocks and sand beneath their feet, the tunnel became a sandstone cave, as they stepped out towards the cave entrance wondrously.
Narnia…
Home…
For a moment, they gloried in it, laughing and splashing in the sea, teasing and taunting as they did once before. Often they had gone down to the sea of an evening to play in the water, when they were Kings and Queens of Narnia.
They shed their school uniforms, and with it, their old lives back in England, before Edmund paused, looking up at the white cliffs that were achingly familiar, yet…
"Ed? Ed!" Susan called, as he stood and stared at the ruins on the cliff top.
"What is it?" Peter asked, and already Edmund could hear the happiness in his voice, the happiness that had not been there for a year.
"Where do you suppose we are?" he pondered.
"Well, where d'you think!" Peter replied incredulously but Edmund shook his head.
"I don't remember any ruins in Narnia." he muttered, as all four stopped and looked at the ruined castle atop the cliffs.
They collected their bags, but left their jumpers, blazers, hats, shoes, socks and other unwanted clothes underneath a little rock, safe from the tide and any scavengers, climbing up to the old ruins.
They were incredible, huge and old, ivy twining around the broken marble columns and stairways, an orchard of apple trees growing in the very centre. The only sign of the old floor was chunks of marble and stone, covered mostly by grass and flowers.
Edmund looked around in a daze, every sight that met his eye was familiar, but in what way he couldn't define. The ruins were old, hundreds of years old, and they were on one of the islands in an archipelago, separated from the mainland by a series of channels.
"Wonder who lived here," Lucy mused from her position atop an old ruined stair which had once led to a balcony. Susan trod on something cold and smooth in the grass, and picked it up.
"I think we did," she breathed. Alerted by her tone, all three went to her side, to see the thing she clutched close in her hand.
It was a golden horseman, a chess piece.
Edmund's chess piece.
Memories of playing chess by the fire on cold winter nights washed over him, beating Peter, drawing with Lucy, occasionally losing to Susan, teaching Eled-
NO!
He cut the memories off determinedly, before his face could fall and they would see his pain. He would not think of her, or of them.
"Hey, that's mine," he mumbled. "From my chess set."
"Which chess set?" Peter asked. Edmund rolled his eyes.
"Well, I didn't exactly have a solid gold chess set in Finchley, did I?" he pointed out sarcastically, taking the little horseman from Susan and examining it closely. Lucy's head snapped around, and she gasped, running forward.
"Can't be," she breathed, her brothers and sister in tow. She led them up onto a ruined dais, where five marble stumps stood, still shining in the sunlight. But that was all they were, ruins, and the atmosphere of abandonment weighed on Edmund as he followed Lucy onto the dais. "Don't you see!" Lucy squealed excitedly.
"What?"
She pushed Peter into place, then Susan and Edmund automatically took his place on Peter's right, as Lucy did the same on Susan's left. "Imagine walls. And columns there, and a glass roof!"
Cair Paravel…
Peter murmured it as Edmund thought it, the revelation hitting him like a steam train. The dais had to be what was left of the Great Hall, where they had sat as Kings and Queens of Narnia…
He looked to his right, and saw the fifth marble stump, the remains of the fifth throne and frowned. What had happened?
How long had they been gone?
Where was Elednor and the other Narnians?
Fear rose up and choked him, as his eyes fell on a large boulder, too large and dark to be natural, as he moved across to it. His experienced eye wandered across it, and his breath caught in his throat as Peter joined him.
"Catapults," he breathed, looking up at his brother.
"What?" he asked.
"This didn't just happen," Edmund turned and explained. "Cair Paravel was attacked."
Peter and Susan frowned. "What about Elednor?" Susan muttered. "What happened-"
Lucy nudged her sister, as Susan glimpsed her younger brother's dark glare when he stood and turned away.
Edmund and Peter saw it at the same time, the wall that had blocked the secret passageway to the Royal Treasury. Peter cleared some of the ivy from it, then helped Edmund to push it to one side, revealing the wooden door, just going rotten. Peter got out his pocket knife and cut around the lock, pushing the door open. A chill wind seemed to rise from the gaping doorway, and Edmund shivered as he watched his brother cut and then tear a strip from his own shirt, twining it around a stick.
"Don't suppose you have any matches, do you?" he asked Edmund, and the younger boy smirked.
"No, but," he murmured, searching in his school bag for his new torch, bought as a birthday present from their father. "Would this help?" he asked, holding it up. Peter shook his head, as Lucy and Susan laughed, and Edmund smirked.
"You might have mentioned that a bit sooner," he complained good-naturedly. Edmund continued to smile as he turned and led the way into the stairway. Only then, with his back turned to the others, did he let his smile drop.
Now he knew he was back at Cair Paravel, he felt more angry and sadder than ever. If the Castle was that ruined, then it would have to have been hundreds of years since they had left Narnia. Elednor would be dead, Elyan would be dead, Laramine would be dead…
All he had ever loved was gone.
So, with a heavy heart, he led the way down to the Treasury.