The Call

Aslan felt every movement and every slowing heartbeat that resided in Susan's poor, weak body but he could now also feel the comfort and the joy her beliefs had brought to her trouble mind. He breathed a deep, heavy sigh that rattled the ground and warmed the soil, "your subjects know that a new magic is at work here and that soon the danger will be past. They are assembling as the Witch's armies are and battle is soon to be with us. Are you ready to face this danger?" he asked.

"It will be an adventure," Samuel said as he looked bravely down into his sister's eyes, "something I have long since been without."

"But not us," Edmund said, "and not Susan, she remembers."

"Exactly Edmund," Aslan said with a twinkle in his eyes, "It all started as a feeling for her. She felt you all so deep within her that she could not deny her belief. She is calling out to you to show her children their way and the beliefs that are so deeply rooted in her soul. She has given you all the tools so that you may remember and react as she needs you do. Do you remember?"

"Yes," Edmund said with a smile as he ran to his thrown and picked up his journal that was left on the seat. He began to flip through it and images and memories sprang out at him and rushed to fill the world with a glory and peacefulness of the deep recesses of his mind, "I kept this journal in our world. Susan used to have me read to her from it. She secretly wanted to remember everything and to be apart of it. It was the only proof that I had to show her that this really was a part of us."

The images from the journal filled the space within the great hall and Samuel and Faith watched their mother and her siblings in their great adventures in Narnia. The images were so vivid that Faith and Samuel came to know everything in a moment. They saw why Susan would have been afraid to return and yet there was a wonder in the call that resounded from the imaged, like a lions roar or the cries of adoration from a grateful population, they all called out to Susan and her place in their world.

"She was so young then," Faith whispered as she saw Susan with her bow and arrows flying straight and true. She looked brave and powerful.

"Her faith never failed her then," Aslan said as he stood before Faith and Samuel, "those arrows never missed because Susan believed they would never miss."

"That was the one outdoors activity that mother did participate in," Samuel said as he watched the images before him, "I will never forget the first time Father and Mother took me to my archery lessons. Mother was brilliant. She picked up the bow and the arrow, squared up her body and shot. It hit the target right in the center, like Robin Hood. She did better than Father."

"I remember that!" Faith said, "I was too young to participate but I remember Father angrily handing me back to my mother as the instructor came he help you, Samuel."

"He mumbled the whole way home and Mother giggled with us over it for days," Samuel laughed.

"What are your memories of our mother, Peter?" Faith asked.

Peter reached into his pocket and pulled out his watch. It ticked with the steadiness of a heart beat and that beat filled the world with a living breath. The snow in the field before the palace began to break up and melt away and the heart beat of every living thing in their world began anew. It was like the beating of a drum that moved through all creation and brought forward the believing subjects, like a call going out throughout all living brings and soon their was a an army of millions before the castle at Care Paravel, all of their hearts beating in time with Peter's watch and Susan's memories.

"Susan once told me that she believed that the same heart beat passed through everything, in our world and in Narnia. She said it was like the ticking of a clock and that if you listened hard enough you could hear it in everything," Peter answered.

"And you can," Faith smiled, "but not like a grandfather clock and not like a coco clock; it's like a heart beat, soft and steady like a pocket watch. She used to tell me the same thing when she took that watch out of the trunk. She said Peter's heart was in the clock and that she knew you were alright because the clock never stopped."

"I remember her saying that too," Edmund said, "she said it was Aslan's heart beating through creation."

Aslan smiled a twinkle in his eye and warmth in his heart. His children were walking along the last path he would set them on without even having to be walked along it. They were working the magic on their own. The memories that made life and death all a part of living were flowing between them now and he could feel Susan's heart beating in time with his.

"And you Lucy?" Faith asked.

Lucy looked deep into the looking glass and saw the fear in Susan's eyes. She was fading away quicker than they could revive their land and she remembered the helplessness that Susan had cried over.

"I remember the day after Susan had returned from Narnia for the last time. She cried bitterly and there was something that seemed to die within her. She said her world was cloaked in black and white. Like snow had fallen and taken the entire worlds colour away because there could never be colour without Narnia," Lucy sighed as she turned the looking glass toward Faith and Samuel.

"She would get really depressed if winter stretched on too long," Samuel said looking at his sick mother through the looking glass.

"But spring would always bring hope to her," Faith said struggling to smile, "she loved the flowers and all the shades of green."

"It is just so hard to see her like this, she was so elegant and beautiful when she got older," Lucy said, "I wouldn't say that she was vain but she knew that she was blessed with a beauty that was captivating."

"I used to watch her get ready to go out with our Father, she reminded me of one of the models on the magazine covers," Faith said.

"She was so beautiful, like an angel," Samuel smiled.

"She'll look just like that again when she comes back to Narnia," Faith said.

"More beautiful than before," Samuel smiled.

"Do you know what you are doing by remembering her like this?" Aslan asked as he stepped into the sunlight.

"What?" Peter asked as the rest of the children hung on Aslan's every moment.

"You've called her to this place, connected it with her past, her present and her future, and placed her in your memories where she will live forever. It started out as just a simple feeling and now it has grown into a loud shout of joy and hope. You have made it possible for Susan to come into this place openly and freely," He said with a smile, "you've completed what I have called you here to do."

Samuel beamed with pride at his sister; who face spoke volumes to the joy she was feeling. There was a comfort now in the way that they looked at each other and trusted one another. They knew that they would be fine so long as they had their memories and their imaginations to connect them with their mother and this wonderful world.