Eleanor

When I was very young, my mother told me her greatest ambition was to witness a miracle.

And because she did, so did I.

What kind of person holds promises that empty?

Before I even opened my eyes, I could feel the warmth radiating against my skin. It felt nice, like basking in the sun after a long winter of empty air.

I stirred against the leaves beneath me as my vision cleared and all the memories of the past week flooded back to me. Every morning, I tried to keep track. If I didn't, it would fade away with time.

Susan and Lucy told us to leave for the How as soon as possible. We would meet them there, just travel a different route and away from Solomon faster for our safety. I didn't want to, but I knew that I wasn't any help to anybody if I was there. It did make me feel guilty though.

I sat up into the warmth, the trees dancing lightly in the wind as the sun rose to high noon. Sophia's form lay beside me, though we could have been twins with how tall she's gotten. I'm sure one day she would supersede me. Her hair rolled from her head in straight locks of curl going in directions like they had been set up to be untamable.

But that didn't matter.

My neck and knees cracked as I stood up from the ground and pulled my sweater tighter around me. It smelt like Cair Paravel, like Edmund, and I sighed in discontent as I felt his absence within me.

Ordires said we would arrive at the How today if we continued on foot for a few more hours. I thought of this as I approached his form on watch beside the two horses we had brought with us.

"Morning," he greeted as I made my way over to him.

Ordires was a man who reminded me of the boys in London who went off the war and came back like they had been fed lies in false pride. He was young, a little younger than my father, but he looked worn in the way of experience. His eyes were the color of the sun shining through a glass of white wine, giving off the feel that pieces of him had been lost and shattered a long time ago.

"What time will be leaving?" I asked him instantly once I approached. There was no time for small talk anymore.

"Any minute now," he said, and then turned his head back towards the inside of the forest, probably looking to see if Sophia was trailing behind me.

"Get your sister up," he said, and in one swift motion was on top one of the horses. "We should leave now, rather than later."

He didn't look at me one more time before preparing to take off on the frost-touched path that wound in and around the forest.

When I woke Sophia up, the first thing she asked me was "Why is it so cold?"

I said to her, "Don't acknowledge it. You can't change anything."

Now her arms wound tightly around my waist as I trotted behind Ordires on horse. The sun was peeking through the trees around us, making their bare forms look more beautiful than eerie. It made me wish Edmund, Lucy, and Evangeline were with us. They would think it's beautiful.

Aside from Sophia's warm breaths against my back, the ride was completely silent. Even the wind remained quite calm, which was helpful in ignoring the ever-present cold which crept up my arms every time Sophia's breaths halted. I reminded myself things could be much worse.

There could be a plague.

"Did you hear that?" Ordires wondered suddenly, stopping his horse abruptly in front of us.

I looked around the forest. We had been travelling no more than a couple hours. "No," I said, slowly, watching his face as he analyzed our landscape. "But I'm not as alert as you so I wouldn't take my word for it."

He didn't look at me. His eyes searched the barren trees like they were all enemies with their backs turned from us. Sophia nestled closer into my back and didn't say a word as Ordires and I were now on full alert, waiting for another sound.

And then it came into my eardrums. It wasn't a war sound. It was a home sound; like the creaking of a staircase as someone's runs downstairs, or the sizzling of bacon in a frying pan in the morning. Couch cushions scrunched together as a family sits together around a table, piano keys being played lightly in the distance.

It was the crackling of fire, and not a fire in which its users are desperate and using every last bit of its benevolent worth. No, it was crackling like it was in the hearth of a home.

Ordires turned left and then dismounted from his horse, pulling out a sword along the way.

"I'll check to see what's going on," he said quietly, leaning slightly towards the source of the noise.

It didn't feel like something bad was behind the trees he was heading towards, but I didn't object. I could feel the dagger Susan had given me cold against my thigh. I didn't bother to grab it.

The world was so still; it reminded me that this was the life I was living. Towards the direction we were travelling, the trees curved slightly at the top so the sky only peeked through like holes in a blanket. I watched the trees slightly, expecting them almost to come to life like Evangeline had told me, but they were very still.

I could have trotted away. I could have left all this, I now realized, seeing the ground glisten with the light precipitation that had fallen. Me and Soph. We could have gotten away from all this.

There was a rustle to my left, and soon Ordires came out of the trees, sword away, with a very confused look present on his face.

"It's all right," he began, though hesitant. "Just come on. I can't really explain."

He didn't even bother to get back on the horse, just led us all from the ground to where the trees opened as if granting us admission to wherever they led.

From the inside of the forest, it felt as though we were in the deepest parts and even if we travelled for a mile any way, we would still find nothing but trees.

I was incorrect.

Just outside the thinning, nearly wilting trees, like an oasis in a dessert, was the very edge of land. About twenty feet away from where I now sat, leaves which covered the ground turned into water in a lake that wrapped in a circle in the middle of the forest. It was large, but still small enough so I could see the trees on the other side, some specks of orange, red, and brown popping from their branches.

The most peculiar thing was there was a strip of small land which jutted out into the lake like a thumb, and at the very edge and without going past where water and land met, was a small house. The fire I had heard previously was just outside the house, like a campfire at the edge of the world.

Memories of home flooded to my mind as I remembered a house just like the one, at the edge where water and land went back and forth. My mother was standing on the porch, as if waiting for me to come home from school. And I expected any minute for her to go away, like this was just a hallucination, but she didn't.

My eyes widened as I shook Sophia awake and dismounted the horse with her in my arms. Ordires helped me get stable once I was on the ground, but I didn't have a chance to see his expression to guess if he knew who this person was sitting on the porch.

I approached briskly, but not even in a run or jog because my mother still didn't deserve that satisfaction. I just wanted to know how she had gotten away and why.

I didn't miss her. I didn't.

It felt like a million years before I reached the house and she stood up from the porch with arms outstretched like I was eight years old again when the world was okay.

"What happened? How did you find this place?" I said instantly, holding Sophia to my chest as I made the wooden stairs of the house creak.

Her smile twitched as it turned into a straight line, but she spoke as if my welcome was satisfactory. "After the fire, I had to get Jude out. I just ran. I'm sorry. I'll explain more when everyone gets here."

Explain more? What else did she have to say?

"And you just came across this house?" I asked skeptically. She shook her head.

"No. It's Adelaide's, a faun. When we first got to Narnia, she found your father, your brother, and I and helped us out. She knew of the situation before you did," she explained, then put an arm around me as she ushered Sophia and I inside the screen door. It slammed behind me, causing me to turn and see Ordires right behind us. I didn't bother to listen to my mother's greeting to him as I stepped further inside.

Would she ever have bothered to look for us if we hadn't come?

The house reminded me of a city house, the biggest thing in my vision immediately being a wooden staircase with cranberry colored carpet. To the left was a living room, and to the right was a dining room. Hesitantly, I walked further in and felt a cold rush behind me from my mother and Ordires walking inside the household.

My mother walked right past me as if giving us a detour.

"Adelaide's in here," she said, and the walked through the dining room to the kitchen. Both rooms were quaint, a small circular table in the dining room that centered an archway, leading to the lemon-colored kitchen.

Adelaide was very young and reminded me of Evangeline with the way she moved through the kitchen like she was constantly trying to keep up with time. She held a certain grace, however, that Evangeline didn't. She was more relaxed. I couldn't help but smile as we entered.

"Ah," the faun looked at all of us, and then motioned to the table. "Sit. I've just got lunch in."

Ordires looked a little uncertain but I sat down with Sophia in my lap so he must have felt obliged to as well.

My mother sat down across from us at the circled-wooden table crammed in the side of the kitchen with her hands clasped. Adelaide didn't seem bothered by the silence.

I thanked her as Sophia unconsciously moved her head into my shoulder when she set a plate of food in front of me. She smiled, and then observed me for a moment as if I were a museum piece on display.

"You're it," she said, with a smile. I saw Ordires stiffen slightly.

"I'm sorry?" I asked, running a hand through Sophia's hair nervously.

"The winged. It's the legend. The first born daughter of the last born winged must set this all right," she replied, and then turned back to the kitchen and began chopping vegetables as if it was no news at all what she was saying.

I tried to hide my embarrassment as my face grew red, like all of this was some big secret. Then I remembered my mother had said that she had told Adelaide everything. Did she have a reason to trust her with all this? Or was her trust completely filled with luck?

"Could you elaborate? I thought no one knew of the legend?" I asked curiously.

My mother exhaled and answered, "No one wanted to talk about it, Eleanor. And there wasn't much proof for a long time, really. Anyone who spoke of it was deemed a lunatic."

"And who wants to be called that?" Adelaide mused with her back turned to us at the counter.

I tried to wrap my head around what they were saying but I couldn't. "Wait. What do you mean when you say I must set it all right?"

My mother began, "With the winged back-"

"I wasn't talking to you," I said calmly to her, taking a deep breath. The room was silent for a moment, and I didn't dare to look at my mother because I knew there'd be hurt in her eyes so I continued, "What did you mean, Adelaide?"

"Well, surely you read the book," she said softly, and then I remembered how it was placed in my bag back on the horse.

"I brought it. But I didn't read that much yet."

Adelaide and my mother shared a look of disgruntlement, but nobody said anything else so the meal continued in a silence of unease.

It took three hard punches in the upstairs bathroom from skin to metal to get the faucet of the tub to move. After a moment, water began seeping from it like blood seeping from skin and I thanked whatever higher power was out there that is wasn't that cold.

"Ah, running water," Sophia murmured in a trance, still dazed by her sleep. I smiled, then helped her out of her clothes and sat on tiled floor next to the tub as she sat in the warm water. The tub was as white as porcelain white would get; it even had wooden lion's feet as supports for each side which I observed as the water filled to the brim of the tub.

I turned the faucet back so no more water spilled from the spout and handed Sophia a bar of pale pink soap. She took it from me and began washing as I leaned my head back against the wall and closed my eyes.

Then memories started coming back so I opened them again.

"Will you ever read that book? Why did you bring it?" Sophia wondered innocently, not even bothering to look at me.

I looked up to the ceiling as my left hand trailed at the top of the water's surface. I don't know why I brought it, to be honest. Lucy always talked about that Aslan character back at the Cair and if we ever did cross paths with Him I did want to have the book so all of my questions could get answered once I read it.

"Yes," I said, looking at her. "But I don't want to talk about it. Ever."

She rolled her eyes, ignoring the fact that I didn't fully answer her, as her freckles seeming to fit perfect on her face. I observed the lion's feet again.

"Solomon knew it was me the moment he laid his eyes on me," I murmured, rolling my head over to her as it leaned against the off-white chipping walls. "We should have done something sooner. What did we think would happen? Everyone would find out that a server of Jadis is back and we just all run off into the sunset?"

"You'd fly," Sophia pointed out. I exhaled heavily.

"It's like communism from our world, this whole winged thing. Cair Paravel's in flames and now there's a full-fledged war about to happen and yet we all seemed to forget beforehand that even the worst case scenario is susceptible to happen."

"You have a whole country counting on you," she said softly, though I could tell by her tone she was only trying to diffuse some of my anxiety.

"To do what?" I asked earnestly, watching her lean back into the water until everything but her face was covered.

"To save the world," she mused. "Sprout some wings and fly away. That's how you do it."

Her joking voice did help in relaxing me. "I want to do something," I admitted. "I just don't know how."

"Read the book first. Go now."

I began getting up. My bum ached from being against tile and I knew Sophia would have laughed if I told her. "No. I have to talk to Margo. I want to find out if she'd ever look for us if we didn't come-"

"El…" she began, drifting off for a moment as I turned towards her at the door. The water lapped slightly as she moved to the side of the tub. "I've read more of that book than you have."

"So?"

"So…I know how Wingeds work more than you do. They were created directly from Jadis herself for her power. They get that power from using their strengths and keeping their weaknesses at afar."

"Doesn't everyone?" I said, leaning against the door, trying to find the right moment to slip away without her seeing my enthusiasm in avoiding the subject.

"It's a Winged's nature to do all those things. Don't forget that Mum was one of them, and you are. You can't get mad at a scorpion for stinging you. It's in its nature. Mum probably thought this was the best way to protect Jude, and we're usually more vulnerable when we're together anyway."

As I processed her words, I began thinking about all the times she implied that I was a Winged and all these things were in its nature. What did she think I was doing to hold whatever little power I had? And over what?

"Okay, Soph," I drawled, slowly opening the door and shutting it behind me. I tried to pretend it didn't bother me. I tried to pretend it didn't scare me. But it did.

Adelaide's small house miraculously fit six bedrooms. Jude was asleep in one of the two downstairs, lying across the bed with his thumb in his mouth and his curly hair moving up and down as he breathed. Her house reminded of home when I was little. Not in the way it looked, but in the way it felt.

The wooden floors creaked under footsteps of movement, making the house feel like it was old and experienced and worthy of the word home. Every single bedroom had the same small design of bed, dresser, and window. Paint was chipping left and right but it only made it feel more rustic and authentic. The food cooked in the kitchen could be smelt throughout the whole house which masked the smell of the old furniture in the living room.

It took me three days to mask up the courage to talk to my mother. Every time I got closer to doing so, I would turn and pretend I had something better to do, and all the while I imagined how ironic it must be due to the fact that some days I was so daring with my words with her that I could visually see the distress on her face from what I had said.

Whenever I approached her, I got a knot in my stomach as I was going to have to perform in front of a crowd of people or was on the verge of tears in front of someone in public.

But on the third day it was just her and I in Adelaide's living room. Sophia was playing with Jude in her guest room and Adelaide was upstairs napping. Ordires insisted that he constantly remain outside, guarding the house. I wasn't one to refuse protection anymore.

She was reading something vaguely on the couch across from me when I spoke.

"Would you-" I croaked, clearing my throat before saying, "Would you have come for us if we never came here? Why did you just leave the Cair?"

"Have you read the book?" she said dimly, not looking at me. My stomach twisted.

"Blast the book. I want you to say it."

Her eyes met mine, and it was like the day she was explaining miracles where they looked sad even when her mouth was not in a frown. I wondered if she believed in them still. No, she probably thought nothing of miracles anymore.

Her voice grew soft, abandoning the book, and leaned in slightly as if the wind outside would hear us as she spoke, "I don't-I don't believe you'll enjoy hearing this," she bit the inside of her mouth and looked towards the front door, and then back at me. "I needed to save Jude. It was the first thing I thought of and the first thing my instincts acted upon. I had a feeling you would be okay. And you are, so what's the problem?"

"You don't know that about the rest of them," I countered. "Why aren't we going back? Would you have ever?"

"No," she snapped, causing something inside me to tighten. Seeing me clench my jaw, her face softened slightly.

"We're all in danger here," she said, smoother, more delicately, like her words were long strips of linen swaying with her every action. "It doesn't matter if we're together, or if we're accounted for, none of it."

I didn't say anything. Her hand rubbed nervously across her forehead.

"Jadis can be brought back with us. Wingeds were her ultimate power. The power so many either didn't know about or didn't want to mention. That's what makes Wingeds special. They held all that power and yet no one cared to destroy them."

"Is that why Aslan gave you a second chance?" I wondered aloud.

She nodded tersely, skin creasing at her mouth. "No one cared to destroy them, and only He could, anyway. But He didn't want to. He understood that our nature is what drove us. We just wanted to survive, and a life without Jadis was not one worth thinking about. Until Him."

She stopped at her words, almost as if reminiscing about Aslan.

He was becoming more and more prominent in my life, yet I still don't understand as to why He would have given my mother a second chance. What made her different? And how did it help at all, considering now we have to clean up this mess?

"He gave us a chance, and so we were all sent to Earth," she continued, my thoughts of Him buzzing away. "We had children there. But He and I knew that the business of the Winged was not done here because there are still bits of it inside you that transferred from me. The parts He could not destroy. The only Wingeds were females. That's why they didn't go to James first."

"Where are the other Wingeds, then?"

She bit her lip. "I was the only one that made it. Once Jadis discovered Aslan's plans, she destroyed the rest of them. She didn't have to time to destroy me."

How unfortunately unlucky.

"And now I have to destroy Jadis," I confirmed. She nodded. "Who is able to resurrect from the parts of the Winged inside me? How are we supposed to destroy any chance of her coming back without destroying me?"

My mother had looked down as I spoken, but now her eyes looked up and they were glassed over and weary.

She didn't speak, making me believe the answer was either It's not possible or I do not know. I didn't want to know either, so I tried, "You told me before the Jadis was rising from the ice? Where is this?"

"Anyone who wished to summon her with simple magic can, and it won't take blood to get her back. Once she is summoned, she will be free because the Wingeds power will draw her out."

My hands ran over my face and down my neck. There were too many facts and questions for one conversation and I found it hard to wrap myself around what she was saying.

She didn't know how to fix it. And she didn't know if I would make it out alive.

I began standing up. I didn't want to think of all the problems I was not longer ignorant to. My mother looked at me quizzically. "What are you doing?" she asked, still sitting on the couch.

"We can't waste any more time. We should leave now, find Dad and James, and then figure things out with them," I explained. Her eyes widened, and then immediately she stood and took my forearm in her hand and held it tightly. Her movements startled me, but she was the first to speak.

"I can't let you do that," she said, her voice now firm like wire holding together a fence. "We've already lost enough."

"What do you think I'm going to do, just sit here?" I snapped, pulling myself out of her grasp and stepping back. "This is your mess, whether you want it to or not. We have to fix this."

"We don't have to," she said, now desperately, and took my hands in hers. "We've lost too much, darling. Your father and James could come here. They'll find us. As long as no one summons Jadis with magic, she won't come."

"But the magic is still here," I countered, pulling my hands away from her. I felt like a child, arguing about eating vegetables. "And what have we lost? We've lost no more than what Narnia has. People have died, Margot. We're not the only ones suffering."

"They don't need you to end this," she tried convincing me. I didn't have to ask who they were.

My teeth grinded against each other in my mouth as I said, "You just said that Jadis can come back because some of the Wingeds magic is in me, so of course they need me. I'm not leaving them, and you're being a hypocrite. That's selfish."

"Being selfish is the only way we'll survive. Either we die, or some Narnians. Please don't make me hold you hostage here."

"I highly doubt Adelaide will want us to spend the rest of our lives in her house, and Jude is Narnian," I pointed out. "So technically he is part of that some Narnians group you were talking about."

Ordires opened the screen door, looked around, and then went back outside again. Margot waited a moment to speak as I watched him resume his post out in front of the porch.

"Please, we just got you and Sophia back," she sounded desperate again, and yet I still felt no sympathy towards her. "We can be a family. You don't have to fight in this war."

"I'm not leaving them," I said defiantly, standing up straighter so we spoke eye to eye. Hers almost looked vacant. "And I don't want this family, not like this. Not through abandonment of another."

She scoffed. "You don't even know them, Eleanor."

And then I felt my toes curl up. Heat rushed throughout my whole body. I wanted to leave. I wanted to maximize the space between her and me as much as possible. I wanted Sophia to understand, but I knew she never would. I wanted family. I wanted Edmund. I wanted to understand what all of this meant, and not from some erratic book which had been thrown at me and supposedly had all the answers, even though Jadis was coming back and my mother didn't know a way to rid Narnia of her without hurting me.

I wanted to find Him.

Suddenly, the world grew silent. The floorboards weren't creaking. The curtains weren't swinging loosely in front of the windows; the water wasn't lapping around the perimeter of the lake.

It was still. I saw my mother, her eyes sunken in slightly like she had aged 50 years in the week. Graying hairs peeked up from her scalp as it wrapped loosely in a low bun. She was not firm, or strong, or resilient.

She was tired, weak, desperate…

"They were a family to me when I had no one," I choked out, feeling a bittersweet taste rise in my throat. I wasn't going to cry. "They took me in when had nothing, loved me when I was completely unworthy of it. It is dysfunctional, I'll admit, no family is a picnic, but if you think I'm trading them for this sick fantasy of yours, you are absolutely crazy."

I made sure I remembered what my mother looked like before I turned to the screen door. I knew I wouldn't see her again for a long time.

Ordires started running after me when I got to the woods, but my mother spoke words that echoed to my eardrums, running through my blood and bones like oxygen that was taken in.

"Let her go."

Her voice was cold, airy, like a sheet of ice.

Running was my only option once I knew I was out of their sight. Out of that life. Out of her fantasy and all the things she did wrong and I was left to do right. I kept running until my lungs were hurling forward into my chest, my heart screaming at me from the inside out to stop but I couldn't. I kept going until the lapping of the shores was no longer with me; the only sounds were crunching leaves beneath my feet and my skirts scraping against tree branches.

Finally, I collapsed once the sun was barely shining and I felt myself dry heaving once I landed to the ground. My body felt like it was on fire, but I was free. The hardest part of me I could feel was that hole that had formed just under my heart, where all the people I had met and cared for and loved had flown away from me.

I didn't have the book, but that didn't matter. I needed to find Him. I needed these questions crawling through my mind like parasites hosting on my body to be answered before time ran out, and I didn't need that book to know what those questions were.

Author's Note: 26! What? I can't believe I made it this far... I'm so happy and I want to thank all my readers again. I just hit 100 reviews and that's pretty amazing. To all those who reviewed, alerted, favorited for this chapter, thank you:

The Perfect Replica

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