A/N: First off, thank you to everyone who has been following this story. I had some reservations about telling Susan's story, but your support and kind comments have encouraged me to keep it up. Of Hearth and Home is now catching up to To Be Just in the number of reviews, which is both surprising and flattering. Again, heartfelt thanks to all of you!

Ch 26: The Wood Between The Worlds

Susan's senses came back to her at last, and she had to force herself to action past a curious feeling of lethargy. She opened her eyes. She stood in a shallow pool in the middle of a vivid-green forest. Edmund was on his knees beside her, clutching her wrist and looking as dazed as she. She could still feel the scrape of stone on the fingers of her other hand—her empty hand.

Saris was not with them. She felt sick.

Fluttering reached her ears. Salvia hopped on the ground, trailing a broken wing.

Water splashed. She turned around to find Lucy and Peter stumbling across the pool toward them, still holding hands. In Lucy's other was Jadis's wand. Peter held the leather wallet containing the rings under his arm.

Edmund turned where he knelt. On seeing the wand, he lurched to his feet and leaped back.

Lucy let go of Peter and grabbed the end of the wand like a cricket bat. She swung it at the nearest tree. The wand cracked across the trunk, but remained whole. "It won't break," she said, shaking her hand.

Peter saw the injured hawk and sloshed through the pool. "Salvia."

"I cannot move it," the hawk said.

Everyone exchanged a look of relief at understanding the hawk's speech. Peter helped the bird onto his arm. "Don't, don't try. Lucy, your cordial."

Lucy obliged, while Edmund stood in the middle of the pool staring into the trees. "Where's Leina? Leina? Leina!" His voice echoed through the trees, stronger than it had been during their time in England. He bolted.

"Ed, no!" Peter called.

He, Lucy, and Salvia chased after Edmund, and Susan had no choice but to follow or lose them in these woods, too. She glanced back at the pool to England with tears in her eyes. It looked like a half dozen others she could see through the trees. She took a step, hesitated, then took another, aching. Saris. Grimly, she turned and raced after her siblings.

The sound of snarling reached her, and she ran toward it. Then came gunfire. Susan nocked an arrow on her bowstring. She and her siblings burst into a clearing, where two of the Nazis were shooting at Leina. Blood stained the wolf's ruff. Susan let fly two arrows—thwack, thwack. Both hit home, and the Nazis toppled to the ground.

Ed dropped to his knees. "Leina!"

The wolf galloped to him, and his hands flew to her ruff. "I'm fine, I'm fine," she growled. "It's his blood, that tall one. I bit his hand. Wish I'd got more of him before he ran." She showed her teeth.

Ed pressed his forehead to hers and murmured something. The wolf nuzzled his cheek. "Stupid human," she said softly.

"What's happened here?" Peter asked.

Susan noticed, for the first time, that the clearing in which they stood was nothing more than a large, wide, shallow depression in the grass. "There was a pool here," she guessed. Looking through the trees, she saw three other clearings, identical to the one in which they stood. She remembered Saris's account of what had happened to Charn—The portal is closed, now—and a shiver ran through her. "This world is destroyed."

They stared at each other, each wearing horrified looks. "Narnia," Peter whispered. He spun toward Edmund. "Asha! Can you sense her?"

Ed sat back on his heels. Closing his eyes, he pressed a fist to his chest. In the silence, Susan almost felt she could hear the trees growing. A moment later, Ed opened his eyes, and his chest heaved as if he hadn't taken a decent breath in days. "She's there," he choked out. "She's there, she's there. But something's wrong." He got to his feet.

"How can we find the pool to Narnia?" Lucy asked, turning in a circle.

"And where are the other Nazis?" Peter added, scanning their surroundings. "Did we draw them all with us?"

"The tall one escaped as soon as I arrived here," Leina said. "He came, at least. Two dead—" She nodded toward Susan's handiwork, "—so that leaves two others."

Peter rubbed at his beard. "Which means they must be—"

Gunfire erupted again. Wordlessly, everyone scattered among the trees. Peter and Edmund snatched up the rifles of the dead soldiers as they went. Susan readied another arrow and hid behind a towering tree, wondering if the Wood had ever seen this much activity in however long it had existed.

And then came silence, so complete and so deep that she felt it sinking into her bones and whispering to her to sit, to rest, to sleep—almost as if the entreaty had come from the trees themselves. Her lids drooped. How long since she had rested well?

She forced herself to focus. Hearing nothing but that strange, dim, shifting noise of vegetation growing, she turned around.

Right into a Nazi, whose eyes were wild with madness. He stood too close to use her bow. She tore the arrow from its string and tried to strike with it, but the Nazi snatched the arrow and flung it away. A knife gleamed in his hand.

Something shot in from of her, and the next thing she knew, the Nazi was hanging in the air off his feet, choking, his throat in the grip of a blue hand. It flung the Nazi toward a tree. Susan heard a sickening crack and the Nazi crumpled into a limp heap.

Saris loomed beside her, his sulfur eyes gleaming furiously at the dead man.