They looked at him expectantly, but he continued to eat for a few moments before he again spoke.
"I dreamt I was back…where I came from," said Timothy thoughtfully. "It was summer, I believe, nearing the harvest time, and we were all working to ready the storage houses."
A shrill but distant cry echoed through the forest to the east, where the sun was rising. Lucy shivered.
"I remember…one day, a woman came to my farmhouse," Timothy continued slowly. "She was old, very old, with skin so wrinkled it looked like paper. There was something…something different around her, but I can't remember what. I don't think she was an ordinary woman. She looked like she might have been beautiful in her youth, but now she seemed to be dying, poor thing. And oh – I remember now – one of her fingers had been cut off, and the wound was strange, oozing what looked like sap rather than blood. And it smelled of apples. That was the strangest thing of all."
Edmund made a face over his breakfast; it was clear he didn't like the topic in combination with food, but Timothy continued anyway.
"My wife and I tried to help her," he said, smiling wistfully (Lucy got the feeling he had only recently remembered his wife). "We treated her wound and gave her food and drink, and a place to sleep, but the next morning we found that she had gone from this world. She seemed to have traveled a long way to find us, but she was too late. And after that, things began to change in my homeland."
"How so?" Lucy asked curiously, managing another bite of breakfast despite the lingering mental images of the dried out spider-creature.
"I don't quite remember," Timothy shrugged. "But I know shifted drastically there. And I know inside that I must rescue all my people from that world as soon as I can."
"And we will," Peter assured him. "As soon as we rescue our sister. Your people may be trapped in that world, but they aren't in any immediate danger – Susan is."
"Yes, I know," Timothy said, though there was a slightly urgent edge still in his voice. Lucy had the feeling that he was rather bent on the one thing he intended to accomplish.
No more was spoken through that meal; when the sun had risen scarcely ten minutes they were packing up their things and beginning their trek north, back into the mass of towering trees and sticky slime that had plagued them before. Lucy tried not to think of warm baths or hot food, as she knew they would probably have to spend another two nights in the forest and thinking of better things simply made the real world seem worse.
They spoke little for the first half hour of the trek, raising their voices only to warn one another of some trick in the landscape. When the sun had risen considerably above the treetops, some bare-boned conversation between Peter and Timothy arose, the High King idly questioning their comrade about his life. Sometimes he had the answers, sometimes he didn't. Lucy didn't bother herself with listening to it, as she was busy trying not to fall face-first into the slime-covered mess of decomposition that was the forest floor. The green rash of yesterday had disappeared, but the skin was now covered in small, light-brown flecks.
The first trouble came around noontime, surprisingly (before then, the worst they'd encountered was some hanging ivy that had "attempted to eat Edmund's pack," though Lucy suspected he'd just gotten it tangled and had been too proud to admit it). Peter, who was leading, let out a warning yell that made Lucy jump, and a second later she stepped right into what he'd been warning about. Abruptly ankle-deep in tree slime, she let out a shriek and hurriedly stepped back out of what seemed to be a long, somewhat elliptical indentation in the ground. The roots of the trees had been smashed into it, and the sludge had obviously seeped in to form a sort of puddle, which now had a few leaves floating in it.
"Disgusting," Timothy commented, coming up behind them.
"It's a footprint," said Peter worriedly. Edmund opened his mouth, shut it, and looked at his brother for leadership.
"I guess we go around it, then," Lucy suggested, when it was obvious that Peter wasn't going to say anything. "Since I don't fancy wading through it."
Edmund nodded and led the way, veering slightly off to one side with a glance at the sun. Lucy followed, then Timothy, then at last Peter, who tore his eyes away from the footprint, checked for his sword, shield and pack, then continued along behind the rest of them in the rear.
"Let's just hope we don't run into whatever made it," Edmund commented, holding aside a few hanging vines for Lucy, who thanked him.
"I wouldn't fancy it," Timothy agreed. "We've had enough of monsters for one trip."
They trudged along, through the muck and slime, and Lucy again thought of what it might feel like to be clean. It had only been a day, but she already felt as if she had been dirty an eternity. If only Susan could see us, Lucy thought dryly. She would take Peter and Edmund by the ear, and send them off to bathe, and then she'd drag me along too…
This thought was amusing enough to lift her spirits slightly, and let out a little laugh, which was largely ignored but for Edmund, who gave her a strange look.
"I was thinking of Su," she explained. He blinked.
"I wouldn't think that would be cause for laughter," he commented. "Given that she's in a spot of trouble right now."
"Well, there's no use worrying," said Lucy, shrugging. "It's not as if it will change anything. I was just thinking of what she would say if she saw us now."
Edmund grinned, hacking a low-hanging branch off a tree and kicking it out of their path.
"She'd probably tell us to stop being silly and turn back," he laughed.
"Yes, and that we're awfully dirty," Lucy agreed. "She'd make us all take baths."
"You know, I would have no objections to that," Peter called from behind them. His younger siblings nodded in agreement, laughing, but abruptly there was an overwhelming, echoing rush of air, a booming thump and the foliage jumped a little as the ground shook. Suddenly, barely two feet away from Edmund nose, there was a tall, thick pillar of grayish-green flesh, covered in faint, rippling scales. It was, unmistakably, a foot.
