AN: Some Thematic Elements, and the word "damn" has reared its ugly head once again. If only I could set up a potty-mouth bucket for that OC! I'm sure he'd make me rich in no time. LOL. Alas, fictional characters cannot pay me non-fictional money. Crying shame. Back on topic, I hope you all like the chapter.
"I doctor up her tea a few times and all of a sudden she thinks it's all right to just leave home without telling me!" groused Peter, pushing aside a bramble and forcing his way through a dense, woodsy path.
Behind him, panting slightly, Susan scoffed, "You've got to be joking."
Peter stopped, accidentally letting go of the bramble so that it swung backwards. It would have hit Susan in the face if she hadn't ducked in time to avoid it. (Frankly, Peter was pretty relieved she had; the switch-like impact would have made his face smart, too.)
"All right," he admitted, letting the strong guilt he knew his twin already sensed in him, however much he pretended to believe he'd been in the right for argument's sake, show. "I messed up. I should never have used that herb to make her forget. It was wrong. I was just desperate and stupid, and I didn't know what else to do."
"I knew all along you shouldn't have messed with her mind," Susan said, tossing her head back rather self-righteously.
Peter turned and looked sharply at her. "My foot you did!" His facial expression hardened into a glower. "You practically told me to do it."
Putting her hand to her heart, shocked, Susan exclaimed, "I did no such thing!"
"Liar. Did you honestly forget for a second there that I can read your thoughts? You wanted me to do it. You were scared, too. We were in this one together." Peter couldn't believe she was throwing him to the wolves like this. All the more so since they'd talked it over at great length. Susan must have had one of those weird, selective memories; she could recite parts of at least three different dictionaries off the top of her head, but she couldn't remember she had been the one to push that first herb-laced teacup towards Lucy. "And if you did have any issues with what I-what we-did, then you ought to have said something at the time!"
"Well," snapped Susan, "you could have waited for the search party our father was arranging instead of just going after her without the foggiest idea which way she went."
"I know where she went," Peter retorted. He figured the lousy search party would just turn over every rock in the Lantern Waste then be desolate when they couldn't find her; but to him it was painfully obvious that if she was going after Edmund, not wanting to get caught, the Lantern Waste would be the last place she'd stay for very long. "Remember the bill from the inn?"
"Yes," Susan huffed, making it quite clear she thought that was well beside the point, "and going there to inquire of her whereabouts was a good idea. Coming out here into this beastly wood with nothing more than the vague knowledge that a strange dwarf neither the innkeeper nor his wife saw anything of might have told her to go this way, on the other hand, was just plain stupid."
"No one asked you to come," growled Peter, lowering his brow.
"Your face did," Susan said, rather quietly, looking away from him.
His expression softened a little. "Su, I'm sorry. I just can't sit at home and do nothing." He chuckled bitterly to himself, closing his eyes. "It's funny, before Lucy left, I didn't understand. I was scared, but I had no idea what it really felt like. Now I know why she couldn't stay put when Edmund went missing."
"He didn't go missing," said Susan pointedly, putting a reassuring hand on her twin brother's shoulder. "We both saw him leave."
"Yes, but Lucy thinks he went missing, that's what she believes, whatever we have to say about it," Peter explained brokenly. "Edmund treated her like a piece of dirt, it's true, and I don't know if I can ever forgive him for that, but..." His voice trailed off, then picked up again. "If how she felt when she thought he was kidnapped was anything like how I feel now..."
"It's all right," Susan tried to assure him. "I'm sorry I blamed you. I just hate being in this wood. I-I'm frightened, that's all."
"Susan, we have to find her," Peter said, his voice becoming a weak whimper. "If anything happens to her, I'll never forgive myself."
"We'll have a much better chance if we turn back," she suggested, even though she knew it wasn't what he wanted to hear. "We should have taken the search party with us. We can't do this alone."
"Maybe not," Peter agreed. "But I can't turn back now. There's no telling how far ahead of us she is, or which way she's really going. If I'm even remotely close to her now, I can't possibly risk going back and finding out later... I can't, Su, I just can't. Please don't ask me to do that."
Susan swallowed hard and bit her lip. Releasing it, she said, "Peter, you're not her father. You can't do everything. I know you try to, you always have, but you simply can't."
"It doesn't matter," he insisted, his eyes growing misty; "I have to."
"Peter." Susan let go of his shoulder and took his hand. "A mere physician couldn't possibly survive this, there could be bandits or worse..."
"Susan-" he began.
"No," she cut him off. "Please let me finish." She squeezed the hand she still held. "A village doctor can't do this. But maybe, just maybe, a knight can."
"I don't understand."
"Peter, you know how to fight. I know you learned, even if your promise to me meant you could never put it into practice." Susan smiled shakily at him. "I'm letting you out of it now."
"It's a little too late," he told her doubtfully.
"Not for you it isn't," said Susan. "All this time all I've ever reminded you was how delicate your health was, how you promised me never to fight, but I never told you how strong you are. You are strong, Peter, you are. This is madness, but if anyone can get through it, you can."
Peter pulled her into an embrace and hugged her, holding her close for a few moments. Pulling away, he said, "Go home. I'll go on alone. I know this scares you. You've been as brave as you need to be. Go on back to the inn, stay a night, then travel to the mansion. Tell everyone what I'm doing and...just be safe there, all right?"
"Safe?" She half-smirked and elbowed him lightly in the ribs. "With a twin brother who is entirely mad, and now both a fighter and a physician, wandering the forest without a guide? You've lost your mind. You're right about one thing, though. We're in this together. We messed up together and we'll fix this together as well. Besides, I took the liberty of sending a letter back home in the care of the innkeeper's stable boy. Father will know where we are; he won't have to worry we've gone missing or run away, too. Not yet, anyway. But, regardless, I'm only going back if you go with me."
"Then I guess we had better keep moving." Peter took a step forward. He didn't verbally say 'thank you' to his sister for sticking by his side, but she knew by his thoughts that he meant it all the same.
Meanwhile, Lucy had come to a frozen river.
Going by the directions the dwarf had given her as well as the guidance of the morning star's compass, she knew she was meant to be on the other side, and thus had to cross over, but she wondered anxiously if the ice was strong enough to hold her or not. She was debating whether or not her silver helmet would weigh her down very much.
In the end, she took it off her head and stuffed it into the deerskin pack. And, taking a deep breath, she put a foot on the ice.
It held. She put her other foot after it, holding her breath. A faint smile came to her lips; it was still holding. The odds of making it across seemed increasingly in her favor.
That is, until she heard a queer scuffling noise on top of the frozen waterfall above her.
Curious and a little unnerved, she looked up, hoping it was just some beavers or rabbits.
It was much greater than a beaver or rabbit, however. It was massive and gray. Unmistakably, it was a wolf; a very handsome gray wolf with a serious face and dark eyes.
From the distance, Lucy couldn't tell if it was a talking wolf or not. Either way, she hoped it was friendly. All the more so as it appeared to have noticed her and was beginning to scurry down the rocks on the side of the waterfall like they were a flight of stairs.
She knew she ought to move faster, try to beat it across to the other side, but she was still scared of breaking the ice if she ran on it, fairly certain it was thinner in some places than others, and furthermore, she was barely to the middle of the river as of yet.
Too far in to turn back, but not close enough to the end that she could scramble to it if danger struck.
Suddenly the wolf was leaping down in front of her, all four paws spread out on the ice, an angry look in its narrowed eyes, growling.
A little cry escaped her and she jumped back, luckily onto a part of the river she had already been on and knew was thick enough to support her.
The wolf was, in fact, none other than Edmund Maugrim using the green ring, but Lucy had no way of knowing that. Something told her it wasn't a dumb beast, that it could talk, only it didn't seem to feel like having a conversation at the moment; it merely kept on growling.
What he was trying to do was get her back to the other side of the river. Sure, it wasn't much, but it was still one river further away from Charn than she would be if he didn't frighten her into retreating.
Honestly, he was rather in shock that she had come after him after what he'd done to her. That had been the whole point. What was wrong with this girl? What else could he have possibly done to make her hate him and stay at the mansion where she'd be safe? He had cheated on her, insulted her, and left her! What did more did it take?
It was lucky that Edmund had turned around and gone a short ways in the opposite direction from Charn. If he hadn't, he might have not learned she wasn't at home where she belonged in time.
The reason he had done so was because, as a wolf, his nose was more sensitive and the wind blowing in his direction from behind had picked up the smell of a faun. Wondering if it was Tumnus, he had decided to rush back through the forest unobserved and see for himself. He hoped it wasn't, that it was just some random, unknown faun out for a pleasure walk in the evening through predator-infested trees despite the cold weather (as unlikely as that seemed), wanting his former mentor to be safe along with Eustace and Ammi (because they weren't half-goat their scent wasn't as strong and hadn't reached him, so he had no reason to think they were in the forest following him back to Charn, too). But if it was indeed Tumnus, he wanted to demand of him if he'd stolen the yellow ring (Edmund knew one of his fellow accomplices had to of) instead of pulling away from the witch like their plan called for. He was sure that as a wolf he was swift enough to make up for any lost miles and get back on the right path before Jadis took too much notice, so he set off.
But whether by some conflicting wind coming from the wrong direction or else some force pulling him a different way, or perhaps the green ring itself resisting being dragged away from the paths to Charn this far on in the mission, Edmund lost the scent and found himself at a halfway, neither here nor there, point on top of a waterfall.
He had just been about to give up looking for Tumnus, figuring the faun would have to find him instead, when an almost physically painful feeling had come over him. His whole wolf-body shook violently.
There was no doubt about a magical force being involved this time; the ring was repelling him against something.
Something below the frozen waterfall.
He'd looked down, only to feel his heart stop in his chest when he saw her; Lucy P. Ramandu, in the flesh, wearing the green cloak he bought for her, crossing the frozen river, clearly heading in the same direction as he was meant to be.
The ring's power tugged at him slightly, as if warning him to keep away from her, but it was on his claw now and in his current form such a small magical artifact couldn't have brought him to any more grief than a bad hangnail or, at the most, a sore paw.
Edmund knew that if he had been in his true human form Jadis would have found a way to make certain he didn't meet up with Lucy at the bottom of the river. As it was, since she wasn't likely to recognize him, this still qualified as part of the mission. This was part of the witch's little game, her sick entertainment. Edmund wasn't officially in trouble until the final round when it became clear he'd botched everything up deliberately to make the witch lose.
All he could think of was making sure Lucy got back to the other side of the river. Once she did, he would figure out how to make her stay there-or, better yet, go home.
"Why are you so angry?" asked Lucy with quivering lips. She would have to make the wolf speak to her. She couldn't go back, and she couldn't move forward with the wolf baring his teeth at her like that, so she saw no other option.
"Turn back," snarled Wolf-Edmund, ignoring her question, "if you want to live."
"I didn't get this far to do that," Lucy told him, trembling but taking a step forward nonetheless.
He growled again.
Now it might seem odd that Lucy couldn't at least recognize Edmund's voice coming out of the furious gray wolf, but when properly considered, it's actually quite understandable. Edmund himself had figured she would know him immediately if he spoke with a Narnian accent, and so he took great care not to use the very accent it had taken him countless hours of practice to master initially before it became natural. Luckily for him, Narnian words spoken with a Charnian edge, suited the gruff voice of a talking wolf remarkably well. He sounded nothing like the Edmund Maugrim who had stayed at the Ramandus' mansion.
Swallowing hard, her heart thumping madly in her chest, Lucy took another step forward.
The wolf snapped his teeth at her. "Stop it!"
Clearly the wolf was not going to let her pass, so she did the only thing she could think of. She went further down the river, instead of sticking close to the waterfall as she originally planned, in a feeble attempt to simply go around the wolf.
But he kept up with her. Whichever way she went, he hastily dashed out in front. Twice, his claws scrapped the ice up as he skidded to a stop. For Lucy, it was even more dangerous, as she didn't have padded paws like the wolf's. She fell back on her bottom after finally almost getting to the other side.
This ended up confirming what she suspected from the start: the wolf, however threatening he acted, was not going to hurt her. If he truly wanted to, he could have pounced long before, all the more so as she was struggling to get back onto her feet on the slippery surface and was in no position to fight him off.
As soon as she was able, Lucy dragged her boots across the ice, still meaning to get passed that wolf.
Edmund had to give her points for persistence. He made himself growl again, though he wasn't sure it would do any real good.
It didn't. Lucy realized she was now only one good jump away from the other side if she leapt diagonally, avoiding the wolf.
Of course she was down-right mad to try it, but Edmund realized-too late-that she was going to anyway.
She's completely lost it, Edmund thought. Why, she's got about as much chance of making that jump as of being the next bloody queen of Narnia! (Oh, wait a minute...that's right, she is...)
She made it. Well, kind of. Her whole upper body was on the other side of the river, but her knees had landed on the ice and were probably smarting like anything under that queer silver dress she was wearing.
"Idiot," Wolf-Edmund grunted.
Lucy groaned and blinked at him, dragging her knees and feet from the ice and onto the snowy shoreline with the rest of her body.
"What the devil were you trying to do? Break a blasted shin-bone?"
"You wouldn't let me get by any other way," she said meekly.
"What was so important about crossing this river?" he snarled.
If Lucy were a different sort of girl, more like her sister, more precocious, she might have retorted, "What was so important about preventing me from crossing this river?" but as she was herself and no other, she replied honestly with no clever remarks. "I'm searching for a friend of mine. He was stolen by a witch on a sledge. His name's Edmund Maugrim; I think he's in a country called Charn."
On a whim, Wolf-Edmund blurted, "Edmund Maugrim?" as if stunned.
"You know him?" Lucy asked, her eyes shinning.
"I did," he said, hating to put out all the lights in her hopeful expression but knowing he must for the sake of saving her.
"Did?" repeated Lucy, the colour temporarily draining from her cheeks and lips.
"He's dead," he lied.
Lucy squinted at the wolf. "I don't believe you." The colour suddenly returned to her face in one semi-furious flush.
Wolf-Edmund cursed under his breath. "All right, so maybe he's not actually dead. But trust me, I can tell you, with complete honestly, that he might as well be. You can't do anything for him, just go home."
"How do you know so much?" Lucy asked, staring into the wolf's eyes as if looking for somebody else inside of him. "Who are you really?"
"Nobody," he grunted. "Just go home."
Lucy continued looking intently at the now squirming, impatient wolf. She could have sworn she knew him from somewhere. "Listen," she said at last, "I'm going to find him whether you tell me who you are or not." And, with that, she scooped up her pack (it had landed on the ground beside her elbow when she jumped across) and resumed walking.
Wolf-Edmund muttered something about her being a pain in his backside and trudged along after her begrudgingly.
"Lovely day," said Lucy by way of making conversation. She didn't want the sullen wolf to think she was ignoring him, but he was so grumpy she didn't quite know what else to say to him.
"It's bloody freezing," he snap-growled, glaring at her. "Shut up."
Lucy sighed.
They appeared to be climbing up to higher grounds now. The land was getting hilly, and even colder than before.
Lucy wondered if they were getting any closer to the west-facing sea, and how she would go about getting a sailing vessel when she got there. She also wondered if the angry-faced wolf meant to sail with her as well or if it would run off before that.
Deep down, she hoped the wolf would stay. She couldn't explain it, but there was something about being with him that made her feel that everything in the world was right again. Such a feeling made no sense, of course, as his demeanor gave her no reason to become attached to him, yet she had unexplainable strong emotions of like-even love-for the unfriendly gray-furred creature. It somehow didn't matter that he, too, had lied to her about Edmund; this wolf was not at all like the dreadful dwarf who'd given her directions for getting to Charn, even if their accents were vaguely similar at times.
Edmund was trying desperately to come up with ways for impeding the remainder of Lucy's journey to Charn without it being obvious to Jadis and her forces of magic. The simplest solution would be to tell Lucy who he was and what was really going on, but he knew Jadis wouldn't allow that. Something would stop him, he was certain of it, and he might, in trying, lose the only way of protecting Lucy he currently had, however feeble it was.
Jadis would find a way to pull him away from the demistar the second she learned who he was. This had never happened before, and as of right now it was probably an amusing novelty, an intriguing grand finale, but if that changed, the witch could change things and keep them apart until Lucy arrived in Charn.
He was sorry he hadn't met up with Tumnus first, if it really had been Tumnus he'd smelled. Perhaps, between the two of them, they could have thought of a subtle way to make Lucy turn back.
Suddenly a scream of sickly surprise came out of Lucy, and Wolf-Edmund realized she was falling down the opposite side of the hill, which had given way in a landslide that had missed the ground he was standing on by a hair of an inch.
He tried to grab onto the back of her cloak with his teeth and pull her up, but it all happened so quickly that he missed, catching nothing but cold air in his teeth, Lucy falling below.
Anxious to see if she was all right, he searched frantically for a path leading down. For a human, there were none at all, save the way Lucy had gone (namely falling); for a wolf, there were a few, but unfortunately even the nearest one would take him out of sight of the place Lucy had landed for several minutes.
Lucy's world was black for a second before she sat up in a snowbank and it all turned white again.
A flash of silver told her that her helmet had tumbled out of her pack. Everything else, however, seemed in place. She had no broken bones and only a few bruises worth mentioning. There was a very small cut just above her left eyebrow from which a little stream of blood trickled, but it clotted speedily.
No sooner had she scrambled to her feet and gone to retrieve her helmet than there came the sight of flashing steel, and a voice said, "This is real silver. I'll be taking it."
Craning her sore neck upwards, Lucy caught sight of a fierce-looking middle-aged man holding a long hunting knife pointed directly at her.
Being ambushed by a good-sized man with a big knife is enough to rattle anyone's nerves, but that wasn't what made Lucy gape at him in awe.
He looked very like Edmund, save for the fact that he was quite a bit older. His eyes, his dark hair, even his nose, were all exactly like Edmund's.
The character in his face was vastly different, though, Lucy couldn't help noticing; much nastier, less playful.
The man took the silver helmet under one arm, still pointing the knife at her. "As for you, I'll take you back to my camp for now."
"No, sir," said Lucy, shaking her head. "I-"
The man had stuffed the helmet (and her deerskin pack, which he'd snatched out of her hands) into a makeshift bundle on his back and was now grabbing at her arm with his free hand, latching on and pulling her to him.
"Get your hands off me!" demanded Lucy.
"Start walking," he hissed, pressing the knife lightly against her chest.
He forced her onward until they came to a place where a tent made up of materials that were probably grand once upon a time all patched together and mismatched iron poles had been set up.
"Sit," he ordered, spinning her out of his grasp and throwing her onto the ground beside what looked like a poorly dug-out fire-pit.
She sat down on a log near the place where he had dropped her and shivered violently, pulling her green cloak as tightly around herself as she could. "What do you want with me?"
"I don't know yet." The man shrugged his shoulders. "Nothing now. Later, it depends how I'm feeling." Then, "As for your helmet, I'm going to find a place to sell it, obviously. I can use a few extra coins here and there. Now no more talking unless I ask you a question, your voice is bothering me."
Lucy scowled hatefully at him.
After a bit, he sat down on a log on the other side of the pit and started eating some of the food out of her pack. He offered it to her as well, but she only glowered and refused to take it; it was hers anyway. He seemed to take little to no notice of the leather book because it was old and not worth much, but the gold hilt of the dagger caught his attention, and Lucy watched with blood-shot eyes as he took it out and laid it next to the helmet greedily.
He looked at her knees, noticing the silver fabric sticking out from under the cloak. "Is that real silver thread in your dress?"
Lucy lifted up her chin defiantly and turned her head.
"I asked you a question."
"I heard you," she said, blinking blandly.
"Answer me or I'll strike you across the face so hard your nose will bleed."
"Yes," she muttered angrily to the still unlit fire-pit. "It's real silver, best as I know."
"Then take it off and give it here," he commanded, standing up with his hand outstretched.
Lucy's breath caught in her throat. "No!"
"Do as I say at once or I swear you will regret it."
"I'll freeze to death!" she cried, shooting him a pleading expression. "Surely you have some pity."
"Pity is something I can do without," the man told her, his voice almost a laugh now but not a nice one in the least. "But you can keep the cloak; looks like it's been dragged around too much to sell. And if your underclothes are too thin for this weather, I'll give you something of mine to wear over them."
"I have clothing in my pack," Lucy said, not wanting anything belonging to this man on her.
"It's my pack now," said the man pointedly.
"You've got it," she stated, "but that doesn't make it yours."
"Shut up and give me the dress."
"It won't fit you right," she sneered, making an uncharacteristic attempt at sarcasm.
He picked up the knife again and lifted it like he intended to throw it at her chest.
Trembling, she stood up and unlaced and unbuttoned the silver dress under the cloak, pulling it down at her feet. The chain-mail sleeves jingled. Stepping out of the garment, she handed it over.
He tossed her a purple tunic and a pair of woolen tights from her pack. Even though she shifted away from him and continued to keep the cloak over herself at all times, Lucy had the uncomfortable feeling that his eyes remained unwaveringly on her as she changed.
Lucy was surprised by how deeply she could hate a person (she had never really believed she had it in her), but even more surprised by how suddenly such hatred could cool off. When he stopped speaking, demanding things and threatening her, keeping more to himself, she found him harder to loathe.
Unlike her feelings for the wolf, Lucy understood plainly why-when she let herself forget he had kidnapped her and dragged her to this camp-she almost liked this horrible man; it was simply because his mannerisms (with the exception of his voice) were identical to Edmund's.
But, at the same time, the very fact that made him more appealing to her also made him more frightening. It was rather terrifying to see a distinctive similarity between a person one loved and a cruel, greedy robber.
She tried to talk to him, in spite of his telling her not to, thinking that she might be able to get something-anything-decent out of him. She even asked if he'd had a good childhood (she thought getting him to speak about loving parents or siblings might soften him up a bit), which unfortunately turned out to be entirely the wrong thing to ask.
He said that, no, his childhood had been beyond rotten and thanks very much for bringing it up. Then he told her to shut up again.
When he pulled out a bottle of wine, tore off the cork with his teeth, and started drinking, Lucy grimaced.
On the one hand, if he drank himself to sleep, she might be able to retrieve her pack and get away before he woke. Only, on the other, he might be a nasty drunk. Lucy had heard-in passing-of people that became violent and unpleasant when they drank too much.
She'd seen Peter accidentally drink a little more than was good for him once shortly before he became a physician, but all he'd done was laugh hysterically for no reason, pass out, and then wake up moaning about his head the next day (Susan had been furious to have to share his hangover with him when she hadn't been the one to drink so much). That didn't give Lucy a whole lot of experience to go on.
When about a quarter of the wine bottle was emptied, the man stood up and finally lit the fire in the pit with a match and some dry wood.
Lucy realized her teeth were chattering.
"I hate that sound," he slurred. Oddly enough, he hadn't sounded nasty when he said that, only as if he were stating a fact. He didn't seem to like the cold or its effects on the human body much, yet he was out here in the forest, instead of in a respectable home someplace warm. Truly, it was a mystery.
After warming his hands over the fire, he went into the tent and came back out a second later with a copper tea-kettle in his hands. Using a propped-up stick, he boiled some water. When he was done mixing ingredients into a blue china cup with a chip on one side, he poured in the water.
Lucy listened to the clinking of an old tarnished silver spoon banging around the cup as he stirred. Then she felt something warm being shoved into her hands so roughly that if she hadn't reacted in time it would have spilled into her lap.
"That'll warm you," he said gruffly.
Lucy mumbled a thank you but didn't drink it, dumping it out, a little bit at a time, on the snow behind herself whenever he had his eyes downcast near the fire instead of focused on her. She knew from the smell, thanks to Edmund, that it was laced with Toffee-Leaves.
Things were going about as well as they could under the circumstances until the wine bottle was almost completely empty and the man started getting a look on his face that made Lucy feel creepy. She wouldn't have minded so much if he didn't keep glancing at her the way he was, but he did, and she shivered in spite of the fact that, between the cloak and the fire, she was no longer cold.
It was worse when he got up, walked around the fire, and sat beside her. No matter how many times she scooted away from him, he always closed the gap within a manner of seconds.
It was growing darker and Lucy's chances of being rescued seemed to be dimming with the fading daylight.
Surely the wolf would find her, she had been thinking. But he had not come. He had not come and it was getting dark and she was alone with this strange man and she wanted so badly for this to be over; for herself and Edmund to be back safe at the mansion. She wanted her brother and sister and her father. What would she do if the wolf didn't come? If he had abandoned her when she fell?
The man's arm slipped around her and she lurched forward, vomiting on the ground directly in front of them.
When she pulled her head back up, tears stinging her eyes and running down her face, the man showed her a dagger of his own with a pointed iron hilt. "You see this?"
She nodded shakily.
"It's not as nice as the one I stole from you," he whispered, "but I was trained to use it well. You asked about my childhood; well, I'll tell you this: I picked up a lot of skills from it. Do you want to know what one of them is?" He leaned his face closer to hers. "If I wanted to, I could jab this dagger into a little space near your spine and paralyze you so quickly you would barely even feel it."
A little squeak of terror passed her lips and more tears came.
"I won't do it, though, if you please me." He put the dagger down in a spot close enough for him to reach but too far for Lucy, then lifted his fingers to her cheek and started running them up and down the side of her face.
On furious impulse, shaking all over, she spat at his right eye. "Leave me alone!"
Instead of going for the dagger like she thought, which might have given her a second to try and get away, he grabbed one of her arms so tightly that she lost most of the feeling in it and used the advantage of his bigger size and heavier weight to push her backwards and pull himself on top of her.
Lucy squirmed and kept begging him to let her up.
He tried to kiss her on the mouth, but she twisted her face so his lips collided with the middle of her chin instead. Then, when he still wouldn't get off her, no matter how hard she pleaded, she kneed him in-between the legs.
Groaning in pain, he let up a bit and she managed to roll away.
Before she could stand up properly, however, he came staggering after her and pushed her back down, barking something about 'teaching her a lesson she wouldn't forget'.
He was on top of her again, tugging at her clothing and running his hands along her waist and thighs. She was crying so hard she thought she would vomit again.
Then, out of a nearby bush, there came what looked to Lucy like a big gray blur, that charged the man, knocking him off of her.
It was the wolf-her wolf! Her same dear sullen traveling companion from earlier that day. She was so happy to see him; a sob escaped from her.
The sob only made the wolf more dangerously angry than he already was. Edmund didn't know it was a sob of joy at seeing him coming back for her; he thought, understandably, that she was still crying from what the despicable creep (who he knew at once for his father although they'd never met before) had been trying to do to her.
His paws on his father's chest, Wolf-Edmund hiss-growled, "If you ever so much as think about putting your filthy hands on her again, I'll kill you."
As the wolf had already made a slash with his claws across his lower chest and part of his waist, causing dark blood to soak through his clothing, the man didn't doubt the truth of those words.
"Nobody hurts her," he added vehemently.
"Nobody except Jadis, right?" whispered the man, speaking very softly so that only the wolf on top of him could hear-not Lucy.
Wolf-Edmund snarled, pained.
"I know what you are," the man told him, still in that barely audible whisper, slurring minimally. "And what the girl is, too. I was just like you once; I was a Traitor, too. Jadis took everything from me. She'll destroy you, just like she did me. You may be all honourable intentions now, but give it until she takes things too far. And she will too; she's a witch, after all. Take a good look at me, whatever your name is, you're peeking at your own future. Well, this or death."
The wolf shook, lowering his open mouth as if he was going to bite the man's face right off. Then appearing to change his mind, he repeated, "Nobody hurts her."
"Good luck with that," he slurred.
Catching his father's eyes and staring him down, he said, "Jadis can't have her."
"You're a bloody fool," snorted the man.
"And you'll be a dead fool if you so much as breathe near my demistar again." He removed his paws from his father's chest and ran over to Lucy.
She was sitting with her knees pulled to her chest by the fire-pit.
"I'm so sorry," whispered Wolf-Edmund, pressing his head against her upper arm. "I'm so sorry." Everything bad that had happened to her was his fault; he felt it keenly now.
Lucy threw her arms around her wolf's neck, weeping. "You came back for me." She couldn't guess what the wolf could possibly be apologizing for, but she was too shaken up to ask. She wanted nothing more than to cling to the only friend she seemed to have at the moment, this dear wolf, and never let go.
"He'll never bother you again, Lucy," Wolf-Edmund whispered, letting her caress his fur. "I promise."
"How do you know my name?" She had felt instinctively from the first that he knew it, but since she'd never told him what it was, she couldn't fathom how he could.
"I..."
"I know who you are now!" exclaimed Lucy, clinging to him all the more tightly. "I've just figured it out."
"You...you have?" His breath caught in his throat.
"Yes! You're the boy I saved from the those hunters as a child. You're not really a wolf, you're a boy under an enchantment." She looked into his eyes sadly. "I'm sorry you're still under it after all these years." She wished she could see him as a human, but she was no longer a child, her limited ability to see through enchantments was in the past.
"Yeah," he said weakly. "That's who I am."
Because it was too dark to travel, Wolf-Edmund suggested Lucy get some sleep.
"What if he..." She'd looked nervously over her shoulder at the man who was, instead of binding up his wounds more securely like a sensible person, chewing Toffee-Leaves to dull the pain.
"I told you, he won't bother you." She had then felt the wolf nudge her arm lovingly. "Rest for a bit. I'll stay with you and make sure he doesn't come near."
"All night?" whispered Lucy in a small, quivering voice.
"All night," he promised.
And so, finding a warm place next to the fire, using the hood of her cloak as a pillow, Lucy laid down her head and closed her eyes.
As soon as he was sure she was really asleep, Edmund fumbled with the green ring on his claw and reverted back to his true form as he sat guarding Lucy.
His feet were still solid gold, which the man noticed at once. "Is that real gold?" he asked, coming over.
"Why?" sneered Edmund, speaking very softly so as not to wake Lucy. "You want to cut them off with an ax and sell them?"
"Don't be disgusting," the man snapped, albeit quietly.
"Look who's talking." Edmund shook his head bitterly.
Studying the young traitor's face in the flickering light of the fire, the man began to wonder. "Are you mine?" The resemblance was unmistakable.
Edmund closed his eyes. "Don't keep on jawing, you'll wake her." Opening them again, he laid down and put his arm around Lucy's waist protectively.
"What if she sees you?" the man whispered.
"She won't," he hissed. "I've got the green ring in my hand. I'll slip it on and change back before she wakes up. Now be quiet."
"Here." The man dropped a brownish-green woolen blanket over them both. "I don't want to have to hear you two shivering all damn night." With that, he hobbled into his tent.
In her sleep, Lucy snuggled up close to Edmund, and he held onto her all night.
AN: That's all for this chapter, folks! Please leave a review.
