17.
"Oh yes," Phineas heard the boy meters in front of him mumbling while he kept being careful with every step he took, afraid of stumbling with the rocky land of the island "follow the imaginary blue star, to the island of Rabandoedoe..."
"Hey!" Phineas called Eustace, hoping he would slow down.
"Like the seven steak knives on the table of a talking lion..."
"They are swords, actually" Phineas interrupted him with a breathy voice.
"Nonsense." Eustace kicked a rock.
Phineas saw Eustace suddenly, stopping and sliding downturns rocky hill.
Phineas ran to where Eustace had been seconds before. He peeked down and saw the boy lying on the ground, a couple meters down.
"You okay?" Phineas called as the younger boy started moving.
"I must be dead!" Eustace exclaimed back to Phineas.
Phineas raised his gaze, still breathing heavily, and noticed what Eustace was talking about.
Gold.
Gold everywhere.
Phineas, open mouthed, tried sliding carefully down the hill. Then he was too surrounded by gold. Golden armors, chests, vessels, jewelry... Eustace stood up beside him, and shook the dirt off of him before running to the nearest pile of golden objects, shimmering in the sunlight. Phineas started following Eustace around, wishing to take a bunch of golden stuff just as the younger kid was doing. He was dumbstruck, that he could feel his heart beating strongly inside of him. He knew he needed to calm down, he was susceptible to asthma attacks for strong emotions. Luckily, he was in his longest streak without one, the last being before coming to Narnia. He had almost had one on Coriakin's island, but he had controlled himself in time.
"You are definitely dead." He heard Eustace saying and saw him pushing a corpse to the floor before taking a thick bracelet from the skeleton's arm and putting it on. "You wouldn't be needing that one, would you?" He said to the bones.
"Hey! There's no need to be rude to the death" Phineas scolded him "There's a lot you can take around here without doing that..." His volume decreased when he saw an open golden box containing inside a thin golden necklace.
He walked towards it and kneeled in front of it. Phineas touched it barely with his fingertips, it felt smooth.
Maybe he could take it for his sick sister... But he never got to take it, because a loud and terrifying growl was heard through the canyon. Phineas stood up, looking up, searching for the source of that terrible noise in the sky...
"Finally, I favorable turn of events for me" Phineas heard Eustace behind him, while the younger kid kept scavenging.
Phineas took a few steps towards the hill they had fallen from, when he heard the clanking of golden treasures falling to the floor. Then a scream of pain. Phineas turned around, his eyes wide opened, as he saw at the younger blonde boy, writhing on the floor.
"Eustace!" Lucy called, looking back at the deserted island "Edmund, I have got a bad feeling." Lucy turned around to see her brother, but in the way her jaw dropped as she saw behind her brother.
"Yes, I've got it too." A girl sneered.
Edmund jumped around and so did Caspian.
"Elle?!" Edmund exclaimed.
"What're you doing out of bed?" Caspian asked before looking at Drinian who was helping the girl to remain standing.
"I'm sorry, your majesty" Drinian bowed.
"I'm just gonna ask this once:" the pale looking girl said, her nostrils flaring "Where-is-my-brother?" She narrowed her eyes.
Edmund looked at Lucy and then back at Elle.
"I'm going to find them." He started walking away.
"I'll come with you." Caspian announced, making Edmund look at him again.
"So am I" Elle's breathy voice raises again.
"You can barely stand up." Caspian told her "You'll slow us down."
"It's my brother, you carelessly left alone to wander around with another kid... Besides" She raised her eyebrows before turning at Lucy "Lucy will help me. Right?"
They had been walking for what seemed hours. Elle could still not believe Lucy had actually agreed to help her sustain herself the whole time. She had to give the girl more credit than she had before.
"Eustace!" Edmund said as he found a burnt-up shoe.
They had found a canyon filled with treasures and traveled it when they found the brown moccasin.
"No!" He exclaimed as he ran to a pile of burnt clothes.
"Edmund!" Lucy cried next to her.
"My cousin" Edmund muttered heartbroken, just when Elle got free of Lucy's grip. Elle saw the girl falling next to Edmund.
"I'm sorry." Elle heard Caspian saying before she started walking away.
Her heart was menacing to come out of her chest. If something had happened to Eustace, then...
"Phineas" She muttered teary eyed, as she walked through a pile of great boulders, stumbling with the golden treasures at her feet.
Before she wouldn't have minded if her brother was missing, not even knowing that her mother would sent her to jail or something. Elle would've threw herself at the gold surrounding her, only thinking about taking it back to Chicago. With it, she would be able to visit Tony whenever she wanted, she would be able to go and live with her dad... But now, it was nothing but garbage getting in her way to find her brother.
"PHINEAS!" She yelled her heart out as she started sobbing.
She fell to her knees, no longer containing the weakness in her body. What if something had happened to him to? She would never forgive herself. She closed her eyes.
And then she heard it, the heavy breathing, the pain groaning. She raised her gaze and looked around, and there, lying by a pile gold, was her brother. She crawled her way to him and saw his face was red.
"Phineas?!" She heard herself panicking. He couldn't breathe! "Where's your inhaler?!" She asked her eyes wide opened.
But he wasn't looking at her, he was suffering right there in front of her. She started crying again.
"HELP! HELP ME!" She cried out taking her brother's upper body on her arms. "He can't breathe!" She was trembling. "He can't breathe" She repeated.
Was that how the two of them would end? Dead on a canyon of a deserted island far away from their home? She knew she would stop breathing the same moment her brother did?
And the worst part? She couldn't feel anything but anger. Anger at her mother and Tony for never telling her the truth, anger at her father for always causing stress to her mother, anger at her grandmother for not insisting her even more with her Narnia stories, anger at her brother for leaving the ship and dying in her arms. But mostly she felt anger towards herself, for making her own life miserable for so many years, for seeing only what she wanted to see, hearing only what she wanted to hear, and making others miserable in the way. Especially her brother... Her brother who was still gasping on her arms.
She closed her eyes, strongly.
"Nu-number one" Elle said out loud "S-s-sit him u-upright" She stuttered, while she did. Her eyes still didn't open, trying to remember a lesson her mother had given her a long time ago. "Number two," She cried "loo-loosen up his tight clothes" She opened her eyes and worked on the shirt buttons around her brother's neck. "Number three," she said "t-take long, d-deep breaths." She looked directly at Phineas' eyes, which were now looking back at her. "N-note:" She remembered every word "do it with him, be-because he's little and will need your help" She sobbed remembering her mother's advice in case she ever found herself alone with her brother with no inhaler.
She hadn't been paying attention back then, but somehow her unconscious had. And so, she started inhaling through her nose and exhaling through her mouth. When she saw Phineas mimicking her, her mouth swiftly twitched into a relief smile, before going back to her expression contorted.
"Number four: give soft pressures under the collarbones" Elle did, and slowly, air started to fill Phineas' lungs again. "Number five..." She muttered "give your baby brother com-comforting words" She frowned, scared to mess the whole treatment in the last stage. She gulped "It's okay, Phiny." Her voice trembled "Mommy's on her way" her face scowled but with sadness, for the first time "Breath in" She did too" Breath out" She left a gust of air too "It's okay, I'm here."
"Elle" He whispered between gasps.
"Yes, Phineas?" She smiled starting to feel weaker and weaker.
He gave her a brief smile.
"Thank you" He said.
Elle smiled before she saw black.
Lucy had arrived in time to see Elle giving everything she could to safe Phineas. But as soon as the boy's breathing got controlled Elle fell backwards onto the rock and gold ground.
"Edmund! Caspian!" Lucy called in fright. Scare to lose somebody else on the same day.
Edmund and Caspian arrived to her, exactly when a familiar green mist started coming out from their friend's mouth, while the girl convulsed on the floor. The young mentried to walk to her, but Lucy raised her arms to her sides, not allowing them to pass.
They all saw how the green mist floated up and away. Only then, Lucy allowed them to go to Elle. She saw that now was Phineas the one taking his sister on his arms. The four surrounded her and saw her as she opened her eyes.
"Get away." The girl growled at them, suddenly regaining her bronze color on her skin, instead of the pale one she'd had for days.
They exhaled, but didn't cheer. Eustace was still gone. Eventually, they found their road to the crew, but in it they had another surprise.
"EDMUND!" Lucy screamed as she saw a great golden dragon flying away with her brother that had been walking next to her seconds ago.
Later that night, they were all resting around a fire started by the flame breathing dragon, Eustace.
The boy had been enchanted by the golden treasure; they needed more time to think what they would do with Eustace's situation. So, Caspian has decided to stay on the island for the night. It had been a long day for everyone. The first ones that fell asleep where Elle and her brother, laying side by side over a mat. Caspian was resting on the bare ground next to Edmund. They talked about the stars and about Caspian's father before Edmund, too, fell asleep. Caspian heard Lucy and Gael talking in whispers before falling asleep too. He even got to hear some of Reep's stories to the great dragon before Eustace started dreaming, shortly followed by Reep himself.
Caspian was the only one whose eyes still wandered through the stars, when he heard a groan, too familiar for him, after hearing its owner doing it hundreds of time. He raised his head when he saw the girl standing up walking away from the fire. He went after her.
"Hey, what is it?" He called her. She turned around a hand over her chest.
"You scared me!" She grimaced making him smile. "It's uncomfortable to sleep on the floor" she explained before starting to walk away again. "that's all."
Caspian followed her. He could never sleep even if it was on a bed anyways.
"Such a long day, huh?" He asked as he reached her.
"Oh, yeah." She shrugged "Fantastic" She added with sarcasm.
"It's good to see you out of bed" Caspian mentioned.
"Feels good to be out of bed" She added, before taking a deep breath "But...I, uh, also feel like I have now more responsibilities"
"What do you mean?" Caspian frowned.
She came to a stop. They were already far away from their friends.
"Now that everything passed..." she shrugged "I don't think I know how to act like the good sister" She bit her lip. "All my life I've acted like a..." She hesitated "mean person in front of my brother." She crossed her arms "I'm afraid that he'll wait from me to be this awesome sister from now on and..."
"You're afraid to disappoint him?" Caspian asked her.
Elle looked at him, her lips pursed, slightly twitching, and her forehead wrinkled.
"Yeah." She confessed "Any royal wisdom?" She joked "I'm open to suggestions"
Caspian sighted and looked at the dark ocean near them. He had once been afraid to disappoint his people too. He looked at her.
"Just be yourself" He said "Avoid the foreign language swearing" he smiled and so did she "and be yourself... that'll be enough"
"What if it's not enough?" She asked eagerly to know the answer.
Caspian kept looking at her, her long and smooth black hair gleaming under the moonlight, her eyes opened wide waiting for his answer. She was not the lady he had thought would catch his eyes. She was no Susan, but... Her passion, her beauty, her childish sense of humor and her lack of one in serious situations... She was more than perfect. She didn't need to worry about not being enough in anything in life.
"It'll be" He didn't notice he had taken a step to her.
Elle's long lashes fluttered under the moonlight when she felt the intensity of his gaze.
"May I confess something?" Caspian asked her politely. Elle frowned but slowly she nodded. "I don't know how, but... I believe that I've been enchanted by you."
The girl's eyes narrowed as she tilted her head sideways.
"Do you mean as in..."
Caspian sighted. He wouldn't keep pretending anymore, he knew that her time in Narnia was probably counted, after all. He couldn't give himself the luxury of being a coward and avoiding the inevitable until it was too late.
"Do you remember when I told you that I had thought that my heart had left Narnia?" He asked.
Elle's hair floated with the slight breeze as she nodded, her arms still crossed.
"Now I'm more certain than ever before than it didn't" He said and raised a hand to his chest "I can still feel it," he paused hesitatingly "whenever I'm near you"
Elle's eyes fluttered again as she looked around. She took a deep breath.
"Caspian, I..." she started.
"Maybe you should start by apologizing to him." Caspian interrupted her. "To Phineas, for everything." He took a step back giving the girl some space. "You should go and rest" He said, before gulping. "I'll go look for more wood to burn" He murmured before walking away from her.