Prompt 11# "Kidnap me from my reality and crushed pieces of my soul colour me outside the lines until my shattered heart is whole" - Perry Poetry.
"No, brother, not for all the jewels in Tashbaan."
And what a relief it was to say too!
"Truly, sister, I should have loved you the less if you had taken him."
Was I the only blind one?
Why didn't they tell me? Or would I not have listened? Blinded by the treacherous hope I had dared entertain. I hoped – I hoped to find companionship, to make an alliance, to grow and be…but no.
"Come, live with me and you'll know me" indeed.
"Then, in the name of Aslan, let us leave Tashbaan this very day."
But ah, the caveat.
Why had I not thought to look for one?
I knew it was not love, thinking it might come, yet I had come anyway. Oh, what a fool was I!
When I left, to cross the seas, wind playing through my fingers and a strange hope resting in my heart, I was full and safe. No note of danger reverberated in its dissonant way into my soul, no breath of trouble.
"Easily in but not easily out says the lobster in the lobster pot!"
Trapped.
We shouldn't have come.
Silent tears ran down my face.
We shouldn't have come, and this is all my fault.
"As to that, I do not doubt that every one of us would sell our lives dearly in the gate and they would not come at the Queen but over our dead bodies."
I'm trapped, and not only that, but I've brought down Edmund and Corin and Swallowpad and Mr Tumnus and – and –
They're all going to die, and I won't even get to die with them.
And it's all my fault.
Waking visions of burning houses and the dead bodies of my brother and our companions flickered across my mind. Blood. There was blood everywhere and the place was burning, and I was dragged away and –
Maybe, maybe if I accept, he'll let them go free? I'll not have them die for me when it was my own folly that brought me to this precipice. I'll not let them be dragged over the side with me.
"I am the cause of this," I cry, unable to hold back a sob, "Oh, if only I had never left Cair Paravel. Our last happy day was before those ambassadors came from Calormen. The Moles were planting an orchard for us…oh…oh."
My own folly.
And what a folly it was!
For I had everything and lacked for nothing, yet still I wished for what wasn't mine to have.
And in all the wrong places, tempted by that hope – and what false hope! I let myself be kidnapped, lured by an illusion, and now, now –
The green green grass of Narnia, so sweet and soft. The laughter of my sister as she dances with the dryads, throwing her head up towards the stars. The quiet lapping of the waves at Cair Paravel, overlooking the gleaming Eastern Sea.
I will never see it again.
Never.
And worst of all, I've doomed them all to go with me! Their blood is on my head. My hands will be stained with it.
I hide my head in my hands, shaking, trembling, trying to hold myself together.
My fault.
"The only difficulty is how to get down to our ship…" I couldn't let myself dare hope. Shattered shards of broken hope cut sharper than never having any at all. I couldn't let myself. After all, wasn't it my misplaced, blind hope that got us here in the first place?
My fault.
"…and as soon as it is quite dark-"
"Up sails and out oars-!"
"And so to sea,"
"And our nose Northward,"
"Running for home! Hurrah for Narnia and the North!"
Hope like a blossom in my chest.
I could no more prevent it than I could prevent the coming of Spring.
It turned sorrow into dancing, despair into rejoicing.
But deep in my heart, the seed of self-recrimination had been planted, wrapping tangled roots around my hopeful heart. Simply being saved doesn't mean you didn't make a mistake, it whispered, it doesn't mean it almost cost Edmund his life, and the lives of everyone here.
I buried it.
But it grew, shattering my soul like a tree root beneath concrete.
My fault.
I became afraid of making mistakes. But who among you can stop making mistakes?
My fault.
But why did it have to be my fault? Nothing happened. Why do I always have to take on responsibility?
'Susan, look after Lucy' 'Susan, be mature' 'Susan, be perfect!'
Well, I'm not perfect and I'll never be! Blame me all you like, but I can't be who you want me to be. And I can't live with your expectations.
So, I'm leaving.
My fault.
A train station.
Bodies.
Broken bodies everywhere.
My fault.
I wasn't with them.
Even in death I couldn't ever compare to them.
Perfect.
My fault.
The funeral.
Three bodies laid out in a row.
"Come to me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." *
You are perfect.
And maybe I didn't have to be.
*Matthew 11:28-30 NIV
Author's Note:
So, this was a last minute attempt to keep up with the challenge despite my unbelievably stupid day, but then it turned into my take of why Susan wasn't a friend of Narnia at the end of TLB. Lol, funny how these things happen.
Trix
