Threads

Chapter 15

The coldness of the rushing water was what shocked him the worst. His body felt as if it had been pricked by a thousand icy needles. The feeling vaguely reminded him of the torture the White Witch had inflicted on him when he had been nothing more than a boy.

It took him a long second to break away from his memory and come back to reality. With difficulty, he emerged from the water and gushed in the fresh air. He opened his eyes, his body trying to adapt to the temperature and fight against the numbing feeling, making it hard for him to focus for a second.

At that moment, he realized how reckless he had been. Lunging against a Telmarine soldier and falling down a chasm. He barely recognized his actions—Peter had always been the rash one, but not him. But the situation resembled a battle context, and he was known for not keeping his wits about during those events. But he had plenty of time to examine his actions later, for now, he had to focus, get out of the river.

As the river's strong current dragged him along, Edmund tried holding on to something, anything. As he researched his surroundings, he recalled the Telmarine soldier he had dragged down alongside with him.

Where was he? Edmund hoped that, for the love of Aslan, he wouldn't be anywhere close. The current had hauled Edmund's sword away, too.

But as hard as he tried to locate him, he couldn't. The water was pitch-black, and the humdrum of the rushing river and its cold temperature dulled the rest of his senses.

He navigated the river's course, pulling himself towards the walls of the gorge that framed the river. He grabbed an overgrown dried root and held on to it, praying that it was still grounded enough to hold on to his weight. He placed his feet on a pointy rock that was half-submerged in the current, but shyly emerged if the water hit it just right.

Somewhat steady now, he resisted the drift. With the stillness he gained, he was able to discern a figure close to the river bank. It was the Telmarine soldier, his body sprawled facing downwards on a rock. Edmund paused his gaze on him for a moment, but he didn't move. Edmund swallowed, realizing that if he had fallen differently, even by just a few inches, he would have met his demise as well.

He shook the thoughts off his mind. Edmund looked upwards, in a desperate attempt to find Eirene. But there were no moving shadows at the top side of the gorge either.

Exhaling desperately, he looked at the wall that the gorge behind around him, and at the other end of the river across him. He considered all the options he had: he could swim across and go around the gorge and climb up to the same point where he was before. He cursed the fact that he didn't see the griffin anywhere near him—I could surely use a lift about now, he thought.

He turned backward instead, figuring out a path that could allow him to climb the wall of the gorge. He tried placing one foot on a ledge that showed itself, being careful to see that it could hold his weight.

As soon as he tried to balance his entire weight on it, he heard the griffin screech. The shock was sufficient enough for him to not realize that the ledge was crumbling away beneath his foot. He turned his gaze up to watch out for the animal, and in that second the ledge gave away. He didn't have time to react, and so he fell back into the water.

Holding on to dear life and the tip of a rock, Edmund steadied himself once again. As he resisted the current, he heard the unmistakable sound of a horse galloping to its top speed.

Edmund's instinct was to submerge himself back into the water, and then figure out who the rider was. But before he could do anything, he heard an all-too-familiar voice calling his name.

"Edmund!" Lucy shouted from across the other side of the river.

Surprised, Edmund landed his eyes on her immediately.

"Lucy? How? What?" Edmund staggered, more to himself than to her.

But Lucy seemed to be completely deaf and lost as she dismounted the horse.

"Edmund!" she shouted again, unknowing that her brother was right across her. "Eirene!" she shouted as well.

Edmund, careful not to lose grip, called for his sister.

"Luce!" Edmund shouted, loud enough this time for her to hear above the sound of the gushing river.

Lucy's face immediately illuminated. Her eyes quickly scanned Edmund and his surroundings. She turned back to grab what seemed to be some sort of rope from her horse.

As she walked to the edge of the stream, ready to throw the rope at him, she seemed to be lost within her thoughts.

"Where's Eirene?" she shouted, "was she taken?" she asked, as she took the rope by one of its ends and began swinging it.

Edmund was startled. How did she know? Perhaps the griffin had flown back to camp and—

"What?" Edmund said, voicing his thoughts.

"Is she alright? Do you know where she is?" Lucy asked slower this time as if she thought Edmund hadn't heard her.

"D'you think we could have this conversation at another moment, Lu? When I'm not about to be dragged downstream?!"

Lucy opened her eyes wide.

"Right! Sorry," she shouted as she threw the end of the rope at him.

Edmund caught it quickly and observed as Lucy tied the other end of the rope to a tree at the opposite side from where he stood.

Edmund held on to it as best he could. Once he could see that the rope was well-tied to the tree, he stepped off the ledge of the rock and felt the full force of the river current pull him downstream. He resisted it to the best of his ability, but he was still pulled downwards a bit. Still, he swam across to the other side of the river.

Lucy was really paying no mind to her brother and was instead turning constantly turning around, upwards and away.

"Ed!?" Lucy shouted once she saw him more or less half across the river, not waiting for her brother to answer her call.

"I'll go find Eirene!" she said, already stepping away from the river bank.

"Right," Edmund said, pressing his lips to avoid swallowing water, "I'll be fine Lu, thanks for asking!" He shouted into the void, knowing that Lucy wasn't listening to him.

Despite the façade of sarcastic comments, Edmund was just as concerned for Eirene as Lucy was. However, part of his mind still dwelled on some questions: how had Lucy been able to find them? Had Telmarines already appeared at camp?

Edmund pulled on the rope as he thought, and struggled to keep his mind focused on his surroundings. He had to remain concentrated. So he shut the world out for a second, noticing absent-mindedly that Lucy was about, running towards something that he couldn't see.

He wanted to turn his gaze up and focus on the horizon, in the direction of Lucy's footsteps, but in that second, the rope began to fray. He felt in a quick second how the rope started to give away, releasing the tension. Panicked, Edmund pressured on, trying as best he could to reach the other side of the river.

He was close enough—a little more and he would be at an arm's length—but the rope gave away a little more.

"Lucy!" He shouted, "need a little hand here!"

"Ed! Look! I think I think she's-"

"I don't reckon I'll be able to look if you don't help me out, Luce!"

Lucy rushed back to the river then, placed her chest on the ground, and extended her hand to her brother. Edmund boosted himself as much as the remaining rope would allow him to grab his sister's hand. Lucy extended the other hand to pull him up completely.

Still holding on to him, Lucy began standing slowly, trying to remain with her heels grounded. Pivoting on her heels, she eventually managed to pull him into the land. Edmund collapsed on the grass and Lucy landed directly with her arse to the ground but stood up immediately after she did.

"Eirene, we need to find Eirene, Ed, where did you last see her?"

Edmund too stood up like a dripping wet spring bolt.

"O-over at the gorge. A soldier took her by the neck- she has to be up there still. It was an ambush Lu, another one."

Lucy immediately began shaking her head at his words, and her expression turned grave.

"Ed, we have to find her. We have to—the letter was a warning, Ed. If we don't find her then what the letter said turns out to be true, and then it'll all—"

The words within the letter replayed immediately in Lucy's mind, but she wasn't sure that what she was saying was even intelligible.

Before the panic could advance any further within any of the two siblings, a griffin screech was heard up above their heads. Both turned up to the darkness of the night sky but saw nothing.

Instead, they heard a thud behind them. They turned on their heels immediately,

and were then met with a scene of a landed griffin, delicately sliding an unconscious Eirene to the ground.

Edmund rushed next to her, hurrying to catch her. He panned over her body quickly, noticing the various bloodstains on her attire. She was in bad shape and cold to the touch.

Lucy leaned next to them, too, unsheathing her cordial out of her belt. The seconds Lucy took to open the cordial dragged on to eternities for Edmund. Edmund watched Eirene intently as Lucy administered the precious droplets on Eirene's mouth.

As Lucy placed her hand closer to Eirene's mouth, she whispered to her brother:

"Ed, if you were ambushed…they'd had to know. The soldiers—they had to know where we were beforehand. Otherwise, they wouldn't have been able to get this far into the forest at the exact moment of our drawback."

But Edmund said naught, and merely caressed Eirene's hair as he watched the crimson droplet fall into her full lips.

"And Ed, the letter warned us about this, about this happening…"

But Edmund wasn't listening either. He kept on watching Eirene, not batting an eyelash, expecting her to draw an aggressive breath back to life.

But she was taking longer than most people did.

Adrenaline rushed through his veins. Lucy held her breath. Neither of them saw any movement, and as Lucy's heart started dropping, Edmund held on to hope. Too late, Lucy began to think about what that possibility entailed. What would happen if they truly were late? Perhaps the letters changed and now said something new, she thought and was about to plunge her hand into her pocket to retrieve the letters.

But then, there was movement.

Eirene opened her eyes, wide. Her eyes immediately landed on Edmund, and her gaze softened. Her entire body was lightweight as she acknowledged his presence. She'd just woken up from mortal wounds, and somehow Edmund was the first thing to plague her mind.

When she glanced at his lips, her own twitched and burnt when she remembered how they had touched. How much she wanted his kiss, how much she wanted to keep on feeling his breath on her.

With each passing moment, the urge to kiss him increased. But she knew she couldn't do it. Not now, at least.

She tried sitting up, diverting her thoughts away from the Just King. Edmund tried to help her up, placing his hand on her lower back. Eirene would have sworn that Edmund heard her gasp.

Once escaping the drunkness that his touch made her feel, the memory of the pain she had felt suddenly came back to her. Out of instinct, she placed her hands on her ribcage, trying to feel where her wounds had been.

"What happened?" she asked, flabbergasted.

"A lot," Lucy said quickly, "we'll fill you in on the way back. We should get going," she said with a worried face, "We just need to make haste. The sooner we are out of these woods, the better."

Eirene noticed it but asked no questions. She merely swallowed and tried to stand up.

"Well, I don't know about you, but I honestly don't want to ride back in the griffin again," Edmund said as he helped Eirene up; Eirene laughed, noticing that her body pained her no longer.

A/N: Hey everyone! Thank you so much for reading and sticking up with this story! I've changed the rating of the story in preparation for feature chapters ;)

Also, I want to thank for reviewing! I hope you like the following parts of the story! :)

Anyway, thanks for reading! Don't forget to leave a review if you so wish :)