Disclaimer: C.S. Lewis created Susan, Aslan, and the rest of the Chronicles of Narnia.
Calling Back
Tonight was not one of the good nights.
Susan knew why, of course. The second anniversary of the accident was fast approaching, and it was only natural that she should feel worse at this time. And then, too, she kept thinking of those games of Let's Pretend that they had played. It was only natural that thinking about her childhood with her brothers and sister would make her miss them all the more. Trying to be analytical, as her boy-friend Marshall had been teaching her, she had traced her thoughts of Let's Pretend back and was certain she had found what had triggered them. It had been that country railway station she and Marshall had gone through on the way to visit his mother. Of course the train ride and all had reminded her of the aftermath of the accident, more painfully than she had admitted to Marshall. That particular station, though, had been so sleepy, so empty, so deep in the country that she had stumbled on an entirely different set of memories. She had almost been able to see herself and Lucy and the boys in the seat on the platform, all their boxes and trunks around them, spinning stories as they waited for the train that would take her and Lu back to school. She had remembered the name of the prince they had made up, Caspian, like one of those seas on the continent. And then Lucy and Edmund had made up another story about the same prince the following summer. They had had to stay at Aunt Alberta and Uncle Harold's house—of course they had wanted something to take their minds off having to stay there!
Good old Lu, good old Ed, Susan thought, trying to smile fondly, but her grief was still too near. The attempt to smile only made hot tears squeeze out of the corners of her eyes, wetting her pillow. Again. She was so tired of her pillow being wet, of the tears trickling across her temples into her ears as she lay awake in the darkness. In the daytime recently, she had been able to forget her grief for a while. Parties could distract her. So could Marshall, some of the time. His coolness and seriousness had given her something to hold onto when her giddy, girlish world had seemed so terribly hollow in the wake of losing the only people who had ever meant anything real. Marshall had taken her to lectures, debates, book readings. The intellectual stimulation could briefly push her despair aside, dry out her eyes. But at night, alone in the dark and quiet…
She drew a ragged breath. Tonight was not a good night.
Perhaps tonight, she could simply think about Let's Pretend stories until she fell asleep. It was dreadfully childish, of course, and she could never tell Marshall or her other friends about it. Not that she had ever mentioned the old stories to Marshall; he would have psycho-analysed her dreadfully. But the games had been such fun…all those names and places they had made up. Narnia. That one name alone brought back so many memories. Of course they had had to create neighbouring countries as well, like friendly Archenland and dangerous, mysterious Calormen. Calormen was where Prince Rabadash (and there was a ridiculous name; how had they thought of it?) had come from, asking for her hand in marriage and nearly kidnapping her—
Susan opened her eyes in some alarm. For a moment she had really been almost able to see the charming, mysterious, deceitful Calormene prince—his exotic clothing, his strange smile, his dark eyes. Perhaps Marshall and their friends would be right if they said that thinking about all these old childhood games was regressive and psychologically unhealthy (not that she would tell them about it). Yes, it was really quite a bit frightening that the imaginary character had become so real for a moment. Plainly, she should clear her head of this nonsense and go on to sleep. It was all quite ridiculous.
Ridiculous, that's what they had called Rabadash later—Rabadash the Ridiculous! Of course, she hadn't been there to see him turned into a donkey. She rather wished she had; it would have been quite amusing, and he had certainly deserved it—
He wasn't real, Susan, she told herself sharply. Of course you didn't see him turn into a donkey, because it never happened. She was letting her thoughts get quite out of hand. All this Let's Pretend, plus her grief over losing her family—tonight it was working her up into something of a state. Why, if Marshall knew the things she was thinking right now, he would say she should go to a sanitarium!
Well, don't think about Rabadash then, she thought, annoyed. Just think about all the silly names we made up. Like Tumnus the Dwarf—no, that's not right—
No, it was Trumpkin that had been a dwarf, Prince Caspian's friend. Tumnus had been a faun (and fancy them remembering mythology so well when they were just children!), Lucy's friend. And Mr. and Mrs. Beaver—they hadn't been very original with those names, but they had made up for it with the Giant Rumblebuffin who was restored after being a statue—or was it Wimbleweather? No, Wimbleweather had been in the story about Caspian. With Reepicheep the valiant mouse.
"…a tail is the honour and glory of a Mouse…"
That memory really did make her smile fondly and even chuckle, although the threat of tears was still very near. She told herself she needed to keep thinking, like Marshall always said. Grief was only a chemical reaction, and one could distract oneself from it with other chemical reactions, such as thoughts. Although Marshall wouldn't have recommended thinking about this particular topic…
One of the oddest names had been Puddleglum, the Marsh-wiggle—of course, Eustace had made that one up, but then he always had been a bit strange. There was no denying that Lucy and Edmund had been a good influence on him that summer they stayed there, though. It had been quite original of him to invent an entire species, certainly not the kind of thing he would have done before. A nice addition to the stories, too, even though she herself had only heard snatches of his tale about Prince Somebody—
"…how do you call him? Billian? Trillian?"
At any rate, he had been Caspian's son, and Eustace and his friend Jill had been assigned the task of rescuing him. But now she felt the prickling of tears again, since poor Jill and Eustace had died in the accident also. She still needed to keep thinking.
They had made up a castle with quite an odd name. Cair Paravel, that was it. Memories crowded into her head, of feasts and dancing. Feasts and dancing that we made up, she tried to remind herself. These memories were so strong, though. And they had found the castle again in the second story, when they had landed there when they were called back—
Called back by my own horn! Susan remembered. My horn which I lost but Dr. Cornelius found, the horn I blew when the wolf came after me and then Peter came to save me, my horn Father Christmas gave me—and he gave us tea which was so nice that cold morning, and he wasn't silly or funny but he made us very, very glad—
No he didn't, don't be silly, you didn't really meet Father Christmas, and you never had a magic horn. It was just imaginary. Susan took a deep breath in the darkness and tried to stop her thoughts, but this time she couldn't, even as she argued with them—
"She has kept me out for a long time, but I have got in at last."
And she could feel her new horn in her hand as Father Christmas told Lucy why she shouldn't be in the battle and cracked his whip and rushed away…
"Long live the true King!"He had been able to get in because something had changed, something important—of course, it was at the back of all the stories, even though she had been trying for some reason not to think of it—it had been because the Lion had been there.
Come back to reality, Susan! she told herself irritatedly. So made up a Lion. We had to have Someone in charge of things, protecting us, even in Let's Pretend, because that's a natural human instinct, and we gave him a name, we named him Aslan—
She had no sooner named him than he came, crashing through her imagination, shattering Let's Pretend to pieces, tossing golden light from his mane—