Chapter 12

Lucy sat at the window seat of their train compartment, watching the shadow of the train flick across the fields and thinking vaguely of sailing the Eastermost Seas on the Dawn Treader. Jill and Eustace were talking about the bottom of the world, and Edmund said nothing and appeared to be lost in thought.

Edmund pulled the crumpled telegram out of his pocket and read it for the umpteenth time, although this time he read aloud. "Come at once to the Professor's – stop. Narnia needs us all – Stop. Wire your train – Stop. Peter."

"How many times have you read that telegram?" Jill asked suspiciously.

"Not enough. I still don't know what's going on. What does yours say?" Edmund pressed.

"Practically the same thing," Eustace said. "It's a telegram—it's not exactly going to be eloquent."

"No," Lucy said thoughtfully, turning from the window, "But you don't understand what Peter's been like. He hasn't been himself."

Edmund took up what Lucy was saying. "And I can't tell whether or not he's…better. At least, not from this message."

"But you're missing the most important part!" Jill protested. She had not met Peter, only heard about him, and this made the eldest Pevensie far less interesting to her. "What about Narnia? What's going on there?"

Nobody had an answer to anything, and the conversation quickly lapsed while everyone nursed their private speculations. At last they arrived, and as the Professor had no car to collect them from the station, Edmund secured a taxi. The ride to his house was very quiet because it was very tense, and that was why it felt so very long.

Polly and the Professor greeted them warmly, but Peter was nowhere to be seen. After her affectionate hellos, Lucy asked about him immediately. "Where's Peter?" she asked.

"Oh, out and about," Polly answered lightly. "He does a lot of meandering these days."

Lucy exchanged a look with Edmund. "Meandering" was not exactly Peter's style. At least, it didn't use to be.

At that moment, Eustace came running from around the backyard and stammered "Edmund—Lucy—Pole—you'd better come see."

The whole company rushed around back, and as soon as the back fence came into view Lucy gasped and stopped short. Peter was sitting on a magnificent palomino and smiling; the horse was swishing its tail. True the horse was beautiful, and in any other moment she would have rushed to him to feel the velvet of his nose, but she couldn't take her eyes off her brother.

Edmund walked into Lucy from behind. He was about to prod her forward when he looked in the direction she was staring. Then he let out a whoop of joy. If he had been wearing a hat, he would have flung it into the air.

Now Peter laughed, and Edmund and Lucy heard the rich sound of it and knew what it meant. "Welcome, friends of Narnia!" he called. "You are well met!"

"Well met indeed!" Edmund replied, his entire face splitting into a huge smile. He rushed forward and Peter leapt off his horse and they embraced each other as kings and brothers. Then Lucy came forward too and Peter held her tight for a second.

"I'm sorry I'm so late," he explained. He still had one arm around Lucy. "I was riding and I completely forgot about the time." The sun shone on his shoulders.

Even though he was dressed in ordinary trousers and a plain shirt, Peter cut a kingly figure. His voice rang with such surety and merriment that Eustace, who had not seen Peter since before his first visit to Narnia, whistled under his breath. "I know I was stupid before, but I don't see how I could have failed to notice Peter. He's kinglier than Caspian!"

"He's the one they call the High King," Jill murmured. She had never met Peter, but she could tell.

They all trooped inside for dinner. Lucy and Jill helped Polly with the cooking, and with Lucy's clear memory and Polly's clever use of herbs, they were able to turn the simple meal of a soup and a joint and some potatoes into something that was almost Narnian. As soon as Edmund tasted the food, he was reminded at once of the simple meal he had eaten with Peter in a huntsman's lodge when they went out gaming in the Western Wood with Cor and Corin. He told the story of how Corin wanted to box the wild boar they had been hunting, much to the amusement of the company.

Then Lucy remembered the finding of Corin and the Battle of Anvard and what happened to Rabadash and how Edmund did such a fine job leading the battle, and Edmund told about the dangerous escape from Tashbaan on the Splendour Hyaline.

The talk of boats made Eustace remember the Dawn Treader and he told of how he became a dragon and was restored by Aslan, a story of great interest to Peter, since he had never heard Eustace himself tell it. He had only heard what Lucy and Edmund had said afterwards.

All of them spoke of Caspian, and Peter wondered aloud, a little sadly, "I wonder if we'll ever meet again?"

"I should think so!" Eustace cried, even though his mouth was very full of potatoes and some sprayed out on the table. He swallowed hard and said "Didn't I tell you all of the last thing that happened after we rescued Prince Rilian?"

Everyone except Jill shook their heads, so Eustace told the story. "We got back to the harbour and Rilian went forward to meet his father, but something was wrong. He saw Rilian all right, but after he had blessed his son, Caspian died."

Here Lucy's eyes filled with very bright tears and Edmund balled up his napkin very tight.

"Caspian died?" Peter echoed numbly.

Eustace nodded and couldn't speak, so Jill took up the story. "He was terribly old by then." She meant this as a word of comfort, to show that he had not suffered, but it only made the others sadder.

"I can't imagine him old," Edmund said. "Not after the Dawn Treader."

"Not after the second Battle of Beruna," Peter put in.

Lucy shook her head. "Not after anything. I can't believe—Caspian? Dying?"

"But there's more!" Jill cried somewhat impatiently. "You're all getting depressed and you're not listening to the end of the story! After he died Aslan showed up and he blew us to the Eastern End of the world—"

"On top of the mountains that we saw when we arrived in the Dawn Treader's boat," Eustace put in.

Jill continued. "We were talking with Him, and then we looked in the stream and there was Caspian, old as anything, lying in it, still dead. Even Aslan cried."

Now the three Pevensies were crying themselves, but crying without making any noise. Edmund reached across the table and took Lucy's hand.

"But then Aslan had Eustace drive a thorn into his paw. It must have been horrible and terribly hard to do, but Eustace did it anyway. A drop of the lion's blood fell into the stream above Caspian, and quite suddenly it was as if time went backwards, and he started getting younger. His wrinkles smoothed and his beard grew short and disappeared and his hair turned from gray to yellow."

Here Eustace picked up the story. "After he had gotten up and greeted Aslan he saw me, and the first thing he asked about was his second-best sword."

Edmund and Lucy laughed heartily at this joke, but Eustace had to explain it to everyone else. "I broke it trying to fight the Sea Serpent. It was a useless thing to do, trying to hack at that huge monster with one little sword. In the end it was Reepicheep who had the right idea of pushing it off the boat."

"Still, it was a very brave thing," Lucy added.

Eustace blushed a little. Then he continued the story. "Well, anyway, he told Aslan that he always wanted to see our world, and Aslan said he could."

"There were some bullies chasing us before we found our way into Narnia," Jill explained, "And Aslan sent Caspian to help us teach them a lesson, only he made the boys promise to only use the flats of their swords. He was only there for five minutes before he went back, but still."

Eustace nodded. "After seeing Caspian get young again like that, I've always had quite a lot of hope about the future.

"So perhaps we will all meet again," Peter mused.

"I'm quite sure of it," Jill said decidedly.

This cheered them all, but in a way that makes you happy rather than talkative. Each was thinking about the person they would most like to see again, and they were all lost in that daydream until presently Edmund said, "But there's one story we haven't heard yet that I would very much like to know. Peter, how is it that you became yourself again?"