"Too fast," Peter mused, and Edmund knew exactly what he was talking about. The train was going far too fast for one about to pull into a station. Then there was a screech of metal on metal and the horn of the train and the roar of the engine all at once. Those sounds ripped through the quiet of the station. The noise was so deafening that Edmund had to cover his ears, his eyes squeezed shut.

There was a sudden bang. Edmund was thrown off his feet but strangely, he felt very light. It seemed to take unnaturally long to hit the ground.

The next thing he knew he was sitting in the grass. Before he could figure out how he got there from the concrete platform, he realized something else. His knee had stopped hurting. Just like that it was good as new, and it had been bothering him for the better part of a week. He rubbed it experimentally and flexed it, but it was as though the hack the other day had never happened. Rather, he felt as though he could run a marathon on it.

He looked up to tell Peter about it, but when he saw his brother his jaw dropped. Peter was also sitting in the glass just a few yards away. The sun was shining in his golden hair and his blue eyes were glowing. He would have looked very kingly if his mouth had not been open wide in surprise.

"Edmund, you—" he stammered, and his voice was trembling. "Your clothes. Look at you!"

Edmund looked more carefully and realized that he was no longer in the shirt and trousers he had been wearing on the platform. Instead he was in full Narnian regalia, a glittering mail shirt and a fine silk tunic embroidered with a lion rampant. Normally he didn't take much account of clothes, but he couldn't help but notice that the gold of the lion was brighter than any gold he had ever seen in thread and the red of the silk was richer and softer than he had ever known. The mail shirt was more intricately worked than the finest dwarf-wrought mail. He looked up at Peter again and saw that he too was dressed in same Narnian clothes. A sword lay beside him in the grass. "You've got a sword," he said, nodding towards it. He felt his eyes widen.

Peter picked it up and drew it from his sheath, staring at the glittering weapon with bemusement. "Whither this sword and these clothes?" He looked to Edmund. "You have your crown again."

Edmund reached up and felt the circlet of gold on his head. "So have you," he replied, noticing that Peter was wearing his crown of old. "Are we back? Is this…is this Narnia?"

Peter stood up, sheathed the sword and shook his head. "It cannot be. We're under Aslan's commandment not to return there." His voice was low, but Edmund noticed he didn't look or sound as sad as he usually did when he talked about not going back to Narnia. He realized that when he thought about not going back there he couldn't quite manage sadness either.

Peter, who Edmund realized was looking more like the High King he was, picked up another sword and handed it to Edmund. Now Edmund rose and buckled the sword around his waist and felt that the leather was the most supple he had ever touched. At the same time he noticed what a clear shade of blue the sky was, and he wondered that he could have called anything before blue.

"I still don't understand," he breathed in wonder. "Where is the station platform? Where is the train? Where are the others?"

Peter shook his head and chuckled. "I have the same questions too. And yet it's strange--I'm not worried."

Edmund thought about this for a second. "No, I'm not either. Just very curious." He tried to remember what had happened, but it was hard to recall exactly what the station platform had been like. He remembered vaguely that he had been staring at the place for some time, and that he had been troubled and a little sad, but it was getting harder and harder to remember exactly what it was to have been sad.

While he was puzzling over this, a clear bright voice called "Peter! Edmund!"

Both of them wheeled around and saw Lucy sprinting towards them, her cloak streaming out behind her, her dress fluttering at her feet, her golden hair flying. Edmund wondered why everyone had always called Susan the prettier one, for Lucy looked so fresh and beautiful now. She hugged them both at the same time. "I knew I'd find you here! I just knew it!"

"But do you know where we are?" Peter asked.

Lucy looked around her and the smile never left her face. "I'm not sure what it's called, but I know I've been waiting to come here my whole life."

This was so like Lucy that it made Edmund hug her all over again. Once he had shied away from hugs, but in this place he felt it stranger to restrain himself.

Lucy laughed brightly, and when he let her go she kept her hands on his shoulders, examining him from arm's length. "I say, Edmund, you look better than you've looked for ages! Your eyes are so wonderfully clear. Do you know I haven't seen you look like that since you were healed on the battlefield at Beruna? In fact, when you left the other day—or last week? How long ago was it?—I was worried about you."

"Well," Edmund said, breathing in deeply. "I'm better now."

"Here come two strangers," Peter commented, looking past them.

"Why those aren't strangers at all! Don't you recognize Polly and the Professor?" Lucy asked, and she raised her arm in salutation.

When Edmund looked into their faces he could see it was them, though they walked with ease, not as stiff elderly people. They were, at most, a scant handful of years older than Peter. They shook hands all around and were just beginning a confusing conversation about how they all got there when the Professor broke in. "What is that door?"

Everyone looked and saw at once what he meant. They went towards it. Edmund went round it and declared "It seems to lead to nowhere."

"Perhaps we should open the door and see if we can see something through it," Peter suggested. "After all, Aslan has drawn doors in the air before."

He was just reaching for the handle when it opened of its own accord and they all jumped back. A Calormene soldier came in with a drawn scimitar. Instinctively, Peter and Edmund drew their swords. The ring of it was loud in that glade, but the Calormene didn't turn or look in their direction.

"Marry, but that's odd," Edmund whispered to Peter. He didn't realize he too was falling into his kingly speech. "A Calormene would never stand down from a challenge."

"I shall go and speak to him," Peter said, stepping forward. "Hail! Are you servant of a Tarkaan? Whither come you? What is your purpose?" When the man didn't turn or acknowledge him, Peter added. "Answer me, for I am the High King Peter of Narnia."

Still nothing, but Edmund was noticing something else. "Do you think he can even see us? He hasn't looked at the sun or the sky or the grass yet, and you can't help noticing them."

"Perhaps not," the Professor agreed. "Let's wait to see what happens."

Peter nodded, but both he and Edmund kept their swords drawn.

After a space of moments which felt like a long time—though no one could be quite sure afterwards how long—the door opened again and a cat came in. The Calormene did not make ready to strike. Then Edmund felt a shudder of dread go through him and settle in the pit of his stomach and all at once a creature was there on their side of the door. It was skeletally thin with four arms and the head of an awful, bloodthirsty vulture, and though Edmund had never seen it before, he knew to call it Tash.

A cat entered the door, and when it saw Tash it ran even as the monster lunged for it. Its beak scraped against the wood of the slamming door. The Calormene trembled and bowed—apparently he could see Tash—but Tash vanished with no trace, as it had come. Lucy was a little pale when she said "I would not like to see what would have happened if the cat had not run."

"Nor would I," Edmund confided in a whisper.

After that they wondered less about what the beautiful place was and concentrated on the stable door. After the cat, a noble-looking young Tarkaan came in. "He has a good face," Lucy murmured. "Let us speak to him."

So Peter and Edmund went forward and tried to address him, but though he seemed to see them all he could say was "Tash, Tash. I go to Tash," like a man in a trance. He wandered away.

Edmund shook his head at Lucy. "It's no good now. Maybe we can talk some sense into him later."

"We should try," Lucy said. "I liked his face."

"Tis true he had an honest look to him," Peter agreed. He put his hand on her shoulder. "We'll try to find him later, Lu. Apparently he's got to walk it off. It is rather a shock being here."

No sooner had Peter finished saying these words than a dozen dwarfs came tumbling through the door. Like the Calormene, they appeared not to see the sun or the sky either, and when Edmund and Peter called to them, they said nothing. An ape followed, at which point Tash appeared and made quick work of him. Before they could puzzle over it much the door opened again and a person was flung in, yelling mightily.

Edmund laughed as soon as he recognized the figure. "No need to yell so, Eustace," he said cheerfully, stepping forward to help his cousin up.

"Edmund!" Eustace cried, wide-eyed with surprise. "How did you get here? Why's it so light? We were just fighting; it was the middle of the night when that Calormene threw me through the door, that brute, that—" he broke off and sighed. "Tirian's right. I've got to stop calling names."

"Who's Tirian?" Peter asked.

"Peter! You're here too! Hullo, you're all here. I say, I've been on some strange adventures in my life, but this is the strangest of all."

"Eustace, who's Tirian?" Peter repeated patiently. "And where's Jill?"

"Jill?" Eustace echoed. "I—I don't know. We were fighting all around the stable, and I lost track of her. I do hope she's alright."

"Fighting?" Peter said.

"Yes. Oh, you don't want to know about it, it's too terrible what's going on in Narnia. Tirian's king now, and he's a good king, but it's a mess. The Calormenes have taken over, the dwarves are shooting everyone, no reinforcements are coming to the king."

"One shall," Peter declared. He gripped his sword tighter and prepared to go through the door. Before he had even taken a step forward, though, the door opened again and Jill was pitched in. Eustace turned very red in a moment, as if the blood started flowing from his heart again.

"Jill!" he cried, rushing over to her. "Jill are you—but of course you're alright." He frowned. "You look quite lovely, honestly."

Jill picked herself up from the ground and looked at Eustace. "So do you," she said with a grin. "But where's Tirian?"

"I don't know. None of us knows anything."

Meanwhile Edmund leaned over and whispered to Peter "This may not be Narnia, but I'm certain it's got something to do with Narnia."

"I feel exactly the same way," Peter answered.

"Do you?" Lucy's whisper was a thrill. "Because so do I."

Jill was just looking around in wonder at the others and asking "But how did you all get here?" when a pair of figures came through, a Narnian King dragging a Calormene by the belt. The Calormene was swinging his scimitar, but the Narnian was unarmed. Edmund felt the coldness sweep through him and he knew Tash was back. This time Tash spoke to the Calormene.

"Thou hast called me into Narnia, Rishda Tarkaan. Here I am. What hast thou to say?"

Edmund hated the harsh, croaking sound of the monster's voice, but more horrid still was when it bent to pluck the writhing Tarkaan from the ground. Lucy turned and hid her face against him. He put an arm around her, all the while praying that Tash would not see the Narnian.

He did. He fixed the young king with a terrifying and fierce stare and seemed about to make the same movement for him when Peter said with cool and strong authority "Begone, Monster, and take your lawful prey to your own place: in the name of Aslan and Aslan's great Father, the Emperor-Over-Sea."

Peter the High King spoke with such authority that even Tash could not disobey. He disappeared with the Tarkaan under his arm and left the Narnian with them. The King, who Edmund supposed was Tirian who Eustace and Jill had been talking about, looked at them with frank astonishment until Jill laughed. Then she stepped forward and said in the high court language he had never heard her use "Sire, let me make you known to Peter, High King over all Kings in Narnia."

Hearing his brother so called again after so many long years made Edmund's heart swell with pride. And Peter looked far nobler than he ever had as he stepped forward to receive the King. Once Peter had raised him up, Edmund recognized him at once as the Narnian who had appeared to them at the Professor's house, only here he looked bolder and truer. Edmund greeted him warmly, but then came the uncomfortable moment when he asked about Susan. Peter said simply "My sister Susan is no longer a friend of Narnia," but Edmund felt all the grief in that statement. All she has to do is want to come back and she shall find her way, he reminded himself, and that kept him from despair.

He would have been very glad for the conversation to end there, and from the look on Lucy and Peter's faces he surmised they felt the same. Eustace and Polly and Jill, however, felt the need to vent some spleen about Susan. Edmund was about to get angry when Peter cut the conversation short and suggested they eat the fruit hanging all around them.

After they had eaten they told Tirian about their arrival, and Edmund found he had difficulty describing exactly what happened. The train station seemed further away than ever after all those strange events. Then Lucy took up the narrative of what happened after they arrived. Edmund liked the look in Tirian's eyes while he listened to her, and he thought that while many men looked Susan's way, none of them drank in her words or her voice or her spirit the way Tirian listened to Lucy now, or the way Caspian had listened to her so many years ago.

Together Tirian and Lucy tried to talk some sense into the dwarves, who were seated some ways away, but to no avail. Then, just as he had felt a sick shudder when Tash showed up, before he had even seen Tash, Edmund felt a wonderful, tingling warmth spread down his back, to the tips of his fingers and toes. He rushed forward with the others to greet the Great Lion. Aslan kissed them each in turn, and though he didn't speak aloud he said to Edmund "My son, you have learned well. You have given yourself this second life which I prepared for you. Live happy and in peace for all of time," and Edmund felt as though his heart would break from joy. He looked at Lucy, who had just received her greeting from Aslan, and she took his hand. Though she didn't say anything, her shining eyes plainly told him "I know exactly how you feel."

Edmund didn't often like to recall the next part; it hurt him to see the stars rain down and the Narnia he knew and called home die. Though he had been filled with terror and wonder, he was glad when Peter scraped the door closed over the ice and locked it. It meant he could turn away. The cold still hung over him, it settled inside him even in that fair country as they set off to follow Aslan. Peter wondered at Lucy's tears, but Edmund would have cried himself if he had been able to summon the faculty. All that coldness seemed to have frozen his tears. And yet as he walked he noticed that the land seemed familiar. Even the very grass, though greener than he thought green could be, seemed known to him.

He looked at the mountains they were facing, the way they cut the sky, and thought that they weren't England or anywhere on Earth, but the mountains of the Narnian west. Lucy called his attention south, and he recognized the twinned summit of Mount Pire. It had to be Narnia, but he didn't know how it could be, even when Farsight the Eagle told them of the landscape. It wasn't until the Professor explained that this was the true Narnia, the original from which the copy was made, that Edmund truly let himself rejoice.

They raced through the western wild, after Aslan, and they arrived at the gates of the garden where Reepicheep greeted them. Edmund looked around and knew that through all the long years and all the confusion and all the despair, he had found his way home.

A/N: So several people have asked me to include all the fun details about their return to Narnia, meeting Reepicheep and Caspian and all that. What stories did they tell? What jokes did they revive? Unfortunately, this chapter was a) quite long enough and b) that stuff, while immense fun, doesn't really fit with the arc of the story. However, I think after I finish the Tetrology (four stories about the four Pevensies--see my profile if you're curious), I might close it off with a last chapter about the rewards each gets for overcoming their greatest hurdle. And add all the homecoming goodness. Y'all should know I'm a sucker for Caspian.

I want to thank everyone for their faithful reading and their awesome reviews. Everyone is so nice, I feel you all need to be harder on me. So if it ever occurs to you that there's something I can do that can make this story better, please don't hesitate to review or private message me. I can't even tell you how cool it is to get a review of any type; just knowing someone is reading my story gives me the warm fuzzies. And if you like it enough, could I make the humble request that you add my story to your favorites or a C2? Now that there's going to be no more updates on this story, I'm sad to think it'll get lost in the shuffle. I'm just a big attention ho at heart. Hence the heartfelt appreciation.

Don't worry, this is also not the last you'll hear from me! I have a new story all started and ready to post and tons more ideas brewing (including Susan's. I think hers will be the most complicated of all). Also, several people have offered several ideas for new stories. I love that. It usually gets my mind going and me thinking of things I never would have thought otherwise. If it weren't for Madelynne Rabb and others who asked that I continue after the end of Kings in Exile I don't know if I would have come up with this one. So my gratitude.

Oh! Of course, the disclaimer. None of the Pevensies are mine, this whole thing is written in tribute to Jack, not to scam off him. And so, though I'm way too lazy to cite the pages, some of the dialogue in this last chapter comes directly from The Last Battle, particularly Chapter XII, "Through the Stable Door" and Chapter XIII "How the Dwarves Refused to be Taken in." If I ever meet C.S. Lewis beyond the Shadowlands one day, I am going to have a long conversation with him about how truly awesome Narnia is to me and how much it's actually changed me.

Look at that. Four whole paragraphs of author's notes, and it's still not nearly as long as the story. Yes, prolific truly is my middle name. But my secret one. Like in "The Naming of Cats." (By T.S. Eliot. Not Andrew Lloyd Webber)