I don't own Narnia or the Pevensies. I just spend my life trying to become part of them. And any incoherence at the end of this chapter is blamed on the bloody owl that's sitting outside my window, hooting its damned heart out and giving me brain spasms.


The interior of the dwelling was as rough as the exterior had appeared. Lucy entered the first dirt-floored room, which seemed to be a sort of kitchen that also functioned as a sitting room, furnished with only a rudimentary table and a few blocks of wood for chairs. Against one wall, there was a stone fireplace that emptied into a clay chimney. Both of these things had been much more carefully built than the table, and both were beginning to show the black, sooty stains of frequent use and not much cleaning. Currently a weak fire was hissing and popping there.

The man, even more tired-looking in the dim firelight, stumbled over to one of the wood blocks and sank down on it wearily. He had the look of someone who had gone through a great deal in a short amount of time. His mousy brown hair was streaked liberally with grey, his clothes were loose enough to suggest some amount of weight loss, and his shoulders slumped with a certain air of hostile dejectedness.

After a moment in which the stranger only rubbed his face with his hands, Lucy realized they weren't going to be invited to sit and took the initiative to do it without being asked. Her siblings copied her and drew out stumps for themselves. Another minute passed in a silence that seemed awkward to the Pevensies, but didn't seem to be bothering their host at all. Finally, Peter cleared his throat. The man looked up irritably.

"What do you want?" he asked, as if he'd forgotten they were there.

"What is your name?"

"Don't see why it matters," the man grumbled. "But if it pleases you, your Majesty, they call me Perick." He crossed his arms and leaned back in his seat.

"Thank you," said Peter. "Now that we know who we are addressing, Perick, may we ask how you came to be in these woods?"

Lucy noticed her brother was using his patient voice, the one he used back in England when she asked why there had to be a war. Unlike then, however, now his tone was lined with a hint of frustration.

"I don't see why it's any of your business," Perick snapped. Edmund bent forward, resting his elbows on the table and staring into the man's eyes evenly.

"Let me tell you a story," he said. "Once upon a time, four children accidentally stumbled into a world they knew nothing about. They found themselves trapped in a dangerous adventure that almost resulted in their deaths several times, but eventually they completed their tasks and became Kings and Queens of that new land. Years later, they set off on another long journey, in which they again faced dangers involving storms, sea monsters, attempted murders and one very inhospitable man who appeared to have murdered a portion of Narnia's forest in order to build himself a cabin. They tried to be patient with the man, but he seemed so woefully ignorant of the land around him that they could not help but wish to slap him upside the head."

Lucy was smiling broadly by the end of his speech despite the well-contained irritation at its finish. Peter held a dignified, kingly expression, but his blue eyes held an amused twinkle, and the corner's of Susan's mouth were twitching upwards against her own better judgment. Perick did not seem so amused, and he curled his hand into a fist, watching Edmund with a deep dislike.

"If my children ever spoke to me like that, I'd give them a good slap myself," he said. There was a tense silence.

"Look, sir," Susan said gently. "We don't want a fight. We've come a long way, and I must say your establishment comes as a great surprise to us. Please, couldn't you just tell us how you got here?"

He gave her a long, appraising look, which she returned earnestly, then he slumped back in his seat resignedly and began to speak. His voice was softer, now, with a touch of the exhaustion apparent in his features now showing in his tone.

"Back home, there was a war," he said. "I had a family, I didn't want to get involved, but they destroyed our homes and drove us off our land. There were many others like us, desperate to find some place to keep living, away from the battles, but there just wasn't a place for everyone. We wandered for weeks on end, staying on the edge of the forest, waiting for it to be over so we could start to rebuild everything they destroyed. But when it had been months, with no sign of stopping, the food around the forest was running out and we knew, all of us knew, we had to go somewhere else. We couldn't wait any longer. So we went into the wood." He paused and looked up at Susan, who he seemed to trust much more than her brothers. She nodded, and he continued.

"For a while we just lived off the fruit trees and occasionally caught a rabbit or something. But then Lyde, that's the son of my good friend Barrin, he came back one day, said he'd found something amazing in a lake and that we all had to come and see. I thought he'd taken a knock to the head; the rest followed and I went because my family wanted to and they were all I had left. Well, we got to the lake and it turns out he'd found her. She was up to her waist in the water, and not dressed in much, I don't know how she wasn't freezing, but she spoke to us. She said there was another world where we could go. Promised us land and freedom, something no one else could give us, and it was all too tempting, however strange it was, we couldn't refuse…" his voice trailed off, and he ran a hand through his graying hair.

"Go on," Susan prompted. Her face was paler than before, and as she shared a glance with her siblings, Lucy knew they were all thinking the same thing – could she be the White Witch? Perick sighed.

"There isn't much more to tell," he said tiredly. "She opened up some sort of a gateway – I'd heard of it in stories and the like, just never had seen it – and we were through, into this forest. She promised we wouldn't be followed, and that we could do whatever we liked with the land, that it was ours. I don't know who you lot are, but I don't care anymore, I just want to see my daughters grow up. I just want to be left in peace." A certain bitterness had crept into his words.

Lucy, under ordinary circumstances, would have felt immediately sorry for the man, but the memory of a young dryad tumbling dead from her arms blocked the feeling.

"Do you know where you are?" Peter asked. The stony silence that ensued gave him his answer. "You are in Narnia, Perick, and it is not like any other world. Things are much different here."

"So I've noticed," Perick replied. "Now if you don't mind me asking, who in the blazes are you all? And are there any other people in this Narnia?"

"I am Peter Pevensie, and these are my brother and sisters, Edmund, Susan and Lucy," said Peter, nodding to each one in turn. Lucy noticed that he left off their titles, which seemed reasonable given Perick's apparent lack of trust. She had met enough ambassadors to understand that while Peter's eighteen years were simply young for a monarch, a thirteen-year-old queen without a regent was unheard of.

"And no, there are no other humans in Narnia," Edmund finished for his brother. "It's just us."

"How did you come to be here, then?" said Perick.

"I've already told you that," Ed replied with the faintest trace of a grin. "Once upon a time…"

"Don't give me that tripe, lad, I'm not stupid. Kings and Queens are stuffy old folk who sit up on their thrones and gossip as their people massacre each other, or stuff themselves while the workers starve. The Lady said this was a new, uncharted land. You're not going to come marching in here with half-horses and take it away, I've every right to be here."

"They're centaurs," Lucy said, frowning. It was the first she'd spoken since they'd entered his house, and Perick studied her for a moment before replying.

"I say it as I see it," he said.

"I think you see it wrong."

Perick scoffed, a sour expression crossing his face.

"If I were you," he said to Peter, "I wouldn't let her talk back like that." Lucy was about to open her mouth and say something quite disrespectful, but her older brother spoke first.

"Thank you for the advice," Peter replied coolly. "I'll bear it in mind if you ever become me."

Perick's eyebrows shot into his bangs before furrowing deeply, and he stood up threateningly, glaring down at all four of them.

"I've had just about enough of your cheek," he said angrily. "If you'll stop your playacting and ask me whatever questions you have left, I welcome you to stay. If not, get out of my house."

"Not questions," said Susan, glancing at Peter. "We must speak to you about something of a more serious nature. I don't think you understand the nature of the forest you're in."

"Then tell me quickly. I have more important things to be doing."

But he sat down, drawing his crude stool nearer to the table. Lucy shifted uncomfortably, wondering how to go about doing this. After all, she'd never accused anyone of murder before.