I don't own Narnia or the Pevensies. I just hope they won't kill me for mutilating them in this sub-par chapter, ergh.
At the end of the long, narrow hallway were several doors. They headed in the first, which led to a room looked as if it may have been for guests at some point, but obviously it had been taken over for use by the wolves that had made up Jadis's secret police. It reeked of things Lucy didn't want to think about, the most pleasant of which could be described as 'wet dog.' They gave it a quick look-over but were unwilling to search it very thoroughly. The next three rooms were all the same way. Finally, the last door of the hallway opened and the contents quite nearly took their breath away.
It had definitely been a treasure room at some point. It wasn't as well organized as the one at Cair Paravel, but the things it held were no less stupendous. Piles of artifacts in gold and silver glittered with all colors of precious stones, mountains of gems and priceless relics knee-high. They would have to wade through to get anywhere. But somehow, the awed, impressed feeling that Lucy always got when she looked in the treasure room at the Cair was nullified. She could only feel revolted at the greed of the White Witch. She knew full well that most of the treasure must have been stolen from Narnians over hundreds of years. Why, perhaps some had even belonged to Mr. Tumnus!
"Could be in here," said Peter, drawing his sword and using it to shift some of the things on the floor distastefully. He looked up at his family. "We should probably look around a bit."
They nodded and branched out. Susan hopped lightly over an intricately carved bench of a cherry wood, heading towards the far corner. Lucy looked around for a moment before making her way through the sea of riches and into the center.
"How are we supposed to know if we found it?" asked Edmund.
"I think we'll just know," replied Peter, stooping to pick up a heavy amber locket. He flipped it open, found nothing interesting, and shut it, tossing it back into the heap and looking back up at his brother. "You know, you'll just feel that it's the right thing."
"Right," said Edmund, sounding nonplussed.
"Oh!" came Susan's voice from behind a great pile of gold. She emerged from behind it, staggering under the weight of what looked to be a solid gold sword with a jewel-studded hilt. With great effort, she held it up for them to see. "Who could possibly use something like this?"
Lucy laughed.
"Someone with slow enemies," she joked.
"And soft," said Edmund. "You can't get a sharp edge on gold, it doesn't hold."
"And if you held it for long enough it would melt. Unless you had hands like ice," Peter pointed out. All four of them laughed; Susan disappeared again in the corner. It became a bit of a game. Whenever anyone found something truly ridiculous, they would point it out to their siblings and the four of them would have a good time predicting what it could be used for. The best by far was discovered by Lucy, a candleholder made entirely of glass and shaped like an enormous, grotesque, dead fish. Its mouth was splayed open, glass tongue grooved to hold a thick-based candle.
"Not only is it impractical, it's awful to look at," Susan had said.
After a good fifteen minutes of searching, they decided their time was better spent elsewhere. Lucy followed Peter and Edmund (still chuckling) out of the room, casting a final glance at the gleaming heaps of treasure before heading out into the hallway. They had passed all the other doorways before she realized there were no footsteps behind her. She turned around.
" Susan?" she called. She heard Peter and Edmund stop and turn. There was no reply. " Susan!"
They hurried back to the treasury. There was a shifting noise from the corner she'd been searching, and then her voice came through to them, sounding listless and tired.
"Oh, just go on without me."
Lucy scrambled forward over the cherry wood bench and poked her head around the stack of gold. Susan sat on the floor with her legs folded beneath her, hands clasped in her lap. At her sister's approach she looked up, and Lucy was shocked to see that her eyes were dulled, completely devoid of their normal sparkle. She looked absolutely expressionless.
" Susan, come on," said Lucy, a glimmer of fear in her voice.
"What's the use?" asked Susan bleakly. "It's not as if I can do anything to help."
"What are you talking about?"
"I know what they say. In all the songs they sing about us, it's the same. Peter is brave. Edmund is wise. You're charming. And I am beautiful, nothing more. Just beautiful."
Lucy cast a frightened glance at Peter and Edmund, who stood frozen in the doorway. She turned back to her sister and feeling quite thrown off, knelt next to Susan.
"No, no," said Lucy earnestly. "You're much more than that. You're a brilliant archer and a great fighter and a terrific older sister."
Susan laughed humorlessly, turning her dead gaze to Lucy's face, and the younger nearly flinched to see how apathetic her sister looked.
"A brilliant archer who can't hit a target without a magical bow. A great fighter who can't even defend herself from a handful of mercenaries. A terrific older sister who left her family in danger on the deck of a small ship in the middle of a storm," Susan said monotonously. "No, Lucy, I've never been more than a burden."
"None of that, now," said Lucy, looking for any indication that Susan had been bewitched. This wasn't normal! She could be cool-headed, even indifferent, but not despairing – Susan would never just give up.
"Don't you see, Lucy?" she continued in a whisper. "I never do enough. I have never done enough. I can't fight wars like Peter and Edmund do. I can't make friends like you do. All I'm good for is gowns and formalities. If I hadn't come along on this journey, Peter wouldn't have been captured, you and Ed wouldn't have had to find your own way, you all wouldn't have had to come after me. The delay probably cost even more lives, and it's all because of me."
"But you've done so much!" Lucy protested. "You fought those archers back in the wood. You shot the man who attacked Ed and I when we were at the village. You made me feel better when I had that nightmare…Susan, you're not useless at all, please, what's wrong with you?"
Susan looked at her lap, fingers coming up to play with a silver chain around her neck. Lucy caught that piece of information before her mind tucked it away – she wasn't wearing a necklace when we came in!
"Where did you get that?" she asked urgently.
"It doesn't matter."
But it did. Lucy lunged forward and grasped the chain, trying to lift it over Susan's head, but her sister suddenly looked furious and swatted her away, rage rising over the indifference. The instant Susan's hand connected with Lucy's arm, their brothers were tense, as if waiting to see what would happen next, but Lucy knew what to do. She seized the chain, apologizing quickly, and ripped it from her sister's neck. It broke, tiny silver links scattering across the floor. Susan cried out in pain, fell to one side, caught herself on one arm and looked up into Lucy's frightened eyes.
"Ouch," she said, sitting up and putting a finger to the side of her neck. It came away slightly wet with blood.
"I'm sorry," said Lucy.
But Susan shook her head confusedly, muttering 'it's all right' under her breath before looking up at Peter and Edmund, then back at Lucy.
"What happened?" she asked dazedly. Lucy got to her feet, helping Susan to do the same and leading the way back over to the doorway.
"You spouted a lot of rubbish," said Edmund, half a smile tugging at the corner of his lips.
"Er…right," said Susan, looking even more confused, but she seemed to give up after a moment. "Onward, then?"
They nodded and the four of them again set off, back through the narrow hallway with the water-windows, down the short staircase and into the dwarf room. Here they chose another door, the third of four, and made their way up a sloped hallway until emerging into a glorious, rectangular stone chamber.
The ceiling was high, though not so high as the previous room, and there were more windows like the narrow hallway. Unlike the thin slits of the hallway, however, they were great gaping holes that led into a blue underworld, tall as a man and just as wide. Eerie, mottled blue light swirled in patterns on the stone floor. The walls were covered in portraits of statuesque, noble-looking figures with unnaturally pale, smooth skin. They all resembled Jadis. Edmund hunched his shoulders and looked away, choosing instead to stare out a window, but looked up in surprise at Peter when the elder king put a hand on his shoulder and smiled gently.
Lucy's attention, however, was drawn to something else. In the very center of the room there was a tall object covered in a white sheet – so strikingly similar to the way she'd found the wardrobe that it was uncanny. Immediately she felt drawn to it. She vaguely heard Susan warn her to be careful before she was hurrying forward, reaching out, fingers curling in the smooth material, pulling it away. It billowed down and revealed what was underneath: a tall, oval mirror, silver-edged and towering above the young queen. Something about it seemed to almost leer at her, and there was something entirely sinister that she could not place a finger on. She stared, transfixed, her own face staring back out at her, her three siblings at varying distances from her.
And then the reflections began to move, and a scream choked itself in her throat.
