The next day, it rained.

It poured down on the house, and in doing so, dashed Peter's hopes of exploring the woods. All four of the Pevensies felt out-of-sorts during the stormy morning. Elizabeth was quiet, curled up on a lounge and engrossed in a thick book, bound in leather, which she had "borrowed" from the library. Her only hope was that Mrs Macready and the Professor were not in the habit of frequenting the dusty shelf she had taken it from, and thus would not notice its absence. She would much rather have remained in her room, but she had guessed, and rightly so, that the Pevensies would have thought her standoffish and peculiar if she had not joined them in the morning. She did not want them to dislike her, for some reason.

'Gastrovascular,' Susan said.

Peter ignored her and the dictionary she had spread on her lap.

'Come on, Peter, gastrovascular...' Susan said persistently.

Peter sighed. 'Is it Latin?'

'Yes,' Susan replied. Elizabeth smiled grimly to herself. She could have told Peter that off the top of her head; and the meaning of it, too; having her nose in a book all the time certainly had its good points, one of those being an extensive vocabulary. Another was that she had an excuse for hiding in corners and being anti-social. Yet another was that people dismissed her strange ways as consequences of reading constantly, and did not bother her. A fourth was that her mother had given up trying to reform her eldest daughter, claiming her to be a lost cause.

It did not help the girl's heart to remember her mother's contemptuous words at their parting, and how they had underlined the warmth of her brother's goodbye at their home. She had been glad to get away from the constant, acid words, the pitying comments made to her mother about her, her brother's disdain of the strange younger sister who would not run, who would not make friends, who would refuse to come to parties and visit people; she was glad to escape the constant crushing of her spirit, by the rain of hard words and blows.

'Is it Latin for "worst game ever invented"?' Edmund asked, lying on his back and looking up at the underside of a chair.

Susan slammed the dictionary on her lap shut, much put out by the reactions of the two boys and by Lucy's downright refusal to play. She hadn't even contemplated asking Elizabeth to play; one of the reasons being that she had forgotten the girl's presence. If she had remembered, she would have thought, rightly, that Elizabeth would not tear herself away from her book.

'Peter, can we play hide-and-seek?' Lucy asked from where she sat, looking out of the window.

'But we're already having so much fun,' Peter replied dryly, looking over at Susan. Elizabeth noted the sarcasm in his tone. Susan glared at him.

'Please?' Lucy repeated, getting up to stand by the arm of his chair. He looked at her, undecided.

She added the one thing she knew he could never resist from her. 'Pretty please?' Elizabeth put down her book, marking the page with a thread of cotton, and looked over at them.

Peter looked at his favourite sister, a mischievous glint in his eyes. 'One. Two. Three. Four. Five...'

They scattered as Peter stood and went to face the wall, his forearm over his eyes as he continued to count.

Lucy raced for an alcove in the wall, covered by a tapestry. Edmund caught up with her and thrust her aside. 'I was here first!' he exclaimed. Lucy gave him a glare and ran along the corridor. Elizabeth, who had overheard the conversation, looked at him with her steady grey eyes, making him feel a little uncomfortable, and followed Lucy, turning off into a side passage where Lucy had gone straight on.

Lucy tugged at a door handle and rushed to the next room. Thankfully, the door opened, and she stumbled inside, relieved.

At the end of the room was a tall...something, covered by a dust cloth. Lucy approached it, her eyes wide.

A tug at the dust cloth revealed a carved wardrobe. The dust cloth fluttered to the floor, collapsing noiselessly in folds of material. Lucy pulled the latch up and concealed herself inside the wardrobe, backing herself through the coats to avoid discovery for as long as possible.

Something prickly touched her back. She turned and stared, wide-eyed, as she emerged through the trees.

Into Narnia.


Elizabeth pulled the latch of a door up, but banged it down again in a rare fit of frustration when it became clear that it was locked. She rarely became openly frustrated, preferring instead to bottle up her feelings where no one could sneer or laugh at her, but she was alone, and she felt like a normal fourteen year old again, as she had not felt in years.

She could hear Peter counting, getting closer and closer to the end mark of one hundred. She rushed out of the corridor and chose a room at random, latching the door behind her.

A carved wardrobe stood in the centre of the room. A dustcloth lay on the floor, where it was just settling down into folds. The door was ajar.

She stared at it, grey eyes wide. There was an aura of power about this wardrobe, an aura of power and majesty. It was as if it was...magic.

She shook herself, scolding her imagination. Magic! An invention for the benefit of children.

Her mother's voice crept into her memory. Stupid girl! Imagining things when you ought to be working! I don't know why I bother to keep you...

With an effort, she forced her mother out of her mind. Steeling herself, she lifted the latch and slipped inside, letting the door stay ajar behind her.

She backed into the wardrobe, waiting to feel the hard wood against her back, the soft coats close in around her. But she kept moving.

Surprised, she looked around. The wardrobe ought not to be as deep as this; it had looked as though she ought to have been able to reach in and touch the back of it, when she was standing at the front of it. Her eyes widened.

Before her lay a world of ice and snow. Snow blanketed every tree, every branch, white, frozen snow, glittering in the cold light. She brushed past the trees and turned slowly in circles, staring up at the trees and the overcast sky. Her feet hardly made an impression on the snow; it was obvious that it had been frozen hard for quite some time.

Her mouth, so unaccustomed to grins or laughter, spread into a wide smile, a joyful smile. She had hardly ever seen real snow, proper snow; there had not been a real snowfall where she lived since before she was born, and she rarely visited the heart of London. This was a dream come true. She looked at the sleeve of her blouse; white crystals rested there. Her fingertips brushed them away gently, feeling their cold against the warmth of her skin through the thin cream blouse.

Her sharp ears picked up an unfamiliar sound; something scraping against the snow. Looking around, she spotted a likely tree, and climbed it hastily. She was stronger than she looked, from years of slaving for her family; caring for the garden, scrubbing the floors, carrying baskets of household necessaries from the local shops and stalls every few days, cooking, cleaning, washing, ironing, sewing. Perched precariously on a wide branch, she waited.

Six white reindeer swept into view, controlled by an ugly, gnarled little man with a cruel whip, who looked to be shorter than her waist. She held her breath; for in the sled which followed, there was a lady, wrapped in white, with a crystal headdress.

The lady called out to the gnome-like creature. 'Stop, Ginarrbrik.' She got out of the sled and looked around, her beautiful, cold face expressionless.

Elizabeth shivered. Although she had not met any women like this before, she did not like this lady; cold and icily beautiful, wrapped in furs and rugs, with a crystal spear by her side. There was a pulsing aura of evil around her; a majestic evil, a disguised evil, but evil nonetheless. It was colder than it had been.

Her foot slipped. A dusting of snow sprinkled down from the branch where her foot lay, and she silently kicked herself. That was a dead giveaway that someone was hiding. For whatever reason, she did not want to be found.

The lady's face hardened. She looked up and pointed the crystal spear towards the tree. Elizabeth tensed, ready to jump and run, back towards the wardrobe, away from the little gnome-man and the "empress of ice", as she called the woman in her own mind. She had an aura of power about her. You would not easily question her orders or motives without fear.

A little bird hopped to Elizabeth's branch. She shooed it away silently; she did not want this woman to punish the bird, as well as her. It flew down and dived past the lady, darting to one side to flash its brown wings in the woman's face, before perching upon another branch and chirping defiantly.

The woman's eyes grew icy. She turned on her heel and seated herself in the sled again. Her gnome-like creature whipped on the six white reindeer, and in a moment they were gone.

Elizabeth let out a breath she didn't realise she was holding, and shivered convulsively. It was cold, and her hands were bare. Her breath hovered in ice crystals before her. She carefully detached her hands from the tree trunk, wincing as fragments of skin that had frozen to the trunk tore from her fingers and hands. Her hands around her stomach, she jumped down from the branch and landed on both feet, nearly letting out a cry of pain as the shock reverberated in her feet.

The bird fluttered down and perched on the sleeve of her blouse. She looked down at it gravely. 'Thank you, wing-friend,' she whispered gently. 'Thank you for my life. Fly away now, quickly.'

The bird chirped cheerfully and flew away, lost quickly in the thick branches of the trees. She looked at where it had been, brow furrowed in thought.

Why had she thanked it for her life? It was just a bird. It couldn't possibly understand what she was saying. It was against all the rules of logic, of biology, and of nature. But no one could have heard her say it – she could pretend she had never said it. In fact, she would not say anything to anyone about this world inside the wardrobe. It was hers. And hers alone.

She ran back to the lamppost and back into the wardrobe with joy swelling inside her, joy as she had not felt in years. The last time she had felt this happy was when she had been allowed, after weeks of begging and pleading with her parents, to attend a concert in St-Martin-In-The-Fields with her aunt, who had since died. She had treasured the memory of the concert, and still did; it was the first real musical experience she had ever had.

She had only felt real joy three times in her life that she could recall; once was when she had discovered the world in the wardrobe. The second was at the concert with her Aunt Virginia. And the first was when her mother had grudgingly allowed her to have piano lessons. In the piano, she had discovered a world of music she had not known existed. Within a year, she was playing with experience and a feeling that few pianists could put into their music. It was her one joy.

But then her aunt had become ill, and died. The mind of the child she had been had not understood why the woman she loved looked so white and pale; why she had not been able to move; why the doctors clustered around her bedside. She could not understand why Aunty Virginia had not moved when she had gone in to gaily tell her of the piano piece she had mastered that day, nor comprehend why her skin was icy cold, and pale. Why the doctors had tried to pull her away from the woman she looked on as a mother, when she so clearly needed Elizabeth to wake her up. She had clung to her aunt, weeping, imploring her to wake up. Eventually her brother had come and slapped her away, before picking her up and taking her home. The whipping she had received that night was the first she had taken in silence. She had been alone then; truly alone, and had remained so up until now. But now…


She pulled open the doors of the wardrobe, to hear Lucy shouting, '…I'm back, I'm back! It's all right, I'm back!'

Elizabeth's brow furrowed. Back from where?

'Shut up, he's coming!' Edmund hissed. Elizabeth peeped around the corner of the door, to see Lucy staring at Edmund in complete incomprehension as the boy poked his head out of the alcove.

Peter came up the stairs and saw them, his brow furrowing in confusion. 'You know, I'm not sure you two have quite got the idea of this game.'

'Weren't you wondering where I was?' Lucy asked, as confused as Peter.

'That's the point! It's why he was seeking you!' Edmund said crossly.

Elizabeth slipped out of the doorway. 'What's happened?' she asked.

'Does this mean I win?' Susan said, arriving behind Peter.

'I don't think Lucy wants to play any more,' Peter said, bemused. Lucy was the one who had first wanted to play hide and seek, and here she was, having not even bothered to hide?

'But...I've been gone...for hours,' Lucy said doubtfully.

The three stared at her. Elizabeth's grey eyes deepened slightly as she thought quickly.

Susan stared into the huge wardrobe, clearing the coats aside and rapping on the back panel with her knuckles. Edmund knocked on the side surreptitiously, listening closely. 'Lucy, the only wood in here is the back of the wardrobe,' Susan said, staring at her younger sister. Elizabeth stood behind Lucy; hand on her shoulder, every line of her body shouting her support of the younger girl.

'One game at a time, Lu. We don't all have your imagination,' Peter said, still a little doubtful. Peter, Susan and Edmund turned to leave.

'But I wasn't imagining!' Lucy cried. Elizabeth still stood behind her, hand on her shoulder, grey eyes unreadable.

The three of them turned at the door. 'That's enough, Lucy,' Susan said.

'I wouldn't lie about something like this!' Lucy shouted, now bewildered at her desertion and the disbelief on the part of her brothers and sisters.

'Well, I believe you,' said Edmund unexpectedly, coming forward.

'You do?' said Lucy doubtfully. Elizabeth's eyes deepened to a stormy grey, not trusting this sudden turn on the part of the younger boy.

'Yeah, of course.' Edmund turned to Peter and Susan. 'Didn't I tell you about the football field in the bathroom cupboard?' he continued, eyes gleaming with mischief.

Elizabeth could have killed the boy for the look on Lucy's face. She had not grown up with this constant teasing and taunting; she had grown up with harsh words and blows, but even she could tell that Edmund had hurt Lucy in a way he never should have. His careless words were just that: careless. He did not care about Lucy or her feelings.

Peter sighed. 'Oh, will you just stop it? You just have to make everything worse, don't you!' he said, angry at the younger boy.

'It was just a joke,' Edmund muttered sullenly.

'When are you going to learn to grow up?' Peter demanded.

Edmund lunged forward, fury in his eyes. 'Shut up! You think you're Dad, but you're not!' he shouted furiously, backing Peter up before he turned and ran, sullen and miserable. Peter watched him go, knowing he had said the wrong thing.

Susan looked at him in disgust. Peter faced her gaze, knowing that he deserved it. 'Well, that was nicely handled,' she said with scorn, before following Edmund.

'But...it really was there...' Lucy said, trying to convince him of her sincerity and truthfulness. Elizabeth watched him, waiting for his reaction, her grey eyes darkening even further.

'Susan's right, Lucy. That's enough,' Peter said slowly. He met Elizabeth's steady gaze, before turning away and going down the steps slowly.


Elizabeth watched him go. She was angry with all three of them, but perhaps she was the angriest with Edmund. He had led Lucy on, given her false hope, and dashed it to pieces. Susan, she was certainly angry with, but with more sadness than anger at the girl.

She wasn't really angry with Peter. She knew what he was trying to deal with; he had his own issues over it. His father was away, fighting in the war. She knew how he felt; her father had beaten her, but she still missed him. He had been told to take care of his brother and sisters, and he felt that he had to take the place, at least temporarily, of their parents. She knew how he felt; but she was still angry, angry that all three of them had brushed Lucy's word off, as though it had been worth nothing; nothing at all.

Lucy turned, half-afraid. 'Do you believe me, Elizabeth?' she said in a pleading whisper.

Elizabeth's heart smote her. She knelt to be at eye level with the girl. 'I do, Lucy, but I know the truth. I've been there. I've been to Narnia.'

Lucy sucked in a breath. 'You have? When!'

'Just then. I came out just after you did. I don't think time runs the same between our world and theirs, Lucy. But I know you're not lying. And they're fools if they don't realise it soon!' Elizabeth said fiercely.

Lucy threw her arms around Elizabeth, hugging her tightly. The older girl was shocked for a minute, but tentatively put her arms around the other girl in return, squeezing gently, afraid of hurting her.

'Lucy? Can I ask you a favour?' Elizabeth asked.

'What, Elizabeth?' Lucy asked.

'Don't call me Elizabeth. My mother calls me that. Call me Liz, or Lizzie, but not Elizabeth.'

'All right – Liz,' Lucy said shyly.

End Chapter Two.


Hi, everyone!

Here is the second chapter. I am giving it to you so soon because of the lovely reviews that people left and that I woke up to this morning and yesterday. Now, responses:

Undomiel2007: They do, indeed, help the speed of updates. I'm glad you like Elizabeth! I like her myself. She's my favourite character out of any I have written so far. Here's chapter no. 2 for your perusal! Thanks for leaving me my first beautiful review!

JJuuulliiiee: Glad it meets with your approval! I will keep updating, rest assured, this is my favourite story so far.

Lady of the Dale: Oh, believe me, I will not be speeding them up. I like long romances. Be prepared for a large amount of tragedy late in the story though...just a hint. It's a good idea. I like writing as much as you all like reading! (Besides, it helps me meet with my English teacher's approval.)

Bookworm-2111: Any time, just make sure you're not too busy to beta for me! And you didn't copyright it, so I didn't copy you, and, altogether besides that, I DO LAUGH AT FLAMES! Muahahahaha! Aaaaaand...HEATH! EWAN!

This may be the last chapter you get for a while, as I am starting Year Nine tomorrow. Lots and lots and lots of work...shudder...but rest assured I will try and get them out as soon as possible. Eliza, just because you start Year Ten, does not mean you have too much work to beta for me! Hint!

And check out my profile, I will be updating it soon. Also have a look at my profile on as I will be posting a story on there as well.

See you soon! Lots of love,

clairebearbooks.

PS. Remember. A writer does not live by bread alone...we live by REVIEWS! Please stop my little story from starving and review for me! Please?