Disclaimer: This garden is a story made by the Author of authors; I would not dare to claim it.
Beta'd by trustingHim17
Yet listen now,
Oh, listen with the wondering olive trees,
And the white moon that looked between the leaves,
And gentle earth that shuddered as she felt
Great drops of blood. All torturing questions find
Answer beneath those old grey olive trees.
There, only there, we can take heart to hope
For all lost lambs — Aye, even for ravening wolves.
Oh, there are things done in the world today
Would root up faith, but for Gethsemane.
For Calvary interprets human life;
No path of pain but there we meet our Lord;
And all the strain, the terror and the strife
Die down like waves before His peaceful word,
And nowhere but beside the awful Cross,
And where the olives grow along the hill,
Can we accept the unexplained, the loss,
The crushing agony, — and hold us still.
~ Amy Carmichael
Susan did not go to church the next day. When the time for breakfast passed, as the light grew brighter and brighter, Susan finally forced herself to get out of bed. She dressed to go to the graveyard—and didn't.
A grave was the last thing she wanted to see right then. She could picture Beth's name on it, all to easily; she could picture Jo weeping at it, as Susan had at—
She would not guess what Jo would tell Beth's grave. She would not try to bear the grief of someone who loved Beth the way Susan loved her siblings, and lost them.
Beth's pain she could ache with. But the idea of Jo's made her fall back into her bed, face pressing hard into the soft pillow, muffling the sounds that were too much like screams.
Beth told Jo first. How the two sisters loved each other!
Suddenly Susan thought of something else, of something Beth had told her. Even before Jo had come in.
It's hard to go ahead, the dying girl had said. Susan suddenly wondered if it was as hard on her siblings, if they went ahead and if they—
Those times Susan went to their graves to speak with them, and sometimes it felt like they were near, like they could hear her. Did they regret leaving her behind?
Surely, surely not. Surely nothing can harm them now.
But if I believe that, why am I so careful with what I say to them?
"It's hard to go ahead."
Aslan, don't let it be as hard on them to go ahead as it is to be left behind.
Lunchtime came and went, and though Susan still felt sick, her stomach kept rumbling and her headache was growing to thundercloud proportions, so she went down to fix toast and tea.
She found herself dripping tears on both. Beth, with all that gentle bravery, was a loss that made Susan feel empty. That might have made her glad to go to church; glad to sit in the pew and pretend her siblings were beside her, sometimes whispering to each other about the truths they thought they heard; but as things were, she could not face the world. She could barely face being awake.
She decided to go to Edmund's room instead, to see if he—if his ghost—could offer any solution to the screams she couldn't quiet.
But Peter shared this room, she remembered, pausing outside the door. Her hand had been reaching for the metal knob but hadn't touched it yet, fingers hovering in the air.
Peter, who had obeyed instantly. Peter, who would have frowned at her refusal to leave for those brief seconds yesterday.
And Edmund, in her head, pointed out that if she'd left, Beth wouldn't have been alone. Beth would have been with her sister mere seconds later. But Susan hadn't trusted Beth to Aslan, Edmund added quietly, and so Susan had seen Jo, had seen how great the loss of Beth would be.
Delayed obedience.
Susan fell to the floor, the wood hard beneath her knees, her face in her hands, crying. The sound rang in the empty hallway; she was the only one made noise in the house anymore, and she knew why. She knew other things too, felt them as clearly as the wooden door she fell into. "You should have left sooner; I will have to put up with the consequences of that," she could hear the Doorkeeper saying.
Obedience is a habit. Peter, you said that several times. Delayed obedience becomes a habit too, and this habit hurts, hurts more than I can say or think.
Peter, I wish you were here, your hand on my shoulder. You'd tell me, "Courage, Su. Courage."
Peter, it's so hard to have courage when I'm alone.
She took in a deep breath, eyes closed behind her fingers, pressing into her eyelids to keep the world dark. All she could feel was the wall at her back and the floor. Peter, it's a little easier, when I'm focusing on my loss instead of Jo's. Jo's is…too fresh, too painful. It's a new broken limb. You all are the broken limbs I'm used to breathing around; this new pain stole my breath again. Peter, I don't have any courage, but I'd rather do what I'm supposed to than feel a hurt like this again.
Peter, what am I supposed to do?
But there wasn't an answer to her question, and she swallowed. Having nothing to do—nothing she could do—brought all the screams up again.
She knew the screams gradually ceased, a few a week. But she'd already been broken. She didn't know how to reach the other side with a new weight pushing her back under.
Just then a knock sounded at the door.
Susan got up and answered it. The Doorkeeper stood outside.
"I know, I know, I said I'd make my door open to the livingroom, but there's nothing there to hold the door. Not without permanently altering the walls. And that's not a good idea right now. We're to reinforce your memories, you know, not move their anchors around. Are you not going to let me in?"
"What are you doing here?" Susan stared at him, the tall, brown-haired professor, swamped with anger, hope, relief, and frustration; it was anger that filled her words, that and disbelief.
"I'm here to give you a task. I can do that outside just as well as in. Your task—"
"I can't."
His eyebrows went up and his head tilted down, eyes looking at her over his glasses. But his tone was much kinder. "Do you really think He knows you so little, that He would give you something you couldn't do? At least, that you couldn't do without His help?"
Susan did not have an answer for that. She couldn't say no, not with Beth's death and Jo's loss tearing at her heart. But she couldn't say yes, because she remembered things, remembered stealing through the temple of Tash to rescue a friend*, a…Faun? She remembered Lucy's hand in hers that dark night where they wept till they could weep no more, as the Lion died. She remembered marching, hot, tired, and afraid, for so many hours before meeting Aslan during Caspian's time. She remembered doing these things, knowing she did not have enough to finish, and yet, at the end, finding the answers only He could give.
"He has a lesson to teach you, Aslan's Queen. And the lesson will be for your good. It will be good for your broken heart, as well as your eternal spirit."
"I intend to obey as quickly as I can from now on," Susan said, tiredness bleeding into the words.
"I do not think that is the lesson He means, though it is a valuable one to learn. No, Aslan's queen, this is a lesson for your heart, not your head."
Susan looked away. "I don't know if there's anything left of it to learn with," she whispered.
"Have you forgotten how He deals with the broken?"
Yes, Susan thought. I have. But her memories came back again. She saw broken little boys abducted by witches, or snarling Wolves with nothing left but pain, or even once an older sister, herself, who had refused to believe. She had been so afraid to come to Him because she could have believed but didn't. She'd been weeping and ashamed, and all He told her was that she had listened to fears, and breathed on her to make her less afraid.
He had been so very, very gentle with the broken and the afraid. Relentless in His love and His unchanging self, but gentle with their pain.
That was the past.
He is probably just as gentle in the present, but I—I do not know. All our conversations happen in my head, in a mind that no longer knows how to listen. Is He gentle?
Because I am not strong enough to fall on anything that isn't, not right now.
Courage, Su. Courage.
Peter, obedience—no, trust—is the brave choice. I'll try.
"What is the task?" Susan asked. She sniffed, suddenly aware of the tears. She wiped them away with quick fingers, and looked up to see the Doorkeeper regarding her with that keen look—but not with any impatience.
He is growing more patient, perhaps.
Good for him.
"You are to call three of your friends. You probably know which ones; I don't. And after that, I am to take you to see a door."
Susan, half turned to go inside and obey, turned back around. "To see a door?"
"That is what I said."
"No, I mean—I cannot see what you can."
"Ah. Oh, yes, I see. This is not a door to walk through, but rather a door into stories."
"Like the one to Anne's world?" Susan fought the hope, telling it not to rise, the Doorkeeper never did what she expected—and sure enough, he was shaking his head.
"No, that was a window we went through—did you not touch it to enter it? We moved through its space. No, this is one where you stand and watch, and it plays the story for you. But that happens after. I thought you said you were not going to delay your obedience any more?"
How quickly he makes my anger come back, with that condescending tone. But enough. On to courage, and obedience, and…all the hard things.
She knew, of course, whom she should call first. Nancy. And possibly Carol, who had wanted to help, and maybe Donna—surely not Robert. She would be but the object of his flirtation, rather than a help.
Perhaps I should start with the easiest one. Donna is…more sensible than most. A part of her mind (the part that had been trained by arguing with Edmund) wondered if this was more delayed obedience, but she shut that part up.
Donna didn't answer. Susan set the handle back in the receiver and looked at the Doorkeeper. He had followed her inside and was sitting once more in the chair where he'd drunk tea. He looked back at her with a calm face. "Next."
Susan called Carol next. Carol's mother answered, and Susan almost hoped Carol would be out—she still did not know the point of these calls, and she rather dreaded them—but Carol was in. She was truly thrilled at Susan's call, Susan could hear it in how much Carol's talking sped up. And in how much she laughed. The sound came at the end of every sentence, it felt like, with a high falsetto that stung Susan's nerves. Susan tried to listen, to be patient, to be a Walker. Even with Beth and Jo weighing on her heart, it was what she was trying to be, but Carol made it so hard. She spoke about dresses, music, next week's plans, Susan's phone call, Susan coming back, all the things that didn't matter. Susan listened, because Carol spoke too fast to need any replies, but it was all so…empty. All the glitter, with nothing but space for it to fall through when grief came.
Susan finally hung up, and looked over at the Doorkeeper, wincing in anticipation of what he'd say about her friend.
"Next."
She called Nancy. Nancy was in, and quiet—so much quieter than Carol. After their hellos, Susan couldn't think of anything to say.
That is, till she thought of Lucy. And what Lucy would ask. "How are you?"
Nancy laughed and Susan winced. She knew the bitterness of that laugh. "I got everything I wanted, and found it was better to give it up. I don't know what I'm doing in this set anymore."
Susan didn't say anything.
"I'm sorry. I'm pouring my troubles all over you again. Do you know, Susan, if you were still there, I'd probably go back? There was something magical about you, something that drew us all in. I guess you miss that magic just as much as the rest of us do. Don't you?"
Susan cleared her throat. "Magic?" She knew Nancy didn't mean crowns, doors through worlds, Talking Beasts, or any of that; and she'd thought she'd lost all the remnants of Narnia, she thought she'd sworn them all off. Even the memories.
"Where you went, everyone followed. And you made everyone welcome; you wanted everyone to come."
The night Susan asked Lucy, once again, to come—yes, Susan had wanted everyone there. Her siblings, her friends, the friends of her friends. Perhaps not her parents, or Peter if he was feeling judgemental, but…
"Are you there, Susan?"
"Yes, I'm here."
"I didn't mean to bring up something that might hurt. I'm just…restless, I guess."
Susan thought of her own need to get out, out of the house, away from everything, just because it might numb some of the pain. "Pain has a way of preventing rest."
"Yes. Yes, exactly! Susan—do you want to get out too? Not to a party, I don't mean that, but maybe…maybe tea, or a walk, or something? I'll try not to pour my troubles on you, but it might…it might be nice."
"Yes, it might be. Not today—something came up—but—oh, how about tomorrow?" Susan glanced at the Doorkeeper, who shrugged, the careless action at odds with his formal apparel.
"Tomorrow, then. Afternoon?"
"Right after tea." The words felt surreal, leaving Susan's mouth. They were so like what she might have said before everything. A slight taste of her past life.
Right after Carol proved she could no longer live it.
She said goodbye and hung up the phone, looking at the Doorkeeper.
"Well?"
"Very good, as obedience goes. So what did you learn?"
Very little, sprung to Susan's lips. But I burn myself on my own anger and his I must bear the consequences too now came to mind, and she held them back. "We do not fit in our own world anymore."
"True. But not all of what you were to learn."
Susan ran through the conversations, the stiltedness, the way they made her tired, and came up with nothing. "What, then?"
"You do not fit in this world, Aslan's Queen. But your last conversation ended with plans to still live in it. Remember that. You are still here, though you did not want to be. No Walker ever does. You are still in this world, and are meant to be a part of it. No matter how much it tires you."
"I fit better in other worlds." The words left Susan's mouth before she thought about them, but they rang true.
"Yes. Nevertheless, that is not where He placed you. Not to live."
"And you don't think it's unfair?" Susan burst out. Beth, Jo's pain, the five gravestones flooded her mind, her heart.
"If the world were fair, you would never have been given any second chances. Aslan's Queen, were you never glad for mercy?"
Mercy undeserved, a Lion's breath on my face and my heart when I was afraid, a sister reaching out over and over, an older brother who was a loving, unrelenting King—who gave me every chance to change and yet abided by my choice, no matter how much it hurt him.
Aslan on a cold stone table, dying for a traitor.
The world was saved by mercy undeserved; it has never been a fair world.
But still my heart cries out that this pain, this breaking, is not fair. This is not what the world was meant to be. Is mercy enough, when mercy does not end the pain?
Beth, Beth, you were given some mercy—mercy in the form of me—and it made it easier, but you still wept.
I know from Hester that mercy makes a difference. But I also know the difference is not freedom from pain.
"My own words will not be convincing; they never are. I am no Walker. Come, Aslan's Queen. It is time to go and see the door. Which, ironically enough, uses more than words." He stood up, pulling down his vest.
"Wait." Susan looked at the floor, gathering up a different type of courage. This was perhaps not an answer her heart could take—but to not ask the question would haunt her more. "Beth—she said it was hard for her to go ahead. You—you open so many doors—have you ever seen—" she broke off, swallowing, her eyes still on the carpet. "Do you know if it is hard for my siblings?"
"That is a door even I may not open, shut, or look through." Once again his tone was gentle. "Come. It is time to answer some other of your questions. Time for His mercy."
"His mercy is bitter to drink," Susan answered, but she walked forward.
"So it is." She went through the door—and it was warm, so warm. She didn't realise at first that she'd walked through one of the Doorkeeper's doors, not till she looked around in the damp yellow circle and saw the ornately carved wooden door with all the wooden animals.
"Here?" she asked, startled.
"Yes. It's a door I rarely see, ironically enough—and I shouldn't call it a door so much as…the stories of the past, seen by the future. No, neither the dog nor swan, this time. I wonder—" He stopped as he reached between the animals to the wooden squares that framed the creatures. He pushed a cross-shaped section back into the wood and the entire door swung open. "Ah. I wouldn't have thought—but I suppose. In we go."
They walked into the hall, and there were the bookshelves, the books, the lantern sconces. And the two wooden chairs were still there, but Susan saw with surprise that the Doorkeeper walked right past them. He went further and further down the hall, Susan following at a slower pace.
The Doorkeeper did not go quite to the other end of the hall, though he did go far enough that the lanterns were much fewer. Susan had to strain to see the individual books on the Bookkeeper's side. And then the Doorkeeper stopped. He stood looking at the blank wall.
Susan looked too, and gradually saw that the wall was not blank. There, in the dimness, she could make out a faint square on the wall, slightly raised, beginning a finger's length below the ceiling, and going down to the floor, as wide as a door would be. But—
"It doesn't have a doorknob?" she asked.
"It is not made to open. But you can see it, good, good. And of course it's in your language, or will be. It always is, you know; it reads in whatever language the person speaks. I will leave you with it for now." And he walked past her, towards his own door, only to stop. Turning around, his right hand already reaching into his pocket and withdrawing a plain white handkerchief, he walked back and put it in her hand before nodding. Then he turned sharply, leaving without another word. Something in the way he walked away reminded her of Peridan, dedicated to his task.
Peridan. Another person she had lost.
She looked back at the square. Faint letters, white in the dim light, appeared at the top. They told of a man, a man who knew he was dying, would be killed that following morning. And so he poured himself out to his friends, to the twelve who had lived and learned and served with him for years, trying to explain, to guide, to ready them. But they were still like children, so confused. They kept asking for what they should not, could not have, and they were afraid. They told him they had two swords, not understanding he meant to die, meant to allow this. Finally he stopped, for they could not bear any more. He took them to a garden. Susan could see the garden as she read the words; dark, for there were no lights but the moon and stars. The garden was on a hill, filled with trees she rarely saw in England. And she saw the man leave eight of his friends in one place in the garden, going further with only three.
By now the words were clearer, silver-bright, almost lit by moonlight from within. And Susan found herself crying, her hand over her mouth, for he was dying, like Beth was, and struggling with the weight of being alone. True loneliness, she knew, comes not from being alone, but from remaining alone when the people you love are still around you.
He, too, had known what it was to not fit in the world in which he lived.
She wiped her eyes with the Doorkeeper's handkerchief and began reading again.
He asked the three to pray—and how well Susan knew that need—and he went further alone. Susan could see his dim shape, a man bending to the ground, drops of dark liquid falling from his face. She could not hear him but she knew what he prayed, what he begged from the one he called Father. He asked if there was any way this cup could pass from him.
His mercy is bitter to drink, Susan had said, and she muffled her own cries with her hand, for she knew this, she knew this, she knew looking at a task and asking if there were any other way. But if there wasn't—he wanted his Father's will to be done.
She didn't want to read more. She didn't want to know how his prayer was answered.
But the light from the words was bright enough to illuminate the hall all around her, and she couldn't look away, either. She couldn't leave that story unfinished.
Courage, Su. Courage. If the answer to this holy man's prayer was no, then Susan would have to find out what happened afterwards. And she would have to find the courage to live it.
The man went back and found his friends sleeping, sleeping for sorrow, the words said, but not—not keeping watch with him. And Susan ached, for she'd had three siblings, and she couldn't imagine them sleeping when she needed them.
Except now, when they are dead; sleeping, some call it. And I need them. Aslan, how much I need them.
So he woke them, rebuking them—far more righteous than Susan ever could be, both stern and kind—and then went away to pray again. Not, this time, to pray the cup would pass from him. No, he prayed that if the cup could not pass unless he drank it, that his Father's will would be done.
His Father's will. Not his own.
Not his own needs. Not the things Susan's soul screamed for, not for a lessening of the dread and sorrow he felt, but for the will of his Father, his God.
The words were shining golden now, brighter than a fire.
And Susan fell to the floor, curling up, hiding her face from the light, for this, this was her answer. I don't know how I can take this answer, how I can live this—how I can surrender my will to the one of a God who took my family and won't let me join them, who took Beth from Jo. He offers mercy, mercy undeserved, but—I remember this story, I remember the man, the God, ended up on a cross. And he told us to take up our crosses too, to bear that slow suffocation.
He told us to die to self, and these might be the screams of my self dying—the self I'd made. And maybe it needed to die, but there will be nothing left if it does.
I cannot, cannot bear this answer. Why would I follow a God who demands I die?
A hand patted her shoulder. Susan jerked away, startled, and fell into the bookshelf behind her. A hand caught her head before it could hit the metal—she could feel this bookshelf was metal, still stuffed with books—and she looked up into the Doorkeeper's face. No, not the Doorkeeper, the other one—the Bookkeeper.
He took the handkerchief from her hand and patted her face with it, then gave it back to her. He let her head go slowly, turning to look at the blazing golden letters, surrounded by a raised white frame, and shook his head. He looked back at her.
"Bathed round about by moonlit air,
Beneath the olive tree,
Our Saviour kelt alone in prayer;
Sore spent was He.
And solemn through the moonlit air
The prayer of prayers arose;
But what it cost to pray that prayer
No mortal knows.
Only our hearts within us know
When they most broken be,
To that same garden we must go—
Gethsemane.
And only one prayer meets our need,
We learn to pray it there;
The prayer of all true prayers the seed,
Our Saviour's prayer.
~By Amy Carmichael."
He laid a gentle hand on her head before leaving.
Gethsemane. What did he say? The prayer of other prayers the seed—
He said "our Saviour." Like Aslan to Edmund, dying to save us—
You three loved to go to church. Was this why? Did you find reflections of Aslan in this Saviour?
I cannot give up my desires for my family, or the hurt that those desires will never be fulfilled. But—I can pray that someone with that much mercy, that much love, would write a better story than I have. That His will is better than mine.
I cannot pray anything else. I don't have my own words. But—I can pray what You did. Your will be done. Your will be done.
Susan stayed there, crying quietly into the handkerchief, for what felt like a long time, bathed in the light of those words but not looking at the story itself. When she quieted, a little steadier, a little emptier, she leaned back against the bookshelf and closed her eyes.
Is this how I do each task as a Walker? I go, I let myself be broken, just a little—Edmund would say it's the breaking that keeps the heart from hardening, wouldn't he? And I look at the way it's still a better story than anything I would have written. I would not have called four children to free Narnia. I would not have called us back to Mum and Da. The story I wrote for myself in England and America is one I regret. And even now—what kind of story would my anger write?
I have to pray Your will be done because I cannot trust my own will. But Your will is hard.
Beth's comfort, and my own from Hester, and Lucy, Edmund, and Peter turned into Kings and a Queen—oh, there are good things in the story as well. Good things that are beautiful.
What do I do, when all the good things are gone? Another tear slipped from her closed eye and trickled down her cheek.
"There is a time to mourn, your Majesties." I can hear that—an Owl once said that. There is a time to mourn. But how long? I will be mourning this for a lifetime.
She opened her eyes, and there was the square, still shining, but only three words were written in it now.
"It is finished."
*Told in chapter 21 of Narnian Tales (2021).
A/N: I had three choices of poems to put in this chapter, the two I quoted, but also a song by Andrew Peterson I have grown to love, "The Silence of God":
It's enough to drive a man crazy; it'll break a man's faith;
It's enough to make him wonder if he's ever been sane,
When he's bleating for comfort from Thy staff and Thy rod,
And the heaven's only answer is the silence of God.
It'll shake a man's timbers when he loses his heart,
When he has to remember what broke him apart.
This yoke may be easy, but this burden is not,
When the crying fields are frozen by the silence of God
And if a man has got to listen to the voices of the mob
Who are reeling in the throes of all the happiness they've got,
When they tell you all their troubles have been nailed up to that cross,
What about the times when even followers get lost?
'Cause we all get lost sometimes…
There's a statue of Jesus on a monastery knoll
In the hills of Kentucky, all quiet and cold.
And He's kneeling in the garden, as silent as a Stone,
All His friends are sleeping and He's weeping all alone.
And the man of all sorrows, he never forgot
What sorrow is carried by the hearts that he bought.
So when the questions dissolve into the silence of God,
The aching may remain, but the breaking does not,
The aching may remain, but the breaking does not,
In the holy, lonesome echo of the silence of God.