"What exactly just happened?" Eva said quietly.
Susan and Lucy looked at each other and giggled before running across the warm sand. Peter took Elaine's hand and ran after the girls with her.
Eva put her hand to Edmund's chest before he followed the others. "Wait, wait, wait, where are we? What happened?"
Edmund smiled broadly. "Does it matter? We're at a beach instead of waiting for a train to take us all to boarding school."
He ran across the sand after his siblings and Elaine.
Eva shrugged and chased after him. He had a point. Why waste time explaining things when there was a beautiful beach right in front of them? Explanations could wait. Besides, if everyone else seemed to be taking this bizarre event in stride, then she supposed she could too.
All of them quickly discarded their jackets, shoes, and socks while they ran across the sand and then practically dove into the cool clear water.
The six children laughed as they all splashed one another. Elaine grabbed Lucy around the waist and deposited her down into the water where she quickly became completely soaked. Lucy's mouth dropped open and she pushed Elaine so that the other girl fell over into the water too.
Edmund stopped splashing his siblings and stared up at the top of the cliff in confusion.
"What is it?" Peter asked when he saw the look on his brother's face.
"Where do you suppose we are?"
"Well, where do you think?"
"Well, I don't remember any ruins in Narnia."
Everyone followed his gaze and saw the very ruins in question that indeed were not familiar.
"What's Narnia?" Eva asked.
Everyone looked at one another and smiled.
"Let's begin walking to the top of that cliff and we'll explain on the way," Elaine said.
Choosing to leave behind their discarded clothing, the Pevensies, Elaine, and Eva started to carefully make their way up to the top of the cliff so they could find out which part of Narnia they had landed in.
"Where on earth do we start?" Edmund asked.
Lucy smiled. "At the beginning, of course!" She turned to look at Eva. "All of this is Narnia. From the lamppost in the Western Wood all the way to Cair Paravel. Every stick and stone that you see is Narnia."
"We all came here through…well, a wardrobe about a year ago now," Susan explained.
"Wait, you came through a wardrobe?" Eva asked.
Lucy playfully glared at her siblings. "None of them believed me about it either. But the wardrobe was a doorway to this world. I came alone first, then Edmund found his way in, and then all of us went inside together. We found out that there was a prophecy saying that me, Edmund, Peter, and Susan were all destined to end the White Witch's reign and restore peace to the land."
Eva noticed Edmund slightly stiffen at the mention of the White Witch. "Who's the White Witch?" she asked.
"She sent all of Narnia into a hundred-year-long winter and killed anyone who opposed her," Peter explained. "With the help of some of the creatures who were loyal to Aslan, we managed to evade capture and find our way to his camp."
Eva smiled a little as her heart warmed when she heard Aslan's name. "Who's…Aslan?"
"The Great Lion," Elaine replied.
The girl knew that hearing that this Aslan was a lion should make her fear him, but she still didn't. She felt like nothing could ever make her fear him. His name alone filled her with a pure warmth and love.
"He's not a tame lion, but he's very good and loving. He is the true King of Narnia, above every living creature, even all of us. It was only with his help that we were able to defeat the White Witch."
Edmund smiled at Eva, but she could see that it didn't completely reach his eyes. "After that, we were officially crowned Kings and Queens of the land."
Eva's eyes widened. "Wait, you mean all that talk about being royalty and ruling over a land and wanting to go back to it, that was all real?"
Peter stopped walking and turned to give her a small bow. "High King Peter the Magnificent."
"High Queen Elaine the Faithful."
"Queen Susan the Gentle."
"King Edmund the Just."
"Queen Lucy the Valiant."
Eva stood there speechless for a second. "This isn't a joke, right? I mean, you're really all kings and queens with official titles and everything?"
Peter laughed lightly. "It's as real as the ground you're standing on."
"I'm still not even sure that's real. What happened after you were crowned?"
"I wasn't crowned until seven years later after the others," Elaine told her.
"Why not?"
"Because…I was not truly a queen until I married Peter."
"Wait, do you mean…?"
Elaine smiled as she put her arm around Peter's waist while his arm went around her shoulders. "I'm not just Peter's girlfriend. I'm his wife."
After an extended pause, Eva could only ask, "Is that legal?"
Elaine laughed as they all began to move forward again. "It was at the time. When Peter and I married, we were both twenty-two."
"But you're only sixteen."
"Well, when we walked through the wardrobe, we were fifteen. No time passes in our world while you're in Narnia, so when we returned after several years of living here…"
"…you went back to being fifteen," Eva finished.
"Exactly. While we'd lost fifteen years of age, coming back to London didn't erase the years we spent there or the vows we made with one another on our wedding day." She and Peter showed her the rings on their left hands. "Our wedding rings were the only things to come home with us from Narnia, and neither of us believed that to be an accident. However, we also knew that we couldn't walk around London in 1940 claiming to be husband and wife while we were only fifteen. So we had to tell everyone that we were just boyfriend and girlfriend instead."
"Why didn't you explain any of this earlier? You all talked about it freely in front of me, you could've just told me that it was all real."
"Would you have believed us?" Edmund asked.
"Yes!"
He looked at her doubtfully.
"Okay, probably not. But…I don't understand why I'm here now. If you all are the kings and queens, then…why did I come along too?"
Elaine smiled as she recalled feeling the exact same way when she had first come to Narnia. "I don't know, but no one has ever been called to Narnia without some kind of purpose. You just need to find yours."
By now, the six of them had reached the top of the cliff where the ruins awaited them. The stone pieces left behind were worn and weathered as if they'd been sitting abandoned for a thousand years.
Now that they were standing in the middle of the ruins rather than looking at them from a distance, Elaine couldn't help but feel that there was something oddly familiar about the whole place.
Lucy plucked an apple from one of the trees in the surrounding orchard and bit into it. Despite the apple tree growing in a decrepit area, the apple was still beautifully crisp and delicious. She walked towards the edge of the hill where she could see the entirety of the beach. "Wonder who lived here," she said to the others.
Susan's eye caught something that glimmered on the ground when the sun hit it, and she leaned down to pick it up. "I think we did," she said quietly.
Lucy's brow furrowed as she looked at the tiny playing piece Susan held in her hand.
Edmund joined the two girls and he too recognized the small golden knight. "Hey, that's mine. From my chess set."
"Which chess set?" Peter asked as he and Elaine came over to the them.
"Well, I didn't exactly have a solid gold chess set in Finchley, did I?"
Eva took the playing piece from Susan's hand. "You had a solid gold chess set? What's the purpose of having a chess set made out of gold? Just to prove that you can have one?"
Edmund gave her a pointed look and made a big show of taking the small knight from her hands.
"Were you even good at chess?"
Susan smiled. "Oh, don't even get him started. He was the best player in all of Narnia. After a few years, there was no one in the entire kingdom who could best him at the game."
Lucy's head turned to look at the pieces of stone towards the other side of the hill. "Can't be," she whispered. She quickly grasped Peter's hand and led him and the others up a small set of stone steps. "Don't you see?"
"What?" Peter asked.
Lucy positioned him in front of a pile of crumbled stone and made him face the way they'd come. "Imagine walls." She placed Elaine next to him. "And columns, there."
Edmund moved to stand on the other side of Peter.
Lucy positioned Susan next to Elaine. "And a glass roof."
Finally, she herself stood in front of the last pile of stone.
Elaine's heart sank and her stomach twisted into a tight knot when she realized why the ruins had seemed so familiar.
"It's Cair Paravel," Peter quietly confirmed.
"Cair Paravel?" Eva repeated. "The castle where you ruled?"
The girl looked around her. This hadn't been exactly what she'd pictured when they had told her that they'd been kings and queens and lived in a castle.
"I don't understand," Elaine said softly. "How long have we been gone?"
The double doors to the chamber opened, and Lord Miraz and Princess Cassia briskly stepped inside. Cassia's thick black curls hung all the way down her back to rest against her royal blue dress which certainly made her stand out amongst the room full of men.
All of the lords in the room quickly bowed before the princess.
"Lords of the council, my apologies for being late," Miraz announced. "I wasn't aware we were in session."
Miraz sat down in his personal seat in the chamber while Cassia stood towards the front of the room near her father's empty throne.
"No doubt you were otherwise occupied," Lord Sopespian remarked.
"My lord?"
Lord Scythley, Prunaprismia's father and thus Miraz's father-in-law, stood up from his chair. "Ever since the death of Caspian the ninth, you've behaved as if you were king."
"My uncle stepped forward in the absence of my father," Cassia stated firmly. "Do you believe that this kingdom would have thrived as well as it has if you had been the one to take such initiative?"
Lord Donnon glared at Miraz. "How often do you plan on bringing your niece to these private meetings, my lord? It has been seven years since you first began letting her in the room while we meet despite princesses not being allowed on the council."
Cassia took a defiant step forward. She had learned from a young age that she would have to work twice as hard to earn the respect of the other members of nobility in the castle because she was a woman. Fortunately for her, her status as princess meant that she held a higher rank than any of the men in the room and she usually made sure they knew it. While she could not explicitly break rules, she could find loopholes. "And he has remained true to the proper traditions, my lord, for I am not a member of the council. I am, however, your princess, and I shall remind you not to talk as if I am not present."
Lord Donnon put his hand to his chest. "My apologies, princess."
"While this land may be stable now, Miraz has taken charge prematurely," Lord Scythley continued. "Now it seems that from behind his walls, even Prince Caspian has gone missing."
"My deepest condolences, Lord Miraz," Sopespian said, though the fact that he said it with a small smile proved that his words were not entirely truthful. "Imagine, losing your nephew, the rightful heir to the throne, on the very night your wife has blessed you with a son."
"What exactly are you implying, Lord Sopespian?" Cassia asked sharply.
Miraz held his hand out, and Cassia took a step back. "Thank you, Lord Sopespian. Your compassion is a boon in this troubled time."
"I trust you can tell us how such a tragedy could have occurred," the lord continued.
The door opened and General Glozelle stepped inside. He politely bowed towards the princess and she sent him a small nod in return.
Miraz stood up from his chair and walked to the center of the room. "That is the most disturbing news of all. Our beloved Caspian was abducted…by Narnians."
The lords all gasped and muttered to one another while Cassia's brow furrowed. She had watched from her aunt's room the previous night as her brother had fled from the city. Unless someone had forced him to leave the castle, she didn't think he'd been abducted and certainly not by Narnians. But then, maybe he had been abducted after he'd fled.
Her brother had always been paranoid about their uncle, insisting that he would murder him once Prunaprismia gave Miraz an heir. Cassia found the notion ludicrous. Their uncle had all but raised the two of them when their father had died in his sleep shortly after Caspian was born when Cassia was five years old. The very idea that he would consider murdering his nephew for the throne was ridiculous.
But what was perhaps more ridiculous was claiming that Narnians were involved at all. From a young age, Cassia and Caspian had been told tales of Narnia first by their father, then by their Nurse, then by the Professor. While Caspian believed in all of the tales of Old Narnia just as their father had, Cassia had long since given up on the Narnian stories holding any truth at all. They were simply childish stories and nothing more.
"You go too far, Miraz," Lord Scythley accused. "Expect us to stand by while you blame such a blatant crime on fairy tales?"
Miraz raised both his hands as a gesture to Glozelle. Glozelle nodded and opened the door. To the amazement of everyone in the room, two soldiers dragged in a dwarf.
Cassia gasped and her eyes widened.
This couldn't be possible. Narnians weren't real. And even if they were, they had been extinct for hundreds of years.
"We forget, my lords, Narnia was once a savage land," Miraz stated.
The two soldiers dropped the dwarf in the middle of the chamber.
"Fierce creatures roamed free. Much of our forefathers' blood was shed to exterminate this vermin. Or so we thought. But while we've been bickering amongst ourselves, they've been breeding like cockroaches under a rock! Growing stronger. Watching us. Waiting to strike!"
He hit the dwarf across the head which caused the cloth to fall from his mouth.
The dwarf glared up at him. "And you wonder why we don't like you."
"Well, I intend to strike back. Even if I have to cut down the entire forest, I assure you, I will find Prince Caspian and finish what our ancestors began."
Cassia smiled. The Narnians must have abducted her brother once he'd fled into their land. And despite him running off, their uncle was still looking for him and trying to protect him.
She didn't understand why Caspian didn't trust their uncle. After the death of their father, Cassia should've been next in line for the throne but she could only take the crown after she married which she had no desire to do for the foreseeable future. No man she had been introduced to in court had ever met her very high expectations, and she was happy to remain a princess until the right one came along. With this being the case, Caspian was next in line for the throne after her, and his official coronation would've taken place on his 21st birthday in three years. Despite their differences, Cassia loved her brother and was all too happy to leave the throne to him in the event that she never married. Until they were both ready, their uncle had taken command of the military and political affairs of their kingdom. Some people called him a tyrant, but Cassia trusted him to only make the best decisions for their country.
He was just trying to help them. He only wanted to protect his niece and nephew. There was no reason for Caspian to believe he wished either of them any ill intent.
She glared at the dwarf who was responsible for her brother's current predicament, and she was very disappointed when the dwarf only glared back at her.