Almost as soon as they left Coriakin's island, a massive storm started that showed no sign of stopping. For days that soon turned into weeks, Edmund, Eva, and Lucy stayed on the main deck to help manage the ship with the others and took turns assisting the crew members in the lower decks dumping out the rainwater that spilled down below. Elizabeth set up a station below deck to help crew members suffering from sea sickness due to the constant severe rocking of the ship in the storm along with any other injury the men picked up in the chaos. Gael, the blessed girl, retrieved materials for her when she ran low.
As for Eustace, he made good use of his time in the lower bunks by complaining in his journal again.
Gathered in the Chart Room with Caspian, Edmund, and Eva, Drinian placed a token on their map where they'd been making note of which island was where. "So, we're stuck here at half-rations with food and water for two more weeks maximum. This is your last chance to turn back, Your Majesties. There's no guarantee we'll spot the Blue Star anytime soon. Not in this storm. Needle in a haystack, trying to find this Ramandu place. We could sail right past it and off the edge of the world."
"Or get eaten by a sea serpent," Edmund added.
Eva couldn't tell if he was being sarcastic or not. She wondered if Drinian's earlier talk of sea serpents had gotten to him, and he was only pretending to find the idea ludicrous when he was actually worried that it was possible such creatures might show up somewhere along their journey.
Drinian gave Edmund a pointed look. "I'm just saying the men are getting nervous. These are strange seas we're sailing. The likes of which I've never seen before."
Caspian stood up from his seat. "Then perhaps, Captain, you would like to be the one to explain to Mr. Rhince that we're abandoning the search for his family."
From the tone of Caspian's voice, Drinian understood his orders quite clearly. "I'll get back to it." He grabbed his raincoat and turned to the others. "Just a word of warning. The sea can play nasty tricks on the crew's mind. Very nasty."
Caspian sighed as Drinian exited the Chart Room. "We should try to get some rest. We'll need it if we're to continue sailing through this storm."
"I'm not sure how anyone can sleep in this," Eva remarked. "But I suppose we have to try." She lightly kissed Edmund's cheek. "Good night."
"Good night, Eva," Edmund said.
Eva slipped inside Caspian's chambers and headed for the makeshift bed on the floor near the back window. While Lucy and Gael shared one bed, she and Elizabeth had decided to take turns using the other one. Eva would've been fine sharing a bed with the older girl, but she knew that even if Elizabeth denied it, she would only be uncomfortable.
So tonight, it was her night to take the floor and even if a bed was preferable, she still easily slipped off to sleep.
Unnoticed by any of the occupants, green mist started to slowly seep into the room, crawling its way inside silently and imperceptibly.
Lucy, unable to fall asleep, pulled out the piece of paper she had taken from Coriakin's spell book and quietly read the other half of the incantation that had previously turned her into Susan.
"'Transform my reflection, cast into perfection, lashes, lips, and complexion. Make me she, whom I'd agree, holds more beauty over me'."
Lucy slowly got out of bed and walked over to the full-length mirror on the other side of the room. To her disbelief, her simple white nightgown transformed into a gorgeous floral blue dress and her face slowly changed until she was looking not at her own face, but at Susan's.
She couldn't believe it. The spell had worked. She was beautiful.
Hearing the faint sound of music, she pushed on the mirror, and it opened to reveal a bright and cheery courtyard.
"Ladies and gentlemen, Miss Pevensie!" a steward announced.
Everyone applauded her entrance and she caught the eyes of several attractive soldiers.
"She's quite a looker," she overheard one of them say.
"Swell," another agreed.
So this was what it felt like to be noticed for her beauty. This was what it was like to be her sister.
It was perfect.
Edmund walked over to her and smiled as he took her arm.
"Edmund!"
"You look beautiful, sister."
"As always," a familiar voice said behind her.
"Peter!"
Her older brother came up beside her and took her other arm.
"Excuse me, miss, can I get a photo?" a photographer asked as he set up his camera.
"Oh, Mother's going to love this," Peter said. "All her children in one picture."
The photographer looked through the viewfinder. "Smile!"
"Hang on, where am I?" Lucy-as-Susan asked. "I mean, where's Lucy?"
"Lucy, who's Lucy?" Edmund said.
"Wait, Peter, where's Elaine?"
Peter's brow furrowed. "Elaine? We haven't seen Elaine since we left the Professor's house. You know that we didn't get along. I haven't the faintest clue where she is now and I don't care to know."
The camera brightly flashed, and Lucy-as-Susan started squirming in her brothers' grasps.
"Susan, what's wrong?"
"Come on now, miss. Nice big smile!" the photographer said, preparing his flash bulb for the next picture.
Lucy-as-Susan looked at Edmund. "Edmund, I'm not sure about all this. I think I want to go back."
"Go back where?"
"To Narnia!"
"What on earth is Narnia?"
"What's going on? Stop this!"
Lucy covered her eyes as the camera flashed again, and when she looked up, she was back on the ship in front of the mirror wearing her nightgown and looking like herself again. Aslan slowly came into view behind her.
"Lucy," he said gently.
"Aslan?" Lucy whipped around, but Aslan was not in the room with her. When she turned back to the mirror, he was still there.
"What have you done, child?"
"I don't know," she admitted shamefully. "That was awful."
"But you chose it, Lucy."
"I didn't mean to choose all of that. I just wanted to be beautiful like Susan. That's all."
"You wished yourself away, and with it, much more. Your brothers and sister and Elaine wouldn't know Narnia without you, Lucy. You discovered it first, remember? And without them knowing Narnia, Peter and Elaine would never have learned to trust and rely on each other and she would not have become your sister-in-law."
Elaine was Lucy's family as much as any of her other siblings, and the very thought that she might never have had that bond with the girl or that her brother would never have come to love Elaine as devotedly as he did made her heart hurt deeply inside her.
"I'm so sorry."
"You doubt your value. Don't run from who you are."
Lucy bolted upright in bed, crying out, "Aslan!" A huge thunderclap shook the room and drew her attention to the torn-out page resting on her lap. She quickly crumpled up the paper and got out of bed so she could toss it into the fireplace.
Meanwhile, as Lucy dreamed of what her siblings' lives would look like without her, Eva tossed and turned on the makeshift bed dreaming about something very different but just as unpleasant.
In her own dream, she and Edmund were in front of Aslan's How practicing their swordfighting. After sparring for several minutes, Edmund tripped her and caused her to fall over. What he didn't expect was her taking him down with her. The two of them laughed as they lay on ground. Edmund moved so that he was kneeling over her and slowly leaned his head down to kiss her.
But their moment was interrupted by a large wall of ice forming directly in front of the entrance to the How.
Eva winced when the scar on her hand began to burn as the White Witch appeared inside the ice.
"Hello, dears," she said sweetly.
Eva wanted to run, wanted to fight, wanted to scream, wanted to do something. But as she looked at the Witch inside the ice, her thoughts slowly became more and more muddled and she couldn't get her feet to move.
"Just one drop of Adam and Eve's blood, and you free me. And I am yours."
Eva cried out in pain as her hand stung again. When she looked down at it, she saw that her wound had reopened and was now dripping blood onto the stones beneath her feet.
"I will let you both rule over all of Narnia. Edmund, darling, you'll be the king Caspian and Peter never could be. You'll have power they could never dream of having."
Staring at the Witch blankly, Edmund used his sword to cut open his palm.
"No," Eva said softly. "Edmund, this…this is wrong."
"Of course not, dear," the Witch said in a soothing voice. "Freeing me is the only thing that is right."
Pulled forward at the sweetness of her voice, Eva took a step towards her. Her hand burned and the thought of touching the ice for relief was overwhelming. She knew that she wasn't supposed to touch it, but…she couldn't remember why.
"I'll help you however you need me. All you need to do is give me one drop of your blood."
The Witch pressed her hand through the ice and held it out for them.
Edmund stepped forward and let his bloodied hand touch the Witch's.
"Come, Eva. One drop. It's for the best. I'm the only one who can help you."
Something told Eva that the only way she could feel relief from the intense pain in her hand was to release the woman from the ice. Completely entranced with the beautiful woman's honeyed words, Eva walked forward and slowly put her bleeding hand into the Witch's outstretched palm.
Suddenly, the ice cracked and freed the Witch from her frigid prison. She held her hands straight out to the sides, and thin pillars of ice appeared out of the ground. When the ice disappeared, the Witch once again held her magic staff and a small dagger.
With the spell on them broken now that the Witch was free, Edmund and Eva looked at each other in horror as they realized what they had done.
The Witch's dark and hate-filled eyes fell onto Edmund. With an evil smile, she plunged her magic stuff into Edmund's chest and he turned into stone.
"NO!" Eva screamed.
How could she have let this happen? After two years of living with the guilt of nearly releasing the Witch on her last trip to Narnia, she had still allowed herself to fall under the Witch's spell. Now Edmund was gone and surely all of Narnia was going to perish under her rule once more.
She cried out again as the pain in her hand became more searing than ever before, reminding her once again of her failure to protect Narnia and live up to her title.
The Witch turned her evil smile onto her. "Thank you, Lady Eva."
Then she plunged the dagger into Eva's abdomen.
Eva sprang up in her bed in Caspian's chambers with heavy gasps.
Lucy quickly hurried to her side. "Eva, it's okay, it's okay!"
Eva felt tears in her eyes as put her hand to her aching stomach. Looking at her hand, she could still feel the pain from her scar reopening.
"I had a nightmare too. I think…this is what Coriakin warned us about."
Eva slowly stood up. "I…need to see Edmund."
"I'll come with you."
The two of them hurried to the lower decks.
"Edmund?" Eva called quietly. "Edmund?"
Inside his hammock, Edmund jumped at the sound of his name, sword already in hand. He pointed his sword to his right, but there was nothing there. He then finally looked over at Eva and noticed tears pooling in her eyes. "Are you all right?"
Eva shook her head, the image of him turning to stone still fresh in her mind.
An especially loud crack of thunder caused Caspian to jerk awake.
"We can't sleep," Lucy said softly.
"Let me guess," Edmund said to her. "Bad dreams."
Eva nodded and sat on his hammock with him, tightly gripping his hand in hers as if to reassure herself that he was living and breathing beside her.
"So either we're all going mad, or something is playing with our minds."
Caspian sighed heavily, clearly as sleep-deprived as the rest of them. "Where's Elizabeth?"
"I think she's still sleeping," Lucy answered.
Caspian got out of his hammock and carefully went up to his chambers. When he walked inside, he noticed that Gael wasn't in the room and he correctly assumed that the young girl had gone to find her father. That left Elizabeth all alone, asleep in Cassia's bed.
Her soft cries reached his ears as he watched her head whip back and forth. "No," she whimpered. "No, please. Don't!"
Caspian took a seat on the bed and gently touched her shoulder. "Elizabeth."
"No!"
"Elizabeth!"
Elizabeth lightly gasped awake and took several short and frantic breaths.
Caspian pulled her into his arms and gently ran his hand over her strawberry-blonde hair. "It's okay. You were just having a bad dream. It's all right. I'm here."
Gasping for breath, Elizabeth tightly clutched onto his arm so she could pull herself out of the dark and isolated place in her dream and back into reality.
She knew that she shouldn't be in this position with the king of the land: alone, in nightclothes, and him holding her while they sat on a bed. Not only that, but she didn't want him to see her like this. She had worked so hard to put up a front for him and everyone else that she was perfectly put together. He wasn't supposed to see her so scared and vulnerable. It was bad enough that he had seen her like that back on the Lone Islands.
But with the feeling of isolation and terror still lingering over her, she decided that for this one moment, she would allow him to hold her and save her reservations for the morning. Because right now, his touch was the only thing that made her feel like she was safe.
After twenty-one total days of tossing and turning and several restless nights, the storm finally ceased. Now able to gather at least a little sense of their bearings, the ship continued sailing on, hoping to come across the Blue Star of Ramandu's Island in the next few days.
Caspian decided that the crew desperately needed something to cheer them up, so he had some of the crew members bring out the instruments they had aboard. Soon enough, they had one person playing a fiddle, one person playing a lute, a couple people rhythmically banging on crates, and the rest clapping their hands in time with a beat.
While they played music together, several of the passengers got up and danced to the lively songs.
Edmund took Eva into his arms and whisked her all around the deck as they both laughed, Gael danced with her father, and even Caspian invited Lucy to share a dance with him.
This went on for a little over an hour, and Caspian could gradually feel the spirits of his passengers start to rise once again.
As one song ended, Elizabeth came up onto the deck from the galley.
Though Elizabeth usually left her hair down, she had recently started to pin it back in order to keep it out of the way when she was helping the crew members with their injuries or practicing her swordfighting.
While Caspian thought she was beautiful either way, he preferred her hair pinned back because it made her seem happier and more confident.
He quickly approached her and held out his hand. "Care for a dance, Miss Elizabeth?"
Completely caught off-guard, Elizabeth looked around but only one or two crew members were really paying attention to Caspian's sudden question.
"You don't have to if you don't want to," Caspian added when he noticed her reluctance.
Elizabeth didn't want everyone's eyes on her, but she didn't want to reject the king either. It was just one dance. She could do this.
"Of course, Your Majesty."
Caspian smiled, but she noticed he seemed disappointed that she hadn't called him by name. He took her hand and pulled her to the middle of the deck near the few musicians. Then he placed his other hand onto her back and pulled her a little closer.
As another song started, Caspian slowly led her in a simple waltz across the deck. Elizabeth furiously concentrated on her movement, not wanting to embarrass herself in front of everyone, but after a few moments, she settled into a comfortable rhythm with him. She looked up and made nervous eye contact with him, but when he smiled at her, she relaxed even more.
She became so comfortable dancing in his arms that for a brief moment, she completely forgot that people were watching her and she didn't even realize that most of them had stopped talking.
When the music stopped, everyone on deck applauded both the musicians and the dancers and Elizabeth was quickly reminded of where she was. She nervously tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear as she cleared her throat and stepped back.
"Um, I came up to tell you that supper is ready," she told Caspian.
"Of course. Thank you for the dance."
Elizabeth quickly nodded and returned down to the galley.
Shortly afterwards, the entire crew followed and sat themselves down to allow Elizabeth and Astram to serve them.
Eva sat at one of the tables and lightly stroked the scar on her hand. She didn't even notice when Edmund sat down across from her until he lightly touched her scarred hand.
"You've been out of sorts for days now," Edmund said. "Are you feeling all right?"
"Are any of us?"
"Will you tell me what's bothering you?"
She hesitantly looked up at him. "Do you remember the first time I showed you that I still had a scar from our last trip here? I told you that it didn't bother me, but…that was a lie. Every time I look at it, I remember that moment where I stood in front of the White Witch and almost condemned all of Narnia to her evil again. The only reason I didn't was because you were there to stop it."
Edmund looked at her sympathetically. He knew the feeling of guilt all too well when it came to helping the White Witch, but unlike Eva, he didn't have any physical reminders of his traitorous actions.
"I am terrified…that one day, I'll find myself in that situation again and I won't be strong enough to resist her and you won't be there to help me."
"She's been showing up in my dreams too," Edmund quietly admitted. "Just when I think I've finally managed to move on from what she did to me, she appears again and makes me feel like that thirteen-year-old kid who was so easily swayed by her words."
Knowing that he was dealing with similar fears as her helped Eva not feel so alone in them, but she also wondered if either of them would be able to keep from falling prey to her power again. Eva adored her title as a Lady of Narnia, but such a huge responsibility also brought about an intense fear of failure and an even bigger fear of letting all of Narnia down when everyone had put their trust in her to protect them.
She worried that there might come a day when she messed up so grievously that not even Aslan would be able to forgive her.