A/N: I can't believe I whined about 7.3k last chapter when this one clocked in at 7.6k... One of these days I'll stop this oversized chapter nonsense, but that day is apparently not today. There was just so much Stuff to write this chapter.
So, welcome to Part 4: Heartworm! This will be a long section, because I have plot things and relationship things I'm determined to explore. To get Caspian his Happily Ever After, there's some canon I need to tweak/move around/deal with sooner rather than later. Which is to say, I'm still on my Marie Condo approach to canon, so hopefully y'all enjoy reading these shenanigans as much as I enjoy writing them. Please also note that there's still Part 5 after this 😈
For real though, all your responses and reviews have been so much more than I ever expected in a smaller fandom like this, and I'm grateful every day that y'all share your thoughts, feelings, and reactions with me. Makes all the writing and revising worth it twice over ❤
Chapter 63 Content Warnings: N/A
Heartworm - a relationship or friendship that you can't get out of your head, which you thought had faded long ago but is still somehow alive and unfinished, like an abandoned campsite whose smoldering embers still have the power to start a forest fire. (from The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows)
Chapter 63: lose my way
Addie
She's floating in a great expanse of nothing, weightless and breathless. Below her feet lies a black void, and above a soft green light brightens the gloom, wavering like sunlight on lake water.
Water? Addie realises too late she's taken a breath. She braces for her lungs to rebel and burn for air, but they don't.
In a rush, movement returns. The light overhead races closer, and before Addie can so much as blink, her head breaks the water's surface and finds air.
She scrambles onto a lush, grassy shore with the yellow ring in one fist and both pouches clutched in the other. The box is gone, lost.
She's dreaming. She inhaled some car exhaust and she's seeing things.
Or perhaps she's well and truly lost her wits.
Addie gets to her feet, slides the ring on her index finger, and takes stock of herself. Her heart is galloping like she just sprinted ten blocks, but her breathing is steady and the rest of her body moves sluggishly, as if she's still underwater. Her clothes are dry despite her dip in the small pool - she fell in, somehow. She must have, else how did she climb up to shore? She's sweating; her winter coat is too heavy for a summer's day like this. The day is bright with sunshine filtered green through the forest's canopy.
Strange. Wasn't it winter before?
Addie shrugs off her coat and leaves it in a heap by the pool's edge.
It's so quiet.
The only noise comes from her - breathing, shifting weight, the glug of her heart.
No birds, no wind, no rustling grass or wildlife or buzzing insects. It's a luxurious silence, rich as a butter cake and pregnant with possibility but never fruition. A place spun of patient wistfulness - of someday and almost but never quite it's here. It feels like the pause between breaths. The silence between heartbeats. The suspension between sprinted footfalls. Like being held, perfectly, between gravities. The sort of place where anything might happen, but nothing ever does.
Addie's throat contracts around a "Hello?" but she swallows the word before it leaves her mouth. It would be terribly rude to disturb the peace.
Addie spins slowly, observing. She's in the middle of a thick wood that stretches in every direction as far as she can see. The trees all look the same - taller than London's highest clock tower, dripping in ivy, with thick trunks as dark as chocolate. The ground is a carpet of lush green grass, ankle-high and all the same height. At first, Addie thinks the groundskeeper deserves a commendation, but the grass isn't cut. Every blade tapers to a perfect point, as if it's never been shorn.
Every metre or so lies a glassy pool exactly like the one at Addie's feet. Their surfaces are mirror-smooth, frozen in time or free of it. Addie prods the pool she came from with her boot. Ripples flow in perfect circles from the contact, but when they reach the pool's edge, they don't bounce back - they stop.
How odd; nothing like London's brown puddles or the Shaws' pond.
Addie sinks to her knees and buries her hands in the grass. It's wonderfully soft, as inviting as Josie's bed back at -
London. England. The holiday.
Addie springs to her feet, rubbing her eyes and shaking her head to clear it of the strange, sudden mental fog.
The ladies, the box, the rings. The train chugging away with her luggage.
She has to get back.
Addie stares at the pool beside her winter coat. She came up through here - she remembers water and a soft green light above. Or was it the pool to her right? Her coat's laying smack between the two.
Her reflection stares back at her, the winter ruddiness gone from her cheeks. A yellow ring twinkles on her right hand.
Somehow, when she picked it up, she wound up here. As if by…
That's ridiculous.
Magic isn't real. She knows that. Everyone knows that.
The how isn't important. She got here through the pool, so that must be the way back. However pleasant this forest is, Josie and Ted must be worried and she needs to get these rings to the sheriff, so the ladies can get them back, and so she can catch the next train to London. And find her luggage.
Addie inhales deep and jumps into the pool.
Water splashes up to her thighs, but she doesn't fall. The water ripples, then stills.
Wrong pool, perhaps? She came in through the… was it the left one instead?
Addie jumps into the other pool to the left of her coat.
It's the same - a splash, a swarm of ripples, then a still puddle around her boots.
Not good.
She's trapped here, made a stupid mistake and now Josie will worry and they were supposed to stick together like good friends do and -
Breathe. There's a way out, she just has to find it.
Addie sits on the grass strip between the pools and hugs her knees. Somehow - never mind the particular mechanics - when she touched the yellow ring, she came up through a pool. So… so maybe if she takes it off, she'll go back.
Yes, that's logical.
Addie slides the ring off her finger and into the gold velvet pouch, where an identical ring flashes. She pulls the bag's drawstring tight and jumps into the left pool.
A splash, and nothing.
It's still a puddle.
God, she's wasting time and the next train is coming and these aren't even her rings and -
Alright. Okay. She's still missing something, but there's an answer here. She just has to focus, calm down, and figure it out.
Addie breathes in sets of four - in-hold-out, in-hold-out. If Josie were here, she'd deem this a fairy tale, an adventure to be solved and then retold a hundred times over lavender tea and shortbread biscuits. In storybooks, the characters didn't flounder around panicking; they just carried on.
She can do that.
There's still the other pouch.
Addie tugs the green bag's velvet throat and peers inside.
Two more rings twinkle at her - green this time, vibrant as the spring's first grass shoots, sparkling like gems. Expensive, probably, and identical to the yellow rings in everything but colour.
There must have been a reason both sets of rings were in the same box.
Addie takes a breath and tips a green ring into her palm.
Nothing.
What if these are just ornamentation, or decoys, or -
Breathe, think.
She came up in a pool with a yellow ring. So maybe she can sink with a green one.
Once more. The left pool first; that's the one she came from, isn't it? It's hard to think in silence this thick.
Addie slides on a green ring, closes her eyes, and jumps.
No splash.
The water closes over her head quick as a flash and a great yawning dark stretches below her feet. Pinpricks dance up Addie's palms and forearms as the inky nothingness gives way to soft streaks of green and blue and sunbeam yellow. The amorphous swath of colours solidifies into distant treetops. No, not distant, she's nearly on them now. Bollocks, she's never liked heights.
Almost as soon as her palms have started sweating, Addie's feet meet solid ground and the world sharpens into focus.
Shit.
Not England.
She's standing in a meadow under a merry spring sun, surrounded by wildflowers that reach her hips.
Oh gods, she jumped in the wrong pool and -
Addie breathes in.
And stops.
She knows this place.
The air is wild and sweet, vibrant with honeysuckle and morning dew, rich with loam and cheery sunlight. Around the clearing, trees two-thirds as tall as the trees in the wood she came from cast western shadows. Ferns, moss, and broad-leafed undergrowth perfect for hiding rabbits and other fauna obscure the forest floor. Overhead, birdsongs trill over each other, a cacophonous competition of melodies that nearly drowns out squirrels chattering, dragonflies buzzing, and leaves stirring in the breeze.
It's perfectly pleasant. If Ted and Josie weren't expecting her, she'd be glad to have wound up here.
But they are, and… and….
This is not the first time she's fallen in here. She was smaller, rain-soaked and sobbing for her mother, stumbling through a far less cheerful forest trying to find a train that would take her back to London.
This can't be the same forest. It's warm, bright, lovely, and yet familiar -
Addie wanders into the trees, half-witless and half-foolish. She shouldn't, she should put on a yellow ring again and try another pool, but…
There is something here. Something defying logic and good sense that drives her forward, through the trees and dappled sunlight, up the slight hill, over mossy stones, under branches speckled with pastel-pink blossoms, and at last, to a boulder overlooking a valley.
A verdant mountain range lush with spring awakening stretches before her. A flock of birds swoops over the nearest valley, one of half a dozen she can see.
And a castle.
There, at the base of the foothills, bathed in the morning sun's golden rays, lies an imposing stone castle surrounded by a city.
Addie's breath stalls, her eyes watering.
She knows that city. She knows that castle.
Oh God, what if she really is losing her mind? Is she imagining all this? Has she cracked?
Addie pinches her arm, and the scenery doesn't waver. Then her elbow - still nothing. She tries the back of her hand, her wrist, the tender skin between her thumb and index fingers.
Nothing changes.
If she's dreaming, if she's gone insane, a few pinches aren't waking her.
Shit.
Addie spends all day walking downhill and telling herself to put on a yellow ring. The green that brought her here is safely in its pouch, and if she had any sense, she'd don a yellow one, go back to the silent wood, and jump in as many pools as necessary to get back to England.
She's not supposed to be here. Once, a long time ago, she left, and she was not supposed to come back.
She should leave. She should do the decent thing and leave.
But… if she's here, and this is the place she thinks, and she isn't crazy, then everything…
It was real?
He was real?
No, he can't be, else why has she wasted all those years wondering, wishing, hoping?
For Mum. Because she was with Mum, and that was where she needed to be. Family, love, home, however lonely it became. For half her years, she had her mother.
But now she doesn't. And if this… if he…
Nailing biting into her palms, Addie ducks under a spiderweb and carries on.
When night falls thick as a blanket, humidity sticky on Addie's skin, she builds a small fire. Nothing big, only enough for light and to warn off any predators, though she's only seen birds, squirrels, and rabbits. She makes her bed under a canopy of ferns and strips down to her sleeveless undershirt and her grey winter skirt. It's not ideal adventuring attire, but it'll have to do. Her luggage is two worlds and a train ride away.
Her mother's diaries are lost now. Possibly forever.
Addie falls asleep staring at the stars, trying and failing to parrot back her mother's last letter. When her voice wavers and grief pangs in her chest, Addie puts it from her mind and tries to find constellations Mr Shaw taught her. None of these stars are familiar, and they appear twice as large and thrice as bright as in London, or even Glastonbury.
She ought to think of nothing else. If she's ignoring how worried Ted and Josie must be, if she's determined to be callous and careless and stupid, the least she can do is make herself oblivious.
Instead, Addie thinks of the king whose throne sits in the castle she's hiking toward and listens to her heart scuttle like a rabid animal until exhaustion drags her under.
Thunk.
"Oh dear!"
Addie jolts awake with a stinging cheek and the scent of black walnut in her nose.
"I'm terribly sorry! Are you alright? Dear me, dear me."
Addie rubs the sleep from her eyes and stands. The voice is high and a little squeaky, like a child's.
"It's alright," she says, spinning in a slow circle. The child's hidden well; she doesn't see a single footprint or disturbed branch. "I'm sure you didn't mean to."
"Thank goodness!"
Branches rustle overhead, and Addie ducks instinctively.
"I say, you are a sight, aren't you?"
A little dishevelled from sleeping on the ground, but not that bad, surely.
Addie peers into the tree above and finds only leaves and branches.
"You can come out," she calls. "I promise I'm not upset."
Another rustle, a branch shakes, and a fat, unusually large red squirrel appears, its front paws folded and eyes bright.
Then it talks.
"Much obliged," says the squirrel. "I don't suppose you've seen Bristletail, have you?"
Addie's eyes burn from staring.
A talking squirrel. She's lost it.
No, maybe not. Talking animals aren't out of the ordinary, not here, if this is -
"I haven't," Addie says. "But if you don't mind, could you tell me where I am?"
"The foothills of the Western Mountains in Narnia, just south of the River Shribble." The squirrel tilts its head and scampers down the tree trunk to a branch at eye level. "I say, you do look strange. Are you lost?"
"Well…" Addie chews her lip. Following a gut feeling, dreams, and a hallucination doesn't qualify as knowing her way; all she knows is the castle lies southwest, and she needs to see it for herself. "I'm not sure."
"Pardon me, but you don't really look… where are you travelling from, if you don't mind me asking?"
She blurts out "England" before she thinks better of it.
"England? I've never heard of that kingdom." With a flick of their bushy tail, the squirrel points at her clothes, shoulders to shoes. "Is that why you're dressed funny?"
"Funny how?" Addie asks. The squirrel must know she's a foreigner by her clothing, and her accent must stand out as well.
"Funny like…" The squirrel's eyes widen. "Do you mean Spare Oom?"
England?
Spare Oom. Like in the stories.
"Spare Oom?" Addie repeats, the words scratching her suddenly dry throat. "What about a spare room?"
The squirrel waves a paw, tail twitching. "No, I mean the Spare Oom." Then, their excitement quieting to hushed reverence, the squirrel asks, "Did Aslan send you?"
Aslan, her parents, a moonlit meadow - she knows him, too. Aslan is the talking lion that -
"I don't think so," Addie murmurs.
"That's alright, Lord Trumpkin will know what to do. It's a shame the king's still away, but we expect his return soon. Oh! My manners." Whiskers ticking, the squirrel folds its paws over its round belly. "I'm Prattletwig. Do sit down; I expect you've had a bit of a shock."
Sit down? No, she needs to keep going, see the castle, quiet this buzzing in her head, and go home.
"I'm okay," she says. "I'm Addie."
"Pleasure to meet you," says Prattletwig. "Well, if you're feeling alright, we'd best get going. The castle's about a day's travel, and you look like you've come a ways already."
Addie brushes the leaves and dirt from her hair and follows as Prattletwig leaps from branch to branch, heading west and downhill.
"Yes. I suppose I have."
They reach the end of the foothills by sunset and stop for the day. Addie's ravenous and exhausted from hours of chasing Prattletwig and eating berries and nuts on the way. The squirrel is pleasant, incessantly talkative company with a thousand questions about Spare Oom she answers in exchange for anecdotes about Narnia's recent history.
Some she recognises. Dancing trees, a revel under a summer's full moon, a war between magical creatures and human soldiers. She sketched such things a long time ago, between drawing him.
"You mentioned a king," Addie says over a dinner of more nuts and tart, purple berries after Prattletwig finishes a tale of a river god.
"Yes, King Caspian!" Prattletwig rotates a walnut in his mouth, biting the button and seam until it cracks in half. "Warrior, Peacemaker, Seafarer. I told you about the War of Deliverance, didn't I?"
"Yes, you did."
Bits of it, at least; the rest took shape in flashes - tunnels, a cloak in a cave, pain in her shoulder, bloodied needles, herbal pastes, a chalky pool, a cracked stone table, the prince from her sketchbook with dark circles under his eyes. A field of dead and wounded, the sickly rot of death and taste of iron, shirts torn into bandages. The prince kneeling before a lion wall carving, leaning over a map marked with stones, crying into her shoulder, brushing her aside, shouting on a hillside. The taste of mint and cotton, the sound of begging, and -
I thought you dead, Addie, and -
I love you, and -
You shouldn't have left.
"- peace at last. The centaurs are even saying we're entering another Golden Age. Not quite the same, of course, but ever so much better than… are you alright?"
Addie blinks away the past - dreams, memories, something in between - and cracks a walnut between her palms. "I'm fine, sorry. Did you say he's on a voyage?"
Prattletwig chitters around a mouthful of walnut. "That's right, I did! He's due back… oh, next week? He's been gone a year. Lord Trumpkin's had things well in hand - even smoothed relations with the other dwarfs, if you can believe it - but he's awfully gruff."
Trumpkin, she doesn't remember.
"And the king isn't?"
Prattletwig tosses an empty half shell over his furry shoulder. "Not at all! Quiet, a bit serious, but you'd never guess it. He's brought back everything, all the old festivals, and then some! I say, there's one next month. Do come!"
Next month? She won't stay that long. She's already been here longer than she should - long enough to cause worry.
To Prattletwig, Addie only smiles. "It sounds lovely."
Walking into the gates of Narnia's capital city - temporary capital, says Prattletwig, until Cair Paravel's restoration is complete - is… strange. The cobblestone main street is choked with citizens, an urgent press of humanity, yet Addie weaves through like she's done it a hundred times.
London trained her well.
Though Prattletwig offered to come with her, she urged the squirrel to return to his forest and not to worry.
"The castle's hard to miss," Addie said. "Thank you for getting me here."
"Well, it is almost lunchtime," said Prattletwig. "Lovely meeting you!"
Addie waved until the squirrel disappeared into the treeline. As charming as Prattletwig's effervescent self was, they would've hurried her to Lord Trumpkin, and that might not be the best idea.
She left, after all.
A towering castle of pale stone and parapets that rivals Big Ben and the Palace of Westminster dominates the cityscape, though it's set apart from the city by an uncovered, guarded stone bridge.
She knows this place.
Addie wipes her brow and presses on. Around her, the populace is evenly divided between humans and non-humans - Narnians. The humans appear Italian or Spanish - Telmarines. Addie avoids the sparse human soldiers.
The Narnians consist of creatures Addie knows from old fairy tales - fauns, centaurs, minotaurs, dwarfs, satyrs, talking animals walking on their hind legs. As she approaches the two centaur bridge guards, a human-like shape made of pink blossoms floats by, humming a tune that makes Addie's heart ache from its beauty.
Her heart has ached since she saw the castle, set foot in this city, since she fell into that pond.
No, no, can't think of that, can't dwell on anything but what she came here for.
What did she come here for? The guards will likely ask, and what can she say? Sightseeing? Seeking work? That she's from Spare Oom, just visiting, thanks, is Lord Trumpkin available for a spot of tea?
Prattletwig was very excited about her coming from England, and they seemed to think Aslan brought her here.
She'd… rather not mention Aslan. Rather not even think of him, the talking lion-god, because the last time she saw him, he…
Stop, stop thinking about it. It still could've been a dream.
She's here looking for work. Simple as that.
Addie exhales her nerves and marches up to the bridge. The centaur to her right stops her, firm but not unkind.
"State your business, miss."
"I'm looking for work," Addie says. She fidgets with a hangnail as the guard appraises her, though she keeps her chin high and her gaze steady. "I've travelled a long way."
It's not, technically, untrue.
The centaur's stern face softens as he waves her through. "Carry on." Then, quieter: "Try the scullery."
Relief pools in her stomach, warm as tea.
"Thank you," Addie murmurs.
She's in. To do what, she's still not sure.
But she's in.
The brisk walk across the windy bridge keeps her hands busy corralling her hair. She cut it short with Josie for her birthday, and it's barely long enough to tie back. Fortunately, when Addie passes through the main gate, the high castle walls block the wind.
And her heart stops.
Because this courtyard, the well, the king's balcony ahead, the arched columns and covered hallway to the right, the smell of baking bread and roasting meat -
She has walked this courtyard. She has walked it a hundred times.
Addie's feet wander left, dragging her on a path she knows, toward wafting steam carrying the scents of spices and ale barm and fresh-cut herbs. Above the courtyard's hum of friendly chatter, a sharp voice rings out.
"Gently, child! Tash's sake, am I the only woman to respect the yeast?"
Addie strays into the kitchen doorway. She's intruding, interrupting the work day, but oh, this is a dance she knows. There are three maids: a young woman trimming strawberries and pears, a girl scrubbing dishes, and a faun scowling at a deflated lump of dough while the cook - Perla - pokes the dough.
"I was gentle, the dough just -"
Perla's spatula smacks the countertop. "Hmph. You were impatient, and now the dough is overworked. Start again."
The maid - a short, green-eyed faun with round cheeks and a pinched mouth - sighs and moves to throw the ruined dough into the slop bucket.
"No, no! Overworked does not mean waste! And you, what do you - by Tash!"
Addie jumps, the scene before her blurring.
"Perla," she whispers.
Loud, clacking footsteps - wooden clogs on stone - and then arms made thick and strong from decades in the kitchen squeeze all the breath from Addie's chest. She can't help it; she sobs.
Behind her, more footsteps, a gasp. A clatter, then water splashes her calves and feet, a welcome respite from the warm spring day.
"Addie?"
Lola - that's Lola's breathy, musical voice.
Addie reaches blindly behind her and finds a hand, oh, that hand. She has held this hand before.
Perla's bruising grip loosens, and Addie spins into another crushing hug.
"You're back, you're finally back!" Lola's tears soak Addie's undershirt and bare shoulder, and a life of before floods back, a wave to drown in, yet welcome all the same.
I trust you to find your way back to us.
"I missed you," Addie hiccups. She didn't realise how much before now, but it's real, it was all real, everything, and was not this place, these two women holding her tighter than promises, was not all this once her home?
And him.
Before it ended.
"I want to hear everything, every bit." Lola squeezes tighter before letting go and looping their arms. "Did you find them?"
Pain - grief barely scabbed over - lurches in Addie's throat. That's right, she left to find her parents.
She found one and lost both.
Addie's smile snags on a fresh well of tears. "Yes. Well, I found Mum."
Lola rubs her arm and steers her into the sunlit courtyard. "Tell me everything."
"Shouldn't we…?"
Addie looks over her shoulder, ready for Perla's scowl and admonition to talk after lunch prep. Instead, Perla's righting the water jug Lola spilled and waving them off.
"Go on," Perla says. "But I expect you back this afternoon, you hear? Let's see how much you remember."
"Everything," Addie says. She thinks she could slip into the rhythm of Perla's kitchen with her eyes closed.
Perla leaves the jug just outside the kitchen doorway. "Good, you can prove it this afternoon. And tell that headmistress you're hired and in need of proper clothes. Astra, the rolls!"
With that, Perla wipes her eyes with a corner of her apron and marches back into her kitchen. Addie stares after her.
"Did she just give us the afternoon off?"
Lola pulls her close, their shoulders pressed together. "She's mellowed over the years. Come on, you'll love the new quarters."
"New quarters?" Addie follows Lola across the courtyard. It's busier than she remembers, filled with chattering badgers and dwarfs, humans mingling with fauns, and the occasional centaur or minotaur guard. Even the guards smile and nod pleasantly when addressed, as if they're part of castle life rather than policing it.
"Yes! Well, we've had them a good three years now, but new for you." Lola calls greetings to a scullery maid, a pair of talking mice, and a satyr drawing water from the well. Instead of the servants' door half-hidden in the shadows, she enters through the imposing double doors.
The entry hall is different, too - bright with torchlight, lush with red and gold carpets, walls draped in tapestries of Narnians dancing, fighting, and kneeling to an enormous lion.
Aslan.
Addie tries not to gawk. The castle she remembers was dark, oppressive, and tense with shadows and secrets. It was just starting to change when she left.
"It's only been three years?"
Lola waves to a dwarf carrying a pile of scrolls and turns a right. "Four, actually. Wasn't it the same for you?"
Four years - a third of her time in England.
How strangely time flows. While she grew up all over again, life in Narnia simply carried on.
After a brief meeting with the headmistress - a dwarf with a wide smile and owlish eyes - Addie's following Lola to the new servants' quarters carrying a stack of three maid's dresses. She tried to insist she only needed one, but the headmistress wouldn't hear of it, and Lola's in the middle of explaining the new work schedule - six days of work, one of rest, and a holiday every season.
Lola turns a corner, palms open a wooden door, and no, is she joking? This isn't servants' quarters, this is a proper bedroom. Four single beds with two pillows each, sheets, a blanket, and a coverlet, and storage chests at the foot. The window is as tall as her, with gauzy curtains to let in the light.
"Still four to a room," Lola says, walking to the closest bed, made neatly with crisp corners. "But isn't this nicer?"
Nicer isn't even the word; compared to their old quarters, this is luxury. A little crowded compared to a bedroom to herself, but the window and higher ceilings keep it from feeling cramped.
"All the servants' quarters are like this?"
"Every one," Lola says. "The old quarters are storage or temporary quarters for anyone who needs it."
Addie tilts her head. "Anyone?"
"Anyone who doesn't have somewhere to sleep. No more street kids."
Addie swallows, her eyes stinging. She once lived on the street, the first time she fell into Narnia. It was a different world back then.
Lola pats her arm and pulls her to sit on the bed. "So, you found your mother?"
Bollocks, now her nose is running. Addie sniffs as discreetly as she can and tells Lola everything - being a child again, spending five years on the Shaws' farm, returning to London when the war ended. The seven she had with Mum, Josie's constant friendship. And for the first time since May, she tells someone all about losing Mum, too. The handkerchiefs, the hospital, the goodbye, the funeral, the diaries. All of it.
It feels… good. Painful, but with Lola's hands in hers, she can finally breathe through it.
Because Lola understands the other side of this grief. That she's mourning Mum, but that she's also thankful to have known her at all, to have felt her love and loved her in turn. To know she was wanted, that she was missed, that she came from somewhere other than hunger and street alleys. She would've liked to know her father too, but that grief is distant, muted by all her years in Narnia and in England.
Addie remembers with a start that Lola is a mother now.
"What about you? How is your child?"
Lola's sympathetic frown brightens into a toothy smile. "Cesare is wonderful. He's three and a half, and so mischievous Alfonso and I can hardly keep up." Lola squeezes her hands, smile softening. "You'll meet him tonight. My parents watch him when Alfonso and I are working. The trouble is always getting him back; he prefers his grandmother's butter rolls."
"Not Perla's?"
"He's very particular. We're hoping he grows out of it."
"I'm sure he will."
Josie was a notoriously picky eater at the Shaws, but she came around. Mostly when Addie started cooking.
"He'd better," Lola says, fondly exasperated. "Now then, let's get you dressed. It's past lunch, and dinner prep starts soon."
Addie shucks off her grass-stained clothes without hesitation, no different from any other time she got dressed in the morning with the other maids. The cloth is a finer weave than she remembers, less scratchy and more breathable.
"I should return two of these." Addie smooths the crisply folded pile on the bed. "I don't need so many."
"Don't be silly." Lola pulls her hair back, huffing when half of it falls. "Why'd you cut your hair so short?"
Addie shrugs. "Josie's idea. Seemed like a good one at the time." It was inconvenient at her cleaning job, but for her records keeping position, she didn't need to tie her hair back.
"Not that I don't think it suits you, but maybe let it grow out? In a few months, it'll be long enough to -"
"Lola," Addie murmurs. "I'm… I'm not staying."
Lola's hands fall away, the hair tie dropping onto the storage chest. "What do you mean?"
Lola sounds more hurt than she thought. Why, after Addie left for four years?
Addie puts on her cap - brown, lightweight - and busies herself tucking her hair. "I'm… expected. Back in London."
When Addie faces her, Lola's mouth is pinched, her frown severe.
"So that's it then? You just got back, went to all the trouble of finding us again, and you're leaving?"
"Lola, I…"
Put that way, leaving sounds so callous. Is it callous, is it cruel to get out of the way so life can carry on normally for the people she loves here?
"It's the right thing," Addie says. "England is where I'm supposed to be."
Even to her own ears, it sounds hollow.
"What's so important in England?"
Addie bites her cheek trying to think of a good answer. She's lived in England for half her life, and all her childhood before she first came to Narnia. Josie's there.
But sitting here in this castle she lived ten years in, with Lola at her side and all her old life flooding her mind, it's hard to remember why getting back to England is so important.
"It's…" Addie shrugs helplessly. "It's home, now."
Lola's tone sharpens. "This used to be your home."
"I have friends there."
"You have friends here! More than friends." Lola's voice wavers. "We were like family. Or did you forget in those twelve years you grew up somewhere else?"
Addie buries a wince. Of course she remembers - much clearer now, with Lola sitting beside her. Lola is still like family.
But Lola belongs here. Lola didn't run away and leave wreckage in her wake.
"I haven't forgotten," Addie murmurs. "It's just… I don't think I'm supposed to be here."
Lola's frown deepens into accusation.
"No, you're afraid so you're running away. Just like the last time you left."
Addie tugs her hands free and busies them smoothing her skirt - a transparent attempt at nonchalance, so blatant she could almost laugh, bitterly, at herself.
Lola's face twists. "I'm sorry, that was… it's just… I haven't seen you in four years, and you're already rushing out. I thought when you came back, it'd be for good."
"I didn't think I'd ever come back." Guilt curls in her stomach, unforgiving and bitter. "I'm sorry I dredged it all up."
Lola blinks rapidly and looks away. "How do you plan on leaving? The tree's gone, and no one's seen Aslan since he opened that door."
"I have- what do you mean the tree's gone?"
It's been a fixture of the city overlook for decades, maybe centuries. How can it be gone? Did Aslan make it die after the door closed?
Lola sits on the chest, hands in her lap. "King Caspian ordered it cut down. He's been… different, since you left."
Addie gestures to the room around them - proof that Caspian's rule is far kinder than his uncle's.
"A good different, clearly."
"No." Lola scoots close again, a welcome heat beside her. "Addie… he was destroyed. He's done good things, a lot of them, but he hasn't been the same. I don't know him that well, and even I could tell."
Destroyed?
Lola's thumb strokes slow circles on Addie's palm. "I'm not saying you shouldn't have gone; I'm glad you found your mother, and I'd give you the same advice now I gave you then. And I remember how hard ending things with him was on you. Just… don't expect the same man you knew."
How could Caspian have been as Lola described when it was he who told her to go?
No, that's too cold. She saw the look in his eyes, the apology, before she bolted for the tree. She heard him scream her name, felt her heart splintering to pieces, and still she ran.
"I think I should leave before he returns." Addie blinks at the ceiling to keep her watery eyes from overflowing yet again. She's cried too much lately. "Like you said, it didn't end well."
Caspian may still be hurt, or pain could have hardened to anger, as it did in the How. Either way, if he knows she's returned, her presence might bring up wounds best left untouched.
She can spare him that much, at least.
"Word is his ship docked at Cair Paravel. He's expected next week," Lola says.
Addie tangles their fingers tighter and digs her toe into the blue rug by the chest.
"I can't stay that long. Even a few days is more than I should."
"Didn't you just tell me no time passed in England when you went through the tree? You woke up the same age as when you first fell into Narnia, right?" Lola turns, her grip loosening. "Are you afraid to see him again? Is that what this is about?"
The mere suggestion of seeing him, after such a harsh parting, so many mistakes between them… the thought of facing him in the flesh when she spent so long telling herself he wasn't even real, that the pain in her heart was just homesickness…
She's not just sparing him pain; she's sparing herself.
"I don't intend to see him again. It's best if I don't."
Lola jiggles their hands until Addie meets her searing gaze.
"He'd want to know. I would've been furious if you came back and then left before I could see you."
Addie's already shaking her head before Lola finishes speaking.
"It's not a good idea."
Coming here at all was a mistake - a step into the wrong pool, and a foolhardy yearning for the life she left behind. She should've put on a yellow ring the moment her feet touched Narnian soil. If she'd never come to the castle, Lola wouldn't be upset by her leaving.
She would have disappointed no one, hurt no one. Now she is hurting - worrying - Josie and Ted with every hour she spends here, but when she leaves, she will hurt Perla and Lola all over again.
And him again, if he finds out she was here and Lola's right that he'd want to have known…
Addie swallows regret. She holds on to her past loves too much - that is her weakness. First her parents, now Caspian and Lola and Perla. They'd be better off if she'd just stayed away.
"Don't decide right now." Lola pulls their joined hands into her lap, pleading. "Wait a few days."
Addie hesitates. Either way, leaving now or in a few days or in a few months, she causes pain.
But Lola's pain is right before her.
"Alright," Addie agrees. "A few days."
The next morning, a faun stops her outside the kitchen with a summons.
She knew she should've left.
Addie follows the faun as slowly as she dares. Both ring pouches are tied around her neck and hidden in her bodice, but if she was quick enough, perhaps she could slip on a yellow one. Vanishing in the middle of a crowded hallway isn't ideal, but it might be worth it.
If the faun catches her, she could lose the rings, or accidentally drag the faun with her, and they'd both be trapped in that silent forest, unsure of the way home.
Too risky.
In the castle's eastern wing, the faun ushers her into a cozy study flooded with morning sunlight. The dark, polished bookshelves stretch from floor to ceiling, every sliver of space stuffed with books and scrolls, and the air is thick with a musty, bookish smell of old paper and candle wax. A rectangular desk sits in the centre of the room, where an old bearded man stands peering at her through his spectacles, hands resting on his round belly.
Doctor Cornelius - Lord Chancellor, advisor to the king, and Caspian's childhood tutor.
"Adelina," he says by way of greeting. "You've returned."
Adelaine, technically, but if she'll be gone in a matter of days, it's not worth correcting him.
"I didn't mean to. I don't want any trouble."
The portly man leans forward, his fingers steepled.
"Be that as it may, my dear, you may have brought trouble all the same."
Doctor Cornelius beckons her closer and gestures to the chair across his desk. Addie steps cautiously forward as the door clicks shut behind her.
"He's not back yet," she says, a plea. "Just let me say my goodbyes and I'll… I'll go."
The Doctor hums and sits. "Go where?"
Addie steadies her breathing to counts of four and gingerly sits in the chair. "Back to England. It'll be like I was never here, I promise, just let me -"
Doctor Cornelius stops her with a hand. "Perhaps we should start at the beginning. How did you come here?"
"I… fell in."
The rings grow warm against her sternum.
The Doctor taps his thumbs together, pensive. "Have you spoken with Aslan?"
"No," Addie says. "I don't think so."
"Then how did you find your way here? From where did you fall?"
The temptation to lie curls over her tongue, salty and corrosive.
No, she's made that mistake before.
"From a forest. Not Narnia's forest, it was… silent. Strangely so, like an in-between place."
Doctor Cornelius strokes his beard, his stare appraising. "And how did you get there?"
Addie chews her lip and says nothing. If she tells him about the rings…
"Adelina, I must insist on the truth. If you are here by the will of Aslan, He will not take you from Narnia until you've fulfilled His purpose." The Doctor's voice turns grave. "But if you came here by another means, then others less benign than yourself may take the same path."
With clammy hands, Addie produces the rings and tells the Doctor everything - the train station, the box, the rings, the pools. Doctor Cornelius listens in silence, stroking his moustache methodically. When she's finished, he rests his hands on his belly.
"It would seem these rings allow travel to and from the silent wood. It would also seem that the pools you spoke of function as gateways, of sorts, to other worlds. As you only successfully entered one pool and cannot be sure if it was the same you emerged from, we can't be certain if every pool leads to a different world, or if the pools lead to a different place with every trip. It's quite possible Aslan himself commands the pools, and your arrival here could be His will after all."
What does it matter if Aslan willed her here or not? It was a mistake, she's intruding, and she needs to leave. It's as simple as that.
"I felt strange, in the wood," Addie says. "I probably got confused and stepped into the wrong pool. So as soon as I touch a yellow ring, it'll take me back there and I can go in the right one. Like I said, just let me say my goodbyes, and -"
As she reaches for the rings, Doctor Cornelius stops her with a surprisingly strong grip for an old man.
"I fear the damage is done. You revealed yourself to your friends, and your name sits on the headmistress's ledger, written in your own hand."
Her face flames; she should've stopped to think before she tried to jump back into her old life.
"Can't she strike it out?" Addie shifts in her seat, the cushion too comfortable under her. "I can talk to Lola and Perla, make sure they never speak of me."
She knows she's grasping at air, that she's suggesting either foolishness or lying to the King of Narnia, but what else can she do?
She can't face him.
Doctor Cornelius adjusts his spectacles, eyes narrowing. "I am not in the habit of lying to my king."
Of course he's not; Caspian commands far more respect than Miraz ever did.
But what, then, can be done?
Doctor Cornelius leans back in his chair. "I confess I was surprised to hear of your arrival. His Majesty did not expect your return. Nor did I, for that matter."
"I'll be gone by sundown," Addie tries again. "Tell him whatever you like, just… I know I shouldn't be here. Let me put this right."
"You can put it right by staying right here."
Addie opens her mouth to object, but he raises a hand and shakes his head.
"Your presence is known now, Adelina. Sooner or later, Caspian will find out. Moreover, you must understand these rings pose a danger to Narnia. Would you open this world to any who might stumble through?"
"I'll keep them secret," Addie begs. "I'll guard them with my life."
"And when you are as old as I? When you pass on?" Doctor Cornelius looks to the twin velvet pouches, as if he can see the rings twinkling back. "I must also remind you that you may not be able to return the same way. We do not know how the pools function. If their gateway is static, true, you could find your way back through the other pool. But if the gateways are inconstant, you could find yourself on an inhospitable world and in very great danger. No, my dear, I fear you cannot use these rings to return. I would not have your death on my conscience."
This is exactly what she feared. This is why she considered lying.
The trouble is, Doctor Cornelius isn't wrong.
"What do you propose, then? I can't stay here."
Because she left, and she wasn't supposed to come back, and she can't put Caspian through… whatever effect her return would have on him. She owes him peace, and how is she to give him that if she lingers in his kingdom like a weed in an otherwise pristine garden?
Doctor Cornelius opens a desk drawer and produces a small lockbox. He tightens the pouches' drawstrings, places them inside, and locks it with a small silver key.
"Phamrus!" he calls.
The faun guard enters, and Doctor Cornelius hands him the box.
"Take this to the castle vault."
The faun bows. "My lord."
The Doctor waits until the guard has left before he returns his attention to Addie with a sigh.
"I do not disagree that your departure would be wise. Your return will likely raise unfortunate memories, but there is little to be done about that now. Let us study the rings together until we understand them. Then, we can discuss your return."
Addie clasps her own hands until her knuckles creak in protest.
"What am I supposed to tell him?"
Cornelius regards her with a raised brow.
"The truth."
A/N: Please know I tried my best to get some Caspian content in this chapter, but it just didn't fit. So, that's coming next week and I hope y'all are ready for Caspian and Addie to finally reunite! I know I am 😏
Chapter 64 Preview:
He sighs - a breach in stoicism and royal distance, but he is only a man.
"Why are you here, Adelina?"