Disclaimer: I do not own Narnia, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the films, or any of Lewis' work. I hope only to pay him tribute with my small meaningless attempts to appease my obsession. Narnia writers...I salute you!

Chapter Quote: "There just children!"

Note: Character Index is located at the end of the chapter.

Chapter Six

Rescued

The Campbells scrambled forward as they watched in horror as Elora plunged through the ice, her satchel flying off her shoulder and skidding on the ice away from her as she sank into the frigid water.

"ELORA!" They screamed. "ELORA!"

And they waited helplessly by the hole...and they waited...and waited...and wai- hold on a moment...yes! There it was! Her head! But oh...it banged sharply up against the side of the hole and her struggles fell limp. Elizabeth and Alysia grabbed her shoulders, pulling her out of the water with everything they had in them and lying her gently upon the ice. Elora coughed and spluttered, her teeth chattering uncontrollably as they gathered around her.

"Weeeee nnnnneed ttttoo ggggettt offfffff tthhhhe iccccccce." She stuttered through chattering teeth.

Michelle propped her up against her own body and the children hovered above her as they gathered around their half-frozen sister. Elora's lips were blue now and her face pale as the snow that continued to fall around them. "You all right?" Asked Maria in concern.

Elora, who was trying to either nod or shake her head, was shivering too badly to speak for a moment. "We have to get out of here." Elizabeth muttered and Michelle nodded.

"I second that motion."

It was nearly dark now and they were all freezing an Elora was shivering so badly that the younger children were beginning to think she might fall through the ice again. Anthony pushed closer to her. "Where did you see the house, Elora?" He asked eagerly. Looking up at him, she pointed with shaking fingers to the other side of the lake. Only...it wasn't really a house...it looked more like a castle.

"We have to get there." Alysia stated, rising and picking up Cecilia. Elizabeth and Michelle helped Elora to her feet and Anthony hoisted Tyler onto his back while Grace and Maria clung to each other for warmth. In this way, they started to hurry towards the castle. None of them spoke except for Elora who was fighting back moans as her body began to stiffen slightly.

"Come on Elora." Whispered Elizabeth to her sister. "Come on..."

"Lizzy...?" Said Maria nervously from behind her. "There's someone coming towards us...there's someone coming from the castle!"

The Campbell Children stopped and Elora slipped from the girls' grasp right back down on the ice. They all looked up. Yes...there was somebody coming from the castle...a number of somebodies actually- all on horses. They stood still and presently, the horses stopped before them.

"Who goes there?" Commanded a deep voice from one of the horses.

"Please sir..." Said Alysia, pushing her way forward. "We got lost and the wolves...aaaand Elora fell into the ice and..." Alysia, who knew very well that she had begun to babble, couldn't help the tears that came swiftly to her eyes as she realized the full hopelessness of their situation if these men didn't help them.

"Good God Oreius!" Exclaimed a younger voice. "They're just children!"

Most of the Campbells were alert due to the sharp coldness from the snow, but most of the younger ones were beginning to fall down to the ice as weariness overcame them. The owner of the younger voice was approaching them now...but the snow was falling much too hard for them to make out his face. "This one is half frozen." Said the voice, who laid his hand on Elora's forehead. "Take her up to the healing quarters at once Oreius."

"Yes, my king." Answered the deep voice

Grace, slightly alarmed that the strangers were taking Elora away, jerked forward. "Please sir..." She said as loudly as she could through her chattering teeth. "Don't hurt her...she's our sister."

The man, as they assumed him to be, stopped. "Of course I'm not going to hurt her...I'm not going to hurt any one of you."

"Please don't separate us, sir." Added Michelle, who was not too cold to keep the funny looking man on the horse from lifting Elora into his arms. There were other funny looking men on horses gathering around them now...but it was so cold...and it was so hard to stay awake.

"Don't worry." The king said as the last of the children began to fall asleep. "You'll all be fine."

If you've never been rescued by funny looking men from freezing before, you might find it difficult to imagine what it was like for the Campbell Children just then. The funny looking men on horses started to pick up the children, who were all falling asleep rather quickly, and began to gallop madly towards the castle. One of the children, however, was not entirely asleep. Grace, carried gently in the arms of one of the funny looking men, was not shivering only with the cold, but also with fear.

Now Grace, being as big a fan of fantasy as Elora, was pretty good at deciphering mystical creatures when she saw them in picture books or in movies. But she'd never actually had the opportunity to meet one in real life. But as she shivered against the warm buddy of the funny looking man, he realized just riding a horse...he was the horse. "A centaur." She murmured through half-frozen lips. She could see the tall one with dark hair fall out ahead carrying Elora's limp body in his arms. And she could hear the hooves striking the ice of the centaurs who carried the sleeping bodies of her brothers and sisters. This was all just a bit much. Terrified they would be separated, she looked shyly up into the face of the centaur carrying her.

"Please sir..." She whispered. "don't separate us."

The centaur looked down at her with dark, ageless eyes. And he smiled, "Don't worry." He said. "We won't."

And with the reassuring words of the centaur floating about dreamily in her mind, Grace fell into a cold, dark sleep.

Now you, as a reader, might have already guessed where exactly the Campbell Children had landed themselves. The castle was called Cair Paravel and the king, who had discovered the children with the centaurs, name was Peter. But the Campbells, still sleeping soundly after their trauma on the ice, did not know or even guess any of this.

Some of them, in fact, most specifically Elizabeth, Michelle, and Alysia: rather thought (and hoped) that this had all been a dream. Or at least they did when the door back into the house first disappeared. But after the near death of Elora, this was all becoming just a bit harder to accept.

Michelle woke up to a crackling noise that was very loud, but also rather inviting. She felt actually rather warm and comfortable. She thought at first that this must of course then, be a dream. And she thought again that perhaps it had all really been just a dream. All of it, the snow...the wolf...the ice...and she thought she'd go back to sleep in hope of dreaming about something a bit more pleasent...such as Tom Welling wearing a shirt that was all wet...a white shirt...yep...yummy. Unfortunately, telling herself to go back to sleep meant that she was already awake.

Irritably, she opened her eyes...then she blinked...and she blinked again. No...this wasn't right...this wasn't right at all. She was in a huge room, with four roaring fires, one on each wall. And in the room there were eight beds, all filled with still, slumbering bodies. She sat up, gazing around in surprise at the lavish decorations usually featuring the outline of a red, roaring lion. Her gaze traveled from object to object, studying the strange designs until at last, her eyes finally rested upon a figure hovering over one of the fires. But then...that couldn't be right either.

She...or what Michelle thought was a she...was dressed in a light shirt that was the color of a deep maroon and was tied with a red sash around her waist. She had dark skin, a rich chocolate brown, and hair nearly as black as Mom's, that was pulled into a neat braid which ran all the way down her back. But it was there that Michelle was sure that she must be dreaming. The lady didn't have legs like you or me, but rather the body of a horse. Where the horse's neck should have been there was instead the lady's body from the waist up.

The horse part of her body was a very dark brown, similar to the color of her skin, and she shifted quietly about the room with a long spear in one hand. Out of the corner of her eye, Michelle saw someone in the bed next to her sit up. She watched the figure stiffen, too speechless to say anything. The horse...er...lady, was standing over one of the other beds now. But the figure who had risen next to Michelle was quivering in either fear or anger.

"Who the heck are you?" Said the shaking voice of the figure, whom Michelle recognized to be Alysia, hoarsely.

The horse-lady whirled in a clatter of hooves to meet Alysia's sharp, accusing voice with eyes the color of a rather startling blue and long cheek bones that actually made her resemble a horse even more. Michelle thought that the horse-lady looked quite as startled as herself. (Though Michelle was sure her own eyes were that unusual looking.) The horse-lady also looked sort of young...though she couldn't really be sure because she had never seen anybody with half a horse for their bum and legs before. The horse-lady fidgeted with her spear before she spoke.

"Uh...terribly sorry." Her voice was surprisingly high and soft for someone with such a startling form. Her blue eyes darted between Michelle and Alysia as she shifted her weight nervously on the wooden floors. "I was suppose to check on you to make sure you all were all right." The horse-lady blinked again and suddenly more rustling from one of the other beds could be heard.

"I knew it!" Grace exclaimed perkily. "I just knew it!"

Alysia, her attention diverted from the horse-lady, turned sharply to her younger sister. "What are you? Some kind of freak! Who ever wakes up so perky in the morning?"

Grace seemed not to have heard Alysia as, her eyes round as saucers, she slid from her bed to the floor. The horse-lady eyed her warily. Grace, usually one of the more reserved family members, was walking out cautiously to meet the horse-lady who was staring right back at Grace with a curious expression on her chocolate covered face.

"You're a centaur...aren't you?" Said Grace excitedly.

The horse-lady looked slightly taken aback and her face was masked in something that looked like a pout. "Of course I'm a centaur! What else would I be?" She asked irritably, as if insulted that Grace hadn't known that straight off.

Grace blushed slightly but the horse-lady...erm...centaur, only shook her head as if to rid herself of some troubling thought. "Terribly sorry- I don't mean to sound rude. The High King explained to all of us that you probably weren't really from around here."

The Children, now all of which were fully awake, had begun to slide out of their enormous beds, all eyes fastened on the centaur as she babbled on. "...he said you probably wouldn't be familiar with Narnia...that's why I was assigned to you."

"I've never met a centaur before." Said Grace, still watching the centaur in awe. The centaur looked disdainfully down at Grace who, in reality, was only a few inches shorter then her.

"Well, I've never been assigned to human children before."

"But you've been assigned other things...more exciting things...haven't you?" Grace persisted.

The centaur's dark features flushed. "Well...this is sort of my first assignment really." She replied truthfully, fiddling with the wooden shaft of her spear. "But I'm more then ready!" She said enthusiastically.

Then Alysia, starting to recover from her initial shock asked the centaur was her name was. "Fania." she replied proudly. "I was only just assigned to the Palace Royal Guard. I've been in training for months!" Fania babbled on and by that time the children had found themselves all dreamily drawn tot he centaur who was now swishing her tail about rather excitedly. Then, quite suddenly, she stopped. "Oh, I say, I don't know any of your names...neither does the High King for that matter. You were all put in a room together at his request."

The children all looked about at each other with looks of half excitement and half relief as they each calculated mentally that all of them were there...all of them except for one.

"Where's Elora?" Asked Anthony.

The children murmured their surprise at not having seen their older sister in the room and it hit them quite suddenly all of what had happened on the previous day. They started to clamor rather loudly to poor Fania who wasn't really all that old for a centaur and wasn't at all used to being asked so many questions at once by so many people. Her face blanched and she stomped her hooves on the floor and let out a loud bellow that sounded like an angry neigh and they fell silent.

"Your sister is fine. She's sleeping right now. I think you'll see her in the great chamber shortly."

"Great Chamber?" Asked Cecilia.

"Oh yes, you're going to meet the High King, Peter, there. The others are away don't you know. But King Edmund was supposed to be returning home sometime today or tomorrow."

Narnia. Didn't the Campbell Children know it just then. Alysia cut Fania off and asked what they would be wearing and when it would be time to go to the great chamber. Fania, looking quite flustered now, asked for all of their names in turn and then started for the door. "I'll get the Nymphs at once! They'll help you get anything you should be needing."

In truth, Elora's night hadn't been so pleasant after all. It had been a long time before she had stopped shivering long enough to answer the questions that a kindly older man asked of her. She slept on and off and was told throughout that time that she had a bit of a fever, which only reminder her that she wasn't home at all.

And that her parents weren't there and that she had no idea where the rest of the children were. She thought she must have thrown up once, which wasn't at all pleasant. And she thought that perhaps falling through the ice, thought it hadn't been her fault, wasn't an experience that she'd like to repeat.

Eventually she was reduced to tears and was finally consoled by a gentle, sing-songy voice of a man who pressed his cool hands on her warm forehead and told her everything would be all right. She didn't know when at last she fell asleep, but once she did, she was so tired that she wasn't even aware that it was nearly dawn.

A/N: You guys would crack up if you heard some of the things that go on in my house. I'm getting such a kick out of writing this and I've got my whole family hooked. (Isn't it funny the way that works:)) Anyway, I hope those of you who are reading this are enjoying it...I know I am! And I appreciate every review I get. :)

Character List:

Elora: Oldest, clumsy, writer, age: 16

Alysia: 2nd oldest, Boy Crazy, likes to talk, Age: 15

Elizabeth: Singer, Boy Crazy Age: 14

Michelle: Boy Crazy, More Reserved, Loves Romance Age: 14

Anthony: Hates Chores/Work, Likes to Play, Has a fresh mouth, Leader of the Brat Pack Age: 13

Grace: Very Pretty, Shy, Trips a lot, Age: 12

Maria: Smart, Cute, Likes to make people laugh Age: 10

Cecilia: Saucy, Rides Horses, Member of the Brat Pack Age: 8

Tyler: Youngest, Doesn't speak well, Finder of Narnia, Member of the Brat Pack Age: 7

Mom: Beautiful, Smart, Everything a mother should be. Age: Perfect

Dad: Handsome, Strong, Smart, Everything a father should be Age: Perfect

Uwey: Senile, Old, Likes to Bite horses, Age: Ancient

TO BE CONTINUED...