"Maybe paper is paper, maybe kids will be kids
Lord, I want to remember how to feel like I did"
-East by Sleeping at Last
—
How long they stood in that doorway, Lucy didn't know. Long after the procession of their enemies passed.
She'd almost suggested they leave multiple times, but the look on Edmund's face stopped her. He looked like he was grappling with something inside him, like he was fighting some internal battle.
Finally, he looked down at her. There was fear in his eyes; pure fear. But behind it, something that nearly made Lucy smile.
"We have to get home before Susan leaves," was all he said.
Lucy nodded firmly. She cautiously peered out of the doorway they stood in. The street was practically deserted, another bad sign.
They hurried home far faster than Edmund should have been able to. Lucy could see the grimaces of pain he thought he was hiding from her.
Edmund locked the door to the flat behind him, and yanked the curtains closed over the little window next to the door. He noted how his hands shook.
"Edmund? Lucy?" Susan called from somewhere in the flat.
It was Lucy who answered. "Yes, it's us!"
Susan came hurrying around the corner as Edmund leaned on the wall. She was in disarray; her makeup half done; her hair falling out of its usually tight bun.
"The radio was saying such horrible things. About some queen dressed in white who'd turned the prime minister to stone. It gave me such a deep, horrible feeling."
Lucy whispered beside him, "A Narnian feeling…"
At the same time, Edmund limped down the hallway, leaning on his cane, and said, "It's her, Susan."
"Who?"
Edmund froze, biting his lip. His older sister had never outright told any of them that Narnia didn't exist. She'd just maintained that Narnia was lost to them all, that they ought to live in the present, not in the past. So they'd stop talking about Narnia around her.
He turned slowly to face her. "Susan, we saw her. She did this. Who else could blanket London in snow during the middle of summer?"
"Who, Edmund? Can't you just give me a straight answer?"
He tried to keep himself from raising his voice and failed.
"The White Witch, Susan!"
The name hung in the air between them like a noxious gas.
Slowly, he watched realization dawn on his older sister's face.
"Oh Edmund…" she whispered after a moment. "You really saw her? She's really here?"
Edmund nodded.
"I wonder how…" Lucy murmured from somewhere behind him. And then, a beat later, "Oh! Peter, we have to warn Peter!"
Despite the fact that he hadn't spoken to his brother in two weeks, Edmund was the one that picked up the phone.
"It's dead!" he snarled after a moment, letting the receiver fall against the wall. "The lines must've been cut!"
Lucy began to pace. "She must be cutting London off from the outside world…"
Edmund sank into a dining chair, burying his head in his hands for a few minutes. He had to think clearly, come up with a plan… Without Peter here, he was responsible for his sisters' safety…
"The people of this world won't have the slightest idea of how to handle her," Susan said.
"That's our biggest problem," Edmund agreed. "Because there are four people in this whole world who know how to handle her."
Lucy sighed, dropping into the chair across from Edmund. "And one of them doesn't even know."
Edmund willed his hands to stop shaking. "We'll have to do something…"
He could see Lucy nodding out of the corner of his eye. Susan began to pace.
"Peter would know what to do…" he murmured after five minutes of silence.
"Well Peter doesn't know," Susan nearly snapped. "We don't have a way to tell him, so we're going to have to figure this out on our own."
Edmund and Lucy stared at her.
"Oh come on you two! This isn't the first time we've faced things without Peter, and it won't be the last!"
A smile slowly tugged at the corners of Edmund's mouth.
"Oh Susan…" Lucy said. "How we've missed our Gentle Queen."
Susan smile, putting one hand on Edmund's shoulder, and one on Lucy's.
"She never truly left. Now, oh Valiant and Just, what are we going to do?"
Lucy was breathing hard as she ducked into a little shop. She quickly pulled off her hat, and pretended to be engrossed in a display of beautifully painted pottery.
Hurried footsteps and shouting approached the shop, then passed by.
Lucy let out a breath. She'd successfully avoided her pursuers.
It was becoming more and more dangerous to go outside with every passing day.
Even the act of giving a homeless man some of her spare change had earned Lucy an attempted arrest.
"Are you alright dear?"
Lucy looked up, noticing the shopkeeper, an elderly woman, for the first time. She fumbled for a response.
"Yes, I'm quite alright."
"You stay in here for a little while." The woman smiled mischievously. "We can't have them catching you."
Lucy returned the smile, moving further into the shop to actually browse the fine china the woman was selling. It wasn't hard to smile, knowing that the citizens of London were finding quiet ways to rebel.
A flash of movement caught her eye, and Lucy turned that direction, walking further into the shop. She saw the flash of movement again, and followed it around a display case.
It was a rat.
Lucy frowned. No, it wasn't a rat. It was watching her with far too much intelligence to be a rat.
Slowly, pretending to look at a teapot on a low shelf, Lucy crouched down.
"Good morn," said the talking Mouse.
Lucy yelped in surprise, and fell back.
"Everything alright?" the shopkeeper called.
"Yes, I just, stubbed my toe!" Lucy called back. She quickly sat forward again. "Good morn cousin."
She held out a hand, and the mouse cautiously stepped onto it.
"Who are you?" it asked.
Lucy lowered her voice, "I am Queen Lucy the Valiant."
"Oh!" The mouse bowed low. "I am so sorry, your majesty."
"It's quite alright. Are you from Narnia?"
"Yes," said the mouse. "I am."
It had snowed so much by the fifth day that Edmund couldn't really walk outside. Had his leg not been permanently injured, he would've been just fine. He hated how weak and helpless it made him feel.
Instead, he sat inside, stretched out on their sofa with a book. It wasn't like he was being unhelpful. He was trying to figure out how to get a message to Peter.
Susan had ended up going to work as a guise to try and find out more about the Witch's movements. And she'd discovered very quickly that not only were the Witch and the dwarf back, but most of the Witch's army.
A sign had been posted on the library door, reading,
"Knowledge contained inside now property of her majesty Queen Jadis.
-Maugrim, captain of the secret police"
Lucy's mouse friend had been very busy too, running about and to and from to collect information for them.
That was how they'd realized that the Witch hadn't cut off the radios. She'd just forced any and all radio hosts in London to stop broadcasting. But the residents of London could still listen to broadcasts from the outside world.
Susan had quickly dug out the flimsy little radio Peter had bought when he'd still lived here.
Oh, how their hearts had leapt when reports came in of strange creatures, things out of myths and legends, popping up all over England.
So now, Edmund found himself buried in a book on how to operate a radio.
The front door opened, and Edmund looked up.
Susan shut and locked the door as Lucy unwound a scarf from around her neck and face. Both their cheeks were flushed.
He sat up. "Well?"
Lucy hurried for a pad of paper and a pen. Edmund shut his book, limping over to join Susan at the table.
Susan took it from her, and began to sketch a map.
"Here's what we're going to do."
Peter Pevensie had been ignoring the feeling for quite a while.
It spiked dramatically one evening, while his roommate, an accountant who also happened to hail from Finchley, was turning on their radio.
"The strange winter that's covered London has just gotten a whole stranger," the radio announcer said.
Peter turned from where he was peeling a potato. His heart skipped a beat.
"Twenty minutes ago, there was one final broadcast out of London. As of now, the radios in that city are dead in the water. We've also received news that no telephone communications can be made into or out of the city."
A second announcer chimed in, "That's not even the strangest part, Frank. A woman, who claims to be of another world, has taken responsibility for the sudden winter, and named herself queen."
"We've received reports that she calls herself Jadis."
The knife and the potato went clattering to the floor.
Ta da! We'll get some action next chapter!
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