O0O0O0O

She floated through nothing until it woke her, that bright and burning thing, that explosion of gold and stars.

She drew breath as though she had not drawn it for a century. Her body hurt, her whole self burned. It was cold, so cold, and then not quite as much . . . and still, Rya ran.

The scream of the hawk, the bay of the dog— Rya would not stand for it. She whirled, she struck, she warned them with snapping, square teeth and wild, white-rimmed eyes. A horse such as looks like that is not a horse to be trifled with, and the animals fell back to a safe distance. Rya's sides heaved; she had been running for so very, very long, but she would go down fighting or not at all.

And then he was there, the dying one, the shadow of a shadow, the palest shadow she had ever seen. He fell from his horse, he fought to rise, and he wanted to kill her— the look in his eyes was the look of the monsters that had set on them that day in the woods so many lifetimes ago. But today there was no Lion to flay him, there was only a gaping wound in his side; a wound that would drain the life from the one who sought to be her murderer.

And she could not let that be.

O0O0O0O

Peter staggered, gasping, to his feet. The maid who stood motionless and stared at him may not have been joined with the mare as he had first thought, but he had no reason not to believe that she was not as dangerous and evil a thing as he first believed. With the last scraps of strength remaining to him, he grasped Rhindon and drew it; held it aloft. His shield he fought to raise, and he hated, oh how he hated, the look of deep pity and gentle horror on the girl's face as she saw the pain this caused him.

"Please," she said, and her voice was so ordinary that it was far more jarring to hear than had she shrieked in foul, secret riddles, "please, don't do that; you're hurt, I see. Oh please, do put them down or you'll only hurt yourself more."

It was something like Susan might have said, Peter thought, and with that thought he dropped, empty, drained of everything that had to this point kept him going. Because if she could sound so much like his sister, then whatever she might be, she was not anything he had thought she was.

She moved quickly toward the fallen man, halting only at a warning growl from Two Shakes. They might not have braved the terrified anger of the mare, but both Hound and Hawk would have let the horse trample them ere they allowed the young woman approach.

"Oh," she said, her frustration spilling out in an impatient stamp of her foot, "oh don't be so foolish, can't you see he's dying? Won't you let me help?"

I do not know if Hounds can smell truth, or if there was simply something in the girl's posture that calmed him, but whatever the reason, Two Shakes was the first to stand down. Orison, sharp-eyed, watched closely as the maid approached the fallen king but made no move to stop her.

Peter was by that point barely aware. He knew, in a very remote and strained sense, that she was kneeling by him now, pressing quick, firm hands to his side. It hurt too much for him to even feel it properly, but the look on her face told him more of his condition than actually feeling it ever could have.

"It's bad, so bad, so very bad," she murmured, and her hands kept moving, kept checking. She peeled back half-dried, sticking fabric, and she shook her head. "I don't think . . . Rya!" And the mare stepped forward smartly, though her nostrils still flared wide and red in wary anticipation. "Rya, come."

The mare came closer, and then closer still. She kept a wary eye on the other animals, though, and her ears remained pinned back flat against her skull. Tarva, cowed as only a stallion can be cowed by an angry mare, made no move to stop her approach and so eventually Rya stood directly above Peter as the maiden who had summoned her struggled to lift Peter to his feet. However the young woman was unequal to the task of bearing such a burden, and realised it almost at once. Turning beseeching eyes on Two Shakes, she said "come here! Here, boy!"

Two Shakes drew back in affront; one does not say "here, boy" to a Talking Dog, no matter how forgiving his nature.

"Madam," he began censoriously, but was unable to finish because the girl was instantly contrite.

"Oh! I am so sorry," she said, "I am sorry, I didn't know that you were— but come! Please, come, your friend is in a very bad way, and I cannot help him here."

"And how do we know you aren't a witch planning to kill him?" Orison demanded, peering keenly down at the maid from a branch higher up. The maybe-witch made a sound of horrified impatience.

"A witch! Oh, that's— look at him! Do you think I have need of any art to finish what a sword has already begun? He will die easily enough on his own without my ever touching him, and if you do not help me move him he will die here as we watch. I will not stand by and see it done; now HELP ME."

Two Shakes (whether moved by her plea or cowed by her tone it is impossible to say) came forward at once to help. He squirmed down on his stomach and wiggled in under Peter's arm. With the Hound bracing the King on one side and the maiden pulling from the other, they were at last able to hoist him up far enough to get him draped across the back of the nervous, dancing mare.

"Is she safe?" Two Shakes asked, casting a dubious glance at the creature that had so recently tried to stave in his skull.

"She is safe enough when she is not being harried by a Hound who ought to know better," the woman frowned. Two Shakes had the grace to duck his head.

"We thought you were a witch," he said.

"That is another point of grievance entirely," the lady decided, and laid a hand on the bridle of her mare, drawing the creature forward at a slow, steady pace. Tarva, keeping a respectful distance, followed along behind.

"Were you there when he was wounded?" the maid asked as they walked. "Did you see what happened? How long has he been in such a bad way?"

"Very long," Two Shakes decided. "He rode all this way from the battlefield to find you— of course that was when we still thought you were a witch."

"He rode?" She stared at the unconscious man in even greater horror. "Why, the fool!"

Two Shakes growled, and this time it was the maiden's turn to look discomfited.

"I am sorry," she said softly, for she knew how dogs are, Talking or otherwise. "I did not mean to speak so harshly of your friend. But surely he must have known he might die."

"I think he was counting on it," Orison said, from where he was wheeling lazily overhead. "Now where do you have a mind to set him down?"

"Here," the maid said, drawing her mare to a halt. The moss underfoot was soft and springy, and a tall tree provided a rude sort of shelter overhead. "It is the best we can do, I think. I'll need your help," she added, addressing Two Shakes, "to get him down again."

They managed it together, and once Peter had been laid out on the moss the young woman wrestled the breastplate from the knight's body, cast it aside and again examined the wound. At last she shook her head. Her forehead drew into deep lines of worry.

"It is bad," she said quietly. "So bad . . . I almost wish I did have some art, for I am not sure that I can fix this."

"Yet you think it is possible?" Two Shakes quivered hopefully.

"I think it may be." She chewed her lip, and sat back. "I do not know. It is possible that too much has changed since . . ." She looked up to where Orison now perched on a branch overhead. "Good Hawk, are you of a mind to act in service to this knight?"

"He is mine to serve, Madam," Orison said.

"Then fly, I charge you, and seek a small flower. It is about so big," she demonstrated with one hand that was bruised and cut from hard riding. "The flowers grow in clusters on a rod-shaped stem and the flower itself has five petals, each coming to a point. It grows in rocky soil, usually by water. I do not know if you can see colour, but by daylight it is dark yellow. It smells rather like spiced honey."

"You mean the Truth-Flower," Orison said, and the girl nodded.

"That is the vulgar name, yes," she said stiffly. "But in my time we called it Lion's Breath; it does so much more than you might suppose." Then she bent over her patient once more, leaving Orison to take off in search of the remedy she had requested.

Two Shakes sat silently by for quite some time, watching as the young woman did her best to make Peter comfortable. She shed her soaking-wet cloak, bundled it into a soft ball and used it to pillow the king's head. She was forced to rip away most of the fabric of his tunic that covered the wound, but she rolled it back as neatly as she could so it did not flap or catch on anything. Then she sat back, staring at the pale, still form, and watched him sleep.

Watching him sleep, she tried hard not to dislike him very much. It hadn't been a personal slight, really— she knew that. Nevertheless it pricked at her dignity to know he had thought her a witch. If he hadn't been more dead than alive, she might very well have slapped him and left him to sort his grievances on his own— goodness knew he must have an awful lot of them, if he would come so far in such a state for the slight chance that he might get to slay a witch. She wondered if knights made more of a habit of such things now than they had done in her day; somehow, she doubted it.

That was another problem— how very far gone "her day" really was. It had been a queer thing, her time in the lake. It felt as though she had only just jumped in, ad yet she knew it was not so. The journey in, the journey out . . . Rya might as easily have gone over a hedge as she had leaped into and out of that lake, but it was all wrong. It was as if they had gone over a hedge only to find that, in going over that hedge, time had suddenly run off without them when they were in the air. And so it seemed to her now— they had jumped in a pool, come out the same pool and yet time had run on without them while they were in there.

"I expect everyone is dead, now," she said, and felt very alone at the thought.

The young man whose fevered head was pillowed on what had once been her favourite cloak moaned, then, as if to ward off her sense of solitude, but she did not thank him for it; instead, she frowned down at him and laid an authoritative palm on his brow.

"Sleep," she warned him, "or else I must insist you seek another for you nurse, and I do not believe you are in any condition to do that."

It was, I think, just as well for Peter that he did not wake; she looked in deadly earnest.

"Madam," Two Shakes spoke with all the consummate gallantry of a Narnian lord, "it occurs to me that we do not have the privilege of your name."

"No," the maid agreed, still frowning a little, "I don't suppose you do." Then manners got the better of her lingering indignation and she added, "my name is Molly. And yours, sir?"

"Two Shakes, Madam." Two Shakes sat up a little taller.

"How do you do, Two Shakes," Molly said, and smiled.

We are all different people when we smile; Molly was no exception. Her smile chased away all the prickliness of her and left behind a quite pleasant, albeit very wet and cold, young lady. Two Shakes, in turn, wagged his tail, settled down on his belly and sidled a little closer to where she sat beside Peter.

"If you don't mind my asking, Ma'am," he said politely, "that is, Miss Molly— if you don't mind my asking, what were you doing in that lake?"

"We jumped in," said Molly, "very long ago. Or rather, Rya did, and I did not stop her. It—" she hesitated, then shrugged. "You may laugh, but it was really almost as though something pulled us in. We were certainly in no position to stay out of it."

"I see, I see," Two Shakes said, looking solemn. Molly studied him.

"Do you?" she asked gently.

"Not at all," Two Shakes sighed. Molly laughed, then, surprising them both.

"That's all right," she smiled. "I don't even really understand it myself. It simply didn't occur to me not to go in; we had no other choice. Then we were in, and we went under. Rya swam, and we came up for air just as anyone might do after jumping into a lake, except when we came up it wasn't daylight, it was dark, and . . . quite a long time after. I'm not sure how long exactly, but when we were under water it was almost as if I could see time passing above us. The winter, mostly— I saw the winter, very long and dull and a little scary. And then spring, as we got nearer the surface again, and many springs more that came after, and now . . . now I don't know when it is, and a knight thought I was a witch and tried to kill me and he would have done too, I'm sure, if Rya hadn't taken charge just then, and now he's dying and I really should just let him, since anybody who would travel so far just to kill something really deserves to die, only . . . I can't let that happen. So I'm afraid it's all a bit much."

Two Shakes edged closer still. His great, broad head was now within reach of Molly's hand. Large, warm brown eyes studied the woman's troubled expression. He whined just a little in heartfelt sympathy.

"Oh," Molly smiled at seeing his concern, "don't worry, please. I'm sure it's fine. Only . . ." her voice caught just a little. "There were so many people. My people, you know . . . they'll all be gone now, I expect, and to be honest I'm trying very hard not to think about that. My brother, my mother . . . I don't know if they got safely away before the winter or— or not."

And she shuddered, then, at imagining what "not" might have meant.

Two Shakes pressed close. It is an odd trick of large dogs to pretend they are so much smaller than they really are. They creep and sidle up as though you might perhaps fail to notice that a Great Hulking Thing is sidling over to you, and I am afraid that Talking Hounds do this just as much as the dumb ones, and it looks no less comical for all that they are able to talk. But Molly did not mind, because Two Shakes pressed his nose to her palm and his heart broke with hers; for dogs cannot be glad if you are not glad too.

"Perhaps," Two Shakes said, "there are other lakes, with other people in them; people you know."

Molly laughed, or tried to— it turned into a sob, and she buried her head in the velvet of the dog's coat to weep. Two Shakes nuzzled her, and whined, and was generally just very large and warm and solid— all good and comforting things for a girl who is soaked through to the skin from her time in the lake. A dress that had been warm enough when dry provided little protection now, and with her cloak under the head of the man who had been so determined to kill her . . . well, if Two Shakes had not been covering so much of her at that point she would likely have started to shiver.

"He told me it was what I had to do," she whispered, pressing her face to the silk of the Hound's ears. "He told me, and he is always true, even when I do not understand him . . . I just wish that sometimes he might explain a little better, a little more— even at all! For I cannot understand how losing my life and so many more lifetimes' worth of time in some vile pool can possibly be of any benefit to Narnia."

Two Shakes squirmed a little closer and lapped with solemn care at the tear-tracks on the girl's face.

"Thank you," she whispered. "May I . . ?" Then, with the Hound's permission, she wrapped her arms around his neck and gave him a fierce hug. They remained just so, Two Shakes as much in Molly's lap as he could possibly get (he was a very large dog, and she a rather slight woman, so it was not as much as either of them might have liked) and she pressed her face to his head until at last Orison returned, triumphant, with a clump of little yellow flowers in his talons.

O0O0O0O

"Pardon me, Madam," Orison danced a little on his branch, "but . . . you are quite sure you know what you're doing, are you? It seems most complex."

"It is complex," Molly said, through clenched teeth. "It is terribly complex, and that is why I would prefer silence. If I am distracted I may crush them too much, and they will be useless, and then what, I wonder, will happen to the knight who tried to kill me, and my horse besides?"

Orison ruffled his feathers in deep affront, but fell silent. He and Two Shakes watched closely as Molly worked with the flowers the Hawk had fetched. She rolled them around in her palms, bruising them gently, crushing them just enough to suit her purposes. She did not crush them as much as Peter had done when casting them into the water; the task for which she required them was more for delicate than a bit of crude interrogation. She did not seek to win a confession from a reluctant subject, or drag truth from the depths of a lake; she sought instead to restore something that had been lost, and I find it worthwhile to tell you that as she worked the flowers she also had to work very hard to forget the look of grim death that had been in the face of the man she was even now working to save.

"There is something very backward about all of this," she sighed unhappily, and then chose from among the already mangled scraps of Peter's tunic one that she thought might serve as a bandage. The flowers she pressed to his wound and the bandage she pressed on top. With bits and strips of tunic torn away and tied together she managed to bind the flowers in place, then sat back on her heels and studied her handiwork.

"Do you do much of this, then?" Orison wanted to know, once he was certain that the delicate part of the procedure had passed. "Much . . . curing? Herb-work?"

Molly brushed her petal-damp hands on her skirt, and nodded. "I did it just today," she said, and then flinched at her own words. "I mean . . . I did it that day. The day I . . ." she shook her head. "Not many people know how; not many people have the patience to learn. They're such a tricky thing, herbs, and Lion's Breath is particularly complicated. It has hundreds of uses, but you have to prepare it just right or else you're left with nothing more than a bit of syrup that may or may not convince somebody to tell the truth.

"I spent so many years, learning how— and now," the thought struck her suddenly; forcibly, "I may be the only one in all of Narnia who knows how to work with it; that is, work with it properly, I mean. The truth bit, that's the easy part; if you're not too determined to make a science of the thing then you just scrunch them up, and preferably boil them first, and you have a reasonably effective elixir. There's no style to it, you see. But the other uses take a great deal of study, and the studying takes a very long time. And who is left to teach it, now? Because after the winter, who would there be left to know what to teach? Lion's Breath only grows in Narnia, the only ones who studied the art were Narnians . . . and me."

Two Shakes, deeply engrossed in sniffing the poultice on Peter's side, spared a moment to raise his head, which he tilted enquiringly at Molly.

"Are you not Narnian, then, Miss Molly?"

"I am," she said. "But first, I was something else. I came from somewhere else. And I thought — we all thought — that it was going to last forever."

She wrapped her arms around herself, got to her feet, and stared down at the sorry heap of wounded knight at her feet.

"It was," she said bitterly, "a very pretty thought. But then the tree was cut down, and the Witch found her way in. The winter, it . . . it came on so fast. Nearly everybody fled, but some of us waited. We meant to fight, of course, but we also thought — hoped — that maybe . . . but we were wrong, and we waited too long. Then he came— Aslan." The way she said the name, her mouth shaping round it with almost painful longing, made Orison's feathers flatten; it made Two Shakes sit back, quietly, on his haunches. Aslan's name always does things like that, you see, when it is spoken by somebody who knows him.

"He said that if I wanted to secure the future of Narnia, I needed to ride North. So I left them, my whole family, and Rya and I rode to the North. I tried to turn back . . ." she faltered, remembering the shame of it. "I tried to turn back quite a few times. Each time he stopped me. I went on. We came to the mere, and . . . we went in. And we came out. And now it is years and years and years afterward and I am the only one in all of Narnia who knows that Lion's Breath is not some crude form of truth-potion; rather it is everything, absolutely everything, that is vital to woodlore, to medicines— why, unless one has a bouquet of fireflowers ready at hand (and a pretty feat that would be, too) there is none better than Lion's Breath, provided it is in the hands of one who knows how to make it do as—"

But she did not get to finish the tirade that had been building to a form of hysteria, because at that point Peter gasped, groaned, and writhed on the ground so that Molly left off her speech to drop once more to her knees and forcibly persuade her patient to return to his back.

"Idiot," she scolded as she settled him on his back once more. "Two Shakes told me, you know, what you did— refusing to return to your camp where you might have been healed, coming instead to seek and kill a witch you could not even have been sure existed! And here, you see," she continued to lecture the unconscious knight as she arranged the sodden lump of woollen cloak under his head, "you see, you foolish thing, there is no witch! There never was, and goodness only knows why anyone thought there was, unless perhaps there was something odd about the mere, when we were in it all those years . . . but that hardly matters, now. There is no witch here, there is only a maid who can well understand why some might be tempted to take a knife to you. Foolish, foolish—"

And if it had not been clear to them before, the Hawk and Hound, looking on, would surely by this point have understood it was not truly Peter she longed to berate. It was somebody else; somebody who was, by virtue of many years gone by, far beyond her ability to scold.

Molly seemed to have run out of scoldings, though; she fell silent and stared at the inert form beside her, the young man whose head still rested on what remained of her cloak. Her expression softened as she studied him, seeing him for the first time not as her would-be murderer or even as a wounded knight in need of succour, but simply a young man who had fled from a bad choice.

"Fool," she sighed again, but this time, she did not mean Peter. She drew her knees up to her chest and rested her forehead on them, wrapping her arms around her legs as though she were a little girl. Two Shakes whined, and leaned in a little.

"Madam?" he said. Molly pressed her face to her knees, and shook her head.

"He said it was the way to protect Narnia. To ensure the future of— of everything. He said that it wouldn't be as I imagined it, but that I would see it happen all the same. And instead, what do I see? A knight who spooks at imaginary witches and nearly rides himself dead chasing them. I should have stayed in the water."

Orison ruffled his feathers in ill-concealed scorn.

"And a lot of good staying in the water would have done anyone," he snapped. Molly flinched and then ducked her head, shamed.

"I just don't know," she murmured.

She cast a sideways glance at Peter; it was tricky to tell in the moonlight, but it seemed as though his colour might already be a little better. She tried to feel some sense of accomplishment, the way she had the first time she had rolled the flowers according to her mother's careful instruction. She remembered how she had watched the poultice restore a Narnian soldier who should have been beyond all aid. Then she thought of the soldier, her mother, and everybody else who must have been gone for so very long, now, and with a hollow sob she curled up beside the knight, tucking herself tight in a small, damp knot of skirts. She was wet, cold and miserable, but Two Shakes crept close once more, Peter slept without thrashing, and Molly, in spite of herself, was soon asleep too.

O0O0O0O

She stood on the grassland overlooking the mere. The trees were young again, the ground had never been touched by frost. There was only the water, the sky, the wood . . . and Him.

"Daughter." He looked exactly as he had the last time she saw him— a Lion the size of the woodcutter's cottage. Had it really been so long ago that he stood and blocked her path? Time didn't seem to matter, now.

"Aslan— oh, Aslan," she flew to him the way they had all done, when they were children. She wrapped her arms around the beautiful mane, burying her face in impossible richness. "Are you the only thing here that has not changed?"

His purr was barely audible, yet it shook the very ground on which they stood.

"You know I am."

"Yes . . ." she rooted closer. "Oh but why did it all have to change? Everything is gone and done, and—" the injustice welled up within her, and she stepped back to look up at him. "You said it would save Narnia! You said that if I rode North, it would save Narnia, and I would see it done. But what sort of Narnia is there left to save? Just a lot of bleeding people riding around, trying to kill other people they think are witches— oh," sighing, "I do need to let that go, don't I?"

The Lion's whiskers twitched. "It would be for the best," he agreed.

"But . . . can't you tell me, at least, how what I did can possibly have saved Narnia? It can't hurt anything to tell me now, can it? I mean, now that I am dead."

"Daughter," the Lion looked at her, "why do you think you are dead?"

"Why, because I am hundreds of years old, really, and I am here talking to you." Molly blinked at him in confusion. "Aren't I, then?"

The Lion's breath — the real thing — wafted over her as he sighed. It was sweet and rich and even better than the heady, spicy fragrance of the flower that had been named for it. She felt as though she grew a little taller simply for having been breathed on.

"You are not dead," he said. "Not in the manner that you mean, although it is true that you are nearer the thing which is called death than any other in this world. You have a right to claim death, if you so choose. But for now you live, and though you stand here before me you also slumber on the banks of the lake beside a knight who did as you once did."

"Who, I?" Molly frowned. "I never tried to kill a witch."

"No; you rode to the North to save those you best loved, and so did he."

"He mustn't have made a very good job of it either, then," Molly muttered, then ducked her head as the Lion growled. "Sorry," she said, and meant it.

"He did as he believed was right, and in the manner of all the best leaders he saw and was grieved by his error long before I needed to instruct him in it." Then the Lion looked at Molly in such a way that she suddenly remembered all those times she had needed to be instructed in the error of her ways. She had the grace to blush.

"Is he a leader, then?" she wondered. "A good one?"

A very small smile ruffled the whiskers of the Lion. "He is. But I would not like that to sway you unduly in the choice you must make."

"What choice?"

"The one I give to you now. Narnia is saved, and the reason I charged you to ride North lies by your side. He will recover, and he will return to the people he loves to lead them home again."

Molly regarded the Lion in confusion.

"But—" she said, and hesitated. "Why are you telling me all this?" For she knew it was not the usual way of the Lion to do so.

"I tell it to you so that you can make your choice. Daughter, he will return to the people he leads and the family he loves. The kingdom you love is whole and well, though it may not look it from here. Narnia awaits and can be your home again; that home which you already gave much to keep. Or," the steady amber gaze held hers, "you can return with me."

Molly's heart leaped.

"The last journey?" she breathed.

"The very last," the Lion agreed. "You may claim it as your own; you have been in this world more than long enough to have that right. If that is your choice, I will grant it."

"Oh!" she cried, and her eyes shone. "Oh, yes!"

"Make your answer with care, daughter. It is a journey you would make one day in all events, and the other choice would give you many years in the kingdom you love. None know better than I how much you sacrificed to keep Narnia."

"But it wasn't Narnia, really, was it?" Molly said. "It was never Narnia I missed so much or hated to leave— Aslan, it was only ever you."

The Lion bent his great head and looked into the radiant face of the woman before him. He smiled.

"This, I have always known. And now you do, too."

O0O0O0O

Peter awoke with a start. He flinched in anticipation of the pain he knew must come, and then was shocked to find it did not. Instead there was only birdsong, and an early morning sunrise that gilded the valley and bathed the mist rolling off the lake in a rich, golden glow.

"What—" he reached fearfully for his side, and felt . . . nothing. Only a cool breeze where the air kissed skin exposed by a shredded, mangled tunic. He tugged clumsily at a scrap of cloth that would not give way; at last it came off in his hand and he stared at the blood-stained clump of fabric. Tiny, curled-up flowers tumbled from within; once dark yellow, they were now stained rusty-red, curling brown around the edges and had definitely seen better days.

"What . . ." he said again, and then Two Shakes was on him, yelping joyously at finding the King restored, and Orison danced from one foot to the other on the branch overhead, spreading his wings in jubilation. Tarva, standing not far off, freed from the least comfortable parts of his tack, grazed his fill and appeared to be quite peaceably accepting of his current lot in life.

"What . . ." Peter said yet again, and looked grievously confused. "Am I dead?"

"No, you are not, though that's not for lack of trying on your part."

The voice was not one whose speaker he might have named, but he knew it all the same; he had heard it in his sleep all that night long, and when he looked on her now he felt very small and wretchedly ashamed, that he could have thought her a witch.

She stood before him in a mostly-dried gown the colour of the midnight sky. A silver chain was wound round about her waist in some quaint, centuries-old style that no woman in Narnia had used since before the frost came, and yet for all that she looked so very far out of time, she was as solid and real as anything else on that hill. Her mare stood at her side, and looked very horsy and normal and not at all like any enchanted creature might do. The maid's hands were cut and scraped and stained with the yellow juices of the flowers she had used to heal him. Her long hair was more free than tied, and had been made rather a windblown, tangled mess by a ride that had begun years before. There were so many freckles on her face that it took Peter a minute to even realise she was scowling at him.

She was, in fact, so painfully, clearly human that he wondered if she would ever be able to forgive him for making such an error in taking her for a witch. Then the corner of her mouth twisted up just a bit in an odd little half-smile of sorts, and Peter felt the tightness in his chest ease.

"Madam," he said, and struggled to his feet— pain did not slow him, now, but a night spent on the cold ground with a wet cloak under his head certainly made rising a tricky business. He breathed easily, though, and if his greatest discomfort was that of a stiff neck then he supposed he had nothing to complain of. "Madam, I cannot help but think that I owe you my life."

"You do," she agreed, "but that's all right; I've no need of your life, you see, and all I did was give it back to you. That's not really the most important thing now anyway, though, is it? You've got much more pressing matters to hand." She looked very solemn, then, and he wondered how a girl who lived in a lake could possibly know that he needed to return to camp to find a way to order a retreat from a battle that could not be won.

"I failed them," he said, and was shocked by his own confession. The maiden, too, looked surprised.

"Did you?" she asked politely. "I'm afraid I can't agree."

"But . . ." he stared at her, confused. "You can't even know. How can you know? You were—" it seemed rude to point it out, and yet it was truth. "You were in the lake."

"Not always," she said. "And you may think you failed, but actually, it just worked out in a different way than you expected. You set out to free these people from a tyrant, did you not?"

Peter, not questioning how she could know this, nodded.

"And so you have done, though the tyrant is not the one you first believed. The ruler who would have taken their mines, land and homes for his own will not emerge the victor from this battle, and that will have been your doing." She tipped her head to the side almost as though marvelling at the thought. "It was really very neatly done."

"I— I suppose . . ." poor Peter felt woefully at sea. The young woman who faced him smiled kindly on his confusion.

"It's all right," she said, "I made the same mistake too, you know; I thought it must go exactly as I imagined it would, but instead . . . Narnia is saved for a different purpose than I believed, and by a means I could not have foreseen. But hark!" her eyes lit, and she looked toward the hill that he had travelled the night before; a night that seemed, in some ways, to have taken place centuries ago. "The dogs come."

And so it was, for Two Shakes suddenly tossed back his head and gave full cry in answer to the faintest of howls that was blown down to them over the hill. The stable pack was drawing near.

"They are looking for you," the maiden smiled, turning back to Peter. "They will fetch you back to your people."

"And what of your people?" Peter was concerned. "Have you a home here?"

"No," she said, and did not sound grieved or alarmed but simply matter-of-fact, "I do not." She trailed one fond hand down the nose of the mare at her side. "Our home is not here anymore."

"Then will you not return with us?" he entreated. "If I owe you my life, at least allow me to make you a home. Anywhere in Narnia might be yours; only ask it of me and I shall give it to you."

"That," the maid scolded, "is a very rash promise." And then she smiled to see Peter blush at the truth of it. "Make no more rash promises, King of Narnia," she instructed. "Such is the instruction from one who knows you far better than I; he urges you to heed it. And I thank you, too, for your very kind offer, but . . . what I said is nothing more or less than truth. My home is not here, anymore."

At these words the early-morning mist rolling up off the lake seemed to thicken, gathering round her like a gentle golden embrace. The mare at her side appeared untroubled by these occurrences; she nuzzled the hand of the maid, and the sunlight danced through the moisture, bathing them both in a rich golden glow. From the depths of the cloud, the girl began to beam.

"Ride," she urged Peter, "return to the people who are waiting for you, and I shall do the same. Take your hounds to heel, and your hawk in hand, and if I were you," her eyes danced, now, shining in anticipation of seeing at long last the only home she had ever cared to know, "I would not fear attack on your return. I do not think there are any who would dare harm the knight who has lain with the witch of the western mere."

And before the clouds consumed her entirely, before the golden glow brightened to such brilliance that the others were forced to shield their eyes from the sight until it had cleared, leaving them standing alone on the hill— Peter could have sworn he saw her wink.

O0O0O0O

O0O0O0O

A.N.: That's part two of two, which means this is done! If you're desperately hankering to see what comes of Peter's return to camp, just head over to Worlds in Dream and read The Grim Place. Otherwise, that's all of it! As I mentioned already, this has been brewing for quite a while. I love the song I drew from to write this, but the chief failing of it, I felt, was that it really tells us nothing about the lady in question and I was determined to remedy that. And so . . . I made her Molly.

Molly is, I'll confess, a character in her own right; the very first Narnia fic I ever came up with, back when I was quite young, centred around Molly and her brother and a few other characters, most of whom will in all likelihood never see the light of day simply because they are the product of my Brain Back Then and I would not be so cruel as to subject you to that. But I do love them for being a part of my own personal Narnian history; I love the adventures I imagined they might have, and since I am not so bloodthirsty as I was in my childhood I decided that perhaps Molly didn't die in the Long Winter as I once imagined she might, and so would serve admirably (albeit reluctantly!) as the witch of the western mere.

Whether or not I made the right choice in sparing her for this purpose is, I suppose, your call to make. Thank you so very much for the feedback you've left so far, and please let me know what you thought of the conclusion. New chapter of Kingdoms Come should be posted in a few days' time, so if you are following that, do keep an eye out!