Okay so a million and ten apologies for the lack of updates. I'd like to blame it all on illness and training for a new job, but rereading Dawn Treader may have played a sort of role. I had to get my mind away from Caspian/Edmund and back to Caspian/Peter. There will definitely be an Edmund/Caspian story in the works after this one is completed, however. Very sorry again for the delayed update! I meant to reply to the comments here, but the apology took up all the room.

"No Ed, there is no way I'm getting on a train. We won't get back in time. The school will be angry. It's a bad idea."

"The school won't know, there is a hole in the parameter that I discovered and Saint Finbar's has a much later curfew than Hendon does. After all, girls are so much more responsible." He added that last bit in a rather sarcastic tone.

"What? Girls?" A look of dawning comprehension graced Peter's face. "Ed I can't believe you dragged Su and Lucy into this!"

"Dragged them? It was Lucy that helped me come up with this plan."

"And what plan is this exactly?" Purchasing the tickets, Edmund stepped onto the platform and refused to speak of the matter any further. After about ten minutes of tense silence, the train pulled into the station. Fortunately, the boys' compartment was almost completely empty with the exception of one very old lady who was so fast asleep that Edmund wanted to poke her to make sure she wasn't dead.

The train ride was spent in relative silence. Edmund tried numerous times to engage Peter in some sort of conversation, but Peter refused to look up from his notebook. After about five minutes, Edmund gave up and the silence was only pierced by the occasional "Edmund, tell me where the hell we are going" followed by the immediate "No." Bored by the lack of conversation, Edmund amused himself for the remainder of the trip by throwing bits of paper at the sleeping lady.

"Where are Susan and Lucy anyways?" Peter asked as they exited the train.

"Already there, now c'mon it is only a few blocks away. Peter's basic knowledge of the London Underground told him they were nowhere near Finchley. He had never been out to this part of the city and he knew his brother and sisters hadn't either. Intrigued, confused and angry, Peter followed Edmund down one street, up another, through an alleyway that made Peter take a step closer to his brother and down a final street until they stopped outside an old house.

The house was boarded up and had clearly been uninhabited for quite a number of years. Despite its abandoned state, the house showed no signs of disintegration and looked sturdy enough.

"It was owned by some rich old fellow. When he found out his son had been killed in the war, the war to end all wars I mean not the current one, he died of sadness (didn't know that was possible). Since his last will and testament left everything to his son, noöne knew what to do with the place and because it was during the war everyone had better things to do so they just boarded it up and by the time the war was over, people had forgotten all about it. Just think about all the stuff in this house! I know it isn't as big as Professor Kirke's house, but it is the best we could do in the city."

"Well that's just fascinating Ed, but-" Peter was cut off by a high-pitched yell of "PETER!" and a tight hug around his waist. Peter smiled reluctantly at his sister and hugged back. Susan came out of the house after Lucy at a much more reserved pace and greeted her brother with a short hug and a peck on the cheek. The three youngest Pevensies started towards the house but Peter remained stationary.

"Halt. I the High King Peter command you to go no farther."

"C'mon Peter," Lucy laughed, "this isn't Narnia, you are just our big brother here and I can ignore you just as well as I can ignore Edmund or Susan."

"I know this isn't Narnia." Peter grumbled so quietly noöne could hear him. "In Narnia I don't get dragged to dingy old houses by my baby brother." And with that, he entered the house behind his siblings.

The house was perfectly preserved, like a time capsule. A thin layer of grey dust covered everything in sight, giving the whole house an even older feel. Even Peter couldn't deny to himself (though he was having no problem denying it to others) that the house looked like a lot of fun to explore. The staircase gave off a very eerie feel, and while Lucy was keen to ascend it right away, Edmund and Susan overruled her. Peter would have liked to see the upstairs, too, but he maintained his apathetic countenance as he followed his siblings into the dining hall on the left.

The large table still had a tablecloth on it, moth eaten and yellowing, as well as a vase of long dead flowers. The children spent a while examining the old silver, tarnished after years of neglect, but quickly bored of the room and proceeded to find a new location. After exploring a few more downstairs rooms the children wandered into one of the sitting rooms and were instantly drawn to one of the paintings.

The picture depicted a beautiful clearing in an otherwise heavily populated wood. The stream was not blue, green or brown like all other streams, but a deep shade of violet. The setting sun barely shining through the dense foliage and reflecting off the purple water and in the very corner of the picture was a small hut. All of the paintings at their schools were of former headmasters and other influential figures so it was a nice change from staring at paintings of stuffy old men. Even Peter couldn't help himself from speculating about who might live in the hut with his siblings and it wasn't until much later that they were able to draw themselves away from the canvas.

Finally, the children agreed that it was time to explore upstairs and they climbed the stairs, Lucy first (at her request) followed by Peter, Edmund and finally Susan. Instead of finding a corridor with different doors leading to bedrooms and bathrooms as one might expect, the children stumbled upon something much more magnificent. There, right before the children, was the most magnificent home library any of them had ever seen.

"It's bigger than our whole house."

"No one could ever read this many books"

"I wonder what kind of books they are"

"C'mon Su," Lucy called, tugging on her sister's arm, "let's go see if he had any fantasy books." As Lucy dragged her down an aisle of books, Susan managed to turn around and yell to her brothers to stick together. "It would be easy to get lost in here" she managed to explain before Lucy led her down another aisle and out of sight.

Edmund glanced up at his brother, delighted to see that, while not smiling, Peter looked much happier. The day of exploration was doing wonders for him. They started down an aisle in the opposite direction of the girls. They ran across all types of books from botany to heraldry. Shockingly, they spent a bit more time on the heraldry than the botany. Up and down, aisle after aisle they wandered examining every book that caught their eye. The old man seemed to have collected books on every subject imaginable. They wandered for hours and never once ran into Susan and Lucy. The library seemed almost too big for the house, then again, it was a very large house.

"Hey Peter, have you ever heard of Greantia?"

"Nope, why?"

"This book, 'in the far off country of Greantia, trade with the Yevenese prospered…' I've never heard of Greantia, or Yeven."

"Well maybe if you had let me go to geography class today I'd know" Peter replied, but Edmund could tell his voice didn't carry the same malice it had earlier that day. "What else does it say about the countries?"

Edmund and Peter continued reading about Greantia, Yeven and other strange countries that they figured bust have existed long ago for a long while before moving on. After a while of exploring in silence, Edmund called out to his brother. He was crouched on the floor, looking at the very bottom shelf and Peter knelt down to see what Edmund was pointing out. Edmund had a book open on the floor, but the book contained no text. Reaching up, he grabbed another book off the shelf, it had an identical cover to the blank book, faded gold colour with an embossed lion on the spine, nothing else, and it too was completely blank. As Edmund moved to hand one of the books to Peter, he noticed something fall out of the spine. Picking it up off the ground, Peter turned it over in his hand.

"It's a pen. What the hell is a pen doing in the spine of a book?" Peter questioned and Edmund moved the book he was holding into an upright position until a pen fell out of his as well.
"That's bizarre. Maybe they are like those teen diary things, maybe we are supposed to spill all our secrets." Edmund joked. "Dear diary, today in the cafeteria Bobby Franks actually looked at me, oh his eyes are just dreamy! Do you think he'll ever ask me to the winter formal? Not with that Michelle Anderson around I bet. Talk to you soon, Love Shannon." Edmund recited all of this in a high pitched voice while pretending to write in the blank book and, for the first time in nearly a month, Peter actually laughed. Edmund looked down at him surprised and smiled to himself. Best. Plan. Ever.

The boys remained seated with the two blank books, identical in every way, each no larger than a pocket dictionary until they heard Susan yelling at them from far off.

"We should go find them."

"Yeah."

"We ought to put the books back then."

"Why?" Questioned Peter, surprising Edmund.

"Well, because they aren't ours."

"But it's not like anyone else uses them. Or like they could read them anyways. Besides it doesn't look like they've been opened once since they were put on this shelf, the binding cracked when we opened it."

"I know, I really don't want to leave them here either. There is something so mysterious (he had to stop himself from saying magical, knowing that this was England and not Narnia and magic there meant top hats and bunny rabbits) about them, but all the same, it is still stealing." With that they put the books back on the shelf and hurried off to find Lucy and Susan.

…………

"If I ever have to write a research paper on anything, screw the library, I'm just going back there."

"Edmund! Language!" Susan warned, sounding more like a parent than a sibling. The Pevensies were on the train back to their schools and couldn't stop discussing the impressive library. All of the other wonderful things they'd discovered during the day were driven to the back of their minds as they shared with each other all the wonderful books they'd found.

"And there was one with unicorns that turned into dragons…"

"And it had all the information on the different type of swords fighting. We learned to fight ­­­­­­­­­­­ style apparently and…"

"You wouldn't believe the book on extinct animals we found. Did you know there was once an island filled with three-foot tall people? Here. In this world…"

"And there was this one with all these different countries I'd never heard of…" They were all talking rapidly in over excited voices, listening to the others as they spilled their own stories. It was the first adventure they had had together in ages and they were all enjoying themselves immensely. Even Peter couldn't hide his excitement as he talked about the different countries mentioned in the book. Eventually, the train reached the girls' stop, conveniently located right across the street from their school, and the boys hugged goodbye to their sisters, Edmund was clearly unhappy about hugging Susan in a public place, explaining that it was okay to hug your little sister, but older sisters were different, but he did it anyways.

"Hey Ed?" Peter questioned about ten minutes later.

"Yeah?"

"Did you happen to bring a torch, it's getting dark and I don't fancy wandering the streets in the dark."

"Of course. I borrowed one from Jimmy, you know the tall awkward kid with freckles?" Edmund fished around in his messenger bag for the torch, but his hand fell on something much more interesting. Slowly, eyes round, he pulled the gold book out of his bag.

"Ed! You took one?" Peter sounded surprised.

"Of course not! You saw me put it back. Check your bag."

"Yeah okay, so you are telling me that if I just pick up my bag," he paused to pick up his bag "and reached inside it" he did that too "that I'll find the-" he stopped short, drawing out the gold book, a stunned look on his face.

The remainder of the ride was spent in bewildered silence, glancing from the books to the other person and back again. Before they had sensed there was something very strange about the books, but now there was no doubt. These were no teen journals.

There it is. Leave a nice review, or a mean review if your little heart desires, and I should have the next chapter up tomorrow morning. No more distractions, I promise.