The New Place

O0O0O0O

The night Bill Pevensie dreamed of the new place would be one he remembered for the rest of his life. Nothing about the place would allow him to forget it; nothing he had ever seen or dreamed before looked or felt like that place, and the moment he saw it, he felt it become a part of him. For the rest of his life, wherever he went, he would always be able to close his eyes and see it in his mind's eye, just as clear and sharp as if he was seeing it for the first time all over again. Strangest of all, the moment he saw it, he knew it would be so; he knew it would become an indelible part of him. Whether that was good or bad he could not immediately decide, but he knew for a fact that he would never forget it.

It began in a wood. There was snow all about, and the place looked like nothing so much as a picture on a Christmas card. A single lamp-post stood in the midst of a small clearing, its flame giving a steady, reassuring light. The gentle glow wasn't as harsh as that of electric lamps, and if Bill had been just a little older than he was, it might have reminded him of his childhood. As it was, he almost thought he could hear it hissing softly as the flame sucked greedily at the gas, but before he could move any closer to inspect it . . . there she was. His Lucy.

The little girl's eyes were bright with curiosity as she stepped cautiously through the snow, turning her head this way and that, reaching out once or twice to brush her little fingers through a drift or bat at a laden fir bough, shivering with both cold and delight. Her sturdy little shoes left small, deep prints in the snow behind her, and looking beyond his daughter, Bill could just make out a glimmer of daylight. It should perhaps have struck him odd, that there should be daylight beyond a thicket of trees when he and his daughter stood in a wood at night, but that's the way of dreams, after all; you don't think of the things you should.

Now, Bill was only thinking how grown up Lucy looked from when he had seen her last, and yet how very like a little girl she still was. Snowflakes dusted her fair hair, and her whole face was lit up like Christmas morning. She took a little, skipping step once or twice, and he thought he could hear her humming to herself. She was, he saw, walking toward the lamp-post, and when she saw it, she stopped, and studied it with nothing more than innocent appreciation. If there was any perplexity on her face, it was lost to his view, bathed as she was in the soft, golden glow of light.

Even now, with his daughter standing almost within arm's reach, it did not occur to Bill to try to speak to Lucy; even though he had not seen her so long, and missed her so dearly, it was quite clear to him as he stood there that it was not for him to speak to her. It was knowledge to him the way knowledge always is in dreams; a fellow just knows a thing, and doesn't waste time asking himself how he came to know it in the first place. Still, I don't know for sure that he wouldn't have tried it, had something else not happened first.

Lucy saw the creature before he did; saw, or perhaps heard it. Bill, for his part, saw the change in her face before he saw the reason for it; by the time he turned to follow her gaze of intense curiosity, the funny little goat-fellow had already spotted them —or had, perhaps, only spotted Lucy, as it was at Lucy that he looked— and, with a little cry, dropped the parcels that he had been holding.

It was a sight Bill had seen countless times in London at Christmas time; a nice, inoffensive fellow, carrying home a few parcels wrapped in brown paper and tied with twine, bumps into another fellow, or is bumped into by a crowd of children, or simply loses his footing a moment on the slippery ground, and the parcels go scattering down. It had even happed to him, once. If they had been in London, he might even have urged Lucy to help collect the fallen parcels, but here the little creature —a Faun, wasn't that what those little goaty things were? He had seen them in his storybooks as a child, surely— did the gathering on his own before addressing himself to Lucy.

Bill watched the exchange with deep fascination. It was exactly the sort of thing that you might imagine dreaming yourself; seeing a person you knew, engaged in perfectly rational conversation with a thing you knew for a fact couldn't exist. And of course you didn't question it, because that's how dreams are, after all, isn't it? But something changed for Bill when the Faun —Mr Tumnus, according to the Faun himself— invited Lucy to take tea with him.

I don't know what it was that upset him about this; I don't believe even Bill knew. But when the invitation was extended, and when Lucy's protests were overruled, something like a large, silent bell began clanging in her father's head. It might have been a dream. It might have been a complete figment of his imagination, that he would laugh at when he woke . . . he didn't know. He really didn't care. All that he knew was that Lucy must not go with Mr Tumnus, because little girls don't go take tea with perfect strangers, even if they are make-believe strangers. It's not what parents bring their children up to do, and to see Lucy about to do it . . .

Bill started forward. He didn't walk, exactly— he wasn't sure what he did. He moved forward, but he didn't hear the snow crunching under his feet, or even feel the breeze on his face as he moved. In fact, it seemed to him that the harder he tried to move forward, the more desperately he strove to get to his daughter before the Faun could whisk her away, the farther away he got.

The snow seemed to be everywhere, too; it was falling harder, the drifts were getting taller, and the night was getting darker. The air around him was thicker, colder, and it was almost impossible to see anything clearly. Shapes blurred and shifted; he knew things were happening around him, but he couldn't see them.

He heard the cold, clear jingle of sleigh bells and a sharp, silvery laugh that made his very flesh creep with horror. Honeyed words, with poison beneath them . . . the smell of something sweet and sticky, utterly repulsive. He felt soft, thick fur pressing to his face. Cold, dead fur, with something cold, dead and evil underneath it, it clung and wrapped and sought to smother him. He fought it frantically, trying to beat it off, but it was only when he finally had to gasp for breath there came a rush of cold air, sweeter and cleaner than any he had ever known. Borne on that breeze was the most terrible sound he had ever heard; his daughters were weeping as if their hearts might break.

Then the fur was again touching his face, but it was softer, shorter, and velvety. He no longer feared it; to the contrary, cold as it was, he wanted to press his face deeper, burrowing close in much the way the children had done with Maura when they were babies. As he touched the rich, cool velvet in the darkness, struggling to understand where he had felt it before, something beneath it breathed; a heart beat, the fur rippled all throughout with heat, and something, with great, deep breaths, lived.

The girls no longer wept. They laughed. He heard them, even as he let himself be buoyed by the joy beneath the velvet all around him. There was a rumble, as if from a great distance, and then came a sound he would never forget, so deep it shook the world and so loud it rattled his very bones and made his heart leap within him. Louder than cymbals, louder than drums, louder than the greatest thunder you have ever heard, was the roar; a roar, a great cry, a shout of promise— of victory.

For a man who had spent as long as he had, surrounded by darkness, cold, and death, Bill should perhaps have been surprised to know it for what it was, but even for him there could be no mistaking it. Swaddled as he was, cradled in velvet, blanketed in warmth, even as the war in which he fought still raged beyond the walls of the tent in which he lay dreaming, Bill Pevensie knew what that roar meant; somewhere, after sides had fought for longer than any one man could remember, a war had finally been won.

Then it was black, everywhere, but still warm and still good, and he slept in peace for an hour or more before beginning to dream once more.

O0O0O0O

The first thing he heard was water splashing. The second thing he heard was laughter, and he knew it was his children who were laughing. The darkness slipped away into sunlight —rather like opening your eyes just as the sun comes through a window— and he saw he was standing on the shore of a sparkling sea. Lucy and Peter were standing in the tide up to their knees, splashing one another with great vigour. Susan sat on the shore, laughing as she watched them, and Edmund stretched out on the grass beside her.

In that strange, detached way of dreams, Bill saw that they were all dressed very oddly. The girls wore long, simple dresses in rich jewel tones, and the boys wore the sort of breeches, blouses and jerkins you saw in children's picture books with ladies and knights-errant. It did not occur to him to wonder why it was so; that's how it is with dreams, of course. Large cats may sprout purple whiskers and begin to speak to you, and you will answer back and think nothing of it at the time. It was no wonder, then, that to see his children wearing peculiar clothing did not bother Bill Pevensie. Instead, he moved forward so he could see them better.

Aside from the clothes, they did not look much older than they had when he saw them in the unfamiliar room. Peter looked perhaps calmer, Susan slightly less severe, and Edmund no longer looked like a storm cloud, but otherwise, they were largely unchanged. Lucy's fair hair was only a little longer than it had been when she met the Faun in the woods; damp, now, it clung to her neck as she laughed, dove at the crashing surf and scooped up a handful of water to fling at her brother. The droplets caught the sunlight, and sparkled like diamonds.

Bill thought he had seen very few things as beautiful.

"Do Kings and Queens get many holidays?" It was Susan, sounding exceptionally wistful. Edmund, settled beside her and basking rather like a cat in a sunbeam, said he didn't know.

"I rather doubt it, though," he said, "so we had really better make the best of this one . . . oho! Peter, you'd better watch yourself, she nearly had you, just now!"

And indeed, Lucy had dived for Peter's knee, taking her brother's leg out from under him and dropping him to one knee. He got very wet, though he didn't go under entirely, and much whooping and jeering followed as Lucy stood in the lapping waves and planted her fists on her hips, beaming in triumph. Susan was clapping, laughing and evading Edmund's attempts to silence her as he cheered on their brother in his attempt to get Lucy back by scooping her up bodily and dunking her beneath the waves.

Bill, watching them, wondered at the comfort of it all; he marvelled that such easy, simple joy could be theirs. If there was a war, somewhere; if somewhere there was ugliness, and death, and hopelessness, his children had escaped it, untouched. Instead they played at the seaside, as carefree as the whole family had been before the war had begun and taken him away. His sons were strong and healthy, his daughters cheery and brimming with confidence.

Watching them now, seeing in them every trait and strength he could have wished for them, Bill Pevensie felt something tight in his chest relax. He forgot —if he had even thought of it to begin with— that it was a dream, that surely this meant nothing more than that he wished these simple, good things for his children and so his mind had conjured it up. Instead, watching them, he felt it must be so; the colours were so clear and sharp, the sound of his children's laughter exactly as it had been when last he heard it for real, that he couldn't doubt it. His children lived, and thrived, and were well.

No knowledge could have warmed him as did that. No thought could have calmed him, no sight could have cheered him half as much as this. Again Lucy splashed the water, and again the light caught it; caught, refracted, and dazzled him. Brighter and brighter it grew, and with a rushing, roaring sound it came up all around him. Then, with the dimmest, faintest echoes of that first powerful roar, he saw the light dim, and darken, and blackness swaddled him again.

O0O0O0O

Bill walked through long, dark corridors, looking for light. Beneath his feet were stones, cool and flat and reasonably clean. On the walls around him hung heavy rugs, or— no, he saw, they were tapestries. There was light, now; coming from somewhere up ahead, there was sunshine, and it illuminated the scenes on the tapestries around him, highlighting gold and silver threads, brightening scenes that charmed and amused him. People and beasts seemed to interact together; dancing, even dining with each other.

As he studied the artwork, he became aware of laughter. Somewhere, farther down the corridor, there were people. He moved toward the sound, drawn by the simple merriment of it. Rounding a corner at the end of the long corridor, he found himself standing at the edge of a small courtyard, richly carpeted with grass. Sitting in the centre of it were four people it took him almost a minute to recognise, and when he did . . . he stared.

Standing, striking a comical pose, his face contorted in a truly farcical expression, was a young man who barely looked like his son. On closer inspection he decided Edmund could hardly be more than three or four years older than when he had last seen him, but still . . . the difference was unfathomable. The last traces of sulky boyhood seemed to have vanished into distant ages, leaving a handsome, laughing youth in his place.

"Come on, Lucy!" he laughed, "I can't hold this face forever, you know! If you don't guess it in the next minute, they'll win!"

"Oh, we're used to that," the other young man grinned.

Peter, Bill thought, had never looked more like a knight straight out of an old poem than he did now. His head bare, his face writ with something inescapably noble, he regarded his brother with high amusement. He sat sideways on a bench, his back braced against a tree and one leg stretched out before him as the other, braced lightly against the ground, kept him steady. Something about the casual posture balanced the regal look of him. Bill might have gone on staring indefinitely, had a soft laugh not redirected his attention.

"I could do with a change," Susan was smiling, looking up at Edmund as he continued to contort himself in the most incredible fashions. "Why shouldn't they win? You're certainly putting a marvellous effort into it, Edmund . . . just don't fall over as you did last time!"

"Yes," Lucy chortled, "or I'll be laughing so hard I'll never guess it!"

If his sons had changed considerably since he saw them last, Bill thought, then his daughters had undergone a complete metamorphosis. He could scarcely call them children now; even Lucy, who could not have been older than twelve, held herself as a young lady would. The tangled blonde pigtails were gone, replaced by rippling waves of golden curls, cascading down her back. Her merry face was tilted upward, dimples engraved deep in each soft little cheek as she struggled to evaluate her brother's pose.

Beside her sat Susan, also smiling, although with a softer expression than her sister. Susan, who had nearly been a young lady when last Bill saw her, was every inch one now. Her hair, too, was impossibly long, the single raven plait falling past the seat of the bench on which she sat with Lucy. She looked taller, even seated as she was, and something about her . . . Bill felt a deep, sorrowful hitch in his chest. The way she tipped her chin, and fluttered long, lovely fingers on one knee in contemplation of Edmund's posture . . . she looked like Maura.

"I have it!" Lucy leaped her feet all at once, clapping her hands in glee just as Peter opened his mouth, no doubt to announce that time was up, "oh, I have it, Edmund, you're the statue by the back stairs! That funny one, with the— Edmund, you're the Hare!"

"Got it in one!" Edmund whooped, and caught his little sister by the hands to twirl her about the lawn in a gleeful dance. "Lucy, I could kiss you! You got it! We won!"

These unsportsmanlike jubilations were so enchanting to behold that Bill didn't even notice the stout, solemn-faced Dwarf until the fellow had actually entered the courtyard and gave an embarrassed little cough.

"Not to be interrupting your Majesties," he murmured, "but the council is ready to sit, if it suits you . . ."

The gaiety of the four, Bill noticed, was tempered at once by the announcement, although none of them stopped smiling. Peter spoke for all of them, saying they would be in straightaway, and Bill had only time to consider it a marvel that none of them challenged their brother's authority before the sun, which had been shining down with considerable force to begin with, grew brighter, and brighter, and brighter, until there was only white light all around him.

It wasn't dazzling, as the light on the sea had been; this was softer, and warmer, and much gentler. There was somewhere, he thought, the sound of a purr, yet deeper and richer a purr than he had ever heard before. It was the sort of purr that could rattle your teeth in your head, if it were pitched just right. Then the sound softened, and the light dimmed, turning to a soft, pearly grey. The world outside grew closer, pushing in, crowding him. The new place, where his children were safe and happy and growing, faded, drew back, and was lost to him in the haze.

It was with a start and a scowl that Bill Pevensie woke up.

O0O0O0O

For most of the day, Bill could hardly focus. They were retreating, all of them, hundreds of thousands of men pushed back, crowded onto the beach at Dunkirk. French, English, Belgians . . . all of them, one snarled tangle, rumours flooding through their midst with the higher-ups powerless to stem the worst of the flood.

One group of men insisted that the Germans were falling back. There was a lack of order in their ranks that made a successful assault impossible, and they would be driven back from France before another fortnight had passed. But looking around them, few could credit it. They were hemmed in, the water at their back and the Germans advancing at the front, and a slow, steady tide of despair was beginning to rise up around them. To hold it off as long as possible, they gathered in groups, and spoke of home.

Language was, of course, a difficulty. The Dutch had some French, the French had some English, and the English managed to make a thorough butchering of French and Dutch alike, but what with a combination of hand gestures, tattered photographs and the few words they did have in common, they managed to make their stories known. One man had a sweetheart waiting for him at home; one man had two, and was in no hurry to return to either. One fellow had a little boy at home just learning to walk, and one had a daughter he had never seen; she had been born the day after he left.

Bill, with no small amount of pride, displayed his photographs along with the rest. There was one of Maura just herself, taken shortly before the war broke out. She had hated it— she felt she didn't look "done up" enough, or some such thing, but he loved it. She sat on the garden wall, making a face at the camera, scrunching up her nose and, he remembered, telling him he was as bad as the boys when he got his hands on some new gadget. The camera, as he recalled, had taken up a good deal of his time . . . but with such subjects, who could blame him?

Maura, her face so expressive as she told him to put the camera down; the boys, beaming up at him from a plot of earth as they made a shambles of what had been meant to be their own little victory garden; and the girls, Susan stiffly posed, perched on the edge of her chair and Lucy, standing behind her, looking exasperated at the farce. She had wanted to press the camera's buttons herself.

The one photograph he hadn't taken was of all six of them. In this Maura was as "done up" as she could get, and the children were scrubbed to a painful shine. They didn't look like them, exactly, but he loved it all the same, and appreciative noises were made by the men as they shared the little treasures around.

"Your boys, your girls, they grow big while you are here, yes?" a large, amiable man beamed at Bill, and Bill smiled back, saying yes, he imagined they did. Unbidden, then, the image rose in his mind of the four of them gathered in that funny little courtyard, Edmund, posing so comically for the others, Susan so softened, Lucy so much older than she had been, and Peter, on the verge of manhood, reclining on the bench and laughing.

"Yes," he repeated, "they have."

Then he gathered the photographs back, tucking them carefully into his breast pocket and closing his eyes, shutting out, for a moment, the sounds of voices around him. They were on the beach, cornered like a lot of rats in a trap, and yet all he wanted right now was to sleep. What was it the man had said?

To sleep, perchance to dream . . .

One could only hope.

O0O0O0O

A.N.: After taking the time to sketch this out a bit more thoroughly, I now have a much firmer idea of where it's going. There should be four chapters after this (or three and an epilogue, depending on how you look at it). Thank you, everybody, for your lovely reviews of the past chapter; check back next week for the next one!

Up next: The Good Place.