The Good Place

O0O0O0O

If Bill had made himself think about it, he would probably have concluded that wanting to go to sleep just to shut out the world around him was not only childish, it was dangerous, too. But then he thought of the faces of his children as he had seen them last in England, and of the faces of the strong, healthy children who, at least in his heart, were growing up safe and far away from everything he had wanted to save them from, and it gave him a strength that was better and deeper than any number of army drills could ever do. The sound of their laughter, even if it only echoed in his head in the uneasy dark of the beach at night time, warmed him more than a hundred mud-stained blankets ever could. So Bill closed his eyes, and rested his head, and welcomed the thought that one more night with his family could take him far away from all of this.

He couldn't tell when he fell asleep. If you had asked him, he might even have told you that he wasn't sleeping yet; he was still quite awake. Of course he was no longer on a beach in Dunkirk, so if he'd thought about it for a minute he would probably have known he was sleeping, but nobody asked him. So Bill, moving through a field of tall, waving grass, a blue sky overhead and sun washing down on him, thought of nothing but how lovely everything was. Behind him, presently, he heard the pleasant thobbity-thub of horse hooves on the ground, but everything was so lovely that Bill found no need to turn around and see the horse. It would reach him in good time, and until it did, why should he rush it? Instead he admired the gilding of the once-green grass, and thought that it must be summer, but late summer; simply too warm to quite be autumn yet.

"Whoa." The admonition was gentle, but had the ring of authority. It made Bill look up at last to see the horse he had heard approaching. It was a striking little animal, its glossy coat a lovely, deep red chestnut, its head uncommonly delicate and its features finely-wrought. It stood in the midst of the field, the tall grass tickling its belly as it mouthed the bit and waited for further instruction from its rider. There was a wicked glint in its eye that suggested it would be glad of the chance to get the upper hand in the situation, but for now at least, it merely stood where its rider bade it.

The rider, he who had spoken with such strength, was a grown man with a lordly bearing and an easy, confident seat on his horse. He wore no armour, but a sword was belted at his side and the horse wore light mail, such as horses do for training exercises. The scene was so intriguing that Bill spent some time studying the nice picture the pair made, the strong, fierce little horse and the noble man astride it. It was not until the man, with a laugh such as Bill had never heard in his life, gave the horse a pat and told it to step lively, that it occurred to him to look at the man's face, and when he had, he could hardly believe it.

It was Peter. His son was no longer a boy or even a boy growing up, but rather was a grown man. He wore the same type of archaic clothing as he had when Bill last saw him, and he sat his horse like a king as he persuaded the creature to leave off all temerities for the time being. And his laugh . . . it was unsettling. That was the only word for it. There was such unbridled joy in Peter's laugh, such wealth of feeling that was so simply, clearly good, it almost hurt to hear.

It had, Bill thought, been a long time since something had been that good.

The exercises Peter put his horse through made little sense to his father. He was riding the animal the length of the field, and as he rode he drew his sword and swing it in a studied pattern, but with no opposition to his blows. Gamely the horse galloped down the field, wheeled at Peter's order, and galloped back up, paying no mind as its rider executed a series of what looked like terribly complicated thrusts and downswings that made Bill's shoulder ache to watch.

If his son had been any younger, he'd have worried about the boy wielding such an evidently deadly weapon, but the fact that he was so obviously an adult, coupled with the easy, practised way he held it went far to putting Bill's mind at ease, and allowing him to simply admire his son's prowess with the sword.

"Whoa," Peter instructed at last, and as before, the horse slowed with a sort of obedience that suggested he was only doing this as a courtesy to Peter, rather than out of any sense of obligation. "There you go," Peter smiled, swinging down from the animal and giving his neck a fond pat. "Now for a walk."

Bill wasn't sure how it happened, but somehow he ended up falling into step with the pair, hovering slightly behind Peter's right shoulder, where he was able to hear everything that was said as Peter addressed his horse.

"Let's see the Marshals say we aren't ready now!" he chuckled, and scratched behind the horse's twitching ear. "In fact, I'd like to see them dare to say you aren't readier than I!"

The horse did not answer, but it tossed its head as if to say yes, he knew he was. Peter rubbed affectionate knuckles along the length of the horse's neck, kneading the muscular flesh until the horse visibly softened toward him, and even bent his head a little closer. Bill, watching, wondered where Peter had learned to handle a horse like that. Peter, unaware of Bill, merely smiled at the animal's reaction for a moment before his face closed over, and he became solemn.

"I'm glad you're ready," he said, and his voice was heavier. "We may not need to be now, but soon . . ." He stopped walking and so did the horse, the pair of them regarding one another with matched solemnity. "Soon we might. That's the thing about the good times, you know; when you've had the bad to go with them, you appreciate the quiet moments all the more." And he looked so serious that it seemed rather odd, given the tranquility of the meadow around them. Bill might even have wondered what it was that his son had to be so grave about, had the sun not been shining and the skies so clear that it hardly seemed to matter. Only Peter appeared troubled, and only the horse before him seemed to understand why.

"When it comes down to it," he told the horse, "whenever we might need to leave next, I'm counting on you to bring me back to them." And then, as if that had been all the gravity he could handle, Peter smiled again, fit his foot to the left stirrup and swung easily up onto the horse once more.

"Enough of this," he breathed, gathering the reins, "it's not a day for being glum, is it? For now, we don't have to work at being thankful. So come on, then," backing the horse and turning him toward the path that had brought them into the field to begin with, "let's stretch your legs."

And in a flash of mane and tail and the glow of the sun on the horse's flanks, the pair went pounding back across the field, leaving Bill standing behind them and feeling, quite simply, at peace.

O0O0O0O

There was no gradual transition this time; no darkening, brightening or fading. One moment he was in a field, listening to the drumbeat of a horse's hooves recede into the distance, and the next he was standing in a large, warmly-lit hall in the midst of a crowd. The hall was not hot but it was comfortably warm, so Bill was surprised when a gust of sharp, smoky air blew on his face.

"Goodness, do shut the door!" the edict made him jump, although the voice was familiar. He turned and saw her— Susan, now a grown lady, hurrying across the floor of the hall, frowning. "Yes, and bar it, too, until they come home . . . thank you," as figures near the door complied. "That's much nicer."

Then she turned to bend over a table, and all around him, Bill now saw, there was activity; it was the oddest sort of scene, the sort you would only see in a dream. Animals, small dwarfs, Fauns like the one he had seen in the forest and yes, he saw, a handful of humans as well, were hard at work. They stood at long, low tables filled with what looked like meat and vegetables. Barrels were open beside the tables, and every table and each group who stood at it were responsible for a different food. One table was salting strips of meat, and another was preparing fish to be salted and stored. Onions, he saw, were being arranged for storage too, and so were kidney beans, dried corn . . .

The workers around the tables were very cheerful for ones working so hard. They joked and laughed; many of them sang. At first Bill marvelled at this, but as he continued to watch, he saw why it was that they were in such good spirits. As those around the tables worked, bending their efforts to the task at hand, Susan made her way from table to table, speaking to one person, encouraging another, and always, Bill saw, she would smile.

Susan's smile affected Bill in much the same way that Peter's laugh had done; it was startlingly, almost frighteningly good. It softened and lit her already lovely face, and watching Susan as she spoke with a nodding Dwarf, Bill felt pride, sharp and almost painful, bite at his chest. His daughter had grown into a young lady any parent might delight in, and watching her speak with the people in the room, and seeing their love for her, he realised he had never been more proud.

"Are you done already?" Susan marvelled, stopping to compliment a plump Squirrel— the very largest one of its kind that Bill had ever seen.

"Indeed, indeed, your Majesty," the Squirrel chattered, "indeed to be sure that I am, your Majesty, and I only hope—" he froze a moment, his nose twitching, and watched with wide, interested eyes as the barrel he had loaded with chestnuts was nailed shut and rolled away— "that you will be glad, Majesty, even delighted to find me, if it pleases you, another task to perform, indeed."

"I am sure we have something around here that wants doing," Susan laughed. "Come, let's find Mrs Clogg and ask her if—" but she broke off here at the sound of a horn trumpeting somewhere beyond the wide stone walls, and a smile even more brilliant swept across her face.

"Your Majesty!" a chubby Faun trotted briskly into the room at the far end of it, "if it pleases your Majesty, the hunters have returned!"

"Well, if they've brought us anything else I say that they can jolly well skin the next lot themselves!" one worker decided, and warm laughter greeted the joke.

Susan laughed too, but Bill couldn't help but notice that her attention was no longer on the preparations at hand; it had moved beyond the walls, outside to where the hunting party was gathering in the courtyard once more. Excusing herself to the Squirrel, Susan moved away from the table. She swept past Bill as she made her way for the door, passing so close he could feel the rush of air as her skirts swept the flagstones, and as she passed, he heard her humming. Her face glowed with quiet contentment, and as she drew nearer he heard her speak.

"Home," she sang softly, clearly addressing only herself, "they're home. They're safe, thank you, and here, and oh, lovely, perfect thing . . . they're home."

And with an expression that could only be described as pure delight, she laid one hand —Maura's hand; the same long, slim fingers, the light, friendly touch. He would never look at Susan again without seeing so much of her mother in her— on the latch, lifted it, and swept out into the autumn afternoon to greet her family.

O0O0O0O

Again, it was sudden. Susan closed the door, and then, as if he had done nothing more than blink, the great hall fell away and was replaced by a much smaller room. It was a library; Bill noted that the light beyond the window was no longer the warm glow of a late summer sun, or even the cheery light of autumn torches set along the walls of a castle kitchen hall, but rather the cool, grey light of winter. Snow fell outside, and made the small fire in the fireplace extremely welcome.

The plush chairs drawn up to the fireplace were four in number, but only two were occupied, one by a pair of extremely large sleeping cats, and the other by —Bill wondered if he would ever stop being surprised to find them so changed— his younger son. Edmund had a book open on his lap, but he was not reading it. Instead, he gazed into the flames before him, and looked, Bill thought, rather like a scholar as he did. His was not Peter's build; Edmund was longer, leaner, and Bill guessed that if they stood side by side, Edmund might well be the taller. Now, though, Edmund was not standing; Edmund was decidedly slouching. One of the cats yawned, stretched, and batted sleepily at the other cat's ears.

"Pulla doesn't like that, Tug," Edmund murmured, and Tug, thusly addressed, yawned again, and picked idly at the chair with sharp claws.

"She's asleep," he said, and the voice was so exactly how you might imagine a sleepy cat's—slow, precise, and heavily burred with self-satisfaction— that Bill found he couldn't bring himself to be surprised at hearing it. "She doesn't know."

"Very well, then," Edmund said, and spared the cat a glance of great amusement, "but if she wakes up and swats you for it, be warned, I may laugh."

"Duly noted, Sire," Tug purred, and yawned again.

Edmund smiled, and studied the flames. The atmosphere in the room was close, but not stuffy; it was really rather cosy. Bill, warmed by the fire and the pleasant nearness of his resting son and the two cats, found he felt almost as if he were dozing as he watched the remainder of the scene play out.

Edmund, for his part, watched the fire snap a few minutes more before shutting his book with a sigh. "No use, that," he said, mostly to himself, but Tug, busy washing his paws and passing them briskly over his ears, heard, and looked up.

"Sire?"

"Sorry," Edmund smiled, "I was just saying there's no point in trying to read. I was thinking of something else."

"A worthy pastime," Tug decided, finishing with his ears and paws and dedicating himself to his elbows. "Pleasant thoughts, I trust?"

"Mostly . . ." Edmund traced one finger absently over the cover of the book he held. "A dispute was brought before me today. A matter of courtship."

Tug paused in his ablutions. "Courtship? Matters of planning a marriage?"

"Mmm."

"Do you normally handle such matters, Sire?" Tug asked, and Bill was momentarily stirred from his pleasant, dozing state to be amused at the thinly-concealed scepticism in the cat's voice. Edmund, it seemed, heard it too; his smile looked very like his father's.

"I do not. I asked Queen Susan to hear the issue. She handles such things far better than I."

Tug's ensuing purr sounded distinctly approving. "The Queen's grace is the soul of tact," he murmured, and Edmund nodded in agreement. "And yet," Tug's amber eyes narrowed to contemplative slits, "you are dissatisfied."

Bill supposed nobody would detect concealed dissatisfaction better than a cat.

"Slightly . . ." Edmund shut his eyes. "I always am, when I can't help."

Again Tug purred, a sound strongly reminiscent of Edmund's reflective 'mmm.' It seemed, Bill thought, that both his son and the cat were feeling the way he did; pleased and dozy, but still clear-headed enough to focus on the problem at hand.

"But Sire," Tug stretched, comfortably lazy in his chair beside the still-slumbering Pulla, "you are largely successful, are you not?"

"Sometimes, perhaps . . . very well," Edmund sighed, "most times."

"They call you Just." The cat's tone was no longer wry, as it had previously been, and Tug regarded his sovereign with tranquil eyes. "Your people appeal to you when they cannot trust themselves to be fair-minded."

"Yes . . ." Edmund sat forward, rubbing his face. Tug, sprawled in a somewhat leonine pose beside Pulla, continued to watch him as he spoke again.

"And when you cannot settle a dispute, you pass the matter on to those who are best suited so to do. In this case, her Majesty."

"Yes."

"Then I do not see, your Majesty," and the use of this title had none of the thinly-veiled irony that his previous use of 'Sire' had done, "how you can berate yourself for what I cannot term aught but success." And, with distinct lack of ceremony he returned to scouring his paws, leaving Edmund to reflect, and Bill to watch him.

Once his son stopped confiding in the cat, of course, Bill couldn't tell what he was thinking, but Edmund had never been very good at hiding what he felt, so his father didn't miss the way the tension seemed to slip from the young man's shoulders as he sat there. Neither, it seemed, did the cat; his preening session at last completed, Tug sat up and studied the King with smug approval.

"Much improved, Sire?" he enquired delicately, and the look Edmund gave the cat was one of amused exasperation.

"If you must know, you infuriating beast, I rather am. As you say, I could not help them, and so I arranged for them to meet with someone who could. That I was able to do that much for them . . . it was a privilege, not a failure."

And with that conclusion reached, Edmund settled back a bit deeper in his chair, smiling. Tug, looking as pleased with himself as only a cat can look, cuddled down beside his still-dozing friend, and began to purr.

O0O0O0O

This time Bill missed seeing the scene shift because his eyes were almost closed. The warmth of the fire had lulled him into a good, warm place, and he still felt warm when he opened his eyes again and found that he was standing in a pool of sunshine, again outside, but not in a meadow as before. Instead he was in a wood, and a small, rather murky pool of water lay before him in a clearing. He was not surprised to see that the young woman who stood beside it, gazing down into the water with her arms crossed over her chest, was Lucy, now grown.

She had, he thought, changed the least of the four. Her face was still sweet and round, though the rest of her had slimmed and lengthened, and even though her expression was grave, she still retained her dimples. Her hair was even longer than when her father had last seen it, but otherwise . . . he would have known her anywhere.

The large Raven that lighted on the branch of the tree affected a long, raspy clearing of its throat, and made itself known. Lucy at once looked up to greet the bird with a radiant smile, and cordially asked after his family. The Raven went on at some length on this subject, and Lucy expressed interest; Bill, who was not personally acquainted with the Raven, chose to look around instead.

The wood was damp with still-melting snow, but green shoots of grass were beginning to fight through the soil. The sun was not exuberant just yet, but standing beneath it, Bill felt the potential. The whole wood, it seemed, was on the verge of bursting forth with new life, but for the moment it held back, and in this quiet place, at this transition point, stood his daughter. Now that the Raven had finally wound down its recitation of family news, he politely enquired after the health of Lucy's family, and she assured him that they were well.

"They don't like to come out at the start of the spring," she admitted, "because it's so wet, but after a whole winter inside I simply can't wait! They'll be waking up, soon," she finished, and for a moment Bill thought she meant her siblings, but then she turned enraptured eyes on the nearest tree. Bill, looking at it, thought it looked just like a tree, but the Raven seemed to understand what she meant.

"Any day now," he agreed, ruffling his feathers. "Then it will really be spring, won't it? The new alders, and the little maple shoots . . . the whole place will just teem with chatter! It gets so a fellow can hardly get a word in edgewise," he concluded mournfully, and Bill thought it was nothing less than a miracle that Lucy kept a mostly-straight face at this particular complaint.

"Still," she smiled sweetly up at the affronted bird, "things are so pretty in the spring, aren't they? They're friendlier. I mean, it gets warmer, and less like winter, and . . . well, people find it a relief, I think, don't they? That the winter can be over each year, now."

Again this remark was beyond Bill, but the Raven agreed with Lucy that it really was a wonderful thing. Then he bobbed a bit in what Bill could only assume was meant as a bow, made his excuses and took wing, leaving Lucy to look back down to the pool at her feet.

For just a moment, all looked as it had when Bill had first happened on the scene, but then something —he couldn't quite place what— seemed to shift, and change, and . . . grow. The tree nearest Lucy rustled in what looked to be —surely had to be— an oddly-placed breeze, but somehow, just watching it, you knew it was not the case. Lucy seemed to know it too; a smile of pure joy lit up her face, and she turned to the tree, her eyes shining.

"Oh," she breathed, and Bill thought he had never heard a sweeter welcome in all his days, "oh, dear trees; good morning!"

O0O0O0O

Again the scene slipped away so fast he didn't see it go, but this time, it was not replaced by another. Instead, Bill felt himself drifting, floating through a grey, chilly haze. His head felt clearer, now; he felt less like he was in a dream, and more like that place between asleep and awake, where you know you are likely to wake up very soon, but are not quite ready to just yet.

Bill, feeling cold and very far away from everything, wanted to wake up. He began to fight his way toward consciousness, when he remembered that it was when he was conscious that things were at their coldest. He tried to back-pedal, but it was too late; the grey haze was lightening, and coming clearer. He was cold, and shivering, and he could feel the coarse cloth of his blanket under his fingers as he clutched at it, trying to draw it closer around him.

He still fought, struggled to go back and find his way through the thicker part of the haze to wherever his children were, but it was no good. Men's voices filtered in, the fog thinned, the cold intensified, and he knew the surf that crashed nearby was not on any beach where he would want his children to swim. His children were gone, his wife was miles away, and he was on a beach with the Germans closing in, getting nearer by the hour.

Worst of all, he was waking up.

O0O0O0O

A.N.: Going by my self-imposed schedule this is a day late, and I apologise for that. I'm trying to get better about doing things on time but it wasn't edited by Friday and I couldn't bring myself to post until it was!

Up next: The Grim Place.