Chapter Five: Edmund

Somehow, it always came back to this.

Every time he closed his eyes to settle into sleep, every time he began to dream, and woke shaky and sweaty - every time, he returned to the cold little stone room in the lower basement of Her castle. Four and a half feet by six feet and two inches. He'd measured it out with his fingers, sitting there day after day - for nine weeks.

For 67 days, actually. He'd sat in that little stone cell alone, for 67 days. Counting things. Doing random sums and divisions in his head. Making friends with the bricks.

Going mad.

When he was awake, it felt like years and years ago; in fact it had sort of been years and years ago - four years in England time, but nineteen counting Narnian time.

Nineteen years, but when he fell asleep, it was all around him still, as though he'd never left at all.

He'd paced around that tiny cell day after day, waiting for meals, waiting for the Witch to come speak to him, waiting for them to bring him awful news about his family, waiting for anything at all. Even the worst they did was never so bad as having to sit there bored and stiff and sore and starving all day, with only one clear thought in his head.

One clear thought.

I made a terrible mistake.

How long had he been asleep? It felt like months - it felt like he'd been back in that cell for months.

But he wasn't there now. He was warm, for one thing. He'd never been properly warm in the cell.

Edmund shook himself awake, squinting into blinding sunlight. He was lying on his stomach, vision full of grass and - violets, oddly. There was a chess piece right next to his face, a little white pawn that looked like something he'd had all his life, but forgotten about for years... A chess piece. Like Peter had had...

His breath caught in the back of his throat - he suddenly recognised this place, this feeling - they were home.

They were back!

Well, he was back. But the others had been with him; they ought to be around here somewhere...

He heard a piercing shriek. Lucy.

Immediately he pocketed the pawn and got to his feet with soldierly speed, pushing off the ground and into a sprint as soon as he was upright. Surroundings: trees, loose rock, ocean, stone walls - ruins? - turf, beach, and there, already sprinting into the clear blue spray, was Lucy. She was still shrieking at the top of her lungs, and when she saw Edmund she shrieked even louder, bolting out of the ocean to jump into his chest, wrapping her arms around his neck.

"Woah! Easy, Luce!"

But they were both laughing and smiling too hard to really say anything. He hugged her tighter and spun her around, which made him over-balance and spilled them both onto the warm sand. He sort of crushed her arm when he landed, but he wasn't sure she'd even felt it. She just kept laughing.

"Home, Ed! We're home!" She breathed happily for a moment, then pushed him off of her and ran back toward the water. She jumped in and out of the tide with little excited hops. Edmund got to his feet, squinted at the sharp white sparkle on the water, and took several deep breaths. Looked to be about ten or eleven o'clock, east-facing beach, sun high enough to be about midsummer -

And then he was hit full in the face with a handful of slimy green-brown seaweed.

"Lucy!"

She laughed, dancing in the surf. "Well don't just stand there!"

"Do you know where we are, exactly?"

"...Do you care, really?" She gave him a cajoling pout, and began backward into the deeper water until she was up to her hips. "Come on, Ed, please... please please please..."

He held his stern, older brother gaze for about five or six more pleases, her voice getting higher and higher with each one. It was getting a little ridiculous, the way she played the baby card. He had to stick his fist over his upper lip in what he hoped was a reprimanding pose to hide the beginning of a smile.

Suddenly a wave rushed over her shoulders, and she shrieked again and fell face-first into the foam. That was the end of his hiding - he burst out laughing as she came up spluttering.

"Oh, ha ha," but she was smiling. "Come on!"

Edmund grinned and pulled his shoes off, rolling up his sleeves. Setting his things aside, he waded into the water and tried unsuccessfully to dodge a splash she aimed at him.

"You're going to pay for that, Pevensie."

"But you'll have to catch me first, Pevensie!"

She was a quick little squirt - she kept jumping away from his attempts to dunk her. After a minute he gave up and allowed himself to relax into the flow of the water. The expression on her face as she floated on her back was triumphant, but he'd bide his time, pay her back later. He picked up a bulbous curl of the seaweed she'd thrown at him, twirling it in his fingers.

"Luce, you know what these look like? They look like mustaches."

"I know, dummy! You were the one who invented it!"

"Invented what?" He shot her a puzzled look, which she returned.

"You don't remember? They're the same weeds we used to play with - the Merman Disguise game. You just stick some of the bulbs in your nose and leave the ends trailing out. Don't... don't you remember? We played it all the time."

Edmund shook his head and forced out a chuckle, hoping that would reassure her. He waded deeper into the foamy water and looked away. Lucy had fixed him with a hard stare. He dove under a wave and came up shaking water out of his hair. But she was still staring.

"I can't believe - We played it all the time, not just when we were kids. Cair Paravel was the only beach where we ever found this kind of seaweed, though - remember Peter marching up to the delegation of mermaids that time, with a bunch of seaweed up his nostrils, and asking if they thought he looked as dashing as a proper mergentleman? How they all got in a tiff and left early, and Susan was completely mortified... You remember, right?"

Edmund swallowed and pressed his lips together tightly. He'd managed to keep it from them this long, but no one had asked him directly until now. He turned to face the open sea, and several waves washed into him as he racked his brain trying to think of a way to stop her from realising what she was about to realise.

"Edmund..." He could barely hear her over the low crash of the waves. "What do you remember, Edmund?"

Lucy was swimming next to him now, gently pulling on his elbow. Her face was set, adamant, but he noticed a tiny bit of fear in her eyes. He opened his mouth, then closed it again, turning away from her as she drew in a squeaky gasp.

"Honestly Luce, it's not a big deal."

"It is, it is a big deal -"

"No, it's not - some of it, a lot of it is missing now. I can't - I can't remember it. I guess most of it. Ever since we got back, it started fading, and then I just couldn't remember anything, except - ." He couldn't finish the sentence, couldn't even meet her eyes. It was bad enough that she thought he was a two-faced head-case (...whatever that was) without having to know that he remembered none of the details about Narnia except what had happened in a four-and-a-half feet by six-feet-and-two-inches cell.

"It's not a big deal."

"Edmund..." Had her voice just cracked? He didn't want to look at her.

"I didn't lie! I've always remembered sort of the general feeling of it, and anyway I never said I remembered all that stuff, when you all were talking about the old stories and everything. I just nodded like I remembered, because I figured..."

"Oh, you figured." He winced at the snarl in her voice. "We thought you didn't want to talk about it because of - because it would be painful for you. We didn't think - I never realised..."

She paused, then began to shout. "We don't keep secrets, Ed! You and me especially! You should have told us - me, you should have told me..."

"Why? How could you have helped?" He splashed deeper into the waves until he was treading water, well away from her. What did she know, anyway? Keeping secrets was about the only thing all the Pevensie siblings had in common - keeping Narnia secret from Finchley, keeping their half-child-half-adult minds secret from their mother and father, keeping each other from knowing anything important by joking it all away, by pretending that they had no secrets...

Lucy had slunk away toward the beach; glancing over his shoulder, he saw her plop down in the shallows, elbows on her knees, palms pressed into her eyes. Oh lord, she was crying. He swam back to shore.

"Lucy..."

She scrubbed her nose and looked away.

"Lucy, I'm sorry, all right?"

She started crying harder. Edmund tried not to roll his eyes.

"Lucy... Lucy, is that Susan?"

She sniffled and glanced up at where he was looking down the beach at a figure a few hundred feet away. It must be Susan; no one else flailed their arms that much when they were running. It wasn't even possible to flail around more than she did.

Edmund pulled Lucy to her feet and they began to walk toward Susan at a brisk steady pace. Lucy wasn't crying now, but she kept looking over at him with red-rimmed squinty eyes. He cleared his throat.

"Actually, we probably should have been looking for the others sooner - I don't really know where we are, do you?"

She was silent.

"We must be near Cair Paravel, right? I don't remember it looking like -" Oops, there was that word again. Remembering.

"No, it didn't look like this," she said, and her voice seemed to have recovered most of its normal tone and strength. "Well, not quite like this anyway."

"But we must be near it, because of the seaweed - and it feels familiar, really really familiar. If we're going South right now -"

"Ed, how is it I remember and you don't?"

"Well - well I guess because my head is so full of wisdom and intelligence, and yours has plenty of empty space..."

He dodged left as she swung at his arm, but Susan had just about caught up to them now. She huffed up to them rather red-faced, and stopped with her hands on her knees, breathing so hard she was unable to speak. Edmund observed to himself that it was probably past time Susan began taking more exercise.

Lucy's observation was less private. ""Are you alright, Susan? You look completely flushed."

"No I don't!" Susan snapped, then straightened, flushing even more deeply for some reason. Lucy choked back a laugh. "Er - "I mean yes, yes I'm alright - but - did you hear the cannons?"

"Uh..." Edmund and Lucy exchanged a glance. "No..."

"I heard cannon fire! So I took off running, found you two..."

Cannon fire? Edmund looked at Lucy again, both trying not to let Susan see them smiling. "Susan, you know where we are, right?"

"Of course I do! I mean, we're on Cair Paravel Island -"

"Island!" Lucy yelped.

"-Yes, I know, but I saw the other shore, and that's what he called it..."

"He who? Peter?" Edmund scrutinized his older sister, who was now staring around from the beach to the inland trees.

"Su?" Susan seemed to have forgotten they were there. She blinked and gave Edmund an odd look.

"Where is Peter?" she finally asked them.

"He's not with us," Lucy said. "I thought he'd be with you..."

"We'd better find him, then. Come on, leave your stuff for now... but I think we should be careful, stay out of the open until we know what we're dealing with..."

She set off into the nearest clump of trees, and Edmund exchanged a confused look with Lucy. He felt a bit bad for his little sister - she must have just realised that two of her siblings had basically lost half their brains - and the third was still missing, come to think of it. Missing, and they had no real idea where they were or what was out there...

"Peter brought us here, didn't he? So he must be ok."

Edmund blinked and grinned at her - somehow Lucy always managed to read his thoughts on his face. Lucy beamed at him and set off after Susan. How had she also managed to forget that he'd made her cry not ten minutes before?

He set off after her, but not before stashing a seaweed mustache into his pocket next to the little white pawn. Just in case. He might not remember inventing the Mermaid Mustache game, but that didn't mean he couldn't play it now.

After three minutes of walking they reached dense forest. They were all three barefoot, but the grass was sandy and soft, so they didn't mind much.

Lucy tried again. "Susan - don't you mean Cair Paravel beach? Not island?"

"It's been a long time since it was just a beach, I think. There was a man - there are people here now, and I... I met one, and he said there were - I don't know, he said this place is haunted, I think - "

Edmund and Lucy both had to hotfoot it to keep up with Susan now; she'd been increasing her speed as she began to ramble, her gaze swinging from side to side as though she expected attackers to burst upon them. They were coming up on some old white ruins now, large slabs of stone with weeds springing through every crack. Edmund hopped over a stumpy pillar to get Susan's attention. "Who was it? Who did you meet?"

"It's no one you know, Ed -"

"But is he one of our people?"

"How could he be? All our people are animals, aren't they?"

"But he's not - you know, an enemy...?" She stopped moving abruptly, looking suddenly unsure. This was the problem with Susan taking control; she never stopped second-guessing. Somehow Peter never had that problem - probably because he never bothered much with first-guessing. They all moved closer together, just slightly. A bird chirped loudly, just over their heads, and all three grabbed each other in surprise, scared looks on their faces. The bird chirped again, and Lucy laughed sheepishly at the false alarm. Edmund felt rather stupid. Surely he hadn't always been so chicken? Susan still looked worried.

"I don't understand what you're so worried about," Lucy said, as Susan pulled them on again, a bit more slowly. "There are no cannons in Narnia, right? Aren't we safe here?"

Edmund answered when Susan said nothing. "Well - think about it. If we're in Narnia, then we ought to be at a castle with a harbor and an orchard, with friends around us." He realised belatedly that Lucy knew that he was sort of bluffing about knowing all this; Lucy now knew how often he'd bluffed his way through the conversations they'd shared back in England, but thankfully she didn't alert Susan to it. He continued. "But we're climbing over ruins, on an island covered in forest, and we're either alone or surrounded by strangers... and I'm sure whoever fired those - cannons - was no friend to anyone on this shore."

"And don't forget," Susan said after a few minutes, as they were cresting a small rise. "If we're in Narnia, there should be four of us - "

"But we're only three..." Lucy mumbled softly.

"No we're not -" Edmund interjected, peering ahead down the hill. "Look over there, down by the shore, do you see? Through the trees?"

"Yes, there's something going on there - "

"Bloody hell, what in God's name -"

"Language, Edmund!"

But Edmund was already tearing through the trees toward the southwestern side, the girls somewhere behind him. What he'd seen on the sand had set his heart racing madly. They sprinted down the rise over roots and low tangles of bush until they were standing at the edge of the forest, where a steep wall of rock fell away down to the beach, impeding their path.

Pushing through the branches of the bushes on the cliff's edge, Edmund got his first look at the fiasco taking place down on the beach - just in time to see Peter charge into the middle of it.