4.
She stands in the courtyard and stares up at the sky, rubbing the rough bark thoughtfully. It is very, very monochromatic; shades of gray with brown and greenish speckled moss as decoration. A young tree.
Her view of the sky is blocked by its spindly little arms—branches that reach prayerfully to the heavenly void (which isn't exactly void because there's a cloud and it's shaped like a hat). Lucy smiles and twists around her finger one of the unruly curls that has managed to escape the elaborate dressing her sister and chambermaid trapped the rest of her hair into. If she could have her way, it would all be free—wild and tangled, waving in the wind like the leaves and grass around her.
There is an apple on the grass a few feet away—an apple the color of amber. It did not fall from the tree with the spindly arms; that tree was planted yesterday, and the dirt around its roots is still turned darkside up. No, this apple is from one of the other trees in the orchard (there are only ten big enough to climb and bear fruit, which is why Pomena helped them plant some more).
Picking up the apple and taking a huge, scrumptious bite, Queen Lucy closes her eyes in delight and lets the taste of summer dance across her tongue, until every bit of her is awake and alive. She turns and sits down—not next to the old tree, but next to the new one. She knows she should care more that the fresh soil is dirtying her pale yellow skirt…but she doesn't. Susan may mind if her younger sister wears a dirty skirt, but Lucy certainly doesn't.
The bark pokes through the back of her dress. Lucy wrinkles her nose and remembers how easily Peter's hand fit around it, as he helped them lower it into the ground. All the way around…such a tiny trunk. And yet, leaning against it, she wonders how long it will take for the slenderness of the tree to turn stout—for the rough bark to grow scarred and rougher.
"How many years this tree shall see," she says aloud, thoughtfully. "I suppose it'll live longer than any of us, and see ages and ages of what'll someday be history. What will it be like, I wonder, in a thousand years?"
She looks up and imagines a sky of leaves—tall, ancient limbs that are crowned with dozens of apples, both yellow and red (for it would be a lousy orchard that had just one kind of apple). And, twisting the apple blossom in her fingers, she smiles and wonders what they'll think of her and the others in a thousand years—if anyone in Narnia, or anywhere, for that matter, will remember.
"How funny it would be to see you in a thousand years," she murmurs, stroking the bark gently as she takes another bite from the golden apple. But the air is fresh and the smell of apple blossoms blowing on the wind soon clears her carefree mind of such heavy thoughts.
But she does not forget the taste of those apples.