Lucy opened her eyes and sat up groggily. She didn't quite know why she'd woken up – no one had tried to wake her. In fact, no one was even awake. No one was on watch. Alarmed, she clambered to her feet and wondered who'd fallen asleep too soon, when suddenly there was a disturbance from the giant footprint nearby – something was coming up and out of it. Lucy grabbed her dagger from the ground next to her and held it at the ready, watching as a very human hand reached out of the ooze and searched for the edge. Frozen with confusion and fear, clutching her dagger hilt as though her life depended on it, Lucy watched as a dark-haired head followed, and soon after her sister arose from the disgusting puddle. Shocked, the youngest queen found herself speechless.
Susan got to her feet on the crowded ground slowly, turning around – she seemed to glow softly, and somehow she had stayed clean, rather like her siblings had stayed dry after rising from one of the pools in the Wood Between the Worlds. Lucy gaped at her quietly, unsure of what to say. Could they just go home now? Mission accomplished? But Susan shook her head as if in response. She held up her hand urgently.
"What is it, Su?" Lucy asked in haste.
Susan shook her head again, pressing a helpless finger to her lips – she could not speak. Then she pointed to Lucy's belt. Confused, Lucy looked down at it. There were several things hanging upon it; the pouch for her cordial, the satchel with her rings, a tiny kitchen blade for bread and cheese, her scabbard. Which was Susan pointing to? Presently, the elder queen made a gesture with her hands, like the firing of an arrow.
"You want your bow?" questioned Lucy confusedly. Susan nodded, and Lucy bit her lip helplessly.. "But we don't have it, Su. Where is it?"
Susan shrugged. She didn't know. She made another gesture, like blowing her horn, but again Lucy could only shake her head. To this, Susan indicated searching with her hand above her eyes.
"Do you need them now?" Lucy asked, unsure how to help her sister. If this even really was her sister. This was all rather strange. She must be dreaming, but to Lucy dreams were just as important, if not more so, than reality. Susan shook her head, but tapped her heart, and Lucy understood that her sister was saying she just wanted her gifts for sentimental reasons. Perhaps Susan knew somehow that they were coming to rescue her and didn't want to return to Narnia without her bow and horn. After all, they were important tokens and valuable tools.
But Susan had pointed to her belt before, too.. Confused, Lucy looked down at it again, when something moved on it, as if pulled by a hand. Alarmed, she grabbed the ring satchel, the object in question, and looked up at Susan, but her sister was gone, and the clearing was dark, and she was no longer standing by the side of the print but lying where she had been when sleeping and there was indeed a hand pulling on her satchel…
"What are you doing?!" Lucy demanded, feeling a hand close around the bag. She grabbed the hand and tried to pull it back down, but its owner was much stronger than her, and without much resistance the little pouch was ripped from her belt. In the dark, backlit by the two tiny moons in the sky, Lucy could see the silhouette of the thief stepping back, pulling out the rings from the bag and casting it aside. Edmund was stirring confusedly beside her but she knew there was no time to waste – the man was getting away!
"Stop!" she ordered, scrambling onto her knees and then up her feet, but she got caught up in her cloak and fell to the ground again. Before Edmund had even sat up to see what the fuss was about, the dark figure was gone.
"What in the blazes is going on?" Peter's voice rang out in the dark as he emerged from the woods a second later, slightly out of breath. "Timothy told me he'd heard something…"
"…Timothy's gone," Edmund interrupted shortly, briskly as he looked beside him. "Did he go with you?"
"No," Peter said, his brow furrowing, his eyes resting on the empty space on the earth.
Connecting two and two, Lucy clapped a hand over her mouth.
"He stole them!" she cried in surprise and anger. "He stole the rings!"
"What?!" Edmund gasped, his hand reaching over to Lucy's belt, but it was gone, the pouch ripped clean off and the rings with it. Peter checked after him, sitting down in disbelief.
"I can't believe it," he said, shaking his head. "What in the name of Aslan possessed him to do it? Ed, do you still have yours?"
Edmund checked – he did.
"I doubt he ever really intended to get us to Susan," he said bitterly. "He only cared about going back to find those other people. But why did he wait so long?"
"I don't know," Peter sighed, shaking his head and running a hand through his hair, upset. "But we can't stop him now. Following him into the Wood could put all of us back in Tamitha and we can't risk that. It's too late. We'll just have to do the rest of this without him and hope we don't need two sets of rings."
"I'm sorry," Lucy said despairingly. "I should have stopped him."
"It wasn't your fault, Lu," Edmund said, shaking his head. "He's twice as big as you and you were asleep. It's all right. We only really need one yellow and one green anyway, and I've still got mine. We'll make do."
"Get some sleep," Peter sighed, standing up and sheathing his sword, which he'd had out previously. "We'll need it. Ed, I'll be waking you in an hour or so, so make sure you get it now."
Nodding in submission, Edmund curled back into his cloak and was soon sleeping. Lucy, not able to do so as quickly, sat a minute longer, staring at the spot where Timothy had disappeared. He had seemed so trustworthy. Intent on the rescue of the others like him, yes, but honest in his intent to help them. Since Lucy was naturally a very trusting person, she found it hard to accept that he had simply abandoned them, and dwelt on this troubling truth for so long she almost forgot about her dream.
"Peter," she said suddenly, when looking at the puddle of ooze triggered the memory. He looked over at her from where he was keeping watch, pacing back and forth quietly; at her voice he'd stopped moving.
"What is it, Lucy?" he asked, his voice low to keep from waking Edmund, who was still slumbering between them.
"I had a dream about Su again," she said. "She wants us to find her horn and her bow and quiver. It's important to her."
"Then we'll do that," Peter said, nodding solemnly and beginning to pace again. Lucy sighed as she settled back down into the unpleasantly squishy earth. With or without Timothy, they still had to find and help Susan. Everything would turn out all right. It had to.